Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 38

My Top 1000 Songs #785: Manic Monday

[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.]

Imagine writing a song like "Manic Monday" and thinking, nah, just gonna give this one away. Takes some cojones, sure; but mostly takes the confidence that you're coming up with so many other great songs, you don't even need to bother with something that sounds like a drop-dead perfect hit.
Man, Prince was on a freakin' tear in the mid-80s.
Anyway, I think he...

My Top 1000 Songs #784: Oblivious

[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 back-to-back example of an artist for whom I can't claim a great passion, but a song that endlessly delights me. The one other time we saw Aztec Camera on the list, it was a bit of a ringer, a pairing with Mick Jones that sounded more like Mick's Big Audio Dynamite than the rest of the band's own work. This time, we're heading back to the beginning,...

My Top 1000 Songs #783: Creature Comfort

[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'll say right off the bat, I'm not a big Arcade Fire guy. I think there's a pretty solid 80-minute CDR mix scattered over their catalog, but that's probably sufficient for me. Still, something about "Creature Comfort," from 2017's Everything Now (an album I otherwise mostly passed on) grabbed me on first listen and is still pretty damn compelling. The indi...

My Top 1000 Songs #782: Hammond 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.]

Sure, the self-titled 1979 debut from sisters Maggie, Terre, and Suzzy Roche was simply lovely, their unique three-part harmonies giving an otherworldly spin to a cappella folk. But they found an unlikely partner in Robert Fripp, spending the wasteland years between King Crimson iterations producing a wide range of bands. On this (and a later record, 1982's...

My Top 1000 Songs #781: Sukie In The Graveyard

[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.]

Scots Belle And Sebastian, 30 years and a dozen or so albums in, have a ton of great music, the sort of records I'll throw on and really enjoy, but not a lot of individual songs--a few exceptions aside--that dig their claws in as stand-alone tracks. But I do adore "Sukie In The Graveyard," from 2006's The Life Pursuit: atypically upbeat, perky fun that just...

My Top 1000 Songs #780: Love Is 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.]

So where does a tv show theme song fit in here? Is it another era-specific novelty song that you-had-to-have-been-there to appreciate? A guilty pleasure? A legit great song that deserves to be heard on its own musical merits? All of the above?
I published a personal essay a few years back on the closing theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the emotional ...

My Top 1000 Songs #779: I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives

[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'll admit to having some qualms about "I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives," from lo-fi post-punk minimalists Television Personalities (off their 1981 debut And Don't The Kids Just Love It). Given the late Pink Floyd founder's tragic history of mental illness (and/or acid damage, depending whose version one follows), and early departure from the band to live ou...

My Top 1000 Songs #778: Watch The Sunrise

[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 are on the list of bands where I've deliberately drawn a line in the sand and said "enough!" I'm trying to keep this list varied and just gumming it up with dozens of tracks from my favorite bands & albums takes the fun out of it. And while I absolutely adore "Watch The Sunrise," it does have the feeling of being "Ok, not the greatest or most impor...

My Top 1000 Songs #777: The Walking 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.]

As an unabashed Turtlemaniac, I've always found the lack of critical respect for the Turtles inexplicable. They had a run of drop-dead-perfect 60s pop singles; a few albums that hold together as both fun and artistically rich (particularly 1968's playful Battle of the Bands and 1969's Ray Davies-produced Turtle Soup); and of course frontmen Howard Kaylan an...

My Top 1000 Songs #776: Dream Date

[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.]

As anyone who checks out my periodic run through new releases knows, one of my favorite trends of recent years is the number of current bands drinking deep from the well of the 80s/90s New Zealand Flying Nun records scene. Lots of slightly-skewed post-punk noise pop reminiscent of The Clean and The Bats, with a few strains of adjacent jangle pop acts rangin...