Songza

Songza is a site where you can, for free, look up and listen to entire songs when the mood strikes you. They have some neat tools, one of which allows you to send a song to a friend, one to embed a song on your site, one to link to a song, one to post a song to Twitter, etc. Good if you're looking to listen to, but not purchase, a song--or to listen to the whole thing and not just a sample before purchasing. I haven't delved into their collection too deeply, but I was able to find Madder Rose's "Swim", which is not available on iTunes--and unable to find the B-52s' "Dry County," which I had stuck in my mind today on my commute. A quick search on the song I most obsess over, Laura Branigan's "Gloria," also yielded live performances of "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" and "Me & Bobby McGee" by Branigan.

Links to some of my favorite songs of the last year (in pop, at least):
"This Heart is a Stone" by Acid House Kings
"1969" by Montt Mardie
"Toxic" cover by Mark Ronson feat. Old Dirty Bastard
"Blue Motorbike" by Moto Boy

And an oldie to shake your coffee to this morning:
"Bust A Move" by Young MC

Clerihews at the Boston Globe

Rats--found out too late that The Boston Globe is running a clerihew contest (finalists to be chosen tonight, 7/7, then voted on until July 10). Submissions are in the comments and are fun to read through. Some of my favorite entries (I'm disqualifying ones in which the first line consists of anything more than the subject’s name—it’s not a strict rule of the form, I guess, but I’m a hardass like that):

By “A. Nan”:

Jorie Graham
once said, "I am,
I think. Or not.
At least I'm hot!"

Frank Bidart
bent over Art,
called the friction
stuff of fiction.


By “therblig”:

Tim Berners-Lee
Invented HTTP
Thus the world wide web was born
For Nigerian Diplomats and porn

Georg Simon Ohm
Studied physics in his Bavarian home
But after much resistance, he just couldn't fight it
And wrote "Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet "


By “Danielle”:

Joe Orton
Was never too shy to go courtin'.
He spent some time in the slammer
Then got bludgeoned with a hammer.


[Think I'd vote for the Jorie--or Georg Simon Ohm]

Here are the only clerihews I’ve ever written, for a great class with Peter Klappert in '97:

Elizabeth Bishop
buttered the fish up
with homage and versification--
and herbed garlic, post-publication.

Marianne Moore
kept a voluminous store
of quotes that she dug in
case she needed something to plug in.