We got Tivo recently. Well, almost Tivo. The DirecTV DVR version. DirecTV used to have a deal with actual Tivo, but they went out on their own a year or so back.

But anyway the point is that I got this certificate in the mail, kind of a rebate or something, for ordering the DirecTV DVR and service, for fifty free downloads at eMusic. After signing on to, and signing up for, eMusic, I found that the normal two-week trial to emusic affords one thirty free downloads, so I guess I got twenty free downloads from DirecTV. Whatever.

But then the problem was that emusic isn’t iTunes. They don’t have any of the usual mainstream stuff. Which is okay, I guess. I’m hopelessly out of touch as far as mainstream pop music goes nowadays. Not to say that I’m some sort of indie hipster either, though. More accurate to say that I’m hopelessly out of touch altogether.

I ended up downloading two records, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and Furnace Room Lullaby, by Neko Case, and then Peddlin’ Dreams by Maria McKee, and Your Country by Graham Parker. Oh, and with three songs left over, I grabbed Marieke, from the recent off-Broadway revival of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, sung by Gay Marshall. And then I found a recording of Jacques Brel himself singing it. And lastly The Day After Tomorrow by Tom Waits, from a record or two ago.

I couldn’t find any Wilco records, or anything by Sarah Harmer. Would probably have gotten something from one or both.

But, all in all, so far, I’m really really digging Fox Confessor. By turns exhilerating and disturbing, Neko Case is like some strange combination of Patty Griffin and Liz Phair, if you can imagine. Great singing chops and bizarre lyrics, maybe, is the key to the combo.

I heard Tom Waits sing Day After Tomorrow on the Daily Show, of all places. They don’t generally have musical acts, not performing anyway. The rest of the album from which the song comes seems like more normal Tom Waits barrelhouse raucous bluesy kinda stuff with weird clanging percussion, but Day After Tomorrow is just a real slow sad dirge. It’s very much like his Fall of Troy from the Dead Man Walking soundtrack, actually, which song I also love love love.

And Marieke, actually, I like a lot better sung by Gay Marshall rather than Brel himself. It’s easily my favorite song from Alive and Well. I didn’t see the recent revival off-Broadway. I saw it, actually, way way way off Broadway, in the basement of Kelly’s Irish Times in DC back in the mid-nineties. Went with the woman whom I dated soon (too soon, really) after my first marriage blew up. Said woman knew the producer of the show, had had like a one-night stand with him in college. Or just a few minutes up against a Pepsi machine affair, really. But anyway he was a really cool guy. Good-looking fellow. And I don’t know what he did in his day job, but he produced this excellent show.

And something about the song and the way that the woman sang it, and how she really emoted, or maybe over emoted but in a way that really worked anyway, it just really got to me. And part of it maybe is the lyrics in Flemish or Dutch or whatever they are, part of the song in this sad different language. It all just really sank in, stuck with me.

The way Jacques Brel himself sings it should probably be the definitive, right? But for me it just fits so much better with a woman’s voice, and Gay Marshall just does it right.