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"

Mixology: Otto's Hot Rock Pile

Mixology is a recurring feature in which I take a look at one of the many mix tapes I made over the years. Some are better than others, but all of them are fun to revisit.

Otto's Hot Rock Pile (or songs to crash a bus by) (8/14/02)

Well, it was bound to happen. After nearly a year of documenting the mix tapes I compiled, I've finally run out. I'm pretty sure there are a few more that I just haven't found yet, but for the time being, that's all of 'em. But a few years after my tape deck died in early 2000, I got my first CD burner. Which meant I was able to create mixes again, albeit ones without an A and B side. For about three years, I made mixes using a couple of different burners, ripping tracks from CDs. Then I downloaded iTunes for the first time and discovered the joy of playlists. I was making a monthly playlist of MP3s I had just downloaded and burned a lot of them to CD for a while, until the last two years or so, when I got lazy and just listened to them on iTunes. Alas, when our old PC was starting to croak a little (aka ye olde Blue Screen of Death), we had it wiped clean. Which unfortunately wiped out all my iTunes playlists. But I still have plenty of CD mixes to talk about here.

This particular mix was one of the first ones I burned, back in the summer of 2002. I wanted a mix of songs that just totally kick ass, regardless of whether I'd put them on mixes in the past. The name of the mix was a nod to metal-lovin' stoner Otto ("I like to get blotto") the bus driver from The Simpsons, although there was probably a lot of stuff on here that he probably would never listen to, like Fugazi, Mission of Burma, Big Black, Pavement, etc.

The song that probably best typifies the Otto mindset is one of the most rockin' songs of all time, Fu Manchu's "Evil Eye." Mainstream rock fans won't know the Fu, and I hadn't heard of them until late 1999 when I picked up a free cassette single previewing a couple of songs from the band's upcoming album King of the Road. I snagged it at the Webnoize 1999 conference in LA and immediately dug it and bought the previous album The Action is Go! "Evil Eye" is the opening song and just melts your brain from the get-go. Pure awesomeness.

Most of this mix came in handy when I was running the 2003 New York City Marathon. I put a good chunk of the songs on my old Rio 600 MP3 player; ended up listening the mix four times as I ran the race. It was a hot day for November and I needed that mix to keep my legs moving as I struggle through the last few miles. I think the song that got me the most fired up was Motorhead's "Killed by Death." It was as if Lemmy hisself was yelling at me to keep going.

You Didn't Need - Rollins Band
Unsung - Helmet
Bed for the Scraping - Fugazi
Jesus Christ Pose - Soundgarden
Negative Creep - Nirvana
In 'n Out of Grace - Mudhoney
Leash - Pearl Jam
I'll Stick Around - Foo Fighters
The Wagon - Dinosaur Jr.
Youth Against Fascism - Sonic Youth
That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate - Mission of Burma
What's Going On - Husker Du
Hit the Plane Down - Pavement
Kerosene - Big Black
Evil Eye - Fu Manchu
Killed by Death - Motorhead
Peace Dog - The Cult
Let There Be Rock - AC/DC
Paranoid - Black Sabbath


Evil Eye!


Killed by Death:

Everyday I Write the Book

It's a miserable day here in the Boston area. Tropical Storm Noel has dropped some rain and high winds on us, so it's a good day to stay inside. I used the opportunity to work on my NaNoWriMo book. I got about 1,500 words done today, for a total of nearly 4,700 in three days. Not bad for a guy who hasn't done this since the late '80s. Briggy's been doing it, too. Hope I can keep it going.

I've managed to go about a week without eating any candy (with the exception of gum, which I'm not counting because you don't actually eat gum). There is so much friggin' candy around here right now and it's extremely tempting, but I'm trying to hold out.

Speaking of candy, the girls gathered in yet another haul Wednesday night when we took them out trick-or-treating. It was a nice night, about 50 degrees and dry. We just hit four dead-end streets (including ours) in the neighborhood. It seems to be the night we meet or see all the neighbors that we wave to throughout the year.

Mmm...nougat:

• Real bummer of a story out of the U.S. Olympic marathon trials in New York, where top-ranked runner Ryan Shay collapsed and died today while running the race. He was only 28. No word on cause of death yet, but it's shocking because this guy was a truly elite athlete. Scary. It casts a pall over tomorrow's NYC Marathon, although the moving story of our friend Lauren was documented in a New Jersey newspaper. She's running New York tomorrow, a year after having to go through a double mastectomy. She's a great runner (she ran NYC in 2005 when I did and finished in 3:34) and I'm sure she'll kick butt tomorrow. [Post-script: Lauren finished in 3:31. Wow! Congrats to her.]
• With the Red Sox hangover pretty much over, everyone around here is gearing up for Super Bowl 41.5, aka the Patriots-Colts game tomorrow. Both teams are unbeaten and dominating opponents all over the league, so it should be a good one. My prediction: The Pats by 10-14 points. [Post-script: The Pats won, but only by 4 points. It was a classic nailbiter, as they trailed 20-10 going into the fourth quarter before Tom Brady rallied for two TDs to win it. Nice!]
• Ah, Dog, who's going to do the bounty hunting now that your show's off the air because you're a racist? Anyone got the number for Colt Seavers?