Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 33

My Top 1000 Songs #833: Son Of Sam

[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 get the sense many/most Elliott Smith loyalists prefer his more intimate, stripped-down work, but I think he shone even brighter when he started giving his songs a more polished, full-band, almost Beatlesque accompaniment. Case in point? "Son Of Sam," from 2000's Figure 8, his final proper studio album before his tragic demise. It's a lush, piano-driven, ...

My Top 1000 Songs #832: Marlene On The Wall

[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 we've been on a run of mid-80s songs from my college days; here's another one from an album that I played all the time as a young student. Suzanne Vega's 1985 self-titled debut was a little more mainstream-sounding than most of the college radio indie rock that took over my life back then, but was innovative in its own way. She followed Joni Mitchell'...

My Top 1000 Songs #831: Handle With Care

[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 don't have any particularly strong associations with this one. The Traveling Wilburys LP came out in late 1988, just as I was starting law school, and it was... fine. And "Handle With Care"? By far the best thing George Harrison had done in years, and the Roy Orbison and Dylan/Petty bits make it far better than it ever would've been as a solo track. Not t...

My Top 1000 Songs #830: No Shine For The Shoes

[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 their second album, 1985's fine Wonder Wonderful Wonderland , midwestern retro-psychedelic act Plasticland went all-in on their reverence for Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd and, most obviously, the Stones' Satanic Majesties Request . They share the jangly, druggy flavor of the like-minded Rain Parade, but with a rawer garage band edge. While the record (and t...

My Top 1000 Songs #829: The Best Of Jill Hives

[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 the time of 2003's Earthquake Glue, Guided By Voices were approaching the tail end of their initial run--the following LP would be their last (until, after a 6-year sabbatical, they'd return even more prolific than before). And the declining wheat-to-chaff ratio on their records, which could be rough even on their best work, was getting frustrating. Yet ...

My Top 1000 Songs #828: Isolation

[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.]

Barely two years after Joy Division supposedly scrapped the initial stab at the debut album that would evolve into Unknown Pleasures because they didn't like their punk sound being diluted by the post-production addition of synthesizers... and here they are, going full-fledged synth-pop. Or at least about as synth-pop as the Ian Curtis-helmed combo could go...

My Top 1000 Songs #827: Back Where I Belong

[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.]

It wasn't planned this way, I swear, but having just touted an obscure Boston band from my mid-80s college radio days, we're back with another (slightly less obscure?) Boston band from my mid-80s college radio days. Dumptruck were a little more in line with the jangly indie pop that devoured my attention back then (and, ok, still does). Their second album, ...

My Top 1000 Songs #826: Biko

[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.]

Kids today and their fancy internet! Why, when I was a boy, we had to go to the public library if we wanted to learn things!
Which is what I felt compelled to do after hearing "Biko," the epic closing track on Peter Gabriel's 1980 third album (like it's two predecessors, simply entitled Peter Gabriel, though informally known as Melt). By the time the album's...

My Top 1000 Songs #825: One Big Tree

[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.]

Yeah, sorry, this one's probably pretty unique to my college experience, so move right along if you weren't knee-deep in New England college music circa mid-80s.
Three Colors were a Boston band who managed a few singles and EPs (later collected on One Big CD, which is probably out of print by now). Their big "hit" (or at least the one that got some regional/...

My Top 1000 Songs #824: She Cracked

[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.]

The Modern Lovers' 1976 debut (recorded in 1971 and 1972) stands as one of the rock era's two or three greatest one-and-done records. (See also, e.g., this or this.) Sure, Jonathan Richman went on to make another half-century of music, for a period still under the Modern Lovers band name, but you know what I mean, right?
And while "Roadrunner" may be the def...