Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 107

My Top 1000 Songs #139: Happy

Not even 15% of the way in, and we're already on our 3rd track from the Stones' '72 classic Exile On Main Street . And while "Tumbling Dice" stands alone as an incredibly accomplished (lyrically & musically) monster of rock & roll myth-making, "Happy" is a more free-spirited party anthem in the vein of "Rocks Off," Keith taking the mic to serve as Yin to Jagger's Yang.

It's more about the music than the words here, that slithery guitar riff (all Keith, who quickly wrote & recorded the song without...

My Top 1000 Songs #138: I Wanna Be Sedated

By the Ramones' fourth album, 1978's Road to Ruin, they had sanded off some of their rougher edges (and in the process lost a bit of the excitement of the first few albums). Still, "I Wanna Be Sedated" is arguably the perfect blueprint for pop-punk (ok, setting aside what the Buzzcocks & Undertones were doing on the other side of the Atlantic). 

Sure, it's pretty much the same rapid-fire three-chord blast of bratty silliness they'd been working since "Blitzkrieg Bop," but with a coating of shella...

My Top 1000 Songs #137: The Killing Moon

It's not easy to make a song that's genuinely spooky and kinda creepy, yet still melodic and infectious. But this Echo & The Bunnymen single from 1984 pulls it off. There's that dark vibe, comparable to what you might've heard a few years earlier from Joy Division or The Cure; a bit of the ol' goth, with the minor-key guitar jangle and horror movie piano, and of course those dark stranger lyrics. But it's also a huge-sounding epic, cutting loose into a beautiful hum-along chorus that makes for a...

My Top 1000 Songs #136: Academy Fight Song

One of a handful of songs I came to appreciate after hearing a bang-up R.E.M. cover. Boston's Mission of Burma were one of those bands everyone at the college radio station seemed to revere, a post-punk band whose boisterous, challenging music could be seen as an influence on many of the mid-80s college radio mainstays. But I generally found them more interesting in concept than enjoyable to listen to, filing them alongside other cool & influential yet a little outside my comfort zone acts (Pere...

My Top 1000 Songs #135: There She Goes

There is absolutely no rational reason I should still love this song as much as I do. Consider:

Basic 3-chord pop song. Yeah, some nice chiming finger-picked guitars, but still, just a prettied up mid-60s Kinks song structurally.Lyrics: Not much there, is there?Oversaturation: Is it just me, or does it seem that this song has somehow ended up on nearly every soundtrack album ever?The band: Basically a one-hit wonder from a band that managed a single LP (albeit a damn fine one, some late 80s Britp...

My Top 1000 Songs #134: New Madrid

As much as I enjoy a lot of Son Volt's music, I'm definitely a Team Wilco kinda guy; so, naturally, while I think the Jay Farrar tunes which dominated Uncle Tupelo are often ridiculously great, I always had a soft spot for Jay Tweedy's contributions. And while Tweedy was a less developed songwriter when the band started out, by the time of 1993's Anodyne, their final album (setting aside my own imaginary follow-up), he'd really come into his own. 

That album's "New Madrid" makes it pretty evident...

My Top 1000 Songs #133: She Said She Said

Ah, yes, our brief Beatles break comes to an end with the second contribution from Revolver (third if you count "Rain") (which I do, because adding the "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" single would've made the album absolutely perfect). "She Said She Said" is part of that batch of buzzy Lennon-helmed psychedelia from '66 ("Rain," "Tomorrow Never Knows," "And Your Bird Can Sing") which form a neat bridge between the more traditional guitar-driven rock of the band's early years and the artistically ambit...

Season's Greetings 2022: A Mix For You

Back in my law firm days, when we reached the holiday season, most partners would send a bottle of wine or gift basket to clients. But that seemed too clichéd. Me? I'd send them mix CDs. (Yeah, I'd rather get a bottle of wine, too; but it seemed a little more interesting at the time.) 

The challenge, of course, was coming up with a blend of songs that would be acceptable to a usually older, more staid crowd than would generally appreciate my personal taste, but without falling back on too many du...

My Top 1000 Songs #132: Don't Ever Change

After a couple days of really big songs, it's time for something much more intimate. I love so much of the music of singer-songwriter Amy Rigby--I recently wrote an Amy Rigby Top 10 over at Toppermost--but the song that affects me most is "Don't Ever Change," off 2003's Til The Wheels Fall Off .

It's a stripped-down, folky acoustic tune, shades of Daniel Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycle" (the Yo La Tengo or Mary Lou Lord version) and Big Star's "Thirteen." Rigby picks a few subjects for her affecti...

The Dying Bird

Looks like we're close to the end for the hellscape that was Twitter. 

I largely ignored it for the first decade of its existence. But I became an active user in 2019, after retiring from my law practice. For all its uglier aspects, it was a fun place to connect with fellow music nerds, to hear about new records and maybe discover some old ones, and, yeah, to try to talk up the book I was writing. I still enjoy writing this little blog thing to scratch my musical evangelism itch, and Twitter is t...