Zenarchery

I never knew they made a video for this: Tricky’s badass cover of Public Enemy’s “Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos” (renamed here simply “Black Steel”). This is one of my favorite tracks of all time:

I’m usually good at titles, but I’m at a loss with this one. So I’m reaching out to you, my loyal and deeply loving fans, to name this for me. This is a demo version — there might be another recording on the album, since I just did this in my living room — but it’ll probably still just be piano and vocals.

This song is dedicated to everyone who’s ever had a shit job at a casino, or had to deal with the drunken fucking pigs who haunt them. For the record, folks who like to visit Vegas — yes, we really do sit around and make fun of you. Especially if you’re famous. If I were into blackmail, I’d be a millionaire — I know some profoundly nasty shit about a lot of famous people. So fuck y’all, and this is for my homies.

Red State Soundsystem – Untitled Vegas Song

Leave your ideas in the comments. The winner gets their name and a thanks in the liner notes of the finished album. (What, you thought you’d get a physical prize? I’m ghetto fabulous, folks!)

Untitled Vegas Song

They pull into Baker at two in the morning And marvel that anyone lives here at all Just fifty-odd miles from the Nevada border Where there’s never any such thing as last call

And everyone’s winning until they start losing And losing and losing, but they never learn But who gives a fuck, well, at least it’s not boring And it doesn’t matter, we’ve money to burn

Bigger and brighter and faster and louder And better than anything you’ve ever seen Smoking cigars by the pool at the Hard Rock Hitting on strippers and living the dream

But this is a kingdom of millionaire vagabonds Living in darkness like millionaire trolls Growing their fingernails sharper than razors Pissing in coffee cans, losing their souls

And after they’ve headed back to the real world We are the keepers who clean up their mess We launder their sheets and we empty their ashtrays And try to forget all the things they’ve confessed And later we gather in all night casinos And laugh at the losers who come to this town And we all insist that we’re leaving tomorrow… But when the sun rises, we’re all still around

I pull into Baker at four in the morning To fill up on coffee and gas for the drive If I can just make it as far as Los Angeles I might just get out of Vegas alive

Leslie Feist chooses her singles very well. I have her first album (or second, but first that anybody ever heard), and of all the songs on it, I like “Mushaboom” best. Same with “1234”, which is an incredibly lovely song. At her best — these songs — her work has a sort of wistfulness and…not nostalgia, precisely, but a longing for a better time, whether it be past or present. I still think the best line she ever wrote was “We’ll collect the moments, one by one / I guess that’s how the future’s done”.

“Mushaboom”

“1234”