Playlist: Lauren’s Happy Songs.

Click here for the playlist, which should open in a separate window. Then you have to click the Play button.   Sorry; I can’t embed playlists in WordPress.

1. Standing In The Shower, Thinking.   Any time I’m in a wrist slitting mood, the first band I’m going to think of to save me is Jane’s Addiction.   “Standing In The Shower, Thinking” is a good, upbeat, optimistic-sounding track from Nothing’s Shocking.   True Lauren Therapy, however, involves listening to the entire Nothing’s Shocking & then Ritual de lo Habitual albums.   Does anyone know if they were ever produced on vinyl?

2. The Only One I Know. I know, I know, this bassline rips off some other, older song.   Careface.   This song is better.   It’s impossible to listen to this song without head bobbing.   If you’re really sensitive you’ll need to bounce around your room, doing some Robert Smith spin arounds with your arms spread out during the chorus.

3. Happy Phantom. Have you ever been in a really, really bad situation where your insides were ripped out by the anxiety of the consequences?   Say, you accidentally made a big, nasty scratch on your dad’s pristine glossy black car that he spent hours talking baby talk to every weekend.   When I’m in situations like this (I’ve been in many.   My dad has a lot of cars.), I take a deep breath, & I ask myself, “Ok.   What is the absolute worst that can happen?”   When I go through all the various scenarios, they all end in death.   And then this song, which, as a sidenote, the title of this blog comes from.

4. United States of Whatever. Well, of course.   This song is goofy.   It’s funny.   There are a ton of funny songs out there.   My favorite part is Officer Leroy saying “Hey, I thought I told you-”

5. Rollin’.   To be honest, almost any Limp Bizkit will put me in a good mood, but Rollin’ is the song that can actually cause me to laugh out loud in the middle of cardio at the gym.   There’s an anecdotal element to the cheer this song provides me.   One drunken night that my friend Mele & I were drunkenly yelling at each other (it’s fun.), he said, “If I was dying, & I would only sing ONE MORE SONG… what would you want me to sing?”   Through the haze I couldn’t really think of anything at the time, &, slowly lifting a finger, I promised I would think on it.   And I did.   It was this song.   lol

6. No Sugar Tonight. This is an old song that I only started listening to recently.   The first time I heard it, I thought it was Three Dog Night, but I should know better.   I love the lead singer’s voice.   No one sounds like this any more.   It almost makes me thinkof the Dancing Baby as well.

7. Never There. This has to be the best song scrubs can sing in the bar while I’m working & get me to participate.   It doesn’t matter if I’m in the middle of shaking a shot or asking for an ID, at the appropriate moments I am unable to control myself & must expressionlessly shout “Hey!”

8. Take The Money & Run. This is typical college time listening.   No, I’m not that old.   It’s just what a bunch of us used to listen to, hanging out in Pete’s front yard with the hibachi smoking & a cold pack of Hamms.   It’s occurred to me that the message in this song isn’t the most moral, but frankly I don’t know if anyone who’s ever enjoyed this song has ever really considered killing & robbing someone any more than Lynyrd Skynyrd encouraged anyone to move to Alabama.

9. Attitude. More college time stuff.   Probably the happiest Misfits song for me is “Horror Hotel,” but it’s nowhere to be found on the web.   The Misfits made a lot of sloppy, loud, slam dancing music that brings back memories of moments when all that mattered was having fun.

10. Kerosene. When I was 20 this was one of the songs that cheered me up.   Still works now.

11. Wait. Around this same time period my friend Silke made me a tape (yes, a cassette tape) of songs that made her happy.   This, along with NIN’s “Head Like A Hole” was one of my favorites off that tape.

12. A Decade Under The Influence.   There are a lot of punk/pseudo-punk bands today that I suppose would be the modern day versions of bands like The Misfits or the Ramones; I never really got too deep into punk & I’m not willing to do research right now so I can’t really make a good case on the similarities or differences.   I enjoy the vocal arrangement in this song; for all that it’s really a lot of yelling & screaming, there’s still a musicality to it.   It’s just a ton of energy & it’s executed well.   And that’s as far into this specific genre that I’m going to get.

13. Can’t Stand Losing You. So it’s a song about suicide.   But there’s a sense of humor to it.

14. Winning. This song sounds as happy as its subject matter.   I’m not a huge Santana fan; besides “Black Magic Woman” this is probably the only Santana song I can say I really enjoy.

15. Two Sisters. What a fun song.   I first heard this song when Fiction Plane opened for The Police at the NBC last year.   Fiction Plane is fronted by Sting’s son, & I bought their CD but this was the only song I really liked.   Terrence doesn’t care for the No Doubtesque bridge or the “groove killer” instrumental (frankly I don’t care for the instrumental either — I think they could have come up with someone more appropriate).   This was part of the 20 minute setlist I performed for an E&O Trading company function with a guitarist who played regularly with a ska band.   This was the easiest song for him.   It was also the song that everyone remembers.

16. We Care A Lot. Faith No More – what happened to those guys?   I used to go to Jelly’s every so often, & because I hate shopping & I’m not good at it, I relied on my friend Rob Seto, who worked there, to suggest a CD for me.   It was Rob who sold me an album called Ten by an unknown band called Pearl Jam.   Another of Rob’s picks were 2 MTV Nevermind The Mainstream CDs, & “We Care A Lot,” from Faith No More’s 1st album, was on one of them.

17. Headhunter v1.0, 18. Sex On Wheels & 19. Jesus Built my Hotrod.   I used to visit a warehouse club called The Factory in the Ward area where moshing was the general dance move to hardcore & industrial rock.   The Factory was as close to my ideal dance spot as it gets; there was a carpeted caged area with running waterhoses & bars of soap where you could still hear the music just as loud as on the main floor but you could also shoot your friends with water & have running soap slides.   There was another room where, after slamming around in the oven-hot dance room, you could chill out on donated mattresses & couches in utter cold, cooled by 1′ diameter AC pipes.   There was at one time an art exhibition, where paintings hung from strings attached to the ceiling around random sculptures, & there was the Fuck You Wall, where you could tape up your slip of paper listing whoever you wanted to say “Fuck You” to & why, purchased from the desk for $1.   I’m sure you can see why these songs still make me smile when I hear them.

18. The More Things Change.   Back to the country-influenced glam rock.   Heartbreak Station, like Shake Your Money Maker, was one of the best Southern rock CDs I ever bought.   This song & “Shelter Me” are just great, high energy rock songs.   And Tom Kiefer is the bomb.   Do you hear those vocals?   He sacrificed himself to do those.

19. Suffragette City.   How I loved this song when I was 18.   I always loved David Bowie, & this classic-sounding song was just improper enough with the “Wham bam, thank you Ma’am!” toward the end.   It always made me laugh.   Still does.

20. Particle Man.   It was either this or “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).”   Just listen to that accordian.   I love the concluding line of each verse.   It’s a straightforward conclusion, utterly friendly in its simplicity.   Listen to this plodding, cheerful song & tell me you don’t feel lighter of heart.

I didn’t have any Devo on this playlist because I couldn’t seem to find “Snowball” or the Tank Girl mix of “Girl U Want.”