Volume 10 – October 10, 2004

Army of Me – Björk [3:55]
Where Is the Line – Björk [4:41]
Hidden Place – Björk [5:29]
Pagan Poetry – Björk [5:15]
The Modern Things – Björk [4:10]
It’s Oh So Quiet – Björk [3:39]
Jóga – Björk [5:06]
Isobel – Björk [5:47]
Desired Constellation – Björk [4:56]
Oceania – Björk [3:25]

Liner Notes:

Okay, so this is very obviously an all-Björk set list, and the reason for that is that Medúlla had only been out for a little while and my circle of friends in Sudbury was absolutely obsessed with Björk. Any new album of hers was an absolute event, and there are quite a few tracks from that album here. It also happens that, being Icelandic, she was a perfect candidate for the show. This particular set list is either a special treat or an absolute nightmare, depending on how you feel about Her Royal Weirdness, but I thought it was fun and interesting to see the range of her work. If I’d known that she was on Tricky’s Nearly God album I would have played something from that as well, but I didn’t become a big Tricky fan until much later. It was also some time before I was able to track down some her Sugarcubes work (their bass player, Bragi Ólafsson, is also an extremely accomplished writer, and you should check out his work). Unrelated to this set list, my friend Corine took me out to some karaoke bar one night when I was living in Sudbury (true story, I hate karaoke). It was a bit of a dive, and absolutely full of lifers—making it my kind of place, aside from the singing—and belted out an absolutely note-perfect rendition of “It’s Oh So Quiet.” Shocked the hell out of me. A few years later she’d take me to a music festival in Barrie headlined by Björk. It was a truly excellent show (she’s a lot heavier live than you’d expect.)

The photo on the cover of this volume is a row of lockers in the tech wing of my high school in Dryden, taken at some point in the late ’90s.