A Listy Music Meme

From Keith DeCandido. (And I see, leaving this sit for an hour or so, that everyone and his mother is doing it today.)

List 10 musical artists you like, in no specific order (do this before reading the questions below).

1. Tom Waits
2. They Might Be Giants
3. Oingo Boingo
4. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
5. Aimee Mann
6. Rilo Kiley
7. Beth Orton
8. Fountains of Wayne
9. R.E.M.
10. Elvis Costello

What was the first song you ever heard by 6?

Maybe "It's a Hit." I'm not sure I ever heard one of their songs before I bought More Adventurous, so that probably was it.

What is your favorite song of 2?

"Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)" -- the live version from Severe Tire Damage. It's the ultimate geek song.

What is your favorite lyric of 5?

From "It's Not":

So here I'm sitting in my car at the same old stoplight

I keep waiting for a change but I don't know what

So red turns into green turning into yellow

But I'm just frozen here on the same old spot

And all I have to do is to press the pedal

But I'm not

No, I'm not

How many times have you seen 4 live?

Never. I haven't seen anybody live for about a decade. (May I mention here that my older son is just about to turn nine? The two facts are not unrelated...) And I never managed to see many concerts even when I was unencumbered. Of the people on this list, I've seen Elvis Costello three or four times, They Might Be Giants twice, and R.E.M. once. And none of the others at all.

What is your favorite song by 7?

"Stolen Car," I guess. The opening still makes me shiver when I hear it unexpectedly.

Is there any song by 3 that makes you sad?

For several of the people on this list (like Orton or Mann), a lot of songs make me sad, as they're supposed to. But, with Oingo Boingo, the song that makes me the saddest is "Insanity," which is mostly a decent song but ends up being a long, overblown, silly attack on Dan Quayle...on a record released in 1994. And that epitomizes everything that sucked the fun out of OB: years between records, a lack of perspective on anything, and songs that overstay their welcome by five or six minutes.

What is your favorite lyric of 2?

So many choices... I'll have to go with this bit from "Whistling In the
Dark":

There's only one thing that I know how to do well

And I've often been told that you only can do what you know how to do
well

And that's be you,

Be what you're like,

Be like yourself,

And so I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be whistling in the
dark

When did you first get into 1?

I bought a cassette of Rain Dogs back in the mid-80s (probably '85 or '86, just before I went off to college) and loved it.

How did you get into 3?

I first knew they existed from the video for "Little Girls," but I can't remember which record I bought first. (I got all their good stuff in a rush in about 1984.)

What is your favorite song by 4?

"(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World," from the Until the End of the World soundtrack. (I've never seen the movie, and I can't remember why I got the soundtrack -- but it's got a lot of great stuff on it.)

How many times have you seen 9 live?

Once, back in the winter of '89-90. I skipped a senior seminar at Vassar (with a very imposing professor) to run home for a day or two and catch the concert, and then had to lie about why I missed it. That was possibly my first good lie...

What is a good memory concerning 4?

Two or three years ago, there was a big middle-of-the-day storm. I left work as soon as permitted, and waited for a bus at Port Authority for quite a while (memory says close to two hours), and then we made our very slow way home, through snow still falling heavily. A mile or so from home (so, at the speed we were going, still a good fifteen minutes away), "Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow" came up on my iPod. It was perfect, and I just stared out the window for ten minutes or so, and then finally got home.

Is there a song by 10 that makes you sad?

"Baby Plays Around." (And most of Almost Blue, as well.)

What is your favorite song of 1?

Old-style Tom Waits: "Old Shoes (and Picture Postcards)"

New-style Tom Waits: "Cemetery Polka"

How did you become a fan of 10?

I think I bought King of America as I was going off to college -- I might have had other Elvis records before that, but I wasn't really a fan. That one is transcendently good, and stuck me with EC for life.