David, may this day be the start of a beautiful, beautiful year. Happy birthday!

I think I’ll make this a monthly thing.

They played India.Arie’s song at the Dublin rally and I’ve been listening to it an awful lot since then: There’s Hope

One night a million years ago I’m watching Northern Exposure and there’s a scene with something about Shelly’s pageant and there’s a song in the background, something odd and the people singing have accents maybe and there’s a drifting twirling while they show the pageant women spinning in their gowns.

I wanted that song.

I didn’t know how to find it — this was before google — and all I could remember is that it says “pretty” in it. Pretty girls? Pretty something? I remembered the swirling skirts, slow motion and the word pretty — a delicate cacophony of skirts and singing but I had no idea how to find it.

I’ve looked for that song since that show aired in 1991.

I recently realized I could get the series on DVD from the library and comb through them to find the song but c’mon — that’s a lot of television to scan through and I’m a busy person. So I started hunting episode lists trying to find the one I needed figuring I could just get that year and do a lot of fast forwarding ’til I came to a pageant scene. And my friends, I have found it.

It took me awhile because I remembered the scene as if Shelly was watching but I figured out it was actually Maurice watching the pageant in the episode The Big Kiss. And once I figured that out, I found the song. And it’s by Sondheim and I already own it and I love it and I play it all the time and now I can play it in a new context.

Here you go: Pretty Lady mp3 from Pacific Overtures

(Hey, was Northern Exposure the first television show to really utilize their soundtrack? Does Grey’s Anatomy owe them a debt or what?)

Over here.

I was inspired by kjames discovery of Elbow so wanted to put my favorite Elbow song on there. And then I had already uploaded Nadia so I stuck that on the end even though it doesn’t match. Also I wanted the Oren Lavie song on the Prince Caspian soundtrack (“Dance Around the Memory Tree”) but the good folks at iTunes won’t let you muxtape their music, (which just inspires some of us not to pay for our music through iTunes — I’m just sayin’). Now Little Dragon? I love them. I love that “Twice” song so much that sometimes I just sit around hitting repeat.

Now I must tell you that “Nadia” does NOT sound right unless you have a decent bass. There’s rounded looping-sounding bass that makes the song (well, that’s not true — her VOICE makes the song) and it sounds nearly ordinary if your system is all treble-y. I’m just sayin’. It’s worth hearing in all of its equallized glory. Her voice is supposed to sound like a river (it sounds like it to me) but Noah says she sounds like the wind.