Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 58

My Top 1000 Songs #605: Dylan Thomas

[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.]

"Dylan Thomas," off the 2019 self-titled debut from Better Oblivion Community Center, has a couple strikes against it. First, there's the usual caveat about including music from the past few years, as it's tough to predict if it'll have the long-term staying power of a truly song. Second, the band appears to be a (at least at this point) one-off super-group...

My Top 1000 Songs #604: Talking Loud And Clear

[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 wave-era UK synth-pop was a big part of my youth back in high school and college, hard to escape, but it wasn't a huge musical passion for me--I've always been more a guitar-bass-drums kinda guy. So I tended to be perfectly content with the stand-alone singles I'd hear at parties or on MTV, rarely diving into albums. 

One exception was Orchestral Manoeuv...

My Top 1000 Songs #603: Celebrity Skin

[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.]

Hole's 1994 sophomore album Live Through This was an omnipresent monster back in the day, loaded with deeply affecting songs, emotionally gripping and cathartic, with tremendous power either because of (or despite) the Kurt Cobain mystique, the unavoidable speculation of the extent to which he may or may not have been involved in (or at least inspired) some...

My Top 1000 Songs #602: Cactus Cat

[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.]

What a nice song! And aren't we all entitled to a nice song? Yes, yes we are. We are good people, and we deserve nice songs. Like this one.

Anyway, back in the late 80s, after getting my arms around the bigger acts in New Zealand's Flying Nun Records' stable (like the Clean, the Bats, and the Chills), I went casting about for other artists on the label. I pi...

My Top 1000 Songs #601: Shakedown Street

[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 you'll know if you've checked out Jittery White Guy Music--yep, still there for the perusing on Amazon.com--I hated the Grateful Dead right up to the moment I loved the Grateful Dead.

And, yeah, I really hated "Shakedown Street." I still remember the first time I heard it, at a party thrown one summer by my high school friend Craig. Pretty good mixtape, t...

My Top 1000 Songs #600: Wave Of Mutilation

[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.]

Well, how do you like that? Despite my periodic considerations of dropping this little project, we've made it through about 600 days of music. Will I last another 400? Dunno. 

But it's nice to hit this landmark with some Pixies. It's our second visit to 1989's Doolittle, and it's not too dissimilar from "Debaser" some 583 days ago: buzzsaw guitars, that hall...

My Top 1000 Songs #599: Green Grow The Rushes

[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.]

Having already cherry-picked a few tracks each from my two favorite R.E.M. albums, Murmur & Reckoning (among others), I should probably give it a rest. So, moving right along... ok, a bit of a cheat, as "Green Grow The Rushes," off 1985's Fables Of The Reconstruction, is probably that record's clearest throwback to the two preceding albums. What can I say; ...

My Top 1000 Songs #598: The Frug

[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.]

Going way back to Rilo Kiley's self-titled 1999 EP (later renamed The Initial Friend) for this adorable little trifle. The band expanded their musical palette over the years (as Jenny Lewis has continued to do as a solo artist), writing more sophisticated genre-hopping material, but there's just something special about this packet of sweetener. Maybe it's s...

My Top 1000 Songs #597: Unbearable

[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.]

Some early Britpop from the Wonder Stuff, from that awkward post-collegiate period when I was stumbling around a bit musically, veering from the R.E.M.-centric jangle pop of my college station years into a bit more UK-based alt.rock, trying to figure out what came next.

Their 1988 debut Eight Legged Groove Machine was something I picked up randomly--maybe I ...

My Top 1000 Songs #596: Graveyard Shift

[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 admit, it feels a little awkward to be on our third Uncle Tupelo track on the list and only now picking up a Jay Farrar vocal. 'Cuz for all my love of Jeff Tweedy--and I've been on team Wilco ever since--Farrar's voice is truly what made Tupelo special, weathered and weary beyond his years. Here we are on their 1990 debut, No Depression, and the boys, jus...