Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 28

My Top 1000 Songs #876: All My Friends

[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.]

Birmingham, AL-based Primitons were among the welcome rush of Southern jangle pop bands to hit the mid-80s college radio airwaves in R.E.M.'s wake. Their self-titled 1985 EP showed a ton of promise, aided immeasurably by the production support of jangle-pop legend Mitch Easter. It didn't hurt that the record led with this absolutely killer track, a fiendish...

My Top 1000 Songs #875: Missing Presumed Drowned

[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.]

New Zealand's Straitjacket Fits were among the many late 80s bands on the Flying Nun label I explored after branching out from my initial discovery of acts like The Clean, The Chills, and The Bats. Their more experimental, heavier sound, infused with splashes of psychedelia, was a little tougher to wrap my arms around, but they had a few tracks that made a ...

My Top 1000 Songs #874: All Of The Good Ones Are Taken

[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.]

By all rights, this is not a song I should like. For the title track on 1983's All Of The Good Ones Are Taken, Ian Hunter sheds the hard-rocking glam of his Mott The Hoople days and earlier solo records (not to mention his ever-present shades... good lord, the man has eyeballs!). What's left behind is an almost bland-ish slab of 70s AOR, reminiscent of mid/...

My Top 1000 Songs #873: Dear Madam Barnum

[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.]

With so many cherished XTC singles over the decades, a handful of which I've previously noted, I almost hate wasting a slot on a deep cut from one of their less-beloved LPs, 1992's Nonsuch. But I've always had a soft spot for "Dear Madam Barnum." It's one of the quirky act's more straightforward pop songs, a pretty basic descending riff throughout most of t...

My Top 1000 Songs #872: This Life

[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.]

Another infrequent visit to the past 5 years... and as always the risk of picking an all-time fave that hasn't yet withstood the test of time. And to be honest, while I really loved Vampire Weekend's 2019 album Father Of The Bride when it came out, it's largely dropped from my playlist. But "This Life" (like "Harmony Hall," which I could have just as easily...

The Clash: Sandinista Revisited!

So, a few of us were having the usual argument about the Clash's 1980 3-LP opus Sandinista! --Is it a fascinating, sprawling opus akin to the White Album ? Or a self-indulgent mess that should've been edited down to a shorter, great-if-imperfect follow-up to career-peak London Calling ?

I fall a little into both camps. I appreciate the overkill of the original triple album, and it was intriguing to dive into it as a teenager impressed by the band's willingness to take risks. But I haven't played it ...

My Top 1000 Songs #871: The President

[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.]

Following up on the (IMHO) career peak of 1985's Fegmania, Robyn Hitchcock (and The Egyptians) stretched out a bit on 1986's Element of Light. The college radio jangle pop and Hitchcock's absurdist sensibility remains, but he also shows a more serious side. "The President" in particular is something of an anomaly in his discography, a rare dive into real wo...

My Top 1000 Songs #870: Wolfman's Brother

[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.]

For those viscerally repelled by the Phish community, this is unlikely to change anything. And, sure, nobody's going to accuse these guys of being the world's finest lyricists. Still, "Wolfman's Brother," off 1994's Hoist, is one of their most classic-rock-friendly pop-adjacent songs, a track (like several others on that record, and the several that followe...

Reissues: The Things

One of my favorite albums from my 80s college radio days is finally--FINALLY!--getting its digital due. After some 40 years of listening to a scratchy, long-out-of-print LP recorded to a cassette tape (and later digitized), one of the few records which was never released on CD is back, remastered with a few bonus tracks..

I wrote about The Things' largely forgotten 1986 minor classic Outside My Window some time ago, but in brief: The Things were a peripheral part of the 80s Paisley Underground, a...

My Top 1000 Songs #869: My Friend

[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.]

Semi-legendary late 60s SoCal band Spirit went through so many convolutions, it's no wonder history finally gave up on them, with little of their material (a few hit singles from the psychedelic era aside) getting the love it deserves. After their initial run of 60s albums, they splintered into various factions--some of the band continuing as Spirit, some s...