Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 103

My Top 1000 Songs #177: Taste Of Cindy

As noted previously, the Jesus and Mary Chain's 1985 debut Psychocandy was sheer revelation: Why isn't everyone taking infectious Beach Boys-styled pop songs and running them through the blender, buried amidst walls of gauzy reverb & distortion? (And soon enough, everyone would be.) And if album opener "Just Like Honey" announced the band's blueprint with a moody "In My Room"-type ballad, then "Taste of Cindy" was the counterpart, an upbeat "Little Honda" or "Catch a Wave" given the same treatme...

My Top 1000 Songs #176: All The Way From Memphis

A second appearance by Mott the Hoople on the list, and proof positive that they didn't need to rely on Bowie to write a perfect radio-friendly single. From the barrelhouse piano opening the track to the honking sax solo at the end (courtesy of Roxy Music's Andy Mackay), this one checks a lot of the boxes for a 70s classic rock staple: a rock star road song tragedy (he lost his guitar in transit! it got smashed up!); and a booming anthemic chorus with the timeless bit of cathartic nonsense--It's...

My Top 1000 Songs #175: Beatle Boots

Love Tractor were among the Southern guitar bands that dominated my college radio DJ days, my obsession with R.E.M. sprouting to include acts like the Connells and Guadalcanal Diary. Love Tractor didn't get the same attention on my show, as their early recordings were predominantly instrumentals. But this vocal track from 1987's This Ain't No Outerspace Ship was an instant favorite, a mainstay of my show for weeks. It's the sort of song that, on a strictly objective level, shouldn't be this high...

My Top 1000 Songs #174: When The Levee Breaks

Led Zeppelin are another band I feel almost obligated to include somewhere on the list, because, c'mon, it's Led Zeppelin. But I can't say there's a lot of passion behind it.

My Zep agnosticism is undoubtedly based largely on radio overplay in my youth; even if, like any other white blooded male in the 70s, I had great love for 1971's LZ IV (and Houses of the Holy, and other works scattered across their catalog), it was always hard to motivate myself to pull out those records very often when I kn...

Seth Swirsky: Songs From The Green Couch (2022)

Here's another fantastic 2022 release that quietly slipped out, but I came across on a recent trowl through Bandcamp.

I originally discovered L.A. musician Seth Swirsky as one half of retro-power-pop act The Red Button (who I'd been turned on to because his partner in that act happened to have gone to my high school). Songs From The Green Couch is his fourth solo LP, and his solo work continues to place him among fine acts like Wondermints and Linus of Hollywood, bands who mine the strain of 60s ...

My Top 1000 Songs #173: Good Morning Britain

I've never been much of a singles guy. Indeed, the only 7" vinyl single I remember buying was "Bohemian Rhapsody," back in 1976 when I was 10 (and that's because I was a 10-year-old and it was "Bohemian Rhapsody," so of course).

But when I heard Aztec Camera's "Good Morning Britain" on the radio, around the summer of '90--the summer after my first year of law school, which felt like kind of a sparse time for good new releases--I immediately wanted to hear it again. Like, that second. 

I wasn't a h...

My Top 1000 Songs #172: Ballad Of Big Nothing

If you rank songs simply by how frequently you throw it onto the mixes you play when you've got people over at your place, this one ends up pretty high on the list. Musically and aesthetically, it's a beautiful track, from the crystalline sheen of the acoustic guitars to Elliott Smith's entrancing vocals.

Of course, you're also hoping nobody focuses in too closely on the lyrics, as the beauty of the music is matched only by the ugliness of the lyrics. It may be the perfect example of Smith's dual...

My Top 1000 Songs #171: A Plan, Revised

During the long wait between The Feelies' spectacular 1980 debut LP and their dramatically different yet at least as spectacular 1986 follow-up, the band members performed in various other iterations, joined by other musicians from the local New Jersey scene. One of these, the Trypes, released a 4-song EP in 1984, The Explorers Hold; the EP previewed the more jangly, folk-oriented sound that would appear on the Feelies' Good Earth album (one of the EP's tracks, "The Undertow," was later reworked...

My Top 1000 Songs #170: Future Me Hates Me

Back-to-back New Zealand bands! Karma!

And, yeah, I'm torn on this one. It's the first song to make the list from the past five years (off the band's impressive 2018 debut of the same name), again raising the question of how long one needs to wait before concluding a song has the staying power to be considered an all-time-great. (Up til this point, the most recent song has been Josh Ritter's "Getting Ready To Get Down," from 2015.)

But at this point The Beths have released 3 LPs, all fine work, co...

My Top 1000 Songs #169: Rolling Moon

I'm frankly surprised I've gotten this far down the list without hitting any Flying Nun acts. The various New Zealand indie bands who started making fantastic music in the 80s--the Clean, the Bats, the Chills, the Verlaines, Look Blue Go Purple, etc.--have been a big part of my life for decades. Ah, well, they'll be finding their way into the mix soon enough.

And this one seems like an ideal starting point, as the Chills' 1986 compilation of early singles, Kaleidoscope World, was my introduction ...