Merge Conflict Music Video Morning

I started the day resolving a source code merge conflict and drinking a coffee.

The merge conflict I fixed quick and felt great.

I think it might could be a good day.

Here’s what I’ve been listening to on heavy rotation lately, from Last.fm. Top Ten songs.

1. Family Business by Lawrence
2. Me & You by Lawrence
3. Sue Me by Sabrina Carpenter
4. Bad Liar by Selena Gomez
5. The King Is Half-Undressed by Jellyfish
6. Make Believe (Loop Version) by Elise Trouw
7. How’m I Gonna Find You Now by James McMurtry
8. Krafty – 2011 Total Version by New Order
9. Wish You Were a Girl by Tchotchke
10. Blessed Relief by Frank Zappa

Now’m gonna write about some of these.

Jellyfish’s The King Is Half-Undressed is a fine chunk of Neo-psychedelic revival from 1990. I remembered this track on the way home from bodysurfing one day. Out of the blue my brain just said: “LISTEN TO THAT SONG, YOU LIKE IT.” According to Last.fm I have not ever scrobbled it before this year. Which means no plays on Slacker Radio (former employer which I regularly scribbled from) and was never in my iTunes collection, and when I was running the Chrome extension web scribbler I contributed to I never listened to it on any platform I scribbled from, including YouTube. I know it’s on at least one of my cassette tape mix tapes from the early 1990s. But those don’t scrobble.

Wish You Were a Girl by Tchotchke is from 2022. Love their tone, attitude and world-weariness. Women being precisely who they are brilliantly is among of my top favorite things.

Blessed Relief by Frank Zappa is from 1972. Zappa loved love crunching, abrasive, freewheeling, ugliness–but this this piece showcases a quality of loveliness which nevertheless contains complexities and curlicues that are the best sort of jazz composition. It’s so pretty that it often–but not always–makes me weep.

Lawrence has a new single out: Family Business. I talked about Lawrence in December and they are still on heavy rotation for all the reasons I stated there.

I heard a song from James McMurtry while listening to Radio Garden.

Digression: Have you tried Radio Garden? The interface is a map of planet earth. Every dot is a radio station that streams their music in some way to the internet. And if it’s online and broadcasting, you can listen. I often will traipse across the planet and try stations in Slovenia. Or Argentina. Or over to the BBC stations. One station I often return to is KDAN 91.5 out of Marshall, California (population, 400). It plays classic rock, sometimes old gospel, country, country swing, outlaw country, jam bands, and often surprises me. It was where I first heard Sarah Shook, last year.

The McMurtry song I heard on KDAN one morning was State of the Union, which is a slow searing folk song from 2017. Listen on Soundcloud. And holy shit the lyrics.

Mother turned eighty,
The consummate Lady
We took her to Golden Corral.
‘Cause she likes the yeast rolls
And Bourbon Street Chicken
We oughta known better by now.
‘Cause me and my brother got into it good,
I called him a hick and he called me a hood,
He said, “Dad always treated his Mexicans good–
“I guess you think you’re better somehow”

“Yeah you think you’re better,
“Cardigan-sweatered.
“Snowflake if ever there was.
“You think you’re so cool
“‘Cause you did good in school
“You got whipped every day on the bus.”
Sister lit out ‘fore the shoutin’ got worse
Went to Wednesday night prayer at the new Christian church,
With a cross on her neck and a nine in her purse–
She might be the wisest of us

It’s too much for regular rotation. Better to have How’m I Gonna Find You Now as a regular right now. I like a propulsive jam like this, and as an older fella, I can appreciate a line like: “Now I’m washin’ down my blood pressure pill with a Red Bull.” I love a bitterly funny lyric — lyrics tag highlights those, because I love to quote ’em.

Time for another coffee. Have an egg, maybe. Time for work.

Thanks for reading, and hang tough people. The world needs fixin’.