10 albums a day #58

Various artists.

Rock Anthems (1993, double CD)
School House Rock! Rocks (1996, CD)
Summer Dance Party (1996, CD)
The Banjos That Destroyed the World (1995, CD)
The Best of Austin City Limits: Country Music's Finest Hour (1996, CD)
huH - CD5, CD6, CD7, Summer Bootleg (all 1995, CD)
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack (2000, CD)

Rock Anthems. Well, this is a bunch of songs that somebody somewhere decided were rock anthems, based on their own personal mix tape, I guess. Songs from the 70s and 80s in here, all radio hits to some extent. I can't believe I never deleted "Addicted to Love." What a stupid, boring, tedious excuse for a song. Robert Palmer was the most over-rated pop star of all time. Two bars, repeat it for 4 1/2 minutes. Hit song. This is the kind of thing that fuels my contempt for humanity in general. Other than that, it's a decent collection of songs that I mostly like. Good for the full version of "American Pie," the radio version of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," and this may be the only CD ever sold that includes "C*m On Feel the Noise" and "Dream Weaver" on the same disc.

I was trying to find a CD of all the original School House Rock songs, but I couldn't find any such thing. I did come up with this, which is a bunch of the old songs recorded by various 90s pop/rock groups. It's okay, but I'd still rather have all the originals.

Summer Dance Party is another that my wife found somewhere. It isn't as bad as the title might suggest, but it does still lean toward the goofy. Tracks range from "Tequila" to "I Can See Clearly Now" to "Break My Stride."

The Banjos That Destroyed the World is extreme banjo music, subtitled "The Fastest 5-String Banjo Instrumentals of All Time." This is banjo music for the unapologetic banjo fan. This was the first in a series of albums (well, there's at least one more, anyway), and I want to get them all.

The Best of Austin City Limits...well, if you say so. I deleted all but six tracks.

The four huH CDs were from when I briefly subscribed to huH magazine in the 90s. Various artists of mostly pop music, though it wandered across genres now and then, for example, one CD has Dwight Yoakum and another one has Steve Forbert. The CD came packaged with a magazine every month that had new album reviews and reader commentary. I canceled my subscription mostly because the reader commentary was unspeakable juvenile and downright stupid. I didn't want even the mailman to think I was in any way even indirectly associated with idiots like that so I canceled. No kidding. I actually enjoyed the music (mostly), but I didn't want anyone to see me reading one of those magazines. These are sampler CDs, and the only group on any of these who I went on to buy an album by was Phish.

The Oh Brother soundtrack is a good collection of old-time country/folk/gospel, although some of it is somewhat "modernized" and performed by contemporary artists. My favorites are "Down in the River to Pray" by Alison Krauss and "Angel Band" by The Stanley Brothers. When I first wrote this post I had said that I had been looking for a score of that song but had been unable to find it. Well, I found it, but it was in disguise with the alternate title "My Latest Sun is Sinking Fast," which is the opening phrase.

Album count: 597.