Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 20

My Top 1000 Songs #941: American Idiot

[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.]

Look, I can't say I listen to Green Day very often (though probably more than you might assume). I was just a few years too old for them. They were more like the band I'd play for my son when he was growing up, wishing I could get him into the Pistols and Clash and Buzzcocks and Undertones and X, but knowing those would feel as outdated to him as the classi...

My Top 1000 Songs #940--8:05

[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.]

Moby Grape's 1967 debut--IMHO the single finest LP to rise from San Francisco's Summer of Love (with apologies to the Grateful Dead & Jefferson Airplane)--offers a wealth of outstanding songs in a variety of styles. Having already noted one of the album's more upbeat acid rockers, I now turn to the record's prettiest song. "8:05" is a gentle acoustic number...

My Top 1000 Songs #939: The Deadbeat

[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.]

There goes that jerk, taking up a scarce slot on his list with an obscure b-side that nobody's ever heard...

But, yep, gonna do it.

Rising from the ashes of my beloved Undertones, guitarist brothers John & Damian O'Neill put together That Petrol Emotion in the mid-80s. I remember being a little underwhelmed by their 1986 debut, Manic Pop Thrill, though I play...

Best New Release of 2025 (Is It Momma?)

It doesn't happen much these days, at least for me, but Momma's fourth LP, Welcome To My Blue Sky, is the sort of album where, on first listen, I find myself fast-forwarding through the songs because I'm so impatient to hear it a second time. 

My thoughts on the band aren't different from when I first I fell madly in love with their last one, 2022's . I tend to imagine them as a couple young women whose parents subjected them to a non-stop stream of Pavement and Breeders and Veruca ...

My Top 1000 Songs #938: Moribund The Burgermeister

[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.]

Feels a little excessive to pick a 3rd track off Peter Gabriel's 1977 solo debut (particularly since, as overall works, I prefer the two records that followed). But opening track "Moribund The Burgermeister" was so delightfully weird; as the first thing to be heard from Gabriel since he departed Genesis, it suggested he'd be carrying on with the prog torch-...

My Top 1000 Songs #937: (I'm Stuck In A Pagoda With) Tricia Toyota

[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.]

L.A. punk band The Dickies were an early purveyor of punk-pop, songs that could be played furiously fast & loud but tended to be on the goofy side, paving the way for everyone from the Dead Milkmen to Green Day. They had a lot of great covers that were great to break up one of my college radio shows, everything from "Nights In White Satin" to "Sounds Of Sil...

My Top 1000 Songs #936: Seems So

[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.]

While the Apples in Stereo's 1995 debut was a jubilant slab of lo-fi noise pop, and an excellent introduction to the Elephant 6 collective of indie bands which would fully launch with the following year's long-playing debuts from Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control, it was the Apples' second record, 1997's Tone Soul Revolution, which established wh...

My Top 1000 Songs #935: Oklahoma USA

[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.]

While it's generally held in pretty high regard by Kinks fans, I've never been entirely taken in by 1971's Muswell Hillbillies. Granted, after that incredible run of Village Green Preservation Society/Arthur/Lola, it's a little unfair to expect the same level of brilliance; or maybe it's just their blend of rootsy Americana and British music-hall doesn't en...

New Releases: Jetstream Pony

Y'know, it shouldn't be so damn hard to make indie rock that sounds like those of us of a certain age think indie rock should sound like. But there just doesn't seem to be enough of it around these days. Fortunately, UK act Jetstream Pony remember, and god bless 'em for it. I talked about their 2020 debut early in the life of this blog, and now they're back (after an intervening EP and a few singles) with an even better long-player, Bowerbirds And Blue Things. Bubblegum jangle washed through a b...

My Top 1000 Songs #934: Sharkey's Day

[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.]

Laurie Anderson was one of those new-wave-era artists who helped me get outside my classic rock comfort zone back in the 80s, probably a little more in the abstract than in terms of actual time she spent on my turntable, the sort of artist I might not turn to a whim, but when I did I felt I was in on something truly new and noteworthy. I made a cassette wit...