Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 60

My Top 1000 Songs #586: This Beat Goes On/Switchin' To Glide

[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.]

Always feels a little weird including a one-hit wonder on the list--like, c'mon, there are a million amazing Beatles and Stones and Who songs you could be going with, and you're taking up a slot on... The Kings? But, c'mon, what a great freakin' song!

Actually, two songs (from the Ontario band's 1980 debut LP The Kings Are Here), pasted together for a radio-...

My Top 1000 Songs #585: Modern Kicks

[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.]

This joyful (if under-appreciated) pop-punk track, like the rest of 2003's outstanding Exploding Hearts debut LP Guitar Romantic, is tough to listen to in a vacuum. Shortly after the release by this promising young band, their van overturned on the way home from a gig, killing 3 of the band's 4 members. So, yeah, the song and the album, for all their youthf...

My Top 1000 Songs #584: Mr. Mind Detector

[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.]

Before pivoting into 70s hard rockin' boogie mode, Status Quo were fine (and underrated) purveyors of late 60s British psych-pop. "Pictures Of Matchstick Men" is the primary legacy of the era, both because it's a fantastic song and perhaps due to its lifeline being extended by a few nifty cover versions. Less known, but every bit as definitive a document of...

My Top 1000 Songs #583: Fight For Your Right

[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, definitely one for the Guilty Pleasures files these days; to the extent I listen to the Beastie Boys, I tend to stick with 1989's sample-crazy Paul's Boutique. Their 1986 debut, Licensed to Ill, is silly, sophomoric, and, yeah, kinda sexist... but let's be honest: it was also the album that first opened up hip-hop for us Jittery White Guys, backing pl...

My Top 1000 Songs #582: I-94

[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.]

Australian first-wave punk band Radio Birdman never got much attention in the US (did they get much in Australia? Dunno), which is a shame, as they were pretty damn great. Sure, the obvious indebtedness to Iggy Pop & the Stooges gets them in the proto-punk lane, but they owe at least as much to the Stones and classic 50s & 60s rock & pop, with plenty of kil...

My Top 1000 Songs #581: Percolator

[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 visit to the Go-Go's universe-shifting "Our Lips Are Sealed," we turn the clock forward some 35+ years to see what the intervening decades hath wrought... and land on the furious pop-punk of Charly Bliss. "Percolator" (from 2017 debut LP Guppy) is deceptively infectious, Eva Hendricks' little-girl squeak, fronting the band's super-tight wa...

My Top 1000 Songs #580: Our Lips Are Sealed

[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, sure, it's easy to take this one for granted these days. Catchy pop song, all-girl band, whatever... but when we first heard this hit the radio back in 1981, along with the rest of Beauty And The Beat, it was one of those songs where... well, everything changed.

It was the summer after freshman year of high school. Overnight camp in Wisconsin; my last ...

My Top 1000 Songs #579: Lead A Normal Life

[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.]

Peter Gabriel's third self-titled album (aka Melt), released in 1980 as I was entering high school, was my introduction to his work (which soon led to my discovery of his Genesis records, which have played a huge part of my musical life ever since). "Games Without Frontiers" was the break-out radio single that first got my attention, but the album is packed...

My Top 1000 Songs #578: Too Much Of Nothing

[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 Much Of Nothing"--not to be confused with the previously-referenced Who obscurity "Too Much Of Anything"--is the latest on our list of Dylan songs where I greatly prefer the better-known cover to the Dylan original. (See also the Byrds and Manfred Mann and the Grateful Dead and Rainy Day...)

One of the handful of 8-track tapes my dad had when I was a ki...

My Top 1000 Songs #577: Depreston

[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 rare inclusion of music from the past decade. While I'm always wary of finding a song to be an all-time fave before it's had enough time to demonstrate true staying power, something about Courtney Barnett's "Depreston," from her 2015 long-player debut Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, already feels time-weary, a tune that seems li...