Both Hands

On this week’s episode, Jon and Megs discuss cowboy pigeons, pubes growing on your hands, freedom of Speech, and vagina candles.

This week’s featured song is “Both Hands” by Rachael Sage (by way of Ani Difranco)

Hung Like A Redhead

On this week’s episode of Secretly Timid, Otieno, Jon, Megan, and Ryan talk about Comey’s firing and Sessions return to draconian era maximum penalties for non-violent drug offenders.

This week’s featured song is “Binary” by Ani Difranco

The October Vulva

st-oct-v

We’re back! On this week’s episode, Nan, Faith, and Jon are joined by special guest (and new cast member) Otieno. Topics include: Otieno, Donald Trump, race, Afropunk, and Luke Cage.

 

Photo by Shervin Lainez

Photo by Shervin Lainez

This week’s featured song is Play God by Ani Difranco

Direct Flight to Iraq

Direct Flight to IraqJon, Nan, and Brian are joined by special guest, Ryan Obermeyer. They also answer some listener emails and Nan does some, “Nanspaining”

This week’s Hot Topics include:

AniThis week’s featured song is, “Woe be Gone” by Ani Difranco

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lly58PXYKhM&utm_source=Toolshed+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5a58c1f49c-Natalia_Zukerman_PopMatters_08-14-2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_22d1e13230-5a58c1f49c-25812781[/youtube]

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The One Thing Men Can Do That Women Can’t

the one thing

Happy New Year!!! On this week’s show we talk about selfies, Sexy Nev from Catfish, and share a recent e-mail.

This week’s hot topics include :

nightmare and the cat

This week’s featured song is “Be Your Own God” by Nightmare and the Cat

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpNjS6W-1Es[/youtube]

 

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Ani DiFranco, “¿Which Side Are You On?”


Ani DiFranco

¿Which Side Are You On?

Official Website

January 17, 2011

Righteous Babe Records

Facebook

Amazon

iTunes

 

She said it herself: “After having written hundreds of songs over decades, I think, ‘Now what? How far can I go with this? Can you sing the word ‘abortion,’ can you sing the word ‘patriarchy’ – what can you sing and get away with? I guess I’ve been pushing my own boundaries of politics and art. Seeing what people have the ears to listen to. How big is my mouth? What can I get out of it successfully?”

Photo By Patti Perret

¿Which Side Are You On? tests these boundaries, but it’s nothing that listeners aren’t willing to ride along with, aren’t willing to push and pull at just as they have for the last twenty years as the folksy fingerpicker has wrestled with the sweet synthesis of artful expression and political conviction. Coming off a three year hiatus and an influential move to New Orleans, DiFranco offers a fresh yet familiar collection featuring 11 new songs and one hot-blooded remake of Pete Seeger’s remake of Florence Reese’s protest anthem “Which Side Are You On?”

Personally, I prefer albums that will allow me to listen from beginning to end – not necessarily a concept album, but one that builds, that leads me, that carries me through a musical space and creates a new experience, maybe even with every listen. Knowing that about me, let me say: this one moves me. ¿Which Side Are You On? is consistently smooth and melodic, and the almost hypnotic rhythm of “Life Boat” and “Unworry” is only somewhat interrupted by the power of the title song before things settle back down, before the somber reflection in “Life Boat” resumes in “Albacore.” Though it’s the tattoo needle that metaphorically says I Do, this otherwise classic love song is easy to love. The lyrics are neither demanding nor profound but they are real. She’s no “blushing girl,” but then again, neither am I. We can both tap our feet just the same and feel the same comfort in knowing that “When I am next to you, I am more me.”

Photo By Shervin Lainez

“J” picks up the pace a bit and even digs a little at President Obama (“I mean dude could be FDR right now and instead he’s just shifting his weight.”) and “If yr Not” goes electric to proclaim ultimately (repeatedly) “If you’re not getting happier as you’re getting older / then you’re fucking up,” before the album slows back down with the very poignant “Hearse” and “Mariachi.” I could listen to these two songs on an endless Ani loop and never fall out of love—with anything—but maybe that’s just me. Add the vulnerable “Zoo” to the loop and bring me back to reality as the singer admits her own imperfections (“I walk past my own self-loathing like I walk past animals in the zoo /try not to really see them in prison they didn’t choose”). After a few ups and downs we are emotionally and melodically prepared for the big finish with “Promiscuity,” which gives a serious sound to a lighthearted metaphor, and “Amendment,” an impassioned rally cry for a woman’s right to choose.

As with all good albums, there’s more to ¿What Side Are You On? than politics, than emotion, than witty rhymes, than good ol’ fingerpickin’. There’s all of that and then some as New Orleans brass, the Neville Brothers, and Pete Seeger each weigh in to give the album a fullness, rounding out the authentic sound we’ve come to expect from such a raw, gritty, tell-it-like-it-is lyricist.  Neither Ani DiFranco nor ¿What Side Are You On? dares to disappoint.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/30621191″]

Episode 90 : Private Eyes

Happy Secretly Timid Tuesday! On today’s show, Jon is a racist, Diane got some “no-no” hair, Danielle wants to travel through time and PAUL PROMISED TO BAKE US A CAKE!!!! The crew rap about this dude-bro named Tebow and Jay Z and Beyonce’s offspring.

Hot Topics include : A new phone etiquette game may earn you a free lunch, a woman rubs her booty-hoe on a pricey work of art, a man uses his i-Pad to cross the border, and the White House denies the CIA teleported President Obama to Mars,

Photo By Shervin Lainez

This week’s featured song is “Which Side are you on?” By Ani DiFranco. Be sure to pick up the album, ¿Which Side Are You On?, when it drops January 17th!

Check out Ani and Melissa Ferrick performing the song for a rowdy Brooklyn audience below!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooduDkmIzjA[/youtube]

 

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