Clean Up Clean Up, Everybody Do Their Share, Pt. 4

This is the last installment of the fall cleaning of my music collection.

Part 1 (A-F)
Part 2 (G-L)
Part 3 (M-S)

This time, we're going from T to Z, although there was actually nothing in the T-Z section worth ditching. Let's take a spin through the Various Artists section:

2006 & 2007 Pitchfork Music Samplers -- These two discs gave me a grand total of one great song I hadn't heard before: Devendra Banhart, "Long Haired Child." Other than that the only thing I remember about them is that the Futureheads' "Skip to the End" comes up on Audioscrobbler more than any other song in my library, and that I really don't like Voxtrot, Destroyer, or Deerhunter.

Andrew Denton's Musical Challenge #2 -- From Australian TV comes Denton, who challenges his musical guest to come up with surprising covers. A few work, like Paul Kelly (who I love) doing "Little Red Corvette," Neil Finn doing "Sexual Healing," or a surprisingly straightforward version of "When Doves Cry" by Barenaked Ladies. Mostly, though, this is Australian artists I've never heard of -- Spiderbait, Lash, Bodyjar, John Joplin -- doing faux-ironic crappy takes on songs like "Eye of the Tiger" and "Sometimes When We Touch."

It's almost worth keeping this around to hear The Wiggles sing "Walk on the Wild Side." You heard me:

Dorothy came from Miami F-L-A
She did the romp-bomp-a-jomp across the USA
Plucked some roses on the way
Started to dance and we heard her say
"Hey Wags! Take a walk on the windy side!"

Future Soundtrack For America -- This Moveon.org-sponsored collection of radio-friendly alternarock for change lost some of its luster for me after the '04 election. I really didn't want to be reminded any more by OK Go that "this will be our year." Because, you know, it wasn't. Other than the killer cover of "Game of Pricks" by Jimmy Eat World, this was a pretty empty collection.

Golden Apples of the Sun -- Devendra Banhart's "Long Haired Child" (on one of the Pitchfork samplers) put me into a short-lived freak folk binge. Time to put an end to that.

Grease Soundtrack -- The Lovely Wife needs to start downloading her own music.

Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur -- Ooh, man, was this a stinker. On its face, it looked like a can't-lose proposition: some of the biggest names from all strains of mainstream music (Lenny Kravitz, Black Eyed Peas, Aerosmith, Avril Lavigne, Green Day) getting together to cover the songs of one of rock's greatest lyricists, with all proceeds going to Amnesty International.

Why, then, is it so bloodless, so emotionless? Maybe it's because of the bizarre singer/song pairings. Christina Aguilera singing Lennon's primal scream-inspired paean to his lost parents, "Mother"? Lenny Kravitz applying his pastiche-soul to "Cold Turkey"? Matisyahu replacing the melancholy of "Watching the Wheels" with his brand of reggaeized up-with-peopleness? Feh, feh, feh.

To my ears, there is one bright spot -- Ben Harper's tender take on "Beautiful Boy." Beyond that, the only thing I have positive to say about this album is that is got me to donate money to Amnesty International so I wouldn't go to hell for DLing this for free.

Oh, one last thing -- should we discuss the sad irony of naming the album 'Instant Karma,' seeing as it was released four years after the conflict in Darfur began?

Rough Trade Shops: Best of 2003 -- Not even sure I got through this one once. Hey, look, there's Devendra Banhart again!