Wedding Wednesdays - Ben Folds - The Luckiest

Here it is, the final song from our wedding, and the one that had the most potential to make me cry. Ben Folds (official wiki AMG) is from Winston-Salem, NC, and is best known to pop audiences as the guy who wrote "Brick," though that might be his most solemn song ever.

When we sat down to start compiling wedding music, I played this for my lovely wife. It was a song she'd never heard before, but Ben's words and sentiments almost had her in tears, something I totally understand. The narrator of this song is an awkward guy, one who can't necessarily express his emotions well in words, but he stumbles around until he manages to say what he feels. (Live video here.)

I'm terrible at that myself, but I just hope that I can help Tiki feel loved, and cherished. I hope I can make her see how much I appreciate her -- everything she does for me, and everything she is. If she feels even half the love I have for her, this marriage can't help but work.

Ben Folds - The Luckiest
Removed due to my 4th DMCA takedown
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Wedding Wednesdays - Michael Bublé - You And I

Got a few more wedding songs to upload for all of you. This is a song written by Stevie Wonder -- we already heard from him both on this blog and at the wedding, which is why I'm not posting the original. (It's not a coincidence, though -- Stevie is high in the list of our top ten favorite musicians as a couple. He might even be in the top three.)

Michael Bublé (official mySpace wiki AMG) is a Canadian big band/swing crooner, who's been doing some press the last few weeks connected with the Olympics and his upcoming tour. We'll hear his cover of the Stevie Wonder song today (but during our actual wedding ceremony the song was performed by the bride's sister, who did a great job and blew us all away). The album this song comes from also includes Michael's version of "Try A Little Tenderness," and his lackluster cover of "Can't Buy Me Love."

Michael Bublé - You And I
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Wedding Wednesdays - Corinne Bailey Rae - Like A Star

Corinne Bailey Rae (official wiki MySpace AMG) is a British torch-jazz-soul singer. She's about to be everywhere at once since she has a new album coming out (with a bonus track which is a Nina Simone cover), two days after our wedding.

This is a nice mellow love song (and possibly the most mainstream thing I will ever, ever post on this blog). I like the lyrics because they're honest about the less romantic side of love ("I don't argue like this / With anyone but you...") but still sweet and hopeful.

Corinne Bailey Rae - Like A Star
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Dan Bryk - Great Adventure

Here's a quick post, my final one for Christmas 2009. (Edited to point out -- hey, be a fan on Facebook!)

Dan Bryk (official MySpace wiki AMG) is an Ontario-born musician, who moved from Canada to Raleigh, NC in 2003 with his partner Erin McGinn (they married in 2008, two years after this song was released). The reason I mention those specifics of his biography should become apparent when you listen to this song.

The Besotted family has a tradition called (I swear) "scooterpooping," which is where you leave the house with a modest amount of money and a full tank of gas, make a random decision to go one of the four cardinal directions, and drive a few hours until you get hungry, make a random decision to eat at a local nonchain restaurant, and continue meandering until everyone agrees to go home, stopping at any place that catches the eye. While this song details a trip with a more specific goal (the best scooterpooping song ever written is Lou Reed's "New Sensations," but that's a different post for a different day), it still has the feel of a classic scooterpoop.

As the fiancee and I prepare to spend our second Christmas together, and the last as an unmarried couple, I can't help but relate to this song. Sure, we're not moving thousands of miles to start our new life together, but it's going to feel like that all the time. The planning and logistics are causing both of us an awful lot of stress, but it'll all be over in 30 days. And every day after that, it will have been worth it. And, as the man says, that will only be the very start of a very long, very wonderful, very great adventure.

Dan Bryk - Great Adventure
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Wedding Wednesdays - Johnny Cash - Flesh And Blood

I love Johnny, I do. And his marriage with June is one of the stories I think about when I consider love (though, naturally, I hope never to emulate the first eleventeen years of that story).

This is the stripped-down, bare-bones version from Johnny's last years, not the one with the shimmery strings from 1970. Ultimately, this feels more like I hope my wedding will be -- smaller, more intimate. Still perfectly composed and executed, but no pomp or bombast, just quiet satisfaction and happiness with life and love. (If we were having a bigger, more expensive wedding, the other version might be more appropriate, especially since I love June's backing vocals on that take.)

This song is one of those comparative love songs, the ones like "In My Life" which say I love a lot of wonderful things, but I love you most of all. And this song says a lot about the transient beauty of our world, and the durable, lasting beauty of love between humans.

I haven't forgotten what tomorrow is -- click here to see last year's Thanksgiving post. I'm a lucky boy, in a lot of ways, and (not unlike Johnny) one of the things I've been luckiest about is to get a second chance with love. Thanks, sweetie. Happy Thanksgiving.

Johnny Cash - Flesh and Blood
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Wedding Wednesdays - John Fogerty - Joy Of My Life

Here's the second post about music for my upcoming nuptials. As longtime readers of the blog will know, I love love love John Fogerty. This is one of my two favorite songs from my favorite John Fogerty album, and a song that I've been known to listen to on repeat play for hours at a time.

Musically, this is so perfect for me, with the gorgeous slide guitar hitting me right in my country/blues sweet spot, the unexpected high fretwork about 1:30 (and the metallic clinking thirty seconds later), and the unabashed sweetness of the lyrics.

Fogerty isn't known as a guy who writes love songs, but this is about as perfect a love song as anyone could ask for. I don't want to delve too deeply into the man's personal life, but it seems to me that his wife Julie is mellowing him considerably, in all the right ways. (Granted, John's still able to access his anger lyrically, but the existence of this song shows that he's capable of a full range of emotions, which the CCR rock hits don't show off.) He's starting a short tour this week, and if you have a chance you should go.

This song always has the potential to choke me up if I'm in the right mood, and in fact right now I've been listening for about twenty minutes nonstop, and I'm on the verge. When this plays during my wedding, that might just be the point my eyes mist up. Thanks, John.

John Fogerty - Joy Of My Life
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Wedding Wednesdays - Stevie Wonder - At Last

So have I mentioned I'm getting married in January? I haven't? Sorry -- you folks need to keep up.

Naturally, I'm excited to choose music to play during the ceremony, and afterwards at the reception. So for a few weeks, I'll be putting up some of the choicest cuts, and talking about them here.

We've been working oh so slowly on compiling the music for our ceremony and reception. I personally have DJ'd one wedding, and "At Last" was the first-dance song there. Tiki and I both love the song, and Etta James in general. (Now, as you may know, I don't care for Beyonce, but that's neither here nor there as far as the original version of the song is concerned.) Our thinking is, everyone everywhere plays "At Last" during their wedding, and the lyrics are quite appropriate to both weddings in general and our relationship in particular.

Etta's version is the classic, of course, but Stevie Wonder's cover is just magical. It's fast, funky, and furious. This is not a first dance song. This is an upbeat song for walking down the aisle as man and wife.

(My cousin suggested that we should walk down the aisle to this, and though we both love everything about the song, and I know a lady who did just that [Hi, Martha! Love to all the Tough Pigs!], we won't be doing that either.)

This is heartfelt, triumphant, celebratory: everything we want our wedding to be. We haven't figured out what our first dance song will be, but there's no way I could dance to this song without spraining something.

Stevie Wonder - At Last
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Silly Sundays - Free At Last!

My legal and tax-filing status has been changed. And that's all I'm gonna say here, except that (despite what you may think if you don't listen to The Beatles all the way to the end) I'm a happy, happy boy.

Gabriel Mann and Maxayn Lewis - Free At Last
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The Beatles - Oh! Darling (early take)
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Okkervil River - Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas

Last year around this time, the MP3 blogosphere was abuzz with news that Okkervil River had just released a new album-length collection of covers and live recordings for free, only on the band's website. I'm never one to sneer at things that are free, and so I downloaded it. And listened to it, over and over again.

I'm not a traditional music customer, as a quick perusal of this blog will certainly show, but this worked on me. (Don't believe me? Click on Okkervil River's tag at the bottom of this post.) Since that time, I've seen the band live and own copies of every single CD they've put out. The songs have crept into my soul, and this song I'm posting today has made my cry virtually every time I've heard it. (Hence its place in my Depressing Little Christmas mix, which I'm posting here on the 21st.)

This song is so tender, so explicitly rooted in personal existence and loss that the Otis Redding quote doesn't feel like a cheat at all. Rather, it feels like something that Otis Redding, were he still alive, would send a letter to the band thanking them for. The song gives us two or three details about home, about the relationship, and a quote from that song you listen to and cry and think about the breakup, and we fill in the rest of the story from our own lives.

This song is in two of my "playlists": It's in my Christmas playlist, and my Okkervil River playlist, which means in the last twelve months I've heard it probably two dozen times. Last week, I was listening to it, preparing to get misty, and ... I didn't anymore. This post is a thank-you to Will Sheff and the Okkervil River boys, yes, but more than that it's a thank-you to Tiki. Our relationship is still new and hobbling around on its little-deer legs: there's nothing formalized or set in stone about it, and the future holds nothing but surprises for us. But that doesn't matter: you've kept me from crying when I listen to this song, and that's the best Christmas present I'll get all year.

Okkervil River - Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas (live)

Multiple Mondays - I Put A Spell On You

(Note for bookkeepers -- I started writing this post last night, but sadly fell asleep before the files finished uploading. Tuesday's regular one-song post will be up soon.)

Screamin' Jay Hawkins wrote this song in 1956 (or so -- there is debate).

In 2005 I compiled a CD for a friend, on which I whittled down my collection of about 35 versions of this song down to 27, enough to fit onto one disc. Then today I got it down to ten. And it was painful. I love this song, and there are more than ten versions I love (sorry, CCR, Alan Price, Them, Manfred Mann, et al.).

But I can't post more than ten here and expect all of you to listen. So here we go: a wide spectrum of versions of "I Put A Spell On You" in less-than-chronological order.

Zip file

Once again, you can find your own links.