Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 68

My Top 1000 Songs #510: Nemesis

 [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.]

Maybe this belongs in the "you had to be there" file, but this track, from Shriekback's 1985 Oil & Gold, was a huge college-era mainstay for me me. A dark, swampy dance track--and presumably the only song to ever include Parthenogenesis in the lyrics--it was a constant fixture on our college radio setlists for a few months, as well as ending up on countles...

My Top 1000 Songs #509: Go

 [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.]

The Apples In Stereo are one of those bands who have so many equally great stand-alone pop tracks that it feels like picking one over another for inclusion on this list feels kinda like blindly spinning the old iPod shuffle wheel and seeing where it lands. 

Still, "Go" (off 2000's Discovery Of A World Inside The Moone) is ridiculously fun. Some retro 60s no...

My Top 1000 Songs #508: Los Angeles

 [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 tend to favor some of X's later albums (particularly 1982's Under The Big Black Sun), as they broadened their initial punk chops with anthemic rock & roll. Still, 1980's Los Angeles remains a stunning debut, blending punk energy with Billy Zoom's more traditional rockabilly-infused riffs and the dynamic interplay between vocalists. John Doe & Exene Cerve...

My Top 1000 Songs #507: Between Planets

 [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.]

The Jesus And Mary Chain's initial lure was the sweet, sugary pop songs buried beneath sheets of distortion and feedback. Yet as they peeled back those sheets--and left behind a trademark aesthetic that would be copied by countless other bands--it turned out those little pop songs could stand on their own. One of my favorites was "Between Planets," from 19...

New(ish) Release: Smug Brothers

Picture an incredibly prolific Ohio indie band, countless snippets of skewed lo-fi pop, choice hum-along nuggets interspersed with seemingly effortless toss-offs brief enough to simply warm you up for the next alternate-universe hit waiting around the corner.

Yeah, the Guided By Voices comparisons seem unavoidable. But Smug Brothers are carving out a niche in their own right, a bit of warm, whimsical jangle that's less GbV (or at least more geared towards Tobin Sprout), and perhaps a bit in line ...

My Top 1000 Songs #506: Sandusky

 [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've largely avoided instrumentals on the list (this appears to be the 4th, and possibly last, inclusion, unless I go on another Eno jag). After all, this is a list of rock & roll songs, and the words are a big part of rock & roll. So it takes something particularly magical to elevate a wordless composition into these ranks.
But "Sandusky" is absolutely mag...

My Top 1000 Songs #505: Smoking Her Wings

[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 Zealand's Bats have plenty of great songs, low-key jangly indie pop from an alternate universe where low-key jangly indie pop rules the airwaves. "Smoking Her Wings," from their 1990 sophomore album The Law Of Things, is on the quieter, broodier side, less perky than their pop stuff, a haunting late-night ballad with a hushed vibe that lingers long afte...

My Top 1000 Songs #504: Go To The Mirror

[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 don't listen to Tommy much these days. It's kind of fallen to the wayside with other formative albums of my youth, kinda like The Wall. When I'm in the mood for the Who--which, frankly, is still pretty frequent--I'm more likely to grab Quadrophenia or Who's Next/Lifehouse.

But as a pre-teen just getting into classic rock, and especially The Who, a band wit...

My Top 1000 Songs #503: Hey, St. Peter

[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.]

Ah, those pre-internet days! When you could hear a song on the radio you really liked, and if you missed the DJ's intro, you'd have the hardest time tracking it down... if you could at all.

I probably heard this some time in middle school, late 70s, on Chicago's WXRT. Really catchy track--a little disco, a little new wave, some odd vocal effects, kinda progg...

My Top 1000 Songs #502: Define A Transparent Dream

[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 example of one of my favorite albums not showing up until surprisingly deep into the list... here, largely because Olivia Tremor Control's amazing 1996 retro-psychedelic opus Dusk At Cubist Castle works better as an interwoven album-length musical collage than on an individual song level. It's not a concept album where the songs don't make sense on ...