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Launchcast lyrics reloaded

It had been a couple years since the last one, so I decided that the time had come again to make a CD from my Launchcast station. Here, for your enjoyment, is another lyrics quiz to go along with it. There were 19 tracks on the CD — I’ve excerpted a lyric from each. The songs this time are, I think, a bit better known on the whole than the last batch. Guess as many as you like.

1. Smiling faces I can see / But not for me
2. Her good looks could’ve sailed a ship / But her will alone could’ve sunk it
3. When words mean nothing, I’ll be here singing
4. Spread the facts on the floor like a fan / Throw away the ones that make you feel bad
5. Everything under the sun is in tune / But the sun is eclipsed by the moon (jackbishop)
6. Baby you could never look me in the eye / Yeah you buckle with the weight of the words (kansasjenny)
7. Like a pillar of cloud, the smoke lingers high in the air / In fascination, with the eyes of the world, we stare
8. You saw me and you shut the door / And it only made me love you more
9. It must be the curse of the age/ What’s taken is never renewed (soul_diaspora)
10. Took my sweet time when I was bitter
11. I know the difference between wrong and right / Don’t make no difference in the middle of the night
12. I’m gonna turn that whiskey into rain (joenotcharles. Well, his wife, really. :))
13. I go to church on a Sunday / The vows that I make / I break them on Monday
14. A corner of your lips / Is the orbit of your hips
15. I stepped out of Mississippi when I was ten years old / With a suit cut sharp as a razor, and a heart made of gold
16. We may not know how or when / But don’t you wanna know why?
17. I had a brother at Khe Sanh / Fighting off the Viet Cong / They’re still there, he’s all gone (kansasjenny)
18. Would your eyes, like midnight fireflies / Light up the trenches where my heart lies?
19. We got to close our eyes / Cut up our losses into doable doses / Ration our tears and sighs

Wordplay

I utterly adored this film, for so many reasons.

Launchcast answers

Here now, the answers to last week’s lyrics quiz.

Launchcast lyrics

I love my Launchcast station. Over the course of… wow, a long time, I’ve rated more than 13,000 songs, albums, and artists, and ended up with a music stream that provides a pleasantly random mix of favorites, like ’ems, and unknowns. Something I’ve come to appreciate about Launchcast is that no matter how many things you’ve rated, it will always throw in some stuff you haven’t rated. That helps to keep things feeling fresh.

Anyway, I recently decided to celebrate my station by making a CD of its offerings. That meant turning on the stream, writing down the songs I own, and capturing the ones I didn’t by the extremely high-tech means of running a cable from my speakers’ headphone jack to the input jack of my sound card. Then I split up the captured data and exported the songs into mp3 form, combined them with the songs I own, and voila, a CD. The mix was fun and surprising as usual, and as a bonus, makes me look hipper than I actually am.

Here’s a lyric from each song on the CD. (Well, almost. There were two instrumentals — a demo version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Never Going Back Again”, and “Chico’s Groove” by the Chemical Brothers.) Since it’s not like this blog is crawling with readers, anybody can guess as many as they want.

  1. I can shake a chicken in the middle of the room
  2. I’m in a world of chronic discontent
  3. Just a few more miles, it’s a rock’n’roll weekend
  4. Dividing our country into colors and still leaving black people neglected
  5. I found a thrill to press my cheek tojoenotcharles
  6. Darlin’, on you I hold no legal claim
  7. Love, unlike lightning, can strike you twice
  8. I love you baby, but I sure ain’t gonna be your dog
  9. I have heard the blackbird pipe his note
  10. We need a helping hand from this abyss of sinking sand
  11. I need you always — you need me now and then
  12. Never start a band with a best friend
  13. I can’t wait for the oxygen to get thin
  14. I can never relax — I’ve got to keep it exciting
  15. I’ll change the way you feel inside, before it’s too late
  16. We could be friends, in our special stupid way
  17. Sex reminds her of eating spaghetti
  18. You always have my unspoken passionjrw

The ever-lovin’ answers!

Well, I was late to the lyrics-meme party, so it only follows I’d be late to the lyrics-meme-answers party as well.

Nevertheless, here they are:

1. I’ll say goodbye to Colorado, where I was born and partly raised.
This is Man Of Constant Sorrow. I was listening to Bob Dylan‘s version, from his first album.

2. You hold the percentage, but I’m the fool paying the dues.
Those who know me would find it highly unlikely that my CD player could choose 25 random songs without picking something or other by Fleetwood Mac. The Stevie Nicks song is coming up later. This particular song was actually a hit: Hold Me, from the Mirage album. I had always thought this was “you want a percentage”, but apparently not.

3. Think of ice cream sliding into a crack.
The Jesus And Mary Chain — Here Comes Alice. The one that came up happened to be an acoustic version, but the original is from Automatic.

4. Some things that happened for the first time seem to be happening again.
This is Where Or When, a Rodgers and Hart song from the show Babes In Arms. I was listening to Bryan Ferry‘s version, from his lovely album of standards, As Time Goes By.

5. Oh, let’s blame it on the Yanks. (So sorry, boys.)
No surprise to me that this one went unguessed — it’s the song London, from Roger Hodgson‘s long-out-of-print second solo album, Hai Hai.

6. Brace yourself: I’m bent with bitterness.
Probably the most non-mainstream selection in the whole thing: For What Reason by Death Cab For Cutie, from their album We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes. This is a band my sister got me into — thanks Jenny!

7. I’m living in an empty room, with all the windows smashed.
As so quickly and ably determined, that’s a line from Walking On Broken Glass by Annie Lennox, from the Diva album.

8. Under his nose was a dream come true.
Howard Jones — Pearl In The Shell, from Human’s Lib. Okay, so maybe I’m sorta stuck in the 80s.

9. Fear not, for you’re still breathing.
came close enough for me by determining that this is a cut from Sarah McLachlan‘s first album, Touch. And he came ever so close to actually identifying it as Ben’s Song.

10. As far as I can tell, I’ve been gone for miles now.
I’m a big Tori Amos fan, but I don’t know that I would have been able to identify this song as Sugar, a b-side whose live version showed up on the To Venus And Back album.

11. Oh, Mr. President, can I tell you a secret?
It’s John Mellencamp, or rather, back in those days, John Cougar Mellencamp, at the height of his “spokesman for the heartland” role, with Down And Out In Paradise from The Lonesome Jubilee.

12. Dive down deep down to save my head.
Barracuda was one of Heart‘s biggest hits, but unless you looked up the lyrics, you might never know this line was in it. The original was from Little Queen, but I was listening to the “unplugged” version from The Road Home.

13. Don’t give me that do-goody-good bullshit.
cut right through the bullshit to identify this as Money, from Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side Of The Moon.

14. In secret she says she needs to see him, but no words are spoken.
Now here’s that Stevie Nicks song: I Can’t Wait from Rock A Little. Yay Stevie!

15. Well you lied to me, cos I asked you to.
I’m a bit surprised nobody got this. There must not be any big U2 fans reading this journal, or they’d have identified this as Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, from good old Achtung Baby.

16. I used to need your love so badly; then I came to live with it.
Another super-duper-mainstream song, from Tom Petty‘s Full Moon Fever album: The Apartment Song.

17. Will this be our poisoned legacy?
Sacred Ground, which is hands down the most irritating song on Living Colour‘s newest album, Collideoscope. I actually wrote a lengthier review of this album on Amazon, in case anybody cares.

18. And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest.
It’s difficult to find a line from Warren Zevon‘s Excitable Boy that doesn’t actually have the title in it, and nailed it. I heard in on A Quiet Normal Life, his greatest hits album.

19. It’s a different sport that is on its way.
This is another pretty obscure one, even if you’re a Joan Armatrading fan: The Game Of Love from The Key, though it was a live version that my carousel dialed up.

20. Right and wrong — it never helped us get along.
Hooray for my namesake Paul Simon, sometimes described as “the Paul Simon of songwriters.” Tenderness comes from the There Goes Rhymin’ Simon album.

21. I’m willing and able, so I throw my cards on your table.
Bob Marley — Is This Love? Lively up yourself, ! The disc in my player was Legend, a greatest hits album.

22. Like day from night, suddenly I saw a thousand faces.
Joe Jackson is another artist who had an excellent chance of coming up on my player’s random mode, and Another World had very good odds too, since I’ve got a few versions of it in there. This one was played by a piano-bass-drums trio on the excellent live album Summer In The City, but the original is on, appropriately enough, Night And Day.

23. She’s killer diller when she’s dressed to the hilt.
Beatles-lover had very little trouble identifying this as Polythene Pam, from Abbey Road.

24. Millions of kids are looking at you — you say, “Let them drink soda pop.”
This is one of many great lines from The Pretenders‘ scathing indictment of Michael Jackson, How Much Did You Get For Your Soul?, off of Get Close.

25. There’s frost on the graves and the monuments, but the taverns are warm in town.
A lovely line from What It Is, the single from Sailing To Philadelphia, charmingly mumbled by Mark Knopfler.

Thanks for playing, everybody!

My first meme!

Okay, I love the song lyrics meme so much that I have to do it. That meme would be:

Step 1: Get your playlist together, put it on random, and play!
Step 2: Pick your favorite lines from the first 25 songs that play!
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song the lines come from!
Step 4: Cross out the songs when someone guesses correctly!

I don’t have an iPod or anything, but I do have a carousel that holds a whole lotta CDs, so shuffle mode on that is a rough equivalent. I’ve eliminated duplicate artists. I also deleted spoken-word stuff, like comedy album cuts. My tastes are pretty dang mainstream, so if yours are too, you may have a field day here.

And away we go:

1. I’ll say goodbye to Colorado, where I was born and partly raised.
2. You hold the percentage, but I’m the fool paying the dues.
3. Think of ice cream sliding into a crack.
4. Some things that happened for the first time seem to be happening again.
5. Oh, let’s blame it on the Yanks. (So sorry, boys.)
6. Brace yourself: I’m bent with bitterness.
7. I’m living in an empty room, with all the windows smashed.
8. Under his nose was a dream come true.
9. Fear not, for you’re still breathing.
10. As far as I can tell, I’ve been gone for miles now.
11. Oh, Mr. President, can I tell you a secret?
12. Dive down deep down to save my head.
13. Don’t give me that do-goody-good bullshit.
14. In secret she says she needs to see him, but no words are spoken.
15. Well you lied to me, cos I asked you to.
16. I used to need your love so badly; then I came to live with it.
17. Will this be our poisoned legacy?
18. And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest.
19. It’s a different sport that is on its way.
20. Right and wrong — it never helped us get along.
21. I’m willing and able, so I throw my cards on your table.
22. Like day from night, suddenly I saw a thousand faces.
23. She’s killer diller when she’s dressed to the hilt.
24. Millions of kids are looking at you — you say, “Let them drink soda pop.”
25. There’s frost on the graves and the monuments, but the taverns are warm in town.

1 – I always thought this was “hardly raised”, but it appears I was wrong.
17 – I actually find this song highly annoying, and had a tough time picking out a lyric I even like.

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