Happy New Year countdown!

Although friend of LI, Amie, strongly recommended that we go out and shake our rump this New Year’s, LI has that whole snail feeling goin' on this holiday season. We long for a shell, and a place to fold our antlers. So instead of going out and about, we will do the traditional ten songs, plus review the last year, etc. and as follows, indent, bullet point.

Obviously, LI became much less fun this year. In the old blogging days, which you will no doubt recite exciting stories of around the campfire to your grandchildren, back in aught eight, aught seven, we mixed up posts of eccentric, bizarre scholarship, meditations a la Pessoa if Pessoa had been a Texas puissant, and our usual political jeremiads – which was fun and edifying and much like a real tv show, if they had one about Nervous Breakdowns – Neurotic Survivor, say. ( Five characters, no med-pacs for a week!) I felt that everyone would enjoy scapegrace scholarship and confessions of deep personal inadequacy – since this worked for the Ancient Mariner – and it worked well enough.

This year, we took another route. We put all the personal essay material, plus the political nihilism, on another blog, News From The Zona, We even won a prize there! But LI itself has been the dumping ground for my Human Limit material. Now, we have tried to be as pretty as pussy about the whole thing, since otherwise, why do it? But it has made for a less, let’s say, antic site. All too often the posts come so loaded down with internal references and nuances that they assume the unapproachability of the wedding cake – which is, of all cakes, the one least made for eating.

We hope that those who miss the old LI – painting stripes on himself and baring his bum – are happy with the NFTZ site. On LI, it will be wedding cakes. Sorry, sorry, sorry! But we can’t give up putting up ten songs on LI!

This was not a year where we fell in love with a new singer, like Santi White. Rather, we fell in love with some old singers. For instance, Victor Tsoi.

1. Gruppa Krovi – we now feel that this song is an old chum. We even like the version by Anastasia Prikhodko, but we can’t quite swallow her neo-nazi connections.

2. Capital by Lyapis Trubetskoy – we rather loved this song. We loved the vid. Who can resist a song that mixes Marx, Disneyland and Vishnu?

3. We also fell in love, this year, with Les Rita Mitsouko. Why did it take so long? Who knows. Amie sent us this unbelievably cute link - and the music that was sort of a constant accompaniment the last couple months has been this one.

4. Okay, I had a weakness this year for Atlas Sound. So, bite me. Adolescent melancholy, be my muse!

5. I also had a weakness for Ladytron. This isn’t my favorite Ladytron, but I love that Bulgarian intro! And this is a more kickass song.

6. It was very much a Mekons year.


7. And what would the New Year’s be without Turkish music, that flows straight from my heart? Mogollar - Selvi boylum al yazmalim

8. Sexy Sushi – who gives me hope for the future! Enfant de putain – salope ta mere
9. Then there was the new Metric album - from which there's the great refrain in Sick Muse
10. And of course, an old song, Rumpshaker

Happiest of new years to y'all! Thanks!
PS - Amie suggested an Iranian song in the comments, and here's an appropriate one for the beginning of this year. Abjeez.