Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 22

My Top 1000 Songs #925: Sheena Is A Punk Rocker

Growing up sheltered in the midwestern suburbs, still a ways off from my teen years and wedded to my transistor radio and the local pop station, the murmurings I'd hear about "punk music"--vague allusions in the articles I was reading as I started to seek out music that lay outside the Top 40--sounded scary and intimidating. Definitely too aggressive and nasty for this shy, nerdy kid.

But, somehow, songs like the Ramones' "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" (a single on their third LP, 1977's Rocket To Rus...

Pugwash: Eleven Modern Antiquities (2008)

After a few years writing about my favorite albums, I opted for a 1000-day tangent to talk about 1000 songs. Only 76 more days to go! And when it's all over, maybe I'll get back to albums. Or just call it a day and leave this out here, just another abandoned blog flapping in the breeze like so many old GeoCities pages.

But there are just so many great albums we haven't talked about! Like this 2008 gem from Irish indie pop band Pugwash. For those unfamiliar with their work, the most obvious compar...

Pugwash: Eleven Modern Antiquities

After a few years writing about my favorite albums, I opted for a 1000-day tangent to talk about 1000 songs. Only 76 more days to go! And when it's all over, maybe I'll get back to albums. Or just call it a day and leave this out here, just another abandoned blog flapping in the breeze like so many old GeoCities pages.

But there are just so many great albums we haven't talked about! Like this 2008 gem from Irish indie pop band Pugwash. For those unfamiliar with their work, the most obvious compar...

My Top 1000 Songs #924: Mary Of Silence

Mazzy Star's finest stand-alone songs wrapped David Roback's slow, trippy, retro-psychedelic guitar grooves in the warm transcendence of Hope Sandoval's ethereal vocals, as pretty and melodic as they were hypnotic. But "Mary Of Silence," from 1993's still-powerful So Tonight That I Might See , dispenses with the beautiful bits, going for something far spookier. A lengthy organ drone with Sandoval's torture-room whispers battling against Roback's horror movie guitar slashes, the song sounds like t...

My Top 1000 Songs #923: Another Travelin' 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've got mixed feelings on Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes. On the plus side, there are a handful of songs I think are just great, a colorful mix of freak folk and experimental indie rock, passionate and emotionally rich yet still melodic. On the other hand, I often feel like he's directly addressing a younger, sadder, needier audience that I'm just not a part...

My Top 1000 Songs #922: Cindy

[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.]

Given the modest-sized yet adoring cult that has gathered around Guided By Voices, faithfully wading through the literally thousands of songs generated between the mid-80s and roughly a week ago by the band (as well as Robert Pollard's various solo & side projects), it's a little surprising there haven't been more imitators. Pollard's prolific gift for low-...

The Royal Tenenbaums: Complete Soundtrack

Gene Hackman's terribly sad passing inspired me to watch The Royal Tenenbaums this weekend for the first time in a decade or so. (Still great, by the way, particularly Hackman.) As with most of Wes Anderson's films, it's sheer heaven for us needle-drop nerds, one perfectly-placed song after another. Alas, due to the usual licensing issues, the official soundtrack (which was apparently issued with two slightly different tracklists) omits a few crucial cuts (most notably a pair of Stones songs and...

My Top 1000 Songs #921: Big Black Car

[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.]

Big Star's swan-song, Big Star's Third (a.k.a. Sister Lovers, completed in 1975 but not released until 1978) saw the early promise of the band--at this point largely just Alex Chilton, suffering sheer emotional collapse in the studio--reaching complete flame-out. And "Big Black Car" makes for a poetic bookend. If "In The Street" (from 1972's perfect #1 Reco...

My Top 1000 Songs #920: The Biz

[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's something so strangely evocative about the title track off The Sea And Cake's 1995 LP The Biz, but I can't quite put my finger on it. A skewed, jazzy track, full of gentle yet weird chords, free-form time signature shifts, conjuring stoned afternoons of 70s jazz/prog-flavored soft rock, with one foot planted firmly in 90s alt.rock yet sounding nothi...

My Top 1000 Songs #919: Whippin' Piccadilly

[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.]

"Whippin' Piccadilly," the 1998 debut single from eclectic UK band Gomez, was an ideal introduction to the band--amiable and low-key, a bit of rustic jam-band Americana with some studio flourishes to sex it up just a bit. If you need to pick a song to play on your earbuds as you amble about town on a sunny day, just casually moving through daily life, this ...