so, i have this new kinda blog crush on Slouching Mom, whose site i finally made it to after seeing her comments on other sites for…well…about as long as i’ve been skanking around on other sites, basically. make that, like, a month. i’m a slow adopter when it comes to using new technologies to their fullest.

in fact, i’m a slow adopter – and adapter – across the board. particularly in my musical tastes. i have a deep affinity for music from the decade of my birth that is rarely matched even by people who were making music then. i’m pretty fond of the decade previous, too, and can tread water into the decade following. but once you get into anything released post-1984, when i hit eighth grade, i’m sunk. i’m hopeless. i’m a relic, replete with an ostrich head stuck in a sand dune, shouting “i can’t hear you!” and “turn that new-fangled crap down, will ya?!?”

this unburdening of my musical fogey-tude is relevant, i swear.

it’s relevant because when i finally got over to Slouching Mom’s site, i discovered that she does not, in fact, have or advocate bad posture…at least so far as i can tell, though i’m quite into bad posture myself…but rather has cleverly titled her blog “Slouching Towards 40.” this is, i think, a wicked, charming, funny allusion to the bleakly beautiful Yeats poem “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, and it makes me like her very much.

now, Slouching Mom tagged me for the music meme where i’m supposed to tell you all about the seven top songs on my ipod, if i had an ipod. which she doesn’t either, which is reassuring…but her songs nonetheless include artists like Jack Johnson and Fiona Apple. and i think of these as uber-hip choices, very current. they’re from a point in time after which i grew breasts. i’m feeling a bit outed here, folks.

when it comes to music, i live in a bucket. which is like under a rock, except more confined.

a few years ago, when Dave & i co-managed a fledgling English expat website in a small-ish city in Korea, i started a music column called “Bon’s bucket.” in my bucket, i had great intentions of going backwards through the alphabet, waxing euphoric about bygone musicians whose tunes made me weak at the knees. i started with Warren Zevon and Neil Young, tagged Johnny Cash as X since he happened – god rest his crooked little heart – to die the week i got to that otherwise awkward letter, continued through W which had to be shared between Tom Waits and Lucinda Williams, crowned the Velvet Underground – of course – with V, and fizzled out around T since i couldn’t for the life of me decide between Traffic and Talking Heads.

so this should probably give you a sense of where the following list of tunes is going to take you. yep, straight back to about 1975. though i shall try to get as…erm…funky as i can without hurting myself.

thus (insert drum roll) the top seven playlist on my record player computer:

1. Tangled Up in Blue – Bob Dylan (though i quite like the Indigo Girls version too…it’s from the ’90′s! practically new!)

2. Case of You – Joni Mitchell

3. Just a Memory – Elvis Costello

4. Lakes of Pontchartrain – The Be Good Tanyas (it’s from this decade! of course, the song is traditional and could have been written in 1875 for all i know…but the actual recording is 21st century. i’m sooo cool.)

5. A New England – Billy Bragg (or the Kirsty McColl version, both rock…)

6. Life on Mars – David Bowie

7. Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen (and no,while Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, and kd lang all have fabulous versions of this…i’m a purist here. only Leonard makes me hear the broken part of the Hallelujah, babee).

oh, and then there’s The Mountain Bed, which was recorded by Billy Bragg & Wilco to lyrics written by Woody Guthrie back in the day…yep, that’s gotta squeeze in there too. maybe one of the other songs can squeeze a cheek over and share its chair?

i know there’s other great stuff out there. i really got into Iron & Wine a few years ago, thanks to dear friends of ours who were saddened to see my taste atrophy on the vine, so to speak, and i know the words to a couple of Flaming Lips songs. i have listened to the Arcade Fire and liked them. i do realize it ain’t 1979, or whatever.

i’m just not convinced that that’s an entirely good thing. this is a very cozy bucket i’m in. great atmosphere, nice shag rug…why would a girl move on? :)

maybe the rest of you know why. this meme’s been going for awhile, but i don’t think Daffado, WhyMommy at Toddler Planet, Mayberry Mom, S at Bull in a China Shop, Cyn, Lady M, or Her Bad Mother have chimed in. the invite’s open. i figure my taste makes anybody else look downright hip.