Thursday, July 08, 2010

Oh For Heaven's Sake, It's Another Designed-to-Throw-You-Off-the-Trail Early Clue to the New Direction!

From 1997, please enjoy (if that's the word) the late and famously depressed Elliott Smith and his poignant ode to Hamlet-ian indecision, "Either/Or."



To be honest, I never really got Smith on any level, although perhaps that's merely a reflection of my own essentially sunny disposition.

In any case, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who gleans the clip's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania.

12 comments:

Faze said...

Yeah, an Eliot Smith song usually represents a net loss of energy. I'd say the clue here is singles where either the A side or the B side could have been the hit. Like "Surfin' Bird" b/w "King of the Surf".

steve simels said...

What a great idea, and I will doubtless steal it.

But no...
:-)

Kid Charlemagne said...

Elliot Smith is Nick Drake for the X-Gens.

steve simels said...

Every generation gets the Doomed Tormented Sensitive Artist Myth it deserves I guess.

MBowen said...

Actually, some of the stuff from his more produced albums (XO and Figure 8), while not quite Hüsker Dü, is pretty decent - "Baby Britain" is a nice Zombies rip with one of the greatest put-downs of all time in the chorus, and "Bled White" is almost power-pop.

As far as the topic - songs with unusual punctuation in the title (i.e., I got nothin')?

dSmith said...

Song titles that reference Kierkegaard?

geor3ge said...

Something to do with the organ?

steve simels said...

No and no.

And at this point, I would normally give a clue, but for the life of me, I can't think of one that wouldn't be so vague as to be meaningless.

Let's just say that it involves the dichotomy implicit in the title. And specific words.

Ken J Xenozar said...

Songs about choices, conjoined by "or". As in "Should I stay, Or Should I go?"

or
"Should I take a viagra or a cold showa"

Anonymous said...

I would have ventured a guess but I fell asleep........

ROTP(lumber)

Word verification: balinish (Does Marty know about this?)

racymind said...

well, this track was posthumously released from what I can tell. Yet, it should have been the "title track" to the album it was produced for in 1997.

So, lets go for "Best Posthumous Releases" in some way or another.

Anonymous said...

Songs that are the titles of albums that they do nor appear on? Like Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy?