Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 6

My Top 2000 Songs #1063: Does Your Mother Know

Yep, we're going there... ABBA finally hit the list! It had to happen!

Sure, ABBA is pretty much the definitive entry in the Guilty Pleasures file, but if you pretend they didn't have some great songs, I don't think we can hang out. Of course, "Does Your Mother Know," from 1979's Voulez-Vous, is something of an anomaly in their catalog. A guitar-driven bubblegum song helmed by the boys in the band, it's far more glam/power-pop than most of their candy-coated disco-ready pop hits, drifting into Ba...

My Top 2000 Songs #1062: Last Stop--This Town

Mark Oliver Everett--centerpiece of the evolving Eels--can write the most emotionally devastating, pathos-rich songs this side of Mountain Goats' John Darnielle or Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum, often unadorned and raw, but occasionally gussied up in surprisingly punch alt.rock tunes. "Last Stop: This Town," off 1998's Electro-Shock Blues, is another stand-out in the latter category. On the surface it's a fun little ditty that sounds oh-so-90s, with its bursts of distortion and turntable scra...

My Top 2000 Songs #1061: Speeding Motorcycle

Much like Bob Dylan (or, as more recently noted on these pages, Richard Thompson), the late Daniel Johnston is an artist I generally prefer as covered by others. To be sure, there is a unique magic and sadness in the original, typically lo-fi recordings from Johnston himself, both his endless naivete and mental illness reflected in his brazenly outsider anti-art. But many artists have successfully unearthed small gems within the songwriting once the novelty act voyeurism is stripped away.

None ha...

My Top 2000 Songs #1060: World Shut Your Mouth

After leaving early post-punk/new wave band Teardrop Explodes--one of those acts I find interesting but have never enjoyed nearly as much as I'm told I should--frontman Julian Cope kicked off a long-running solo career with the 1984 LP World Shut Your Mouth. Confusingly, the album included no song with that title. He remediated this with a 1986 single (found on 1987's Saint Julian), a catchy pop song that deservedly got a decent amount of airplay, albeit without creating a whole lot of lasting b...

My Top 2000 Songs #1059: We're All As We Lie

Genesis co-founder and guitarist Anthony Phillips didn't stick around very long, leaving after 1970's Trespass due to crippling stage fright. But he's had a long solo career since then. Most of his albums have been largely instrumental, but his first couple solo records featured some lovely songs that followed in the tradition of early Genesis. 1977 debut The Geese & The Ghost is particularly great, aided by guest vocals from Phil Collins (who didn't join Genesis until after Phillips departed), ...

My Top 2000 Songs #1058: Mower

I first fell for Superchunk because of their frenetic, energetic update to old-school punk rock. Hell, "Precision Auto," the opening track on 1993's On The Mouth , feels like a speeding locomotive about the fly off the tracks any second. But "Mower," from the same LP, slows things down to a muddy dirge without losing an ounce of the power. Something about the tune, particularly Mac McCaughan's emotional wail, feels spiritually compelling, a lumbering anthem even if I can't quite make out all the ...

My Top 2000 Songs #1057: Dreams Never End

I have tremendous love for New Order's moody, haunting 1981 debut, Movement . It's always struck me as more of a Joy Division coda, a commemoration of the passing of JD frontman Ian Curtis, than as a proper New Order introduction. There are few hints of the more synth-pop direction the band would take afterwards, but the closest thing to a transitional song on the LP is "Dreams Never End." It takes a step further into New Order's dance-pop territory than the bulk of the record, a counterpart of s...

My Top 2000 Songs #1056: Little Willy

I don't care what the cool kids say; I'm just gonna keep dropping old Sweet singles onto this list until I run out!

As noted on multiple prior occasions (and described in more detail in my book), Sweet were one of the earliest bands I fell in love with as a 9-year-old kid first discovering Top 40 radio. "Fox On The Run" was among the initial hits I obsessed over while listening to the local Chicago station on my handheld transistor radio up in my room, eventually saving up enough allowance to run...

My Top 2000 Songs #1055: That's What You Always Say

This cut off The Dream Syndicate's 1983 full-length debut The Days Of Wine And Roses (reworking a rawer version from the prior year's debut EP) sounds like a great lost garage rocker, discovered on a dusty 45 found in the back of a record shop 15 years after its release. A basic bass riff gradually adds some jangle, and then some buzzsaw guitars--simple yet riveting, like some rare track by the Standells or the Leaves, given just enough of an early 80s Paisley Underground punch-up to keep it fro...

My Top 2000 Songs #1054: The Eleven

Like a few prior picks from the early days of the Grateful Dead, "The Eleven" is at least as much a jam as a proper song. Still, it's got more of a set structure than, say, the free-form instrumental motif of "Spanish Jam," or the typical extended "Dark Star" exploration. I talked about the song once before, upon creating a homemade mix comprised of multiple versions of "The Eleven" stitched together (done as a lark but it turned out kinda great). 

Briefly, the tune--named for its odd 11/12 rhyth...