Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 78

My Top 1000 Songs #417: Marquee Moon

[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 10+ minute title track off Television's 1977 debut Marquee Moon isn't exactly a go-to ditty you'd turn to for a quick adrenaline rush or to throw onto a mixtape or to turn on a friend who has heard of the band but hasn't heard them. (That would be "See No Evil" or "Venus.")

Instead, it's an intense, arguably challenging piece I spin up only intermittentl...

My Top 1000 Songs #416: Girl In The War

[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.]

Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter's second cut on the list happens to be one of the most gorgeous, emotionally weighty contemporary folk songs one can imagine. The track, off 2006's The Animal Years, is a beautiful Americana ballad, restrained finger-picking and some light instrumentation building to enveloping ambience; though the real show-stopper is Ritter's...

My Top 1000 Songs #415: TV Eye

[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, there are any number of excellent and/or groundbreaking proto-punk numbers from Iggy Pop and/or the Stooges, but for purely visceral insane-volume sensory overload, "TV Eye," from 1970 sophomore Stooges LP Fun House, is...

Eh...

No need to prattle on about it.

Crank it up, piss off your friends.

Brief video excerpt, live 1970:Live, a few decades later (wi...

My Top 1000 Songs #414: One More Hour

[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 outstanding track from Sleater-Kinney's 1997 powerhouse Dig Me Out, "One More Hour" shows the trio's facility not just with visceral punk through a feminist lens, but more emotionally grueling interpersonal exposure. The music is relatively restrained here, traded guitar licks over Janet Weiss' almost military-precise, staccato drumming, backing wha...

My Top 1000 Songs #413: Stagnation

[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.]

Sunday mornings are when we pull out the old prog records here at the JWG household. And a personal fave is Genesis' 1970 LP Trespass. It's essentially the band's first prog album--discounting their more pop/folk-oriented (and underrated, IMHO) 1969 debut--and predates the glory days when Phil Collins and Steve Hackett cemented the Peter Gabriel-era line-up...

My Top 1000 Songs #412: Build

[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 in the late 90s and early 00s, when I was actively trading live/rare music through a GeoCities home page and snail mail, one of the coolest things I ever got in a trade was a home-made cassette of impossible-to-find early singles by various artists in the then-nascent Elephant 6 musical collective. I'd started getting into bands like Apples in Stereo a...

My Top 1000 Songs #411: No Better Place

 

[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.]

Fountains of Wayne had so many equally splendid songs that it feels a little artificial singling out a favorite or two. If I'm being honest, it does feel a little like I've once again landed on a spot in my Top 1000 where I feel a burning need for a FoW track and I'm just gonna randomly select one off my home-made Fountains' Greatest Hits mixtape.
Still, th...

My Top 1000 Songs #410: Revolution Blues

[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.]

Over the course of over half a century, Neil Young has produced music suiting every conceivable mood, from the beauty of "Birds" to the anger of "Ohio" to the howling furiosity of many of his Crazy Horse collaborations. But rarely has he sounded as downright menacing and frightening as on "Revolution Blues," off 1974's wonderfully varied On The Beach. 

Some ...

My Top 1000 Songs #409: Porpoise Song

[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.]

One of the stand-out examples of late 60s psych-pop comes from an unlikely source--a Monkees song penned by Carole King/Gerry Goffin (who also wrote the prior Monkees track to make this list). The bath of organ, the hypnotic melody, Mickey Dolenz' languid delivery, and some touchstone headphone-friendly sonic tweaks make for a very pleasant trip. And, sure,...

My Top 1000 Songs #408: Precision Auto

[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.]

Today's my first day teaching a new law school class. Pretty exciting. So it's kind of fitting that today we land on one of the ultimate adrenaline-rush wake-up-and-start-the-day rave-up numbers. The purely visceral post-punk rouser, off Superchunk's 1993 On The Mouth, is on the short list of songs I can always rely on to start the day right when I get in t...