Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 82

My Top 1000 Songs #381: Hang On To Yourself

[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.]

Like a lot of kids in the 70s, I was first turned on to David Bowie by that amazing ChangesOneBowie compilation, one of history's finest greatest hits collections. From there I worked my way through his back catalog. The first stop, of course, was 1972's Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.

Being a pre-teen with little disposable cash, I ...

My Top 1000 Songs #380: Not Too Soon

[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.]

Hot on the heels of the Jam's "Smithers-Jones," here's another example of a band's non-frontman (or, here, frontwoman) stepping to the fore and absolutely crushing it. While Kristin Hersh was generally Throwing Muses' visionary, guitarist Tanya Donelly occasionally took a spot at the mic. And "Not Too Soon," off 1991's The Real Ramona, is a true tour de for...

My Top 1000 Songs #379: I Think I'm In Love

[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.]

Recently voted the #1 song by Those About To Consume A Gummy, Grab Some Headphones, And Dissolve Into The Sofa.

I mean, probably.  

Another song off Spiritualized's 1997 Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, and like the previously-referenced title track, it's a modern-day psychedelic opus. The sweeping 8-minute epic feels like a two-part suite. The ...

My Top 1000 Songs #378: Smithers-Jones

[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 rare non-Paul Weller song in the Jam canon, "Smithers-Jones" (off 1979's sublime Setting Sons) finds bassist Paul Foxton going for the full-on Ray Davies. It's a humble tale, kinda crushing and kinda sweet. Middle-aged, middle-management dude trudges through his daily commute; gets called into the boss's office expecting the long-awaited promotion; find...

My Top 1000 Songs #377: Golden Blunders

[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.]

Seattle indie pop act The Posies had some solid records over their long run, and plenty of really good tunes (to say nothing of the countless beloved side-projects to which frontmen Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow contributed, from the reformed Big Star to jangle pop acts like Orange Humble Band).

But "Golden Blunders," off 1990's sophomore LP Dear 23, was at ...

My Top 1000 Songs #376: Up The Bracket

[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 didn't bother checking out the Libertines when they first came to short-lived prominence in the early '00s. The UK music mags I read like Mojo and Uncut seemed to talk more about the band's infighting and drug problems than their music, and they kind of got lumped into that whole Interpol-Strokes-Franz Ferdinand "return of guitars to rock & roll" hype mac...

My Top 1000 Songs #375: I Heard You Looking

[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 exception to my "No Instrumentals!" rule for this list, Yo La Tengo's epic guitar jam "I Heard You Looking" has long carried special emotional resonance for me. The band steadily grew stronger and stronger, from the decent if not-necessarily-striking college radio sound of their earliest late 80s records through the transition into indie rock stalwa...

My Top 1000 Songs #374: Amplifier

[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.]

No bid for immortality in this unassuming little ditty by the dB's... just a dark, nasty, and kinda funny hoot set to a jangly Bo Diddley beat. Coming off the band's second album, 1981's Repercussion, "Amplifier" tells the sad tale of a spurned ex taking everything the dude owns save that inexplicably left-behind guitar amp.

Is it deep? Profound? Nope. But l...

My Top 1000 Songs #373: Oh! Sweet Nuthin'

Doug Yule fans, rejoice! Yes, the last song on the Velvet Underground's final (proper) album, 1970's relatively radio-friendly Loaded, is still a Lou Reed composition, but Yule takes lead on vocals & guitar, and if there's an argument that he deserves as much credit as Reed's foil as the man he replaced, John Cale, this song is it. (Indeed, as far as I can tell, Lou himself never included the song in his live repertoire after going solo, which seems a damn shame.)
The song is an apt way to bid fa...

My Top 1000 Songs #372: No Myth

[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.]

When Michael Penn's 1989 debut LP March came out, I assume most of us who picked it up were like, oh, great, Sean Penn's brother made a record, whatever, guess I'll give it a try... and then opening track "No Myth" started up and there was a collective smile and sigh of relief. Ok, sure, it sounds a bit of its era, particularly that drum sound... but you ca...