Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 27

New-Ish Releases: Rose City Band

On their fifth LP, Sol Y Sombra, Rose City Band make a huge shift from their enduringly mellow cosmic American music...

No, I'm kidding. It's another reliable slab of gentle psychedelic country rock, a blend of the Gram Parsons/Grateful Dead/Beach Boys-informed-stylings of Beachwood Sparks and the early 70s Pink Floyd-inspired sunshine psych of Kingsbury Manx. And in the midst of a rainy winter and a country in collapse, what could be more welcome than music designed for a sunny summer afternoon ...

My Top 1000 Songs #884: The Girl I Can't Forget

[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'm kinda surprised I don't have more Fountains of Wayne songs here; I think that's a sign of restraint on my part, with so many great songs to choose from (or maybe just a tragic oversight I need to correct with my remaining selections). And it's particularly amazing that they could come up with a song as delightful as "The Girl I Can't Forget" and leave i...

My Top 1000 Songs #883: Tangled Up In Blue

[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 freely admitted that my actual enjoyment of Bob Dylan's music falls far short of my recognition of his particular genius. Aside from his mid-60s electric run, and the myriad covers of his songs by other artists, I rarely play his albums. I mean, I've got all his 70s work (I pretty much gave up by the mid-80s), and it's frequently great if frustrating, ...

My Top 1000 Songs #882: One More Colour

[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.]

Canadian singer-songwriter Jane Siberry's The Speckless Sky got a lot of airplay on the college station for a brief moment in 1985. There was something interestingly genre-hopping in her offbeat blend of Suzanne Vega's contemporary folk-pop, the arty new wave of fellow Torontonians Martha & The Muffins, and more experimental artists like Kate Bush and Lauri...

My Top 1000 Songs #881: Your Kind Turn Me All Around

[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.]

One of those random things in my music collection that I'm convinced few people have ever heard, but holds a special place in my heart.

Polyphemus were a short-lived Southern California indie duo dating back to the mid-90s. I think it was my brother who turned me on to their 1993 debut, Scrapbook Of Madness, a fascinating relic which pairs noisy guitar 90s a...

My Top 1000 Songs #880: Somebody Got Murdered

[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.]

Been on a Clash kick lately, especially 1981's Sandinista--the sprawling hit-or-miss triple-LP set which, not for the first (or last?) time, I sat down and tried distilling into a more manageable 80-minute CDR length. And while, despite (or because of?) its self-indulgent sprawl, there's a lot to love on the album, my favorite track has always been "Somebod...

Reimagined Album: The Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter

The Rolling Stones' late 60s/early 70s triad of Let It Bleed/ Sticky Fingers / Exile On Main Street is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest runs in rock & roll history. (Of course, 1968's Beggars Banquet is no slouch; and I personally think both '67's Satanic Majesties Request and '73's Goats Head Soup are way underrated.)

Still, for all the acclaim, I've never had a lot of love for Let It Bleed as a complete album. Sure, it's bookended by two of their greatest recordings ever, "Gimme Shelt...

My Top 1000 Songs #879: Young Folks

[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.]

One unfortunate impact of the increased segmentation of the music market over the past couple decades is that, sitting here in my enclosed indie rock bubble--or jittery white guy music, as one friend put it, providing the name for this blog & my book--I very rarely have any clue about current popular music. Prior to that, maybe up through my 20s and 30s, wh...

My Top 1000 Songs #878: The Bulrushes

[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.]

Seems like just a couple days ago we were talking about obscure-ish 80s college radio jangle pop... 

Hoboken, NJ act The Bongos rarely get the credit they deserve as forerunners of the genre. They started releasing music in 1980, placing them alongside the Feelies and the dB's in the early East Coast post-punk scene, and their terrific 1982 long-player debut...

The Clash: Revisited

Last weekend, I decided to update my abbreviated version of The Clash's sprawling, overstuffed 1981 opus Sandinista! (It came out nicely, I think.)

This weekend, as long as I had my Clash collection handy, I decided to take a stab at a new & improved, reimagined debut(ish) album. 

My first exposure to 1977's The Clash, like most of us here in the States, was via the adulterated 1979 American version, which swapped a few of the tracks on the UK original with later singles & b-sides (deemed, not inc...