Ragged Records Playlist – Video Edition #2

by Ryan Meehan

The brutal winter weather that we are so accustomed to living in the Midwest has officially started here in the Quad Cities of Illowa.  While we were able to skate through December with almost no snow at all and very limited sub-zero wind-chills, the harsh reality of blowing snow and people driving their 1998 Toyota Tercels into telephone poles all across the bi-state area hit us like a ton of bricks during the first full business week of January.  I can definitely tell you that this kind of weather is no place for outdoor nude ribbon dancing in the middle of the street at 1AM, something that I get the chance to practice regularly once summer rolls around and I’m temporarily off probation for at least a few months.  At least we have music to help soften the crushing blow that will be everyday life in the QC until the end of March, and we have Ragged Records in downtown Davenport to help satisfy all of our record purchasing needs.  And thanks to the magic of the internet, we also have the ability to share our somewhat schizophrenic musical tastes in the form of playlists.  Please excuse my scatterbrained tendencies with regards to staying inside of the lines here, and understand that this is not done intentionally to showcase the diversity of my listening tastes.  I can’t stand it when people do that shit, and to be brutally honest I consider myself to be a bit of a music bigot when it comes to certain genres and styles.  For example, I generally don’t trust any hard rock music with a flute in it.  There’s nothing rockin’ about whistling into a goddamned tube.  Jethro Tull?  No thanks…  Although I’m well aware “Aqualung” is a name commonly associated with an underwater breathing apparatus, whenever I hear it I can’t help but picture someone’s lungs filling up with water.  As a little science lesson, do you know what happens when your lungs fill up with water?  You die.  How ironic, that’s exactly what happened to Jethro Tull’s career after they robbed Metallica of that Grammy back in 1989.  Anyway, that’s neither here nor there and has nothing to do with any of the artists on today’s catalog.  Now that I’ve gotten off of my soapbox, I’m going to put it away before I trip over it and while I’m doing that feel free to check out the twelve songs that I’ve selected in the second installment of my submission to the Ragged Records series of playlists.