Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 156

Grateful Dead: Wake Of The Flood (1973)

Yeah, I get it, everyone loves American Beauty , as well they should. But I think a strong case can be made that Wake of the Flood -- which followed three years later (during which time they released a number of live albums, as well as a pair of excellent solo albums from Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir) -- is equally great, if not their best studio work then certainly close. On a personal level, after becoming a full-blown convert to the Dead back in college based primarily on live tapes, it was my pu...

Now That's What I Call Power Pop!

No album pick today, but figured I'd share a current in-progress playlist. I've got tons of power pop in my music collection--not just artists' proper albums, but a lot of compilations gathering together material from lesser-known bands (i.e. the long-running, annual International Pop Overthrow collections). The playlist, at least at the moment, is drawn primarily from the original albums, not from the collections, but at some point I'll add to this (or make a bonus list).

A few gaps in Spotify (...

The Asteroid #4: An Amazing Dream (2008)

As the name suggests, The Asteroid #4 (or, on more recent releases, The Asteroid No. 4) play spaced-out stoner rock. They've got a good number of albums out there to choose from, ranging from Barrett-era Pink Floyd whimsical psychedelic pop to dronier explorations that call to mind Hawkwind or Wooden Shjips to noisier shoegaze (or, the case of the 2003's outlier Honeyspot, cosmic Americana). My favorite is this one from 2008, a pretty great introduction to an unjustly overlooked band (though, re...

Pilot: From The Album Of The Same Name (1974)

I've never understood why Pilot has failed to garner the level of respect of like-minded 70s power pop bands like Badfinger and the Raspberries. And no, the Scottish band is not in the same league as Badfinger, but they mine the same McCartneyesque orchestrated pop territory, and at least on this, their debut, fairly successfully.

Pilot are probably best remembered as the one-hit wonder behind "Magic." And let's face it, while the power of that song may have been diluted by overuse in recent year...

The Vipers: Outta The Nest! (1984)

There were a number of garage band revivalists competing for attention in the mid-80s. One of my personal favorites (and, alas, one of the toughest to track down these days) is New York's Vipers (not to be confused with various other bands called the Vipers). While mostly offering traditional guitar-driven late 60s-styled garage rock, they included more contemporary markings of jangly Paisley Underground psychedelic upstarts like the Rain Parade or the (also hard to find) Things, balancing their...

Phish Top 10 on Toppermost

Over on Toppermost today, you can see my picks for the Top 10 Phish songs... an entry-level, more pop-oriented list geared towards newbies. Plus an overview of their studio album history, and, for existing fans, a live playlist.

(You can also check out my earlier Toppermost contributions on Luna, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Feelies, Genesis, Wilco, King Crimson, and Brian Eno.)

Here's the studio Top 10 playlist:

And here's the live playlist:

More New Releases (For Bandcamp Day)

Bandcamp is offering another Bandcamp Friday today, waiving its revenue share so that the artists in its catalog, hard-pressed by Covid's preclusion of touring, can recoup 100% of all sales proceeds. I figured it game me an excuse to point out a few new releases I've grabbed (and update my running playlist of 2020 highlights). Here are a few:

The Psychedelic Furs: Made Of Rain . The eighties stalwarts return with their first studio album in nearly 30 years. And, no, it doesn't try to reclaim past ...

The Hollies: Butterfly (1967)

Bit of a Twitter kerfuffle the other day over the appropriate placement of the Hollies among the classic rock pantheon. And while the band has its passionate defenders, I personally place them well below the Big Four (Beatles/Stones/Who/Kinks). Among the British Invasion stand-outs, maybe they fit in somewhere among the Small Faces, Zombies, Pretty Things, etc. No doubt they were a terrific singles band. And when it came to harmonizing -- I'm a sucker for a good harmony -- they were arguably nea...

Future Clouds & Radar: S/T (2007)

A relatively unknown but intermittently astounding indie pop album that answers the question: What happens when you give a power pop refugee with unbounded musical creativity access to a studio and the latest technology, but no editor? You get a sprawling double-album that ranges from glorious baroque pop music to silly self-indulgent experimentation, peppered with a handful of insanely catchy earworms.

Robert Harrison is the co-founder, singer, and guitarist for Cotton Mather, a crunchy power po...

Goose Creek Symphony: Est. 1970 (1970)

Goose Creek Symphony are a long-running country-rock outfit hailing from Phoenix. I'm only familiar with their first 3 albums, from 1970-1972, which were straight out of the Gram Parsons cosmic Americana songbook, shades of Workingman's Dead and the Band, only with a lot more old-school bluegrass in the mix. And while I'm not really a country-bluegrass kinda guy, the albums have an eccentric charm to them that keeps them interesting, even for more traditional rock fans (at least those who don't ...