Your other co-blogger, Lily, on the set of the first FY$1CDs (how’s that for an obnoxious acronym?) photo shoot.

Track 1 - All Over Town by De Novo Dahl on Cats

We like this song! This album has a very strong start as a Category Two Victory even if it does veer back into Category One territory a little farther along.

Although the lyrics weren’t included, Lily tracked them down online because this song seems to have a lot to say but the vocals are kind of mumbly. Unfortunately for her, she’s taking a class on Heidegger and Derrida right now, so these lyrics:

Your hands are controlled by the whispers 
and the whispers are controlled by the things that you hear

Your actions are controlled by 
oh oh the language and the language is controlled by 
oh oh the hunger that you feel

kind of distracted her from the song at hand and reminded her that she has a paper to write on Derrida and that is frightening. 

Carlyn: It sounds… sort of Ok Go-ish or like Spoon, but with some added 80’s. I could be jazzercizing right now.

Lily: I can see it, but I don’t know, there’s some sort of almost sexual depth in the vocals and the lyrics that doesn’t lend itself to that comparison.

[this is where we got distracted by photos of cute boys. this happens sometimes. we apologize for the interruption, but seriously, there were cute boys to look at on the interwebs. what do you expect?]

This is our very first (and only, so far) Category Two Victory! We are very excited. It is a two-disc set called “Cats and Kittens” - one CD is Cats and the other is Kittens - by a band called De Novo Dahl. This doubles the victory, since it means we didn’t get one good CD for $1 but rather two good CDs for 50 cents each! Even better is the fact that this was actually a Category One Choice. All around, this has been our most rewarding purchase from The Bin.

The album art and cover are entirely in two-tone pink. The song titles include “Doody-Ball Upside Down” “Sexy Come Lately” “Dinosaurs!” “Sexy Mr. Falcon Jive Mister” and “Turtle Italian.” We don’t have any idea how to classify the type of music on these CDs, as every song sounds somewhat different. Some songs sound very over-produced techno-electronic while others sound almost acoustic. Some songs have chorus-type vocals, some are completely solo vocalists. Some are fast, some are slow. I don’t think a genre exists that “Cats and Kittens” fits into. The album copy doesn’t offer any clues - it just lists the band members, the contact info for booking, and the typical accompaniment credits and band “thank you”s. We won’t waste any more time trying to describe this album - we’ll just start posting tracks.

Track 2 - Boys and Girls by Pineapple Sue

These guys sure are giving Relient K a run for their money. Here, they give up deep social commentary on the state of the global community in favor of the more close-to-home observation that “boys and girls, they will never understand each other better.” We don’t know what that means. Pineapple Sue also seems to have come to the conclusion that their brilliant lyrics will be better served if they sing OVER their instruments rather than WITH. 

We’ve got a guest commentator with us today, Elras the Music Snob. He’ll be working with us occasionally to add his pretentiousness to our hilarity. Also, he’s gonna straight get you arrested.

Elras: You know, I kind of want to turn this off, then come back in a few years and listen to these guys when the singer’s balls have dropped. Sometimes I have trouble with girls too, but my first instinct isn’t to write a song about it, and even if I did it wouldn’t be a bad song, so I guess I’m ahead of him on all counts. And come on, just say ”more better.” You know that’s what he wanted to say, the lyricist just couldn’t make it scan. I’m going to be honest, this is the most boring thing including electric guitar that I’ve ever heard. You know how in the Middle Ages, the alchemists were trying to find the essence of a thing, the purest form of the thing, instantly recognizable as that thing, that thing and nothing else. That’s what this song is, the essence of derivative pop-punk. This could be a different song, and I wouldn’t notice. There’s no hook, no variation. It’s like a social experiment, an attempt to write the quintiseential pop punk song: “I don’t get girls. Here’s a three chord progression. Here’s another one. There’s your song!” It’s like a derivation of a derivation. If the Clash was straight whiskey, this would be a shitty fruity margarita that some guy tries to get you drunk on at a high school party. That song was just so terrible. I’m not usually into ornamental writing, but I want to track down whoever wrote these lyrics and forcibly tattoo a list of adverbs and adjectives on his chest. Yes, forcibly tattoo. That’s how I’m solving all my problems from now on.

Track 2 - Plymouth Rock by John Vanderslice

We’re posting the second track from this album before the first one because it’s the first song on the album that we heard. The car we were listening to this $1CD in on the way home is on crack (don’t ask.) Also, this song is a much better introduction to the work of Mr. Vanderslice than the first one.

Carlyn: Sweet name, by the way.

Lily: Really? “Vanderslice” sounds like the name Charles Dickens would give to a serial murderer character.

Carlyn: Yeah that’s why I like it.

Lily: …let’s just share some of the lyrics.

tuwaitha on a moonless night
blacked out except for the street fires

Lily: What the hell is “tuwaitha” and also what is a “street fire”? Also, fyi for all you guys designing CD lyric booklets: all lower-case is not cruise control for edgy or sensitive or really anything cool.

when we jumped off the deck
white bullets tore right through my neck

Carlyn: What the hell is a white bullet?

Lily: I think it’s a commentary on race - listen to the lines before it, they’re about Indians.

Carlyn: The idea of a “white bullet” reminds me of those pills you stick up your butt.

Lily: A suppository?

Carlyn: Yeah.

This is the album art for “Epilepsy is Dancing/Where Is My Power?” You can see why we just had to purchase this. Something strange about the CD was that its case was sort of backwards - it opens from the left side and has only one part of the case where the paper inserts go. It’s hard to explain, and it just added to the bizarre nature of the album.

This is the first track on “Live Life One Pineapple At A Time.” It is called “What’s Happening To The World?” We love the edgy and fresh lyrics, especially “Why is everyone so freaking lame?” These guys are going to be the next Bono, with their heartfelt concern for the human condition and their incisive social commentary. 

Carlyn and I love the way the first stanza remains so faithful to the rhyme scheme but they abandon their dedication by the second stanza, figuring assonance is just as acceptable. We do have to point out, though, that if you’re “still waiting for the world to change today,” at least you won’t have to wait very long.

This is an album called “Pixel Revolt” by John Vanderslice. It’s a Category 2 Choice but, unfortunately, it disappointed by being awful. The album art is nice, though Lily points out that it looks a lot like the album art for “Almost Here” by The Academy Is. We think the background music for all these songs is pretty nice - as Carlyn puts it, “music to have sex by” - but the singing just kills it. And by “kills,” we mean “tortures for several hours, bludgeons over the head, and THEN saws at the jugular with an airplane knife.” Do they have those? 

This is a CD called “Live Life One Pineapple At A Time” by a band called Pineapple Sue. We’ve posted the picture from the inside cover because the album cover is just plain white with a pineapple on it and the name of the album and band in a trendy black font. The inside cover reads: 

Our thank u’s:
Our Heavenly Father, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, families, friends, the church of Rotebro, Andreas Nordqvist, the church of Immanuel, Rissne rock cafe, Rune Olsson, Majbritt & Tomas Lannfjall, Christian Rivell at Bilda, and especially YOU, listening to our music.

You’re very welcome, little Swiss Christians. 

What really sold us was the photo of the four band members objectifying their hairless adolescent bodies with pineapples. Whose mother took that photo? We’d love to have been there for that photo shoot.

Lily: Here’s how things are gonna go down ‘round here: I’m straight gonna get you arrested.

Carlyn: Lily’s a little confused. That was actually a song title on a rejected Category One album the other day.

Anyway, here’s what’s up: tumblr won’t let us upload more than one audio file per day, so we obviously won’t be doing that. Also, we don’t want to just post entire albums one track after another each day. Even we can’t handle entire albums at a time - and yes, we do listen to the music as we write about it, every song, on repeat if necessary. The sacrifices we make for you guys. (Carlyn: YOU try listening to a Conor Oberst reject CD all the way through, and then thank us.) So what we’ll do for each CD is post an “intro post” with the album art and a mini description of it, then each day post a randomized song from a $1CD that we’ve already introed. Don’t worry - we’ll tag all of them with the band and album name so they’ll be easy to find. (We’ve changed our theme enough to be sure the tags are working.) So that’s the plan. Get ready for an adventure in some cheap and awful and occasionally good music!

Also, we’re gonna straight get you arrested.

We decided to take a photo of the stack of $1 CDs we currently have in our library to document the starting point of this blog. (Right now it represents an investment of $7 plus change. We anticipate the collection growing very large.) What started as a “hey let’s snap a shot of the stack of CDs” turned into an impromptu photo shoot in our room. Here’s lovely Carlyn with the current $1 CD collection and a sweet feathered headband we bought on our most recent outing to The Bin and nearby establishments.

Our choices of CDs go into one of two categories:

Category One: Oh Man This Is Gonna Suck!

Usually it’s band and album names that attract us to the CDs that end up in this category. Things like “Magna Cum Louder” (an actual album name we found in The Bin) and, of course, “Epilepsy is Dancing” are sure to get our attention. Once we’ve pulled out a sufficiently intriguing album from The Bin, we examine the cover art, the track listings and the lyrics, if there is a lyric booklet provided. (There usually isn’t, though, because these tend to be self-produced, Recorded In Uncle’s Basement sorts of things. Unless you’re Taylor Hicks, and then you’re in the The Bin for totally different reasons.) We make a stack of the most outrageous ones and then pick ones that have potential. We don’t want just regular old suckage, like mediocre B-list pop or a clone of every second-tier punk band ever. We want the stuff that takes itself Really Really Seriously, or, alternatively, looks like the result of a drunken dare. We want stuff that defines itself as “Kung Folk” (Carlyn: I can’t believe we didn’t buy that one!) or has on its cover one white man and one black man, both wearing oversized sunglasses and baseball caps backwards, posing with arms crossed in front of a big truck (Lily: I can’t believe we didn’t buy that one!) Those are the Category One CDs that end up coming home with us.

Category Two: Oh Man This Actually Might Not Suck!

This is the same sort of strategy as Category One, although there is a little more emphasis on the visuals like album art and the inside booklet. What keeps us coming back to The Bin is the idea that we’ll end up like the Columbus of $1 CDs and find a beautiful new world of obscure music that was just waiting to be discovered by some open-minded listeners with a few extra dollars. When we find a band or an album title that sounds interesting, we see if the aesthetics of the album art match the sort of music we enjoy. We check to see whether the lyrics are overly whiny, navelgazing, pretentious, or cliche. We look at the instrumental credits to see if there are things like cowbells (actually listed in one CD), tooth-whistling, Nepalese Bell Chanting, etc. (If there are, the CD might get bumped up to Category One.) Usually we are disappointed by Category Two choices, but sometimes we are pleasantly and thrillingly surprised by a really good find. This has only happened once, but man was it worth it! Unfortunately, when we choose a CD based on Category Two principles, and it ends up being bad, it doesn’t typically end up being bad enough to qualify for Category One enjoyability. They’re mostly just mediocre knockoffs of music we actually like.

This is the CD that started it all. During our first trip to the $1 CD bin, Carlyn found this. It was in a white case with no front booklet and it appeared to be titled “Epilepsy is Dancing Where is my Power?” by Secretly Canadian. Further investigation upon purchase revealed that the album in fact has no title, the two tracks are called “Epilepsy is Dancing” and “Where is my Power?”, the band is actually Antony and the Johnsons and Secretly Canadian is the label.

You couldn’t ask for a better first $1 CD to make us aware of what we were getting ourselves into. The bizarre crooning, the “I cry glitter” lyrics, the 2-minutes-too-long instrumental bits - we were dying in the car on the way home when we played it. This is the first track, “Epilepsy is Dancing.” Just experience it.