So, check this out: We’re about to go radio silent for a few days for the high holy holidays that have started already for some of you (and for those of you stuck in 80 feet of snow, you can warm up to what we already have). The good thing about this is that this brief hiatus gives everyone a new chance to record more!

I leave you for now with this great one from Jenna.

Sentimental Heart (She & Him) – Jenna Frye

It’s a cute little ditty and I love to hear that familiar little nylon string strum we heard on last year’s track. I also really dig this album, though I think I lost it somewhere over the year. The other thing I like to imagine in this is that Jason is M. Ward and isn’t playing any music but just doing a little dance while the rest of the song goes on. Excellent!

Unless I finish another song before the end of December, this is the last IRCMT2008 entry by a person with the last name of Peden. What a shame. This is another one of those it’s-cold-stare-out-the-window kind of songs, except it takes the other path. Instead of making you want to sit all bundled up inside, it urges you to go outside, throw yourself into the snow, and make naked snow angels.

Oppressions Each (Brightblack Morning Light) – Extraordinary Rendition

I think this band name is funny. Extraordinary Rendition is another sibling of mine, Sean, performing Brightback Morning Light’s Oppressions Each. It’s bluesy. Listen carefully at 2:26. A brief pause explodes into some deep bass, a great old-school warbly organ, and some reverbed-up high backing vocals that pull it all together.

- B

I’ve never been a model of consistency, though I try. A day late, that’s why we’re hitting you with a double dose today, with a snow-covered weekend in what seems to be both parts of the coast—the NE and the NW.

Take Me To Your Leader (Clambake Clamdust) – The Bellingham Covers Collective (Matt Fu of 1985, Peter Woiwood of Go Slowpoke and Ian Imhof)

Dynamite (Clamdust) – The Bellingham Covers Collective (Matt Fu, Peter Woiwood, Anna Arvan of I Love You Avalanche)

Forgive the additional tangent: What we have here are two songs from the Bellingham Covers Collective, submissions from Matt, which I’d heard before and thought were great. The project has additional tracks of Bellingham bands covering other Bellingham bands. The first time I heard the guy from Clamdust was actually the first time I heard the guy(s) from Language Arts over at KUGS in Bellingham. These songs are pure pop gems and the covers add some wicked harmonies and charm to them.

I’m on vacation for two weeks! Family coming to town, but I hope this will also help in getting our songs out on a consistent basis. Enjoy these while you enjoy your weekend. Chuck a snowball at someone for me.

(UPDATE: I’m an idiot)

Already? We’re definitely cruising along now on Day 7 and we have plenty of submissions still rolling in. Here’s what I got from Chuck re their submission:

The song is called “Polly Come Home” and comes from the ‘who wouda thunk to do this’ “Raising Sand” CD by Robert Plant and Allison Krauss. Technically, this CD came out in November 2007 but it has been on our playlist for all this year. “Polly…” was written before most of you (and Allison Krauss for that matter) were born by primary Byrds songwriter (by far my favorite band growing up – can you tell?) and backup singer, Gene Clark, who had earlier been in the New Christy Minstrels at the start of the late 1950’s ‘folk revival’. It was one of Clark’s first post-Byrds songs and was first released on a pretty obscure ‘country-rock’ album by the group, Dillard and Clark in 1969. I have this album and the one other by Dillard and Clark because by the time they came out I had starting collecting everything done by the Byrds and their ‘offspring’. (Dillard, by the way, is “banjo maestro” Doug Dillard, who played Jebbin Darling on the “Andy Griffith Show” in the early ’60’s, a show which also gave us Opie, aka film director Ron Howard).

Polly (Robert Plant and Allison Krauss) – Muck and Charty

I heard an earlier version of this cover that was almost as good as this one, but this one has bass, and I love bass. Not like bass-thumping bass like you get in all those techno songs, but some really heavy anchoring that just makes the sounds so much fuller. Did I mention that this is produced and executed very well? Good work, Muck and Charty! FYI, that’s B-dogg’s Chuck and Marty—the family dominating the IR airwaves.

We’re slowly getting back on track here at IR. In fact, so on track, that this post is coming to you well before the day is over! And there’s a good reason why, because I didn’t think you could wait any longer for this track.

I don’t know about you, but this probably deserves a little background, however painful it may be for you, from High School Musical 3:

That’s right, Harvey is back. It’s time to turn it up! GAME ON! sixteen-sixteen-sixteen!

Now or Never (High School Musical 3) – the klakamus fred meyer c+c music distribution center, featuring harvey whittington

I especially enjoy the spoken word at the beginning that steadily gains more energy as the song progresses, and the medley of 80’s songs throughout and the WILDCATS! I could easily listen to a couple dozen albums from the klakamus fred meyer c+c music distribution center featuring harvey whittington, how about you?

Unrelated, kind of: The biggest Fred Meyer I’ve ever been to was somewhere on the Eastside near Jason’s old house.

So much for posting these things in the morning, huh? I got a text message from Matt Fu the other day about some songs he and Tyson Ballew (Old Shoes / Best Boy Electric / Tyson Ballew) recorded a while back that were covers of friends of theirs that they wanted to submit! So, excuse us while we go on a little tangent of songs that weren’t released this year:

Me, the coyotes, and the prairie (Montana Carl) – Old Shoes

I dig that cello. The original of this song is also on the Tummy Rock comp called “We Like to Kick Ass” along with other NW favs like 1985, Racetrack, and me. Ha!

Day four!

It’s minus two outside, and during the frigid, slippery bike ride home I contemplated building a raging fire in my living room (we do indeed have a fireplace, so I would not be setting the floor on fire) and curling up with some soft, lulling wintry music. I didn’t end up building a fire, because fire scares me, but my second desire was well-satisfied since Tim sent me our next addition to the IRCMT 2008 and asked me to write the post. I know we all say, “I can’t stop listening to this song,” about almost every song posted, but, you know, I can’t stop listening to this song.

White Winter Hymnal (Fleet Foxes) – Hermano y Hermana

This is truly actually mi hermano y hermana – that is, J. Dylan A. Peden and Amanda M. A. Peden – teaming up in Portland, Oregon to tackle the Fleet Foxes song, White Winter Hymnal. You may remember Amanda from last year’s rendition of the New Buffalo Song Cheer Me Up, Thank You, but Dylan is a new addition to the IR family.

This one is perfect in its simplicity – the warm, strummy guitar nuzzling up against the nice bongo counterpoint, both just enough in the background to emphasize the gorgeous voices. They sound really good together. The immediacy of the vocals is a pretty interesting contrast to the heavy reverb on the vocal tracks of the original recording. Can we say, another winner?

- B

Okay, sorry, I thought I was going to have some time to get this one up, or maybe have B post this for me, but he’s MIA (bonafide hustler making his name). I still haven’t gotten day one’s song out of my head.

I Kissed a Girl (Katy Perry) – The Greatest American Sport

I’m sitting here at Josh’s (AKA The Greatest American Sport) in State College, PA and he’s going off about how the crazy Girl Talk crowd bum-rushed the venue last night. He says when this song drops, he’s gonna comment and say: “Eat that suckas! Smell my farts!”

I gotta tell you that I wish I’d thought of his secret weapon for recording this song. I won’t reveal it. Your secret’s safe with me, dood.

Again, a late night! In any case, here’s day two, and don’t expect day three to come any sooner than 11pm tomorrow either, because I want to give these songs their proper due on the front page. I’m promised several more over the weekend, so I can start loading the songs up and we’ll get them posted in the mornings next week.

Starlings (Elbow) and The Wolves (Bon Iver) – The Life and Times of You

This Elbow song is amazing. B was telling me he’d write a few words about why he covered this song and we’d listen to the original before we listened to this one, but I can’t wait and it sounds like he’s stuck in the meeting hell of academia. This is, of course, actually a medley of that Elbow song and a Bon Iver song, and they go to gather rather nicely. Way to go, B.

Hello, and welcome to this year’s mix tape! It’s still taking shape and I’m hoping to get more in soon. We’ve got enough for this week, assuming I finish mine tonight or tomorrow, but B’s also delivered yesterday. In any case, I like to call this the better late than never edition: We’re going to start off with a bang, and not a whimper, and no less than 20 minutes before the end of the promised start date.

What we have here is a pretty sweet cover of Hot Chip’s Ready for the Floor. Lippy used the IRCMT standard, Garageband, as well as hung-over vocals. I should have finished recording my song last night, while I was drunk on margaritas.

Ready for the Floor (Hot Chip) – Lippy

I really dig the vox and it’s just all hooks. Hooks coming out the ear. Seriously. We want more! I hear there may be….

As a run-up to Wednesday – the day the IR Collective Mix Tape 2008 posts really begin – I decided to throw up a couple of posts related to various IRCMT2007/2008 events. Later today, I think I’ll write briefly about the songs I decided to cover and provide links so everyone can listen to the originals. For now, I’m going to present a revised Best-Of-2007 list. I’ve probably listened to twice as many albums from 2007 than I’d listened to (or given a chance) by the time I posted my best-of list from last year, so I felt I owed it a second go. You can also find last year’s IRCTM2007 round-up at that link.

Revised best-of-2007, from B-DOGG!

1. Fog – Ditherer
2. Menomena – Friend and Foe
3. The National – Boxer
4. Bowerbirds – Hymns for a Dark Horse
5. Radiohead – In Rainbows
6. Travis Morrison Hellfighters – All Y’All
7. Band of Horses – Cease to Begin
8. Glossary – The Better Angels of Our Nature
9. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
10. Laura Viers – Saltbreakers

These are pretty good albums.

- B

• 13 There Will Be Blood | 2.23.08
• 14 Semi-Pro | 2.29.08

This is just the partial list, as I posted individual posts about the other lame movies I watched this month already. These two were probably the best ones that I watched, but I have to say that, and I know what this says about me, I enjoyed Semi-Pro more than I did There Will Be Blood. We came out of Be Kind Rewind and under pressure from the Oscars coming in a few days, we decided to do a double feature and head straight into TWBB. Bad idea, we should have done it the other way around, or maybe gone a full triple feature and headed to Semi-Pro directly after TWBB. I’m not saying it wasn’t a great work of art, it’s just that the desolate, inconsolable characters in TWBB were just so damn excruciating and exhausting that, uh, I don’t really want to ever see that movie again. Kind of like Boogie Nights.

Will Ferrell, on the other hand, had me thinking that he could do no wrong. I should have known better, and found that out the hard way when we went to go see Step Brothers.

I hope everyone had a great Turkey Day—Mine was great. We headed to Los Angeles to visit the family and hung out with the kids all day long. We ate the big dinner on Friday and my sister, Owl and I cooked tons of food practically all day. I gotta say though, our ability to fit bacon into so much food is astounding.

I made some of Tom Colicchio’s Craft stuffing which didn’t turn out as good as I’d hoped, though the sausage bits were like little prizes in the stuffing. We also didn’t add foie gras and left out the raisins, which I’m sure were there for a reason, but we just weren’t feeling it. I did, however, dig the anise seeds quite a bit.

In any case, we were also supposed to work on a song while we were down there, but never got around to it, which is a dang shame, since I have to start posting songs on Wednesday. I haven’t received anything yet, which not the least disconcerting since I know at least B-dogg is going to probably show up with 8 or so songs this year. I’m going to take the rest of the weekend to get at least one if not a couple of mine in the can.

New York City Restaurant Pictures – Eatbite → the interface needs some work, but the simplicity is good. i just want good pictures of food, and if it looks good, that’s where i go. simple.