Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #008

Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #008 – My Top 100 Of 2006

The first thing I’ll tell ya, is that pretty much every list ever made, is comprised of complete bullshit.  This one included, I promise you.  I’ve been all over the Consequence Of Sound social media boards as of late, criticizing what has been a litany of uninformed lists that reek of desperation more than relevance – but it’s only fair that if I’m going to do that, I should have to stick my neck out there in the same damn way.  I used to come up with all kinds of lists in my younger days, for all kinds of reasons, but usually just for my own amusement.  If I had one regret about the list I’m going to share with you here, it’s that it’s largely incomplete in the sense that, yes, it contains 100 songs…but apparently I never finalized the order.  Maybe that’s for the best, I don’t know.  What I can tell you is this though…I would have believed in it then, and I still do now I’m sure.  I preserved the list for twenty years, and I even made another the year after, which I did in fact, deck out in detail from a hundred down to one.  As for 2006’s list though, I only kept the songs in a folder, which defaults to alphabetical order.  It’s like a kickass time capsule of sorts though ain’t it?  I’m unearthing the person I was, way back when, twenty years ago.  I would have known full well that I’d be leaving something out or including debatable choices even back then.  It’d be interesting to have a conversation with the me of twenty years ago…sleepingbagstudios wasn’t even a thought by that point in time, I still hadn’t married the wonderful woman that would one day become my wife, didn’t have my amazing dog…that list goes on.  The only constant that I’ve ever had in my life is the music that has surrounded me from the moment I knew how to push play.  I haven’t looked at this list in years with the exception of making sure it still exists in the archives…it’ll be neat to check this out with you.  I’ve heard so many more songs since I labored over what to include on this…I remember how difficult it was to create, yet how much joy it brought me to make it.  I can only imagine that making another here in the present would practically make this entire list from 2006 unrecognizable by comparison…but that’s kinda beautiful too ain’t it?  That’s “evolution, baby” as Eddie Vedder would say.  Maybe it is.  Maybe it isn’t.  We’re about to find this out together I reckon.  I’m not gonna try to order them how I might have back then just for the sake of doin’ it…and before you give me any shit about legends like Zep, Pink Floyd, The Beatles & whatnot…I tried to keep my choices modern, lest they be dominated by the classics & such.  Feel free to judge me, but don’t go giving me any shit, especially not after I told you right from the get-go you shouldn’t trust ANY list, even my own!  Apologies on going half-assed with this…I don’t know what stopped me from adding in the numbers to where I thought these songs sat within a top 100 list originally, but here are the songs I couldn’t live without back in 2006 (Playlist embedded below at the bottom of this article if you’re interested in listening).

Jer’s Official Top 100 Of 2006:

A Perfect Circle – “Sleeping Beauty”

A Perfect Circle – “The Nurse Who Loved Me”

Aimee Mann – “It’s Not”

Album Leaf – “Another Day”

Beck – “Missing”

Belly – “The Bees”

Ben Folds – “Landed”

Better Than Ezra – “Rewind”

Big Wreck – “The Oaf”

Bjork – “All Is Full Of Love (Strings)”

Black Lab – “I Don’t Love You”

Blind Melon – “Walk”

Bloc Party – “Compliments (Shibuyaka Remix)”

Boards Of Canada – “In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country”

Cake – “Palm Of Your Hand”

Cardigans – “Higher”

Chris Cornell – “Disappearing One”

Coldplay – “See You Soon”

Coldplay – “Sparks”

Coldplay – “Swallowed In The Sea”

Collective Soul – “Ten Years Later”

Cure – “End”

Dave Matthews Band – “#41”

Dave Matthews Band – “Spoon”

David Gray – “This Year’s Love”

Death Cab For Cutie – “Lightness”

Death Cab For Cutie – “Passenger Seat”

Death Cab For Cutie – “Tiny Vessels”

Dirty Three – “She Passed Through”

DJ Shadow – “Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt”

Doctor – “High Is As High Gets”

Elliot Smith – “Miss Misery”

Feeder – “Paper Faces”

Finger Eleven – “For The Ocean”

I Mother Earth – “When Did You Get Back From Mars”

Iron And Wine – “Dead Man’s Will”

Iron And Wine – “Swans And The Swimming”

Jay-Z And Linkin Park – “Dirt Off Your Shoulder/Lying from You”

John Mayer – “Kid A”

John Mayer – “Victoria”

Jurassic 5 – “Freedom”

Keane – “Somewhere Only We Know”

Keane – “We Might As Well Be Strangers”

K’s Choice – “Cocoon Crash”

Lemon Jelly – “Ramblin’ Man”

Lifehouse – “Breathing”

Live – “White, Discussion”

Mars Volta – “Eriatarka”

Mars Volta – “Roulette Dares”

Massive Attack – “Inertia Creeps”

Massive Attack – “What Your Soul Sings”

Matthew Good Band – “Running For Home”

Mike Doughty – “Down On The River By The Sugar Plant”

Mike Doughty – “Sunkeneyed Girl”

Mogwai – “Auto Rock”

Mogwai – “Punk Rock”

Mogwai – “Stop Coming To My House”

Mum – “Green Green Grass Of Tunnel”

Nine Inch Nails – “Right Where It Belongs”

Nirvana – “In Bloom”

Nirvana – “Pennyroyal Tea”

Our Lady Peace – “Are You Sad”

Our Lady Peace – “In Repair”

Our Lady Peace – “Somewhere Out There”

Paloalto – “Throwing Stones”

Pavement – “Unfair”

Pete Yorn – “Crystal Village”

Pete Yorn – “On Your Side”

Pete Yorn – “Pass Me By”

Q-Tip – “N.T” Feat. Busta Rhymes

R.E.M. – “Boy In The Well”

R.E.M. – “I Wanted To Be Wrong”

R.E.M. – “The Outsiders”

Radiohead – “Scatterbrain”

Radiohead – “You And Whose Army”

Rage Against The Machine – “Ashes In The Fall”

Sade – “By Your Side”

Sarah Harmer – “Silver Road”

Scott Weiland – “Son”

Sia – “Breathe Me (Four Tet Remix)”

Smashing Pumpkins – “Mayonaise”

Snoop Dogg – “Issues”

Something For Kate – “Kaplan Thornhill”

Something For Kate – “You Only Hide…”

Spoon – “Jonathon Fisk”

Stabbing Westward – “Waking Up Beside You”

Stars – “Elevator Love Letter”

Teenage Fanclub – “Same Place Different Place”

Tegan And Sara – “I Know I Know I Know”

Temple Of The Dog – “All Night Thing”

Toad The Wet Sprocket – “Stupid”

Tool – “H”

Tori Amos – “Crazy”

Tragically Hip – “Eldorado”

Tragically Hip – “Nautical Disaster”

Verve Pipe – “Half A Mind”

Watchmen – “Beach Music”

Weezer – “O Girlfriend”

Weezer – “Smile”

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”

And there you have it!  That’s me, circa 2006, twenty years ago.  Objectively speaking, it’s a little sporadic, a little Coldplay heavy for my taste now, and I was definitely listening to a lot of Around The Sun by R.E.M. at the time…but aside from that, I’m still pretty happy with that list.  I’m interested to see what happened the following year – I only did two of these – this one here from 2006 and one the year after in 2007.  I likely thought I’d do this every year, but it’s mentally taxing y’all!  I remember the feeling well…but I also remember loving that kind of stress, and that it’s entirely self-imposed anyhow, right?  This is that love of the game type stuff, like reorganizing your collection in alphabetical order, then by genre, then autobiographically…you old-heads get it.  Hard to do that with your phone I suppose.  I will tell ya this – I might just do this again one day now that I’ve seen what a joy it has been to uncover after all these years.  Not gonna lie, there are actually a few cuts on this list that I’d forgotten by name…like “It’s Not” by Aimee Mann for instance…I was like, did I mean “Wise Up?”  Turns out I didn’t – I remember really liking that song for a while way back when.  Then there were tunes like “Ten Years Later” by Collective Soul that I had completely forgotten about by name, or cuts like John Mayer randomly covering “Kid A” by Radiohead?  Where in the hell did I even get that?  Very happy with some of the lesser-known tracks on this list being there…stoked to see many that I know would stand a good chance of being on my list if I did make another today…and yes, shocked by a few glaring omissions that are practically unforgivable, but hey, I was in my mid-20s at the time.  If you’re not making a ton of mistakes in your mid-20s, are you even living life properly?  Anyhow.  At the very least, I would be more than stoked to listen to a list like this one even now, and I’m proud that it proves I had a wildly varied taste in music, even way back then.  Gonna let this marinate in my mind for a bit and appreciate what was…and as soon as I feel like I’ve forgotten it enough to make another list, I will.  Hopefully with a little bit of luck, sleepingbagstudios will still be around in twenty years when I’m…Jesus…sixty-six…and I’ll share it with you then.  Until then, you’ve got this to get started on…have a listen, and enjoy it will ya?

I’ve made a playlist at Spotify to make it easier for ya…and for the most part, I think about 93 of the songs on this top 100 were on there.  There were some, like say, Black Lab’s “I Don’t Love You” which was originally on the See The Sun deluxe release, has now been re-released as a single from a couple years back – and that’s the only version online now, so I added that.  Others like Belly, who have taken the majority of their music off of Spotify (Respect!  I wish more did!), or John Mayer, who took a bunch of older material off the site…Teenage Fanclub as well…Sarah Harmer…some songs just weren’t there, so I didn’t add them to the playlist I made below.  I needed substitutions…and thankfully, I had some.

The following is a list of what I kept at “honorable mentions” for 2006. Chances are, they were the songs that I hummed and hawed over, and were likely the last to be cut.  To bring the top 100 back to a full count of 100 songs, I took five off this next list, and substituted them in for anything that was missing.  As to which five I chose…you’ll have to check it out for yourself to find out…but here’s what was on it:

Jer’s Honorable Mentions:

Alice In Chains – “Don’t Follow”

Aqualung – “Brighter Than Sunshine”

Ben Gibbard – “Carolina”

Better Than Ezra – “Get You In”

Bloc Party – “Banquet Phones (Disco Edit)”

Boom Bip – “Last Walk Around Mirror Lake (Boards Of Canada Remix)”

Cure – “Treasure”

Fountains Of Wayne – “The Senator’s Daughter”

Four Tet – “She Moves She”

Grandaddy – “The Go In The Go For It”

Incubus – “Make Yourself”

Jay-Z And Linkin Park – “Numb/Encore”

Lindy – “Important”

Nina Gordon – “2003”

Nirvana – “Tourette’s”

Pedro The Lion – “Bands With Managers”

Placebo – “Every You Every Me (Sneaker Pimps Version)”

Placebo – “The Bitter End”

Queens Of The Stone Age –  “You Can’t Quit Me Baby”

Radiohead – “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box”

Semisonic – “DND”

Soul Coughing – “Janine”

Soul Coughing – “Lazybones”

Soundgarden – “Mailman”

Sparklehorse – “Waiting For Nothing”

Toad The Wet Sprocket – “All She Said”

Tori Amos – “Scarlet’s Walk”

Tori Amos – “Strange”

Watchmen – “Middle East”

Listen to these tunes…they’ll enrich your whole life, I promise ya.

Much love to you all.

– Jer @ SBS