Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 116

My Top 1000 Songs #59: You Can't Always Get What You Want

I realize some Stones fans blanch at the song's excesses, but for me, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" was the band's first true epic, the song that confirmed that, like the Beatles, they could operate in a sphere far beyond mere mortals.

Yes, by the time of 1969's Let It Bleed--the first of their incomparable Mick Taylor era--the Stones already had an astounding run of perfect singles. And the (underrated) psychedelic lark Satanic Majesties Request showed the band pushing at the boundaries o...

My Top 1000 Songs #58: This Must Be The Place

While I adored the Talking Heads' first four albums, 1983's Speaking In Tongues didn't quite click for me when it came out. Maybe it was the more dance-centric sound, which lost some of the artier, post-punk (and Eno-abetted) novelty of the earlier work. Or maybe it was just that it was kinda overplayed at the time, showing up at pretty much every high school and college party (especially when the Stop Making Sense movie and soundtrack made the band all the more omnipresent).

But the album did ha...

My Top 1000 Songs #57: I Can See For Miles

1967's brilliant The Who Sell Out is both a joyous celebration of lightweight pop music and a cheeky send-up of pop radio. Yet much like "Good Vibrations" on the Beach Boys' otherwise wigged-out (and foolishly aborted) Smile , Townshend serves up the perfect pop single in the midst of the madness. "I Can See For Miles" is really the pinnacle of Townshend's short-form popcraft before moving on to the expansion of the form on Tommy and ultimately sliding from pop to rock on Who's Next .

It's a master...

Momma: Household Name (2022)

As the owner of more music than I know what to do with, and someone who tries to keep relatively abreast of new music, there are few things more exciting than coming across a fantastic record I somehow missed--and even better, one from a band I wasn't familiar with that already has a few great records under their belt.

Momma is actually the second great, female-fronted band I've belatedly come across in the past couple weeks. And, indeed, it was while watching some recent concert clips from that ...

My Top 1000 Songs #56: Safe European Home

As noted previously, the Clash's 1978 LP Give 'Em Enough Rope had a mixed rep back in the day; sandwiched between the punk glory of the debut and the rock & roll perfection of London Calling , it was held out as a sort of hard-rock misfire. And while I think it's pretty great--c'mon, it the Clash!--it's not without flaws, particularly some of the heavier production.

But what an album opener! That single, resounding beat on the drum breaking into a basic yet riveting three-chord riff, as Joe Strumm...

My Top 1000 Songs #55: From A Motel 6

One of my favorite bands finally makes its first appearance on the Top 1000 (with only the fourth post-80s song so far, as 60s & 70s classic rock essentials continue to clutter the highest ranks).

Yo La Tengo's albums grew steadily more ambitious and accomplished after their initial mid-80s college radio days. 1992's May I Sing With Me was already pretty great. But it was their three-album run beginning with 1993's Painful that established them as indie rock legends. And that album's "From A Mote...

My Top 1000 Songs #54: Village Green Preservation Society

The title track from the Kinks' 1968 masterpiece sets the tone for what has long been, by far, my favorite Kinks album. Musically, it's stripped down and clean, a far cry from the damaged-amp distortion of early hits like "You've Really Got Me"; and as peer acts like the Beatles and the Who grew increasingly more complex, Ray Davies opted for simplicity, little more than a lo-fi unplugged guitar riff. Lyrically, it's the boldest statement yet of Davies embrace of traditionalism, a loving look-ba...

The Best Of 2022 (So Far): The Running List, Cont.

Fall has arrived, and we're about 3/4 through the year... time to update my playlist of some of the new music I've been listening to in 2022. As previously noted, some of my recent faves include albums from Guerilla Toss, The Beths, The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness, Dentist, The Paranoid Style, Dream Syndicate, Wilco, the Drive-By Truckers, and Spiritualized. 

For the Spotify-enabled, here's the current state of my running list:

 

My Top 1000 Songs #53: Love Will Tear Us Apart

Showing up here just a couple days after New Order's "Temptation," the two songs give an indication of where Joy Division might have gone had singer Ian Curtis survived.

This 1980 single is probably the easiest entry point for the not-exactly-user-friendly Joy Division, a synth-driven pop single that's as lyrically dark as most of their work yet softened by the hum-along hook and the uncharacteristically gentle guitar strums and Curtis' adoption of a slightly more Sinatra-esque croon to take the ...

Talk Talk: Laughing In Eden (A Re-Imagined Album)

I've written previously about my fascination with Talk Talk's supremely weird 1988 album Spirit of Eden . After a few years of relatively straightforward (if unusually sophisticated) synth-based new wave pop, bandleader Mark Hollis switched gears on their fourth record, a haunting, experimental song cycle that's relatively quiet and hook-free, with intermittent bursts of abrasive energy--a blend of the band's Euro-synth roots with free jazz, early 70s King Crimson-like prog, and the mid-period wo...