Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 13

My Top 1000 Songs #1002: Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life

Back in the mid-80s, I was making regular trips into Evanston, IL, not far from the Northwestern University campus (and about 20 minutes from my childhood home), where there were a half-dozen used record stores in a two-block stretch. Ah, the golden days of vinyl shopping! I went through a brief period of buying bootleg records--a real crapshoot, often terrible, but with a few gems. I remember buying this one Beatles bootleg full of random rarities (eventually rendered obsolete by the official A...

New Releases: Subsonic Eye

Another contender for one of my early favorites of 2025--or at least for album seemingly constructed to fit right in my sweet spot. On Singapore Dreaming, Singapore indie band Subsonic Eye mine the deep vein of women-fronted 90s indie rock, merging jangly pop with fizzy shoegaze buzz, all wondrously catchy but slathered in enough shimmery gauze to convey moods as much as hooks. (They're cut from a similar cloth as South Korean band Say Sue Me, confirming that the kids in Asia are doing a great j...

My Top 1000 Songs #1001: Allison

So, after a week-long vacation, I'm thinking I'll just keep going with this Top 1000 thing a little longer. Still need a little something to wake my semi-retired-brain each morning, and this works as well as anything else.

I suppose it's no longer a Top 1000 now that I'm at #1001. Maybe it's now a Top 2000? But I haven't sketched out the next 1000 songs (just a few hundred), and that may be too ambitious. Top 1000(+) it stays for now.

As for "Allison"--no, not the Elvis Costello song (with a singl...

New Releases: The Minus 5

Scott McCaughey remains the busiest man in rock & roll--hell, he's been a part of more recording projects since suffering a debilitating stroke a few years back than most artists manage in a lifetime.

Alongside his original band, The Young Fresh Fellows--and can I just reiterate that last year's long-awaited remix of their 1984 debut remains in constant rotation on the Jittery White Guy stereo?--his main enterprise is The Minus 5. This time around, the semi-stable cast of characters includes R.E....

1000 Songs In 1000 Days: Put A Fork In It!

So... now what? You and I have spent the past 1000 days talking about 1000 songs (plus, we're at about 2000 total posts). Feels kinda silly; nobody reads blogs any more, and this whole project was started out some 6 years ago largely as an exercise in beginning each day with just a little bit of light writing, back when I was working on my book--hey, have you checked that out yet?--and I needed a way to loosen up my musical brain. 
The list itself originated long before that, back in my days as a...

My Top 1000 Songs #1000: Ill Fated

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Holy crap, this 1000-day insanity is finally over! Time to get a job, I suppose. (Which isn't to say I haven't already sketched out songs #1001-2000, but as the daily viewers of this page have declined from a few thousand to some guy who fat-fingered a Google search, not sure if I'll bother...)

Gave some thought to doing something colorful for #1000--a kitsc...

My Top 1000 Songs #999: Bohemian Like You

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

"Bohemian Like You," off 2000's Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, has a little of everything that makes the Dandy Warhols so ridiculously fun. Built on a reliable, classic Stones riff, with some distinctly 90s vibes (that fuzzy bass sounds like something off an Elastica record); and yet another in a series of amazing videos from one of the last bands serio...

My Top 1000 Songs #998: Divorce Song

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

I probably don't need to pay yet another visit to Liz Phair's debut, 1993's legendary Exile In Guyville, when this list has thus far left the woefully underrated 1994 follow-up Whip-Smart untouched. But it's hard to bypass "Divorce Song" (one of the many songs originally contained on Phair's home-recorded Girly-Sound demo tapes before being touched up for o...

My Top 1000 Songs #997: Get Down

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Reaching waaaaay deep into the Guilty Pleasures file for this one... but it's absolute proof positive that 70s bubblegum pop was the best bubblegum pop ever. Gilbert O'Sullivan's 1973 single (also found on the LP I'm A Writer, Not A Fighter) maybe lacks the kitsch value of his other big hit, 1972's oh-so-sappy-70s "Alone Again (Naturally)," but it's a whole...

My Top 1000 Songs #996: Run Dusty Run

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Returning again to that wonderful debut long-player from The Long Ryders, 1984's Native Sons, which so delightfully paired jangly, Byrdsy psych-pop of the Paisley Underground scene with a more rollicking pre-Americana cowpunk vibe. Leaning towards the latter, "Run Dusty Run" has always felt almost too casually carefree, more a twangy bar song than a track r...