Ye Olde Hit Parade: Entertain

Editor's note: Ye Olde Hit Parade takes a look back at my favorite songs year by year (starting in 1978, when I really started paying attention to music).

2005: Sleater-Kinney - Entertain

Some big stuff happened in '05. Hurricane Katrina and the botched response to it. A new video-sharing site called YouTube was launched (wonder if it's still around?). Pope John Paul II died. Lance Armstrong won his 7th straight Tour De France, cementing a record that would never be tarnished (right?).


In my world, things were good. The girls turned 3 and 1 and Lily started walking early in the year, so we had our hands full. After taking 2004 off from marathons, I had planned to run Vermont in the spring of '05, but I had some Achilles issues that forced me to bow out. But I recovered to run New York City for the second time in the fall.

We vacationed on the Jersey Shore again, but this time, I had to do some work editing a book while I was there. Check out the technological fun I had (from my blog post on 7/22/05): I also had to do some work the first few days down there, inputting edits to book chapters that came in late; I borrowed a laptop from work but had to get creative because the room had high-speed wireless but the laptop was not enabled to work with it. Ended up getting a 256 MB USB storage card, transferred the documents I needed from PC at the hotel's business center, spent parts of two days finishing the chapters, and then emailed the finished versions from the biz center. Not how I originally envisioned my vacation, but it had to be done.

I've had other years when I had to work on vacation, but it's a lot easier now.

It was another big year for indie rock and I was immersed in reading a bunch of MP3 blogs to learn and hear about new stuff. Among my favorite new acts were Black Mountain, LCD Soundsystem, Kaiser Chiefs, Okkervil River, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Bloc Party and Wolf Parade. I even posted a few MP3s from this blog, but that was short-lived because the buddy was providing me with access to his FTP site to host the songs ended up shutting it down or something, and I was too cheap to pay for my own. Whatevs.

The NHL's 2004-05 season was wiped out because of a labor lockout, so I ended up going to a lot of college and minor league hockey games. Still went to some concerts, though: Queens of the Stone Age, Mudhoney, Sloan and U2.



The song of the year for me was Sleater-Kinney's "Entertain" from their kickass album The Woods. I had been a fan since 2000's All Hands on the Bad One, but this album really crushed it. S-K redefined the power trio, driven primarily by Janet Weiss' pummeling drumwork. On "Entertain," Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker trade vocals while Weiss just destroys.The band split up after this tour, reuniting in 2015 with a new album and tour. Sadly, Weiss left the band after making their 2019 album The Center Won't Hold, due to musical differences. Too bad, because she rules.

Honorable mentions: Black Mountain - "Druganaut"; LCD Soundsystem - "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House"; The Mars Volta - "The Widow"; Kaiser Chiefs - "I Predict a Riot"; Kaiser Chiefs - "Everyday I Love You Less and Less"; Brendan Benson - "Alternative to Love"; Queens of the Stone Age - "Little Sister"; Queens of the Stone Age - "In My Head"; M.I.A. - "Galang"; Beck - "E-Pro"; Tom Vek - "I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes"; Okkervil River - "Black"; Robert Plant - "Shine It All Around"; Teenage Fanclub - "It's All In My Mind"; The Hold Steady - "Cattle and the Creeping Things"; The Hold Steady - "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"; Nine Inch Nails - "The Hand That Feeds"; Spoon - "Sister Jack"; Spoon - "I Turn My Camera On"; Gorillaz - "Feel Good Inc."; Maximo Park - "The Coast Is Always Changing"; Sleater-Kinney - "Jumpers"; Art Brut - "Formed a Band"; The White Stripes - "Blue Orchid"; The Dropkick Murphys - "I'm Shipping Up to Boston"; Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - "In This Home on Ice"; The Subways - "Rock and Roll Queen"; Frank Black - "I Burn Today"; The New Pornographers - "Use It"; Bloc Party - "Like Eating Glass"; Metric - "Monster Hospital"; Wolf Parade - "You Are a Runner and I am My Father's Son"; Franz Ferdinand - "Do You Want To"; Broken Social Scene - "7/4 (Shoreline)"; My Morning Jacket - "Off the Record"; Paul Weller - "From the Floorboards Up"; Snoop Dogg - "Drop It Like It's Hot"