[Songs My Son Should Know] Ice Cube | It Was a Good Day

The probability that our son will be raised on a heavy dose of 90s West Coast gangsta rap hovers at about the 100% mark, particularly this jam by Ice Cube, which rhymes over a nice little Isley Brothers sample with pre-Twitter status updates that make you think that "muhfuckin Cube is totally being a pimp today".  Like.

Somehow, even back in 1992, this song made you feel nostalgic about something -- God knows what, since most of you reading this were in the budding years of high school like I was, where cognitive/emotive recall was incapacitated by the likes of 40oz-ers, socialized medicine, and girls with all kinds of fucked up eye-makeup.

'Bout the same time he pulled out the jammy.

So, why should Enzo become familiar with "It Was a Good Day"?  That's not even a good question.

Because from the very first opening notes, you know goddam well that there will be four-minutes-and-twenty-seconds of group chorals, shake-em-up-shake-em-up-shake-em dice gestures, and fingers skyward towards the Goodyear Blimp.  Its a communal song.  It belongs to every single person in one regard or another.  It never really fails to inspire, and the moment to enjoy it is infinitely applicable.  Its a truly omniscient song.

Plus, he will need documented evidence that a team called the SuperSonics ever existed.  @KevinDuranchula #SaveOurSonics [RT] The Lakers beat the Thunder doesn't sound the same.

Like.

[Edit: Here's a deliciously coincidental tid bit that I learned today, 01/27/2012:  "The exact date of the "good day" that Ice Cube famously rapped about in his 1992 song "It Was a Good Day" has been positively identified by an extremely intrepid, heroic blogger. Using flawless deductive reasoning, Murk Avenue has concluded that the good day in question was January 20, 1992."  This was exactly 20 years to the date I wrote this blog entry.  How about that?]

[Songs My Son Should Know] Band of Horses | St. Augustine

[Note: This will be an indefinite series dedicated to developing my son's aural palate, be it a song that has musically historic significance, a connection to a life event, or simply a favorite song in the vast inventory of arias between his mommy and daddy.  Sometimes these tracks will be austere and pensive, while other tunes will be campy and daft, and in other instances, saccharine and sweet.


All of it will make up his musical inventory through at least the first few years of his life.  He might love every track, but I am not determined to make it so.  Its simply a collection of songs that he should know exist ...]

Essentially, this song begat Enzo 1/3 of his lifetime moniker.  Melissa and I pored over volumes of choices for our son's middle name -- it being his only escape vessel from any potential need to cut bonds with his first name.  I mean, you never know what history dictates for a man inoffensively named Adolph before the great wars, or for a human named Borat, who was indiscriminately probably a fine child until about 2004.  I bet Sandusky, OH wishes they'd had an emergency policy in the town charter.

Sure, Office Space taught us: "Why should I change it?  He's the one who sucks."  And while its a good lesson in fortitude, its always nice to have a back up plan.

Therefore, one night, our 2/3rds-named and two-weeks-late unborn child sat in his momma's tummy and agreed to be called Augustine as this song played on shuffle.  11,000 songs, and at the height of "we need to settle on a middle name", St. Augustine serenaded a family.

Enzo Augustine* then decided the next day, that it was no longer imperative to sit around waiting for himself to be named.


*Later, we discovered two other fascinating parallels with the name Augustine -- apart from the fact that Band of Horses is the band that my wife and I share as our common denominator: 1) Augustine is the Latin interpretation of the name "Austin", his birthplace, and 2) Augustine, in fact, is the Patron Saint of Brewers.

Boom.

[Listomania!] Backtracing the many years of [AA]'s Top 101 list. Backtracing, I say.

Consequences, never again same.

I've long been wanting to preserve the end-of-the-year song lists that I've crapped out at the end of each December since 2005.  The main reason being is that twice I've had total and utter iPod meltdowns -- and thus the long months of ear cramping for the distinguishing factor between songs #62 and #63 become lost in the blackness of memory.  After the first iPod incident, where some Seattle trash goblin in the 99% occupied my 'pod for good, I sorta-semi-learned my lesson to document the list somewhere.

Of course i half-arsed it, and the list took a long time to reconstruct anyway -- especially since I had to find many of the MP3s (or AAC - hey Apple!) again to even begin reparations.  But eventually, it was back to the way I wanted it on a fresh 80GB classic.

But then, just this past year, the 80GB got discAIDS and failed me in epic ways.  I innocent hard-reset made my iPod as naked as the day it was born.  Though the 101 lists were preserved for the most part -- had to go MP3 hunting again -- most of the playlists that had been scratched together for our big move from AZ to TX, rehearsal dinners, birthdays, showers, etc, etc, could not withstand the deathblow of a massive crash and a bleached memory.

So, I decided to assemble the lists on Spotify for posterity -- and in the off chance you wanted to waste 56-60 hours listening, be my guest.  Still, Spotify leaves a number of songs off of their inventory, and all of the lists are incomplete due to this factor -- so I will continue to fill in the gaps from time to time.  No Radiohead, for example, and since my lists typically acquire Thom pox, that is a huge omission for me.  Instead, there is some bullshit yoga CD that is providing the placeholder -- and that irritates me.  Just try to ignore it.

2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005