Quiet Freakout

One of the most annoying things about popular internet relationship-destroyer, Facebook, is that sometimes there is actually some pretty cool stuff on there, but of course you can't access it without, as my friend Carol says, "drinking the purple Jesus juice." Our old friend Peter, for instance, has been making downloadable mix tapes and posting them on his Facebook page, account, or wall — whatever you techno kids call it. Each one represents a certain genre or theme or mood, and they come with nice cover art. Peter has really good taste in music, so I was glad that Alison, being an unabashed Facebooker, has been able to email me the download links, along with descriptive text.

All this is to say that, having enjoyed many of these things (except possibly the all-Bruce-Cockburn one, and even that had some nice surprises), I've been inspired to make my own mix-tape-for-the-world. Here it is:

The Other Woman
An alternate title for this mix might be That's a Dealbreaker, Ladies!, because for each of these songs, you will know at least one person who would not be able to sit through its entirety. Here are the freaky, folky femmes from the wrong side of the music industry. To be fair, some of them have been quite successful, but they're all unique in some love-it-or-hate-it kind of way. I happen to love them all, and my aim here is to convince you to feel the same.

Most of the arguable oddity comes in a subdued, understated package, though a few of these gals do occassionally let loose with some actual wailing. And mostly it's the voices that will drive your closed-minded friends to press the eject button. But in some cases it has more to do with the non-white-Anglo cultural origins of the music. I'd like to point out that the inclusion of these latter cases in a mix of ostensibly "weird" or even "annoying" music does not mean that I am a racist — just that I think your friends are.