Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 88

Genesis: Abacabacaba (1981, Revisited)

Been a bit since the last imaginary album I shared, but here's the latest: Abacabacaba, a (minor) reworking of Genesis' 1981 Abacab LP.

I'm much more a Peter Gabriel-era Genesis fan, though I enjoy some of the records from the Phil Collins-helmed years as well--particularly the first couple (Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering, which retained some of the artier aspects of the Gabriel records), but also 1980's Duke, which sees them moving pretty solidly into their new pop style, albeit holdin...

My Top 1000 Songs #321: Made Of Stone

[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.]

Here's another example of one of my favorite albums not making its first appearance until pretty well down this list, again because it's such a solid album from start to finish that no one song necessarily emerges as a personal favorite. The Stone Roses' 1989 debut made a huge impact on me from first listen, the slow-building "I Wanna Be Adored" patiently d...

My Top 1000 Songs #320: Rush

[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 four highly creative, varied, and seriously underrated albums, Mick Jones disbanded his post-Clash outfit Big Audio Dynamite and formed a new combo, the name slightly altered to BAD II (and, later, simply Big Audio). I'm not nearly as fond of the work from these iterations of the band, but there were a few highlights here and there, most notably "Rush...

My Top 1000 Songs #319: Brian And Robert

[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 admittedly idiosyncratic pick, "Brian And Robert" is unlikely to get a shout-out from even diehard Phish phans, much less normal, rational people. In the Phish pantheon, it's one of their songs that least translates into the favored live setting, a brief vocal showcase free of the band's legendary jams. But as a sucker for harmonies--and yeah, I'm a...

My Top 1000 Songs #318: Fade Into You

[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.]

If--and we're speaking entirely hypothetically and off the record here--one were planning to spend Saturday night incredibly high, crashed out on the couch, it's hard to pick a better soundtrack than Mazzy Star's second LP, 1993's So Tonight That I Might See. Late guitarist David Roback, having co-founded retro-jangly-psych-pop band Rain Parade and then the...

My Top 1000 Songs #317: Sister Ray

[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 I'm violating one of the rules of this whole Top 1000 enterprise. I'm trying to avoid songs that are "objectively great" (whatever that means), or historically important or groundbreaking, and sticking with the songs I simply enjoy the most, either in terms of playing them constantly or having a deep emotional connection to them.

And the Velvet Undergr...

My Top 1000 Songs #316: Sharing Patrol Theme

[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.]

Some songs on the list are obvious, widely-shared favorites, the sort of songs we can celebrate together, our mutual admiration binding us together. And then there are the super-obscure ones, the songs that I love for purely personal reasons, that I'm convinced few people have heard, much less count among their favorites.

So, yeah, this is one of those latte...

My Top 1000 Songs #315: Killer Queen

[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.]

It's spring 1976. I'm 9 years old, a nerdy kid approaching the end of 4th grade, totally obsessed with the AM Top 40 station I'd discovered around Christmas 1975. I spend most afternoons in my room, with a red, white & blue handheld transistor radio held to my ear, following the pop singles as they race up and down the charts (aided by the weekly music surv...

My Top 1000 Songs #314: Puttin' People On The 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 Drive-By Truckers have so many harrowing, truly moving populist anthems, it's hard to pick one without picking a half dozen; I was all set to hone in on the amazing "Sink Hole," but ended up pivoting back to "Puttin' People On My Moon," one of the songs that first attracted me to the band. This track from 2004's The Dirty South, like much of that amazin...

New Releases: The Salt Collective

Been on a bit of a shopping spree lately. Here's another new-ish one I'm enjoying: Life by indie pop supergroup The Salt Collective. Parisian band Salt released their debut, The Loneliness of Clouds, in 2019, and it was pretty interesting, some intriguingly skewed jangle pop with unpredictable yet still catchy hooks, though I found the vocalist to be a bit of an acquired taste. The band addresses that one drawback by adding a who's-who of indie pop legends under the Salt Collective umbrella, inc...