Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 109

My Top 1000 Songs #122: Distopian Dream Girl

For a couple years in the early/mid-90s, I was living in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco (before my wife and I embarked for the suburbs and parenthood). I had a brief commute on the BART to my downtown law office. The front bay window of the drafty, ancient Victorian we were renting overlooked Dolores Street, a hilly avenue lined with palm trees. On weekends, when I wasn't working (this was in the days before telework, when weekend work still meant coming in to the office), I'd hang...

My Top 1000 Songs #121: Lazy Sunday

Here it is, Monday morning, and I suppose I should've moved this up a day so I could've posted it on a Sunday. Ah, well, spilt milk under the bridge.

I have a deep and abiding love for the Small Faces' 1968 psychedelic masterpiece Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake. And while I enjoy the trippy weirdness found within, the album is buoyed by this bit of lighthearted, joyous, piano-driven pop, the band goofing off with Cockney accents and random silliness. The real glory comes at the end, when the band's neigh...

My Top 1000 Songs #120: Let There Be Rock

I wrote previously about how hard it is to write a song about loving rock music without sounding cheesy. For every Sleater-Kinney singing about wanting to be your Joey Ramone, you're likely to find a fistful of Peter, Paul & Marys assuring us, somewhat unconvincingly, that they dig rock & roll music. But surprising no one, the Drive-By Truckers delivered one of the all-time great odes to growing up on rock music.

Patterson Hood takes a pass on the more universal approach and sticks with the perso...

My Top 1000 Songs #119: Atmosphere

If you're looking for the essential confirmation that producer Martin Hannett was essentially a fifth member of Joy Division during their brief tenure, look no further than "Atmosphere." The pulsating bass and echoing percussion, that tinkling synth that sounds like a rain of confetti; the song is as much about its, well, atmosphere, as it is the music and lyrics. It was one of the last songs they recorded before Ian Curtis' passing (released as an obscure single before later surfacing on variou...

My Top 1000 Songs #118: Getting Ready To Get Down

A highlight from singer-songrwriter Josh Ritter's 2015 album Sermon On The Rocks , this is the newest song to make the list so far (indeed, the first track to make the cut from the past 14 years). Is it really the best song of the past 14 years? Dunno, but I've probably played it more than anything else. So, yeah, there's the usual issue of an appropriate waiting period before pulling the trigger and deeming a song a timeless classic, but given how many times I've hit auto-repeat without tiring o...

My Top 1000 Songs #117: Ghosts

I tend to prefer the upbeat rockers on The Jam's mid-period LPs--that run of All Mod Cons/Setting Sons/Sound Affects is one of rock's great hat tricks, though frankly they never had a bad album--but this mid-tempo number from their final record, 1982's The Gift , is the Jam song that I've always found their most unforgettable. It's deceptively simple, a nifty stripped-down guitar lick with crisp snare & cool bass, with some nice touches--the cheerful hand-claps, the R&B horns that presaged Paul W...

My Top 1000 Songs #116: Metal Guru

Not long back, I went through a mental exercise (i.e. wasted some time writing about it here) of trying to think of the most attention-grabbing opening seconds of an album. And T.Rex's "Metal Guru" was near the top of the list. To paraphrase what I wrote there: "Aside from maybe 1971's Electric Warrior, I've always enjoyed T. Rex more as a singles act than as a purveyor of truly compelling LPs. Still, its 1972 follow-up got off to a brilliant start with the opening notes of 'Metal Guru,' in my v...

My Top 1000 Songs #115: Starry Eyes

Definitely on the short-list of absolutely perfect power pop songs. Honestly, play that chorus for someone just one time, and I guarantee they'll be able to sing it from memory for life.

Released as a single in 1978 by British new wave/power pop band The Records, it's a killer pop tune with some delicious Byrdsy jangle. It didn't get a lot of traction in the US, and I think I first heard it at some point in my mid-80s college radio days. I rediscovered it on Rhino Records' 1993 multi-CD DIY compi...

My Top 1000 Songs #114: Stuck Inside Of Mobile...

As noted previously, I'm a pretty fair-weather Dylan fan; I tend to prefer his songs filtered through, say, the jangle & harmonies of The Byrds or the gentle Americana of Emma Swift or the casual thunder of the Grateful Dead or whomever. And while I eventually opened up to him more in adulthood (or at least to his mid/late-60s and early 70s work), I had little interest in his records as a kid. Indeed, I think the only reason I finally picked up Blonde On Blonde (tied for my favorite Dylan LP alo...

2022: The Year In Review (Early Mix)

I'm emerging from Thanksgiving weekend, when all of America sits down and starts working on their annual year-in-music mixtape. (No? Just me?) Plenty of great stuff. And as has been the case frequently in recent years, women-fronted groups tend to dominate my year-end playlists. Here's an initial stab at 10... no, let's make it 11... 11 songs I really loved this year.

Guerilla Toss, "Zum Herz"

In contrast to the jangly indie pop and fizzy noise pop that's most prevalent below, Guerilla Toss lean t...