1."Paint The White House Black," George Clinton; "Dressing Up For The Indictment," Rye Coalition; "Scooter and Jinx," Sonic Youth; "Leak In The Media," DARYL; "Judy Is A Punk," Ramones; "C.I.A.," Caesar; "Corruption," Iggy Pop; "That's All, Karl," Mike Lane; "Criminal Minded," Boogie Down Productions; "Mosh," Eminem; "The Watergate Blues," Howlin' Wolf; "Peace In Our Time," Elvis Costello & the Attractions; "Christ For President," Billy Bragg and Wilco; "A Floater Left With Pleasure In The Executive Washroom," Dillinger Four; "Christmas In Washington," Steve Earle; "Iraq," Vic Chesnutt; "Impeach Me, Baby," Beverly "Guitar" Watson. A medley.

2. "Somebody To Shove," Soul Asylum. The roaring highlight of an odd night of passage at First Avenue (Oct. 24th); a night when Tommy Stinson and Dave Pirner needed and got somebody to shove, and the spirit of Karl Mueller recalled what Joe Strummer said at the end of Westway To The World, something like, "When you've got four or five people committed to one thing, it's a band, and that's rare, and it shouldn't be taken for granted. We learned that bitterly. Bitterly." Few are learning as much more bittersweetly these days than Soul Asylum and its fans.

3. "Since U Been Gone," Kelly Clarkson. A riff that would make Ric Ocasek swoon, a snare-blast that would do Metric proud, an "uh-huh," that would make the Divinyls touch themselves, a chorus tailor-made for glow sticks and arena ephemera, and, all in all, a perfect segue into...

4. "Awful Bliss," Guided By Voices. In which a lover gets the hell out of his and her way so as not to upset the accepted order of things. Call this the anti-"I Will Dare."

5. "My Maker," The Heartless Bastards. One of my favorite new bands, singing (I think) about a god that looks the other way when we fuck up, leaving the evolutional/spiritual shifts to us and us alone. It somehow recalls a bumpersticker I love ("Jesus loves you, but I'm his favorite") and the epitaph I've decided I want on my tombstone: "He made the easy ones look hard, and the hard ones look easy."

6. "Mars Loves Venus," The Brunettes. A duet! Like Shane-Sinead doing "Haunted"! Or Donny and Marie doing "I'm A Little Bit Country"! But better! A truce in the war of the sexes! Testify! A whole lotta girly-boy and boyly-girl in all of us!

7. "Tiny Dancer," Elton John. Almost the only reason to ever see Almost Famous, and the only reason I mention it here is a so I can mention Chris Hewitt's hilarious no-out-of-four-stars rip of Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown.

8. "Something In You," Orange Peels. Aztec Camera-ian in execution; Advil Sinus (Day)-methadone-ian in elevation.

9. "Ear, Nose, Throat," Troubled Hubble. On the way to the Paul McCartney concert the other night, my wife and I drove past the candlelight peace vigil on the Marshall-Lake Street bridge. Peopled honked and flashed the peace sign at the couple hundred (not the "25 or 50" that the Star Tribune reported) so-called '60s relics and their progeny, bundled up and wrapped in blankets and American flags and holding signs that read, "No More Dead."

A few minutes later, we walked into the Xcel Center, past stretch Hummer limos and semi-trucks embossed with that dorky photo from McCartney's current Happy Days period and words proclaiming "Paul McCartney presented by Lexus," and "Gas 'n' Electricity and Rock 'n' Roll." We left after being treated to an hour of McCartney's MOR self-mythologizing, and only this Mark Wheat-played tune later that night, which roundaboutly skewers the Boomer comfort trap with eyes wry open ("wealthy equals healthy"), could get the bland taste out of my ears.

10. "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got," Bettye LaVette. With age comes wisdom, and on this early-morning confession, a wise blues singer for the ages trades hunger for some sort of self-satisfaction.

11. "Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love," Jonathan Richman. Ricky Martin's got a new album out, fraught with songs about the need to be loved. But this more nourishing, because as JoJo and any true lover will tell you, unconditionally loving others is what fills you up--whether the others love you back or not.

12. "Gone Are The Days," The Magic Numbers. Everybody's favorite new band, and on this love confection, it's easy to hear why.

13. "I Am a Sunflower," Ben Lee. Been thinking about the fact--and you can look it up--that 80 percent of this country equates internal power with money, status, material, and titles, while the other 20 equates power with the inner life and spirituality, and what coroner/near-death experience storyteller Dr. Janis Amatuzio told me last week:

"I've begun to think that we as a society are evolving. I think we're on the edge of something great. I mean, I would hope it would be the fabled 'thousand years of peace.' I can't go home and turn on anything on TV and not see anything that doesn't have a forensic twist to it, and I'm starting to wonder if this isn't a metaphor, a subconscious searching, where, perhaps instead of us saying, 'What happened?,' we're starting to say, 'What happens?' "

If any part of that is true, if we indeed are on the cusp of some sort of spiritual revolution, then it might be time for the ones who have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the other shoe to drop to step up. This could be somebody's campaign tune: "And everybody feels it, and everybody knows: there are those who have the flame and then there's those who just wanna get close."

14. "Ever So Lonely/Eyes/Ocean," Sheila Chandra. The saddest, slinkiest song on this list, from an Indian-Brit crooner, and introduced to me by my Punjabi- and Hindi-music loving friend Hannah in her apartment one night a few years ago, on one of those all-too rare mutual deejay nights.

15. "Dedication to Poets and Writers," Ornette Coleman. If it's true that "your writing will get better if you listen to great music by great musicians," as Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird has it, then this nine-minute squall of beat-crazy violin should make bards out of all us.

16. "Place Unknown," Quintron. If this NOLA organ-grinder and his pussy posse is half as much fun in the Entry this coming Wednesday as he is on this giddy ditty, batten the hatches and do the hip-shake, babe.

17."The Ballad Of Paul and Sheila," Mason Jennings. Thank God for Peter Scholtes, for reminding me of these great spirits on that sad day of October 25. My dog and I happened to visit their beautiful graves the other day in Lakewood Cemetery, which is a song-experience unto itself. Truly, anyone who's sick of all these lawyers, guns, and money owe it to their inner wretches to do likewise before the snow flies.

18. "Run Away Teddy," Mary Coughlan. Hell hath no fury like a stalker scorned, and this one, by the great Irish singer Couglan, makes Halloween a 365-day proposition: "You abandoned me like Frankenstein, now look out Teddy, I'm right behind."

19. "Open," Mike Scott. A lot of the time I look for songs penned by souls who describe mine back to me. I don't learn much from victimhood music or have much patience for phoned-in anything, and I was surprised the other night when I got absolutely nothing from Al Green on Letterman. His soul-cheerleader thing came off empty, because when he sang, "Everything's gonna be OK," his face told a different tale, as if he knew he should be singing the blues for these bluesy times, but that he'd painted himself into a corner where we expect him to be a reverend of reassurance.

On the other hand, this one, from Waterboys' leader Scott, is a slice of how I aim to be in the best of times, but so often fail at: Open to love, spirit, the changing wind, touch, nature, the world within, passion, change, adventure, the new, miracles, joy, service, risk, passion, peace, silence, and that's just the first two minutes.

20. "So What If We're Outta Tune," Marah. The most heartening thing I read in the Star Tribune this weekend was in the Business section. According to Dogpile, on a sample day (Oct. 21), Twin Citians searched the Internet for "music lyrics" (20,406) more than anything else other than "sex," and much more than the next-most searched, "poetry" (2,842) and "hurricane wilma" (1,870). And here I thought I was the only one digging for and digging stuff like:

"So What If We're Outta Tune"
(Marah)

We're desperate in common
In spite of our names
Glowing in a room of Christmas lights and candle flames
We're sick starting over
Missing our cues
If promise rings on ancient strings
Ain't no one got a clue

'Cause oooh lover
I only sing for you
So what if we're outta tune
With the rest of the world

We're humming in circles
Cleaning our plates
Dreaming out our choruses
And slow sad middle eights

A tenner between us
And nothing to lose
By leaving everyone behind us
Silent and confused

But oooh lover
They ain't me and you
So what if we're outta tune
With the rest of the world

So come on darling stay with me
Let's cut through the crowd
Make the most of being lost
In what time we're allowed

We're desperate in common
And missing the jokes
Rollin' through the eyes of snakes
And in the rings of smoke
Strainin' our voices
To no consequence
Cause maybe baby loves the cost of our irrelevance

And oooh lover
That's all I want to do
So what if we're outta tune
With the rest of the world

"14,000 Things To Be Happy About"
(Troubled Hubble)

Tell your mom you're not coming home tonight. You've got your youth, your will, and you're willing to fight. And no conscience could keep your heart in one piece, there's passion to be found, there's stress, there's release.

So into the open air to soak it all in and live your life like the world owes you something more than what you have. Like a one-way ticket or any free ride, a brand new box to put your head inside. Or a neat new monument, with your name etched in. A home to call your own, new problem-free willingly withdraw from certainty and lack of sleep on the pure and peaceful path of stupidity. Growing gets hard, waiting gets old to you. I know, that feeling's no fun, it feels like you're out, down and done too.

Oh grow up, when will you ever learn? When will you learn, that candle in the window is going to be the reason your whole house burns. And the money... It's a carrot on a string. There's a horse standing over a black hole basement after losing everything. But your car, you know, it runs like a dream, and your hair and skin are so fucking clean. Everyone looks at you, like you're an angel or something.

But we'll take the fake happy over knowing what's wrong and we'll give you the stuff that you need to belong, and hope that's what you need, by a small chance. A quick and heavy dose of acceptance. Growing gets hard, time is running out. You'll die, a young and exciting death and tell us all in your last breath, I'm done there's nothing to be happy about.

And we dance, and the flowers come up through the footstep floor mat. And now's your chance, to seize this all, you seize this all, while your smile hides what's beneath keeps the sadness a secret as we grow old, and take it all with us. Now I know there's mistakes that go along with youth, so choose to replace or take them with you and I feel so bad now that I'm so old, so angry, so broke so unhappy, tattooed and ugly.

Welcome to the first Walsh Files, in which CP staff writer/musichead Jim Walsh picks the 20 songs that mean the most to him each week. Check back every Monday for a new mix/playlist.

This week's playlist:

1. "Things The Grandchildren Should Know," Eels A former and current forlorn subscriber to The Loner's Manifesto gets it up and greets the new day. My most-played (fave) song of the year.

2. "You Can Be The Rain," Randall Bramblett In which a distant lover dapples herself on her would-be man's windshield, bathroom windows, bedroom windows, stained glass windows, etc., and they live happily ever after, without their touch and dying within their reach and living with or without each other.

3. "You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son," Wolf Parade Gilda Radner's delicious ambiguity, boiled down to a couple scratchy minutes.

4. "You Are The Everything," R.E.M. This is about rapture, the kind that happens when sitting by the river, looking at a painting (check out Siri Hustevedt's Mysteries Of The Rectangle,), or watching the Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg documentary Speaking In Strings. These days I take my rapture wherever I can get it, for the noticing of it validates silence and oneness and beauty in the face of all this snark culture we're living through. Not a classic singalong, but the lyrics read like timeless parchment:

Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing (say, say, the light)
I'm very scared for this world
I'm very scared for me
Eviscerate your memory
Here's a scene
You're in the back seat laying down
The windows wrap around
To sound of the travel and the engine
All you hear is time stand still in travel
and feel such peace and absolute
The stillness still that doesn't end
But slowly drifts into sleep
The stars are the greatest thing you've ever seen
And they're there for you
For you alone you are the everything

I think about this world a lot and I cry
And I've seen the films and the eyes
But I'm in this kitchen
Everything is beautiful
And she is so beautiful
She is so young and old
I look at her and I see the beauty
Of the light of music
The voices talking somewhere in the house
Late spring and you're drifting off to sleep
With your teeth in your mouth
You are here with me
You are here with me
You have been here and you are everything

5. "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games," Of Montreal Hey, when did the Tom-Tom Club come out of hibernation? Let's pretend we don't exist/let's pretend we're in Antarctica, let's thank the Current for turning us on to stuff like this, and making something out of nothing.

6. "Customer," The Replacements Q: Why do daily newspapers and local newscasts give you so many stories on shopping? A: You're nothing but a customer.

7. "Viva la Persistence," Kimya Dawson First heard her do this at the Acadia a few months ago: wordy, nerdy, and wise.

8. "I Don't Want No Woman If Her Hair Ain't No Longer Than Mine (Short-Haired Woman)," John Lee Hooker A fella's gotta have something to grab onto, ladies.

9. "Teachers," Soulwax I'm a sucker for songs about rock, even bad ones. This is great. Canned Heat, Roxy Music, Supergrass, James Gang, Killing Joke, The Cramps, and a cast of dozens are in the house and at the blackboard.

10. "New Sound," The Capricorns Another terrific tune about the hunt for the latest and greatest and the need to, as the Hundred Flowers put it, I gotta be seen, I gotta be seen. This is a jittery ode to the night, a finger-fuck between the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Date With The Night and the Cars Let's Go.

11. "Sometimes I Forget," Loudon Wainwright III In a week haunted by Joan Didion's reading at the Fitz and Karl Mueller's mates at the Entry, this weeper from Loudon III about the death of Loudon II was something close to cathartic.

12. "Good Souls," Starsailor Hard not to hear this shimmering right-to-life anthem (Thank you for the good souls who make life better, indeed) at the end of Mayor Of The Sunset Strip and not dream of the film's sad-faced pixie anti-hero Rodney Bingheimer, and what he says he likes about music: It makes me happy.

13. "You Can Have My Husband," Precious Bryant Theme song for my next key party.

14. "Late At Night," Simon Says More often than not, a song reverberates with me because of who played it for me the first time. My sister-in-law was the culprit here, and now whenever it shuffles around, I listen carefully to what she hears, and I'm heartwarmed by the thought of her coming home on the bus from her corporate law job, lost in the sounds of trance-y dance romance.

15. "Johnny Met June," Shelby Lynne When worlds collide, fuse, amuse, inspire, last, endure, 'til death do they meet again.

16. "4 My Man (Featuring Fantasia)," Missy Elliott A lady's gotta have something to grab onto, fellas.

17. "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," Stars A theater lobby. After the show. The reviews were right. Some, anyway. Yawn. Wanna get Thai? Then, God, that was strange to see you again, introduced by a friend of a friend. Shudder, resolution: Live through this and you won't look back. Like Frank Black said, You're the king of all you survive. Like Dori the fish said, Just keep swimming.

18. "Swimmers," Broken Social Scene Gimme a little of that beat.

19. "Love Steals Us From Loneliness," Idlewild In other words (Nick Cave's), I believe in love/And I know you do, too/And there's a path we can walk down, me and you.

20. "Life Is Still Sweet," White Hassle I could listen to Float On until the death cab comes for me, but this is the one that inspired it.

Local release of the week: Gao Hong, Li Jia Xing, and Zhang Ying, Music Of China Released on John Munson's Culture Bridge Music, this is the best meditation tool/chill out soundtrack I've heard in centuries.

(ode to the lost art of burning leaves, 10/24/05)

Around this time of year, on a typical Minneapolis weekend in the '60s, citizens and wiccans would ritualistically take to raking their lawns. If they cocked their ears and imaginations to the wind, they could hear the crowds of Memorial or Metropolitan stadiums, roaring for their tribes and gladiator heroes battling in the great outdoors. And if their ears and imaginations failed them, they could always stop what they were raking and hear the sound of WCCO-AM on transistor radios, incanting across the zephyr.

Autumn is here, and a young man's thoughts turn to these things. Perhaps because raking is the dullest and most fruitless of all of Satan's chores, for all it accomplishes is a chump's clarity: Would it be so bad to leave unmade the bed of dead leaves and dirty grass? Would it be such a disaster if it all simply rested beneath the snow, snuggling as one big slop trough, for six months?

Once upon a time, though, there was a pay-off. A ceremony. Incense. To be sure, when it comes to olfactory orgasms, there is nothing like fall. Nothing, not the lilacs of spring, the bouys of summer, the brace of winter, delivers the same crisp wonder and bittersweet symphony. Fall is the time of year when the dark night of the soul screams "something's missing," and harkens back to a time of rustling school corduroys, and the perfume of burning leaves.

Yes, my dark lovelies. It is no myth. It was everywhere. It was pure pagan celebration, sanctioned by the city fathers. Rake and rake and rake would we, and then we would pile scratchy brown-and-orange effigy-ready piles on the lawn, street, curb, or gutter.

Some would jump into the veiny mounds, but that was kids' stuff. Most raked only to "burn burn burn like roman candles," as Kerouac had it--you just had to be careful not to let it spread to parked cars and turn the whole unholy event into a live feed from Halloween in the Castro, or a post-NBA championship celebration in Detroit.

They were smoke signals, nothing less. The butterfly effect, before it had a name: In the lighting of a pile of leaves in the middle of the city, there was some serious black magic being played out; a communing with other smokers down the block, across the river, and through the woods. It was a connection to something ancient, something mystical, and a way to live out what a brick in front of the Writers Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland says: "Go back far enough and all humankind are cousins--Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999)."

Go back far enough in this city's history, and you will discover a flamin' groovy time before 1971. That was the year the outdoor burning ban went into effect. Some tree-huggers got their undies in a bundle about the ozone and dioxins, and pushed through a measure to stop the fires and turn leaves into compost and mulch for the sake of future generations.

And now here we are--safe and sound and fireless. "I miss burning leaves," said my friend Shawn, an expatriate Minnesotan living in Hollywood. "We lived in the country and would burn the 'brush pile' that had accumulated over the summer. Dead branches, dead mice, dead birds, dead leaves, dead grass. We would dump a few gallons of used car oil on it and light her up. Then we would be out there 'til midnight waiting for it to die down."

"My father had a leaf-burner next to the garage by the alley," said my friend Erik, an expat from Seattle who recently returned to Minneapolis. "It had holes in the sides where fire had burned through over the years. It made raking leaves much more fun, and it smelled and felt good to be next to the fire. When my parents told me we couldn't do it anymore and why--'Because it was bad for the environment'--I felt bad that I had enjoyed it before."

Oh, but it was good. So, so, so good. Never mind global warming, the pagans contend that "burning oak leaves purifies the atmosphere," not to mention serving as "doorways to the mysteries, health, money, healing, potency, fertility, strength, endurance, good luck, longevity, primeval strength, and to preserve youthfulness."

I can't get enough of that stuff, so I summoned the Minneapolis fire marshal, Dave Dewall, to see if he'd give my bursting-at-the-sternum inner pagan a permit to burn leaves. He was a total puritan wet blanket. He said there's a city ordinance against burning leaves for good reason, but that fires can be had on private property with "cord wood, no branches, leaves, or debris, and the pit must be no more than three feet in diameter."

Not exactly the sort of thing that inspires whooping and getting naked around the circle of life. Dude had nearly doused my inner flame, until I realized I don't need a watered-down version of my flaming youth. I've got my memories to keep me warm. To wit:

When I was a wee lad growing up in this bastard burg, one of my household chores was to take out the trash and burn it. After dinner and dishes, I'd haul out a paper bag of tin cans, dirty diapers, plastic cartons, and the like, and toss it into a metal trashcan near the alley. Then I'd light a match. If it didn't catch, I'd sprinkle in some lighter fluid and watch the smoke and flames lap the stars.

Same thing with leaves. One night, during a particularly high bonfire in the alley, my brother found a crippled bat. He picked it up and tossed it on the pyre. We cackled as the heat immolated the fur and wings, setting into motion an entire chain of events that brought all who were there that night blessings that the pagans say come from standing around cauldrons and candles and burning leaves, not bending and bagging and tying.