Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 131

Wire: The Ideal Copy (1987)

Wire were one of those bands I discovered only after the fact. My immersion in college radio in the mid-80s inevitably led me back to Wire, one of the original UK punk pioneers. I quickly fell in love with their majestic 1977-1979 three-album run (well, four if you count Colin Newman's terrific 1980 solo album, A-Z, which sounds like the natural follow-up to 1979's 154 ), and was sad to discover the band was no more.

So it was a real treat when they resurfaced in 1986 with a brief EP, followed sho...

Forgotten Seventies (A Mix)

As I've mentioned previously, I have an inexplicable fascination with long-forgotten records from the early '70s, the no-hit wonders who managed an album or two of usually justly-overlooked music. Mostly American (but occasionally British) bands typically deeply indebted to or derivative of American Beauty-era Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, CSN, Neil Young, maybe Traffic or the Band or CCR. Shades of folk and country and blues and straight-out rock, way too obscure to be slotted into the...

Eleventh Dream Day: Since Grazed (2021)

As I pore through various year-end lists for great 2021 albums I overlooked, I'm kicking myself for not picking up the latest release from Midwestern indie rockers Eleventh Dream Day sooner. 'Cuz it's a fantastic album, arguably one of their best; and, some 30+ years into their career, a surprising stylistic departure.

As noted previously, I'm a big fan of their run of early 90s records, which, like their peers in Yo La Tengo, merged post-Velvet Underground guitar scrawl with killer alt.rock hook...

The Sails: S/T (2006)

The Sails are a UK power pop/retro pop band (well, mostly just a guy named Michael Gagliano). And if you like '60s-styled power pop, trust me, their 2006 debut is gonna be one of your new favorite albums.

The record ranges from straight British Invasion rock to slightly more bubblegum affairs to occasional flashes of psychedelia, all given a fresh 2000s sheen. It gallops out of the gate with the jangly guitars and sweet harmonies of "See Myself" (somewhere between the Hollies and Zombies with a d...

The Who: Live At The Young Vic (1971)

One of my ongoing pandemic projects, which I rejoined after the new year, is cleaning up my live music collection. I spent a good chunk of the '90s and '00s trading live music (first tapes, later CDRs). This was in the pre-torrenting/downloading days, when bandwidth didn't allow for accumulating live music online. Instead, I had a list of my bootleg/rarities collection posted on a website, and I'd trade shows via snail-mail with other like-minded fans, spending my weekends duplicating tapes or C...

Music From The New Millennium (A Mix: 2000-2021)

An old law school friend reached out to me recently, complaining that there hadn't been any decent music since the 60s & 70s classic rock of her youth. She asked if I could put together a playlist to convince her otherwise. She described her taste as being comprised largely of the Beatles and Dylan, Janis Joplin and Cat Stevens. So I kept my picks pretty user-friendly, mostly mid-tempo pop-ish alt. rock that avoided the more experimental or boisterous parts of my collection.

Here's the result. Gi...

The Softies: Holiday in Rhode Island (2000)

Talk about a band name that captures a musical ethos in a single word... the Softies were the epitome of K Records twee-pop, the duo of Rose Melberg (later of the excellent, slightly more rocking Tiger Trap) and Jen Sbragia. They released 3 LPs and a few singles, all conjuring up a couple young women writing sad songs in the bedroom above their parents' garage with a couple unplugged electric guitars, sweet and earnest and misty-eyed. Hey, what can I say, I'm just a big ol'... softie.

Holiday was...

The Beatles: Let It Be, Revisited (1970)

Time to kick off 2022 with an album that spent a lot of time in heavy rotation in 2021. The 9-hour Get Back documentary (on Disney+) was a gift for Beatles fans (and music obsessives), showing the tedium of the writing/recording process, the flashes of sheer genius (mostly Paul's), and the love/hate relationship among these men at the cusp of the band's dissolution.

It also helped resurrect an album that is generally considered one of their weaker efforts. And while I still find it to be a (relat...

Ushering Out 2021: Some High Points

 

Sure, you can't look back at a year with hundreds of thousands of pandemic deaths (in part due to politically-motivated anti-vaxx insanity), and the worsening threat of the death of democracy, with anything short of grim sadness. But don't forget, a year ago we were in the midst of (let's be honest about what it was) an attempted coup, and still waking up every morning dreading what The Former Guy might be spewing out into the universe, so... progress!

And there were plenty of high points in 202...

The Orange Humble Band: Assorted Creams (1997)

Look, this is simply a great album, resting comfortably at the midpoint between power pop and jangle pop, right in that Big Star/Teenage Fanclub sweet spot, plenty of bright, chiming mid-tempo tunefulness and a few killer stand-out tracks.

But it also raises the recurring question of whether we can divorce the art from the artist. Because Orange Humble Band, an indie supergroup of sorts, have Posies singer Ken Stringfellow on vocals--one of countless side projects to which he's contributed--and S...