Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 113

My Top 1000 Songs #85: Let's Go

Is it too much to have not one but two Feelies songs from the same album, 1986's The Good Earth , before we've even reached #100? Dunno. But I've probably played that album more than almost anything else in my collection, so it feels (Feelies?) just fine.

Not the most substantial of songs--three chords, a couple lines of lyrics; post-Velvets indie folk-rock at its most basic. But the tone of that dual-guitar jangle is what the guitar on every song oughta sound like. I mean, the sound on this ditty...

My Top 1000 Songs #84: New Slang

Yeah, feels a little high on the list. But if inclusion on mixtapes is a factor in evaluating a song, then "New Slang," which found its way onto pretty much every mix I made since its release in 2001--right around the time I bought my first CDR burner--up 'til the eventual end of the hard-copy mix era, deserves due credit.

It's an odd little song, with lyrics that are alternatingly indecipherable and impenetrable, much like early R.E.M. (and where, as with early R.E.M., I'd sing along with my own...

My Top 1000 Songs #83: Where Is My Mind

During my time at the college radio station in the mid-80s, there were a few new arrivals that led the station to a collective "holy shit!" Something new and unexpected that everyone immediately noticed as both significant and endlessly re-playable, the sort of song or album every DJ felt obligated to spin on every show for the next three months.

The Jesus and Mary Chain's "Just Like Honey" (along with the rest of 1985's Psychocandy) was one of those moments. And Pixies' "Where Is My Mind" was an...

My Top 1000 Songs #82: Surrender

I'd like to think a lot of my favorites dominating the upper reaches of this list are deeply meaningful--lyrically moving, musically innovative, personally significant.

But sometimes they're just silly pop songs with perfect shout-along choruses that made me absolutely giddy as a 12-year-old (with no understanding of the absurdist lyrics), and still make me absolutely giddy well into middle age.

Mommy's alright, daddy's alright. They just seem a little weird. Indeed.

My Top 1000 Songs #81: Dark Star

I'm not sure if this actually qualifies as a "song" in the traditional sense (or the sense I'm using it throughout  this Top 1000), but it's nonetheless the song to which I've likely devoted the most hours of my life--though not really a fair comparison, since I have countless versions scattered across my live Grateful Dead recordings, most of which run 15-30 minutes in length.

I'm guessing this is the only song on the list where I'm not talking about a studio recording released as a single or al...

My Top 1000 Songs #80: Eight Miles High

Another one that feels kinda obligatory, like you HAVE to have "Eight Miles High" somewhere near the top of your list. And frankly, I tend to listen to later Byrds more often than the earlier stuff, particularly Notorious Byrd Brothers and Untitled . But there's no denying it's a monster of a song, and one that really hooked me on the band as a kid. I'd probably heard "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" on the radio at some point, and a cassette copy of The Byrds' Greatest Hits was one o...

My Top 1000 Songs #79: Ceremony

New Order's first single is the perfect bridge between Joy Division and the band that arose in the wake of Ian Curtis' suicide. Joy Division composed the song shortly before Curtis' passing--a messy live version can be heard on JD's posthumous Still collection (drawn from their final performance); and a particularly unpolished demo later surfaced on a box set. The surviving members cleaned it up for their first release (apparently they had to approximate Curtis' lyrics, which he hadn't written d...

My Top 1000 Songs #78: I Will Dare

As written in these parts ad nauseum, when I arrived at college in fall '84, discovering R.E.M. was a life-changing event. My love for them, and the other jangly guitar bands that dominated college radio, was pretty instantaneous.

My passion for the Replacements took a few extra minutes to fully develop. Their earlier work, falling somewhere between the Stones and punk, was fine, but didn't move me emotionally the same way R.E.M. did. But "I Will Dare," from 1984's fantastic Let It Be, finally he...

Wire: 21st Century Wire (A Mix)

Few bands manage to pull off a respectable second act... yet first-wave punk pioneers Wire have unexpectedly managed a third act full of terrific (or at least surprisingly solid) music.

Obviously, that original 3-LP run from 1977-1979 (4 if you count Colin Newman's 1980 solo debut, which sounded like a logical follow-up) is pretty unrivaled. From Pink Flag's innovative art-punk snippets to 154's post-punk, pop-tinged semi-industrial weirdness--and middle album Chairs Missing's midway point betwe...

My Top 1000 Songs #77: Hello Goodbye

As promised, we managed to go more than a month without any Beatles crowding the list... and after this there are just a few more randomly scattered throughout the Top 1000 (yeah, there should rightfully be dozens, but how boring would that be?).

Incomprehensibly to me, "Hello Goodbye" (much like "Hey Jude") seems to draw the ire of a lot of  Beatles fans. And, ok, it's not exactly one of Paul's deeper lyrics; or, for that matter, a very groundbreaking piece of music (certainly in the shadow of S...