Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 48

My Top 1000 Songs #700: By This River

[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.] 

Back when I started this blog in 2019--mainly as a daily morning exercise to get myself writing each day when I was working on my book (which, hey, right there on Amazon.com, go get it!)--one of the first pieces of music I wrote about was Brian Eno's remarkable, slightly schizophrenic 1977 album Before And After Science. It was Eno's last vocal album for m...

My Top 1000 Songs #699: Feeling OK

[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.] 

Not every entry on this list can be a "this song changed my life and has had deep emotional significance for me for decades" kinda song. Sometimes it's more like a "this song makes me happy and makes me want to run and make a mixtape for friends just so I can include it" kinda song.

Best Coast's "Feeling OK," off 2015's California Nights, is in the latter c...

My Top 1000 Songs #698: Pinball

[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.] 

After yesterday's musical theme of nostalgia, here's one that conjures up strangely evocative feelings of the early 70s. British singer-songwriter Brian Protheroe's "Pinball," the title track of his 1974 album, is gently wistful, a folk-ish tune infused with jazzy yacht rock (in a good way), and for me captures a very specific moment in time. Now, I doubt ...

New Releases: Color Green

Just stumbled across a great new album from SoCal band Color Green. I've cycled through their sophomore long-player, Fools Parade, and it's hitting a lot of my sweet spots. Discernible touch-points include sun-fried Meat Puppets-conjuring psychedelic choogle, the jangly cosmic Americana of Beachwood Sparks or Ultimate Painting, and the mellower side of jam bands like Phish, though the varying styles of multiple singers & guitarists also invoke Gomez, It's a heady stew, deliriously laid-back but ...

My Top 1000 Songs #697: Skull

[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.] 

Sebadoh's "Skull" had a feeling of being somehow lost in time when it first appeared on 1994's Bakesale, sounding like a vital part of the emerging crew of 90s indie stalwarts like Pavement and Yo La Tengo and Guided By Voices while vividly conjuring moments out of a not-so-distant past. Both the lyrics--"There is history in this place, there are dragons t...

My Top 1000 Songs #696: Lipstick

[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.] 

Too cute to go with back-to-back modern bubblegum indie tracks called "Lipstick"? Abso-friggin'-lutely. But it's getting late in the game and I'm going with it.

San Francisco indie act Imperial Teen--a "supergroup" of sorts with members of various other Bay Area bands, including the probably better-known hard rockers Faith No More--had a few albums of quirk...

My Top 1000 Songs #695: Lipstick

[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 a pre-teen first introduced to music through mid-70s AM pop radio, I developed a lifelong affinity for cheesy bubblegum music--those short, simple pop tunes with catchy hooks and silly lyrics that can be embraced both by kids and, more ironically, by post-Ramones hipsters relishing the simplicity of rock music before it became an art form.

Sadly, there h...

My Top 1000 Songs #694: White Lies

[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 trip back to my mid-80s college radio DJ gig. Years before there was Uncle Tupelo and the Jayhawks and Ryan Adams and the whole late 80s/early 90s Americana revival, we had a fistful of cowpunk bands we were spinning at the station. I loved the Long Ryders, who mixed in some jangle-pop and psychedelia with their country, but also more straightforwa...

My Top 1000 Songs #693: Here Comes My Girl

[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 have VERY mixed feelings about "Here Comes My Girl," off Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' ridiculously hit-laden 1979 breakthrough Damn The Torpedoes.

On the one hand, I kinda really really hate the verses, those spoken-word bits where a gritty-voiced Petty moans about how cruel the world is and everything is ugly except the titular girl. It just gives me...

My Top 1000 Songs #692: Tunic (Song For Karen)

[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.] 

Sonic Youth's majestic (maybe even underrated?) 1990 LP Goo is one of those records with a fistful of great songs that, on any given day, I might pick as my personal favorite. "Disappearer" is great, but also "Mote" and "Kool Thing" and "Mary-Christ." But there's something special about "Tunic (Song For Karen)." Kim Gordon's ode to Karen Carpenter could've...