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EREV XMAS
by Sean
Please note: MP3s are only kept online for a short time, and if this entry is from more than a couple of weeks ago, the music probably won't be available to download any more.
The Owls - "Welcome to Monday". This song is a greeting card, The Owls' cheery omniscient hello on your strained Monday morning. Welcome to MondayAnd it's nice of them to do so, to send a pop song telegram in shades of blue and rosy pink, with mildly jangling guitars and a jetstream swirl of synths. If it's God singing (and She sings in the first person plural, so there's a hint of She-knows-something-we-don't-know), well despite Her insensitivity to how much Monday sucks, She's sweet to be taking this personal interest. Something in Her dry, pretty voice suggests Mia Doi Todd, or maybe just a world that's kind & good but not flashy in its offerings. A Monday that will provide for you only if you ask it to, demurely. The Owls - "Isaac Bashevis Singer". Isaac Bashevis Singer: author, humourist, Nobel Laureate, Jew. Were he still with us he would probably be doing the same thing as I'm doing on this Christmas Eve: noshing on mixed nuts, Ferrero Rochers, waiting at a loved-one's house for a matriarch to return with some cabbage rolls. It's a good life. But one of the things I like to do with this song, this tender portrait, is to disconnect it from the "real" Isaac Bashevis Singer, the I.B.S. known and beloved, and instead to give the song to an anonymous Isaac: one who aged and died in NYC without ever becoming famous, who smiled and shook his head whenever he read an article about the famous writer who shares his name. Our Isaac, this gentle bachelor who works as a watchmaker or a newspaper seller or a watercolourist, this guy too has a wide circle of friends, has lady callers and superstitions and on Christmas Day he throws a feast for all his cherished ones, gentiles and Jews and a solitary Hindu, serving fruitcake and gefilte fish, kosher wine and Austrian bubbly, Ferrero Rochers and mixed nuts. And his turntable never stops spinning. [buy Daughters and Suns, absolutely the most diverse & pretty a group of pop-songs you'll hear before the end of the year] Posted by Sean at December 24, 2007 12:46 PMComments
lol at erev christmas Posted by g00blar at December 26, 2007 9:27 AMPost a comment |
 about said the gramophone
this is a daily sampler of really good songs. all tracks are posted out of love. please go out and buy the records!
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all songs are removed within a week or two of posting. said the gramophone launched in march 2003, and added songs in november of that year. it was one of the world's very first mp3blogs. if you would like to say hello, find out our mailing addresses or invite us to shows, please get in touch: montreal, canada: sean toronto, canada: jordan montreal, canada: dan please don't send us emails with tons of huge attachments; if emailing a bunch of mp3s etc, use a service like MailBigFile. if you are the copyright holder of any song posted here, please contact us if you would like the song taken down early. please do not direct link to any of these tracks. please love and wonder. "and i shall watch the ferry-boats / and they'll get high on a bluer ocean / against tomorrow's sky / and i will never grow so old again." we are a member of MBV.
about the authors
Sean Michaels lives in Montreal, where he is writing a novel. His work also occasionally appears at McSweeney's. Follow him on Twitter or reach him here.
Dan Beirne is an actor and writer living in Montreal. He writes fiction fiction fiction on here. It may feel true, but it is never True. He is most proud of his most recent project The Bitter End. Email him here Jordan Himelfarb lives in Toronto, where he is editor in chief of The Mark. Jordan's posts appear at Said the Gramophone only on the last Wednesday of every month. Email him here. Site design and header typography by Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet. The header graphic is randomized: this one is by . 
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