Goodbye, Brooklyn, how you doing?

Some of us, increasingly more of us, are off to [un]faraway vacations for a few weeks, and at the risk of emitting too much like a military experiment gone awry we wanted to direct a big fucking thanks to all the transumers, brand butlers, New York police, judeo-christian moralists, dive-bar-killers, Fort Greene expatriate grups and piece-of-shit ex-girlfriends that made this year such a precious one. Here’s some nostalgia for ya.

Jay Z & Lil Wayne - Hello Brooklyn (The Knocks Remix)
Carlos Moura - Sou

You know that impulse you get when you’re watching some awesome old tv trash (especially the kind curated by the tastemakers at TV Carnage), that little productivity demon in the back of your head which incessantly gnaws “Sample this! Remix the shit out of it!” And the laziness angel responds, “but the couch is so comfortable, and the internet so interesting, and you just got a new email!”

Well, we bitch-slapped that angel and exercised our demons, grabbing some choice clips from one of the tv carnage discs. Here it tis for you, dear reader.

TV Carnage - Selected Audio Clips (tellmeyouloveme rip)

Including!

Air Mauritius
Alone in Your Electric Chair
Cheat and Eat
Fame
The Few the Proud
Hairdresser
Hot Cop Porno Theme
Inflatable Cube Breakdancing Theme
The Dirty Cowboy
Respect the Mentally Disabled
Shalom Shalom

Ok, now you got me angry - and at least I don’t need to artificially, New-York-cop-style pump myself up on public insurance funds to demonstrate just how much. But fast on the heels of my last post, reader Miss Momo asked me for some good recent-ish songs. So let’s get on with it, eh?

The first song stands as perhaps the perfect end of the year song for living in New York. Hinging on hipster opera vocals, the irony of would-be-gentrifiers lamenting the purchase of the city by fuckheads would stand at the forefront were the song not so damned great. It’s fantastic to see a song explicitly about urban politics that is handed down by white newcomers; its a sign that America is a) waking up to realize our total and complete lack of livable urban infrastructure and, simultaneously that b) we have no plans to reshape it - are, in fact, blocking it all attempts at salvation.

Was it any different, though, way back? Tanya Stephens sings about the music biz in this 2004 classic, but it would be remiss to not see the same kinds of trends happening in the political and other worlds. Emphasis on superficial additions to our city - ooh, bikes on Governor’s Island!! - over sustained commitment to the myriad of other deeper endemic problems that revolve around people’s engagement with the civic sphere plague the real business going on in this country, a thesis a priority-lover would love.

Indeed, it is the dark end of the street. But what will the new year bring?

LCD Soundsystem - New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down
Tanya Stephens - Way Back
James Carr - The Dark End Of The Street

This is how New York does it - but despite our city descending into revanchist, neoliberal hell, some people, namely us, still manage to find time to throw a party or two. Or perhaps we throw them because, being inside already-existing late capitalism, we subjects can’t really articulate a response that has not already fallen, Britney-Speaks-like, to the jackals of consumption. Below, then, are two unabashed pop songs that we will play at our party on Friday. And if you don’t want to subject yourself to more lectures, you’ll blast them right now.

Yes, I’m in finals mode. Tough shit.

Montell Jordan - This Is How We Do It
Gameboy Gamegirl - Sweaty Wet Dirty Damp

Tellmeyouloveme reader (and lover of all things red) Girltron sends us a few ditties: a backbeat-heavy, foot-stomping jam by French Kicks, a grrrrl-groups rager with a choo-choo-train bassline, and a brass-heavy, drunken he-diva version of Toxic, featuring the one and only Dirt McGirt (cuz dirt don’t hurt). Thassalot of hyphens!

French Kicks - Knee High
The What Four - I’m Gonna Destroy That Boy
Toxic - Mark Ronson (feat. ODB & Tigger)

No, it’s not that weird internet dude. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and before heading out to navigate the stroller Normandy Beach in your local historic neighborhood, you want a 1960s band from Brazil to adopt a 1950s American style and with some flourish. I’m not too twee, I swear!

O Terco - Yes, I Do

…to those that cry “but nobody dances in new york!” and stand stuck to the wall like an overcooked string of spaghetti, to the guys wearing purple diagonal-striped oxfords and belligerently begging for a cigarette, to the waitress ruining an awesome chicha night of dancing by passive-aggressively demanding a so-called suggested donation, to those that know that a napkin and pen are always better than a cell phone for taking down someone’s number, and to friends in other cities that I miss the shit out of.

Black Kids - I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You
Black Kids - Hurricane Jane
Los Mirlos - Lamento En Salva

Wading through rainy days with a surfeit of latka oil makes one appreciate even less the thick layer of water that pours happily off the BQE every morning on your commute to work. With a bike so unrepaired it would make the bike snob blush I guess I can only be happy I made it home. Anyway, I like this song today because it inexclicably but wonderfully mixes austere Finnish sensibility, 60s jingli-ness AND a Tahitian beach painting. It also has some sort of weird David Lynch thing going on, but I can’t place my finger on it.

Renegades - My Heart Must Do The Crying

piece of cake. let’s bake it!

snoop dogg - sensual seduction

this shit’s the boom bangingest:
Lil Boosie and Lil Webbie - Wipe Me Down Remix

With apologies to the racial politics of the soul genre, TMYLM wanted to offer a corollary to the millions of wonderful blogs writing about soul. Maybe the appropriation makes the man, maybe the falling bridges make me weep and laugh. The sexual politics would make many a feminist blush, too, but who can resist being saved by someone, somewhere? What would you rather read about on a Thursday, the latest gossip about Gawker’s firings?

Jon Rae and the River - Just One More
Devendra Banhart - Saved