Yule Music: The Searching

I listen to good music, on average, once a week. Ask anyone who knows me, and you'll pretty much get the picture. I have horrible, awful "taste" in music (if you can call it that), and I only get around to decent stuff instead of crap every so often during my day.

The rub here is, when I listen to the 'good' music depends entirely on who you ask. The Fairy and some of my cousins would think it was Tuesday - when I update Groovelectric and Tiesto's Club Life. The Librarian, more likely Thursdays when I run out of podcasts and turn on WITR (local college station) for the day. I get really angry at work at least once a week, sometimes twice, at which point I hit up the angry metal that Taun-Taun and the Viking helped me find. Neuraxis is really the only thing that drowns out stupid coworkers, even if it makes my eardrums bleed.

Goth stuff, like a Darker Shade of Pagan, is Mondays, for the most part. The Professor is helping me find more awesome music in the same vein, happily. And once or twice a month, I get all nostalgic and throw in a bunch of traditional Irish music and soft rock from my Mom and Squirt, who have no idea how I don't kill myself with all of the above.

I also listen to top 40. I listen to Lady Gaga, NOT because she's ironic, but because I like her. Ke$ha, too, which is a death-penalty offense to some people. I know most of the words to Like A G6.

I'm not stating all of the above because I'm trying to prove my nerd/hipster cred. I'm stating it for context - when I say "I have no taste in music", I really, really mean it. I have a hard time identifying genre differences. I can't remember band names or song titles. I don't give a flying crap about the 'context' of a musician (See: Lady Gaga vs. Ke$ha) and who's being intelligent vs. who's in it for exploitative money.

So, with all of that context, when I say I'm having a really, really hard time finding good Yule music, I hope I get the meaning across. Seriously. I am NOT a hard person to please. I'm not picky. I AM slamming my head against a wall, though.

Why is so much of the Yule songs I can find slow, depressing, and angsty? A holiday mix has room for, like, two of those. I want music I can bake cookies too, dammit!

I feel like the depressing inevitability stuff really, really belongs in Samhain. Winter Solstice is about "raging against the night", so to speak. It's about not sitting down and accepting the inevitable onslaught of cold and death. It's about celebrating maniacally in the face of winter, of light and fire and declaring to Hades that yes, I am going to live through this and see the spring. Quiet snow falling to moaning harps is not helping the mood!

I've found a few here or there that I like. Some good nerd-stuff, too. I might post the final playlist I come up with, but meanwhile, I'm throwing a prayer out to the Internet sprites to go kick google in the nuts and help a girl out, yeah?

Blessed Be,
Pennanti