Drop it like it's hot, etc. So, a few interesting developments -- Pinkie and I have some sneaky plans up our sleeve that may or may not involve dj sets at a local legendary gay watering hole's happy hour. Wish us luck, yeah?

As a result, I'm listening to old Party Ben Sixx Mixxes, I hadn't realized how much I missed those little half-hour selections of piping hot mashups every week. Even tastemakers need tastemakers, I suppose. Or something.

So, anyway, we played bows + arrows' Click Wheel Five yesterday, in an attempt to make ourselves feel like we might someday end up in the Random Selection section of the Onion AV Club. (BTW, how can you not love Janet Weiss' charmingly wacky tastes? And Eugene Mirman's?) My iPod was apparently in some kind of mood, as the first five songs were rather, well, to paraphrase Ben Gibbard, "Cooler than me." The pod also obviously had iconoclastic singer/songwriters and/or producers on the ... brain.

LCD Soundsystem -- On Repeat

Is Mr. Murphy meowing in this song? Not necessarily one of the best tracks on the self-titled LCD Soundsystem album, this is still a pretty, as they say, "bangin'" track. By which I mean, it reminds me a whole lot of Rinôçérôse's "323 Secondes De Musique Répétitive" transformed into a blistering rant on ... uh, entertaining rich hipster kids. Um, did they even notice that?

Harry Nilsson -- Marching Down Broadway

Harry's mom wrote this very short song. (GUAM!)

Wilderness -- Oh Say Can You See

My goodness, I'm not sure if I'm utterly in love with Wilderness or really, really hate them. I'm going to the show Monday, though -- hopefully all questions will be answered. On the other hand, I can't stop compulsively listening them in an attempt to puzzle this out, and apparently the pod seems to think that's okay. Wilderness reminds me of something, like Slint, I think, meeting Explosions in the Sky (or if Television and The Pixies went on a debauched camping trip and Mrs. John Murphy made everyone s'mores...) with wonderfully distorted prog-holler-emo vocals. Like I said, this is either brilliant or utter shit, I'm really not sure.

John Cale -- You Know More Than I Know

Apparently, the pod is also totally more pretentious than I am, or at the very least, it wanted to remind me that this would make either a great last song of a particularly moody DJ set (Do you like me or not? Circle yes or no, goddamnit...) or be utterly perfect for a crisis montage on a teen soaper, because obviously it's time to introduce some gravity into the lives of teenage indie kids via Cale's early solo career, ca. 1974. (Bonus tidbitlet: Fear, the album on which this song appears, was produced by Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera!)

The Mountain Goats -- Quito

This is easily one of the best Mountain Goats songs of all time (which is rougly, as previously discussed, a list of about 50 songs, due to Mr. Darnielle's massive ouevre), especially since it heads up the 4-hit thrill that closes out We Shall All Be Healed -- "Quito," "Cotton," "Against Pollution," and "Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into The Water, Triumph Of" -- which is why it's a little hard to really feel this song out of context. Don't let that stop you from giving this song a listen, though; the thing that really gets me here is the crystal-clear imagery of the lyric and the deep, dynamic production (courtesy the amazing Messrs. John Vanderslice and Scott Solter) that invokes the early home recordings of Darnielle's career (the faint, distorted cello violin bass -- PPH, is that you? -- perfectly imitates the creaking of that old boombox -- er, I think that's a cello, anyway...). And of course, you should always remember that Quito, Ecuador is, fittingly enough, the only national capital city that lies in the shadow of an active volcano; thus endeth my treatise on the speed-addled fever dream that is this song.

Tonight: Steve Arceri's CD release at Emo's with Kind of Like Spitting, Lemuria, Pompeii, and A Featherweight Burden -- and most assuredly, fun and hijinks and the company of good friends.

ETA: If you haven't heard Ramesh from Voxtrot's impromptu cover of Blondie's "Shayla" over at indieinterviews, you should totally go listen to it now.