Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 115

Spiral Stairs: Medley Attack (2022)

Another fine 2022 new release, this one slipped out a little under the radar earlier this summer.

And you've gotta admit, the timing wasn't ideal. Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg dropped his latest record (his 4th under the Spiral Stairs pseudonym) just as Pavement embarked on a massive reunion tour, its first since their last reunion tour in 2011. So you can excuse the 90s indie rock fanboys for being a little too busy losing their shit over the amazing Pavement gigs to pay too much attention ...

My Top 1000 Songs #67: The Wheel

Like the previously-discussed "Ripple," "The Wheel"--first appearing on Jerry Garcia's first solo LP, 1972's Garcia --is something of an outlier in the Dead catalog. While appearing frequently in the Dead's live set over the years, it works best in its original studio incarnation. The Garcia album (which featured Jerry playing all the instruments, joined by Dead drummer Bill Kreutzman) introduced a half-dozen great songs which became Dead mainstays, and while they all sound perfectly fine on reco...

My Top 1000 Songs #66: September Gurls

Nothing deep and consequential. Just pretty much the defining moment of the power pop genre. For those about to crank up the treble dial... I salute you.Live in '93:All Bangled up!

My Top 1000 Songs #65: Just Like Honey

On paper, there's nothing terribly groundbreaking about the Jesus And Mary Chain's "Just Like Honey." It's deliberately retro, joining Brian Wilson by copping the drum intro from the Ronettes' "Be My Baby"; followed by a simple 3-chord pop tune, a post-punk updating of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound and the Beach Boys' early pop--much like the Ramones had done a decade earlier, but stripped of the punk fury and ratcheted down to half-speed.

But the sonics of the song really felt like a revolution. ...

My Top 1000 Songs #64: All The Young Dudes

Our second cover song in just a few days! 

It's hard to imagine a better testament to David Bowie's sheer genius in the 70s (I think we've already had 3 Bowie tracks on the list) then the fact that he wrote one of the most amazing songs of the decade--and then just casually gave it away to another band. Who does that?

Still, it was quite the good deed. Despite recording some fine music--I love their more folk-oriented debut, and the hard-rocking Brain Capers from 1971 was pretty solid--Mott the Ho...

My Top 1000 Songs #63: Fuck And Run

I'm a little horrified to admit that, at #63 (yeah, ok, maybe it should be #69...), this is the first contribution from a woman artist to make the list. That ratio will change as more music from the last 30 years begins to populate my Top 1000; sadly, the 60s & 70s classic rock that dominates the top slots was a lot more dude-centric. And while there are a lot of women artists and women-fronted bands I love from prior to the 1990s (whether bands like the Go-Go's, Bangles, Primitives, Cocteau Twi...

My Top 1000 Songs #62: Peace, Love & Understanding

The first cover song to hit my Top 1000, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" is the rare instance where a cover surpasses the original. Which is no slight to Nick Lowe, who wrote and performed the song with his original band Brinsley Schwarz. The Brinsleys' version is already great, a rare slab of shimmering power pop amongst the band's more traditional R&B-tinged pub rock; the jangly three-chord pop tune stood as an introduction to the wickedly tuneful indie-pop that would f...

2nd Grade: Easy Listening (2022)

Damn, the late summer/early fall season is turning into a feast of excellent new releases. Add the new one from Philadelphia indie pop act 2nd Grade to the pile!

Their 2020 debut long-player, Hit To Hit, was a throwback to classic Guided By Voices, but with a much greater debt to power pop (and even bubblegum)--24 rapid-fire, lo-fi-ish nuggets, often taking a minute or less to lay down a clever lyric and killer hook and move on to the next one. It was a mix of easy smiles and castaways, with a fe...

My Top 1000 Songs #61: More Than This

Roxy Music's final LP, 1982's Avalon , is a far cry from their earlier, more critically-revered work. And while I like the old stuff, especially the first couple records with my hero Eno, Avalon made more of an impression on me at the time. It came out right in the middle of high school, and struck me as a more "adult" sounding record than much of what I was listening to, something I could see breaking out later in life to impress people with my exquisite sophistication. And no song made more of ...

My Top 1000 Songs #60: Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey

I think it goes without saying that "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," a fairly lightweight and silly entry in the McCartney oeuvre, fits squarely in the song-I-love-for-purely-personal-reasons bucket rather than the undeniably-timeless-critically-revered-classic bucket.

Prior visitors to this site and readers of my book (Thanks! Christmas is coming! Buy a copy for a friend!) know of the importance Paul & Linda McCartney's 1971 minor pop nugget Ram has played in my life. It was the lone rock album (w...