I'm sure by now that most of you who read this are aware our editor-in-chief, Will Swaim, has resigned. What you may not be aware of, however, is our boss's penchant for singing—constantly. Seriously. Dude sings more than Rebecca Schoenkopf does. Which is A LOT. Anyway. In memorium, I'm posting the official Will Swaim playlist. If Will owned (and could figure out how to operate) an iPod, here's what would be on it:
Elvis Costello, "What's So Funny (About Peace, Love and Understanding)?"
T
An employee at a Fred Meyer store in Portland, Oregon mistakenly ordered vinyl LPs of R.E.M.'s latest album, Accelerate, instead of the CD-DVD version, and a funny thing happened: 20 of the vinyl copies sold the first day they were put on the shelves. Now this retailer is going to stock the format that the music industry hoped would die a quarter century ago in 60 of its stores in Oregon, Washington and Alaska.
“It's not just a nostalgia thing," Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer,
Last Night: The Kooks and The Whigs at the House of Blues in Anaheim, Oct. 27, 2008.
Better Than: Joining the fledgling Modern Whig Party. William Henry Harrison, they ain't!
Download: This Kooks cover of "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John from early this year.
I'm not an eavesdropper in general, but sometimes, y'know, you just can't help it. Like when you overhear something like this, from one of the many enthralled young teenage fans leaving The Kooks concert at the House of Blues in Ana
It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again.
BILLY JOEL
The Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)
As punk and disco exploded, the Piano Man's deeply unhip 1978 breakthrough proved that top-shelf Broadway/Brill Building songwriting could still sell - and, occasionally, rock. "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" and "Anthony's Song (Movin' Out)" remain priceless snapshots of Annie Hall-era NYC, the title track bares real teeth, and the Kenny Chesney fave "Only the Good Die Young" -
Night can either be fun (the carefree frolic described in R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming") or scary (like the vampire-filled 30 Days of Night), or somewhere in between, like beloved '90s Nickelodeon series Are You Afraid of the Dark? (Plus there's the "Night" that's in M. Night Shyamalan's middle name, which is on a classification by itself.)
