The Prairies in October Playlist

Sure, the sweet warm summer is coming, and, sure, I’m hitching the first ride I can out of these lousy prairies, but let’s not forget that for one month in the autumn, more or less, the flatlands of America are pretty cool. What better way to celebrate their four-week span of foggy, brown & lavander ghostly beauty than by forming a theme playlist for them? Sir, I will tell you politely but firmly that THERE IS NO BETTER WAY.

So here y’are:

The Prairies in October Playlist

1. ‘Song For Jesse’ by Nick Cave from the soundtrack to “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (An incredible film – one of the best I’ve ever seen. It was put out in super-limited release in 2007 and for that reason left almost as soon as it’d arrived, and that’s an incredible shame; I encourage everyone to get it on dvd. Seriously, I rank it with “Seven Samurai” and “My Dinner With Andre“. It makes me sad and hurty inside that everyone’s not cheering for it, and critics aren’t doing that thing where they creak back in their chairs and try and fit the words “ambiguity” and “evil” together in a sentence somehow, like “Well, its treatment of the ambiguity of evil was cookie-cutter, really,” which they do whenever a really awesome movie comes out.)

2. ‘Asleep and Dreaming’ by The Magnetic Fields

3. ‘The Coo Coo Bird’ by The Be Good Tanyas

4. ‘This Land is Mine’ by Dido

5. ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ by Emmylou Harris

6. ‘Laurie De’ Tullins’ by Chris Thile

7. ‘Hallelujah’ by k.d. lang

8. ‘Ivory’ by Ray Lynch

Gee, I was pretty disparaging about film critics before, wasn’t I? Well, not as disparaging as these guys:

Disclaimer: I don’t own this video. I got it here.