Music Collection #10: Austin Powers, B-52's, Badly Drawn Boy

Artist: Various Artists
Album: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me Soundtrack
Favorite Song: Draggin' The Line (by default)
Origin: Amoeba, purchased for $5.95

This is one of those things in the collection that we only own because of one song - R.E.M.'s cover of Tommy James' Draggin' The Line. It's okay, but not worth the six bucks we spent on this. Of course, I'm sure even more hopeless R.E.M. geeks spent full price on this.

Artist: The B-52's
Album: Time Capsule
Favorite Song: None
Origin: Unknown, from Annie's collection

So, this one is totally not my fault. Once again, the icy grip of R.E.M.-fandom is to blame. You listen to R.E.M. six hours a day, read every article and ever website, buy a biography or two, and suddenly you've convinced yourself that The B-52's are a good band because they're from the same Athens, Georgia music scene. The B Fuckin' 52's! What the hell?

Anyway, this best of album is remarkable for one reason only - it contains 18 tracks! 18! Frankly, you'd have to try pretty hard to fill an EP's worth of songs for a B-52's best of, but someone went batshit crazy and provided the world with a good 15 tracks more than it ever desired.

Artist: Badly Drawn Boy
Album: The Hour of Bewilderbeast
Favorite Song: Epitaph
Origin: Hanukkah gift, I think (maybe birthday)

This was one of the first albums I ever asked for after having only read the reviews. My birthday, Christmas, and Hanukkah all fall in the same month, which means that a good way to get new music is the read the year-end lists and asked for whatever sounds best. Anyway, this was on there, and I got it and enjoyed it. And, despite the fact that I haven't listened to the album all the way through in years, it's still a touchstone in my musical evolution (wow, I don't think I've written a sentence that pretentious in a while). This was the first album I remember having with weird instrumentation, lo-fi production, experimental songs, etc. - presaging later favorites, including Neutral Milk Hotel and Sufjan Stevens.