Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 112

My Top 1000 Songs #95: In Quintessence

Another one that ends up high on the list as much for its deeply personal emotional associations as for its musical quality. Ok, probably more so--there are Squeeze songs I like more; hell, on this album alone (1981's East Side Story ), I'd probably rank "Tempted" and "Piccadilly" higher, and maybe "Mumbo Jumbo" and "Is That Love?" as well. But "In Quintessence" opens the album, and is intractably wound up in one of the biggest revelatory moments in my musical life.

I talked about it in my book--w...

My Top 1000 Songs #94: I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

If you're here, you presumably share my unflagging conviction in the power of rock & roll to save your soul. Which makes us particularly susceptible to songs that share and promote this conviction. But it's a fine line: Sometimes a song adequately nails the transformative power of rock music (see, e.g., the Velvet Underground's "Rock & Roll"); but sometimes it comes across as cloying and shooting for the obvious (see, e.g., Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll"). Most are somewhere in between--i.e....

My Top 1000 Songs #93: Sound And Vision

I first got into Bowie when I bought the ChangesOneBowie compilation cassette as a kid. As noted previously, it totally captivated me; so many fantastic songs, in so many different styles. But in those pre-internet days, I didn't know much about him, and figured that was the capstone of his musical career. So it was pretty crazy when I went to the library and discovered he was still making great music, and that some songs were even better than the ones on that tape.

"Heroes," of course, got my at...

My Top 1000 Songs #92: See No Evil

Damn, look at that line-up on side one of Television's Marquee Moon ! If only they'd segued them together; then I could consider this a medley a la the Beatles and chalk up the whole thing as one fantastic song.

As it is, let's just go with the amazing album opener. That blazing dual-guitar sound that set the bar for so much indie rock that followed. Makes me just wanna stand midway between the speakers, crank 'em up, and let 'er loose. Richard Verlaine's not-exactly-radio-friendly vocals, and the...

My Top 1000 Songs #91: I Am A Scientist

Guided by Voices were right up there with bands like Pavement and Yo La Tengo in setting the tone for my 90s listening habits (and on into the present day). And while frontman Robert Pollard currently has some 2500 songs to his name (whether with GbV or as a solo artist or with countless side projects), at least according to his registry in the , "Scientist" was my entry-point into what's become an overwhelming (and expensive) bit of fandom.

As a brief snippet of lo-f...

My Top 1000 Songs #90: Thunder Road

As I mentioned recently in sharing my reconfigured River album, my relationship with Bruce Springsteen's music has run hot and cold. I had great love for the Born to Run and Darkness albums when I discovered them as a kid, but 1984's culturally oversaturated Born In The USA kinda turned me off, and I pretty much ignored everything he released after that. But over the past decade, I've circled back and found much to love in his overstuffed post-70s catalog; and his opening of the concert vaults h...

My Top 1000 Songs #89: Trigger Cut

This one flows fairly logically from yesterday's "Catapult" post; if R.E.M. were the band that most impacted my musical life in the 80s, Pavement likewise carried me through the 90s. And their full-length debut, 1992's Slanted & Enchanted , remains one of my all-time faves. 

The previously-referenced "Summer Babe" kicked off the album with a barrage of fuzz and excitement that merged melodic pop with the post-punk thunder of Sonic Youth and The Fall. But the second track completes the one-two punc...

My Top 1000 Songs #88: Catapult

As I've blathered on endlessly about in this space (and in my book), R.E.M.'s 1983 debut was a true life-changing experience from me. And while I remain captivated by every note, from the opening rallying cry of "Radio Free Europe" to the closing anthem "West of the Fields," when the dust settled, I think it was side-two opener "Catapult" that struck me most on an emotional level.

Lyrically it's a little slight; and like much of their earlier work, the words are often indecipherable (and those th...

My Top 1000 Songs #87: Echoes

An entire LP side of headphone-friendly pyschedelic bliss, Pink Floyd's "Echoes," off 1971's Meddle , was the culmination of the band's lengthy space-rock explorations, an impressive peak that closed off an era as they pivoted into the following decade's more narrative concept albums initiated by 1973's Dark Side of the Moon (setting aside the brief detour into 1972's Obscured By Clouds soundtrack).

Unlike some of their earlier-jam based tracks, live staples like "Set The Controls For The Heart Of...

My Top 1000 Songs #86: Train In Vain

In 1979, I was in the eighth grade. I'd begun the transition from the Top 40 AM radio stations that had first roped me into music to the classic rock stations on the FM dial, digging deep into rock's past. I tried to stay current as well, but in the pre-MTV, pre-internet era, I was pretty much limited to whatever penetrated the bubble of Chicago's rather pedestrian radio stations. You'd hear murmurs about "punk" and the then-emerging new wave bands... maybe some Elvis Costello or Joe Jackson or ...