Today's Random Ten

At least this time I actually know all the songs and remember putting them on iTunes...

• "Mi Ranchito" by Los Super Seven (3 stars) - There are better songs on the Los Super Seven album.  This one's not bad, though.  All in Spanish, this one's very much traditional Mexican.  The entire album is outstanding, capped by the cover of "Deportes (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)".
• "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You" by Matt Rollings with Lyle Lovett (4) - Most folks think of Lyle Lovett - if they think of Lyle Lovett - as a country singer, and he is sometimes.  But a lot of the times, he's much more a traditional, jazzy standards singer.  This one's from the Kissing Jessica Stein soundtrack and has Lyle singing over Matt Rillings's piano with brushed drums behind them both, simple, plain, beautiful.
• "Stumptown" by Nickel Creek (3) - Nickel Creek's instrumental skills - and they were mad skillz - are on center stage here in this 1:44 instrumental.  The Nickel Creek albums bounced around stylistically, and it's not a surprise that the group went their separate ways, but they made some outstanding music while they were together.
• "Time to Get Ill" by The Beastie Boys (4) -Old school Beasties from their first album, the Rick Rubin-produced masterpiece of white rap.  Say what's the time?
• "Bullets" by Bob Schneider (4) - Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back isn't a great movie.  Yeah, it's fun because it's full of in-jokes from the first three flicks in the Jersey Trilogy, but it's not a great film.  I owned it but have since moved it along.  The soundtrack, on the other hand, is an absolute knock-out.  It's a great mix of older tunes ("Tougher Than Leather", "Bad Medicine", "Jungle Love", "Magic Carpet Ride") and alternative rock from the mid-90's ("Tube of Wonderful", "Hiphopper", "Kick Some A$$", "Jacka$$").  The whole album flows like nobody's business.
• "Staring at the Board" by Spoon (3) - This one borders on being deleted from my iTunes whenever I hear it.  It's a fifty-second bit of lo-fi nothing.  I generally don't keep anything on my iTunes that's under three stars.  If it's a two-star song, I don't like it but think either it might come in handy somewhere down the line (as a prank, as a message, as a soundbite, something) or I want to keep it for completion (I have all the Wilco songs even the ones from The Wilco Book).  This one isn't going to be useful.  It isn't something I need for completist urges.  It might go away.
• "New York's Not My Home" by Jim Croce (4) - Most people don't go more than a couple songs deep with Jim Croce.  Generally that's "Bad, Bad LeRoy Brown" (after whom we named our first dog) and "Time in a Bottle", maybe "Operator", but I absolutely love Croce's voice and have thirty-two of his songs (probably half of his output during his too-short life).  He was a bear of a man with a huge pushbroom mustache, a giant nose, and a heck of a cigar.  His songs tend to fall into either semi-funny songs about odd characters ("Leroy Brown", "You Don't Mess Around With Jim", "Roller Derby Queen") or achingly emotional (this one, "Operator", "Time in a Bottle").  It's a beautiful, heart-wrenching song.
• "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" by The Chad Mitchell Trio (3) - I think this is a Pete Seeger song;  I do have his version of it.  The voices here are prettier - more in the vein of the choral/folk groups of the time, sort of a more choral, less peppy Kingston Trio.  It's a protest song against ever going to war again but presented without much vitriol.  It's a well-written song, but the three versions I have (Johnny Cash being the third) aren't spectacularly well sung.
• "Temazcal" by Monsters of Folk (4) - Monsters of Folk are a modern day supergroup - a step down from Cream and Blind Faith, and two steps down from the Traveling Wilburys in terms of per-supergroup popularity and power.  Their lone release didn't quite live up to the hype - it's pretty music and good stuff but it's not the spectacular product that their combined prowess might have suggested - but it's some very pretty stuff.  The voices blend together surprisingly well, but I prefer when Conor Oberst takes lead, as he does on this song, the chorus of which features all four voices.
• "Ricky's Theme" by The Beastie Boys (4) - Most folks don't know that the Beastie Boys have released two entirely-instrumental albums.  The first was initially a fan-club-only release taking selected instrumental tracks from their first few albums, but the second one was released as an entirely new instrumental album.  Neither one is magestic and spectacular, but the Boys can put on a surprisingly funky slow groove that makes both albums work as cohesive wholes.  This is one of the better instrumentals on that first, The In Sound From Way Out! album.