Friday Random Ten: Chicks writing songs edition

Seven of the songs on this list are written or in one case co-written by gals, so it's not, strictly speaking, a chicks-only playlist, but I've never been one to favor segregated events. Plus this is supposed to be random, no?

1. "Hammer and A Nail" Indigo Girls (Nomads Indians Saints) - OK, I know I've said I don't have anything in my iTunes database that would embarrass me to be caught listening to, but if there's an exception this is it. I do kind of secretly like them, though. Whenever she heard these gals, my lovely ex-wife used to start this goofy rant about how pretentious and literary and hip they were, and claimed that she could just throw a bunch of quotes from dead feminist martyrs, a couple characters from Shakespeare, and a few stale metaphors into a hat and pull them out randomly and it would be an Indigo Girls song. I'm not sure she's wrong.
2. "Oh, Fait Pitie d'Amour" Buddy Miller (Midnight and Lonesome) - I absolutely love Buddy & Julie Miller. She is certainly high on my list of top ten songwriters ever. This is a kind of cajun two-step flavored tune that's just about irresistible: "you're gonna wreck up my lonely life/ with love and happiness and laughter/ take up my time making you my wife/ living happily ever after..." I can't stop dancing!
3. "Talk to Me of Mendocino" Kate & Anna McGarrigle (The McGarrigle Hour) - And speaking of great songwriting, these girls are pretty luminous. Kate wrote this old favorite, and I think this performance includes her son Rufus Wainwright in among the backing vocals, especially in this stretch: "and it's on to South Bend, Indiana/ flat out on the western plains/ rise up over the rockies down on into California/ out to where all the rocks were made.*"

   *This is my transcription, but I wasn't quite sure I had it right, so I looked it up and it's supposed to be something else that I don't like as much: "out to where but the rocks remain," which doesn't really make much sense to me.

4. "Overjoyed" The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir (Shy Folk) - I know I've gone on & on about this (alas, no longer performing together) Toronto-based combo, but if you can find a copy of any of their CDs it'll sure be worth your time to give it a listen: "We can live/ overjoyed/ we can give/ overjoyed/ when the crisis comes/ we'll find peace on the solid ground and say: we're overjoyed."
5. "Strange Lover" Julie Miller (Broken Things) - She's singing here with Steve Earle; Buddy is somewhere in the vocal mix, I think, and playing guitars, etc. I totally love that one line: "blood is red/and money's green/ sugar's sweet/ and you are mean." And the chorus: "well the cows lay down when it's going to rain/ when you come around it's a hurricane /you say it's bad luck baby but I know/ that it's cocaine" Oh and then somebody starts playing that Hammond B-3. Doesn't get much better. I don't even care that maybe the cows should lie down.
6. "The Married Men" The Roches (The Roches) - I've always liked these gals quite a lot too, and their songs are reliably funny and smart. And didn't one of them also used to be married to Loudon Wainwright? I forget which one. [Susie reminds me in the comments that she had his baby but was never married to him] This is one of their older recordings, just them and three big boomy Martin dreadnought guitars. Oh and a littly bit of accordion and some kind of shaker-y thing towards the end: "...one says he'll come after me/ another one'll drop me a line / one of 'em says all my agony is in my mind/ they know what is wrong with me/ none of 'em wants my hand/ soloing in my traveling wedding band" and "I know these girls they don't like me/ but I am just like them/ picking a crazy apple off a stem/ and givin' it to the married men/ the married men/ alla that time in hell to spend/ for kissing the married men..."
7. "Pithecanthropus Erectus" Robert Quine, Greg Cohen, Art Baron, Don Alias, Michael Blair, Francis Thumm, Bill Frisell, & Hal Wilner (Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus) - No lyrics to quote on this one. Seriously cool shit though. Hal Wilner produced a couple of these high-concept compilations (there's a Kurt Weil project "Lost in the Stars" and a Disney one "Stay Awake" that I really dig). Robert Quine's guitar work on this piece is worth the price of admission. The rest of it's pretty high-quality as well.
8. "The Envoy" Warren Zevon (The Envoy) - Those of us of a certain age can recall reading the news or hearing about the President's envoy being sent all over the place. I always loved the sound of that title, Presidential Envoy, and wondered what exactly it meant: "whenever there's a crisis/ the President sends his envoy in/ guns in Damascus/ or Jerusalem..." I kind of wanted to be one when I grew up, but now I'm thinking I wouldn't like it all that much.
9. "Have a Nice Day" The Ramones (¡Adios, Amigos!) - Oh, I do love these boys. "I heard from the landlord/ when he kicked me out/ I heard it from the spirits/ as they possessed my house: have a nice day/ that's all I hear every day/ Have a nice day I don't believe a word you say."
10. "Right in Time" Lucinda Williams (Car Wheels on a Gravel Road) - Anyone who says women don't write great music just isn't paying attention. Plus I think this one's got both accordion and Hammond B-3. And what's she singing about? "I take off my watch & my earrings/ my bracelets & everything/ lie on my back and moan at the ceiling/ ohh baby/ I think about you and that long ride/ I bite my nails, I get weak inside/ reach over and turn off the light/ ohhhh baby." Oh yes.