One of the things I like to do with these (self-proclaimed) eclectic playlists is sprinkle them with songs that have been previously featured here as free and legal MP3s, ranging back from these last 18 or so years. It’s first of all a nice way to reinforce the quality of the songs by saying yes, this is not only a free download, not just a “flavor of the month,” but it’s a legitimately wonderful song, here for the long run (I mean, “Hotel Lights”!: such a brilliant piece of music! so sadly overlooked!). Which leads me to the other great thing about revisiting songs I’ve reviewed in the past, which is the opportunity the playlists provide to hear these songs in a wider musical context than their being simply shunted into one or another 21st-century-focused mix. Among the many unfortunate side effects of our cultural tendency to put music in silos of genres and/or decades is that we rarely if ever get to hear music from our current generation of musicians standing in and around music written and performed by other kinds of musicians from other moments in time. Why is this important? I’ll tell you: I don’t really know. (But here are some more detailed thoughts on the matter.) I do suspect that consistently narrowing one’s horizons does not contribute to one’s health and well-being, never mind the health and well-being of a society composed of individuals with similarly narrowed outlooks.
If you’re with me this far, you already know all this. What you may not already know are some of the songs in this month’s mix (artful segue, huh?). We start with new wave power pop from an obscure, defunct British outfit that never had a US release, visit the Psychedelic Furs’ unexpected and unexpectedly good reunion album from last year, give a listen to an overlooked Rickie Lee Jones gem from a challenging album, dive into a “freak folk” antecedent from the dawn of the ’70s, spend a bit of time with Joe Jackson’s unusual live album, and, oh, a lot more. Please see (and listen) for yourself, via the handy Mixcloud widget right below the song list:
“The Way I See It” – The Brakes (For Why You Kicka My Donkey, 1979)
“Wreck” – The Bittersweets (Goodnight San Francisco, 2008)
“Chan Chan” – Buena Vista Social Club (Buena Vista Social Club, 1997)
“No-One” – The Psychedelic Furs (Made of Rain, 2020)
“Badge” – Cream (Goodbye, 1969)
“You’ve Been Gone Too Long” – Ann Sexton (Loving You, Loving Me, 1973)
“Living a Lie” – The dB’s (Repercussion, 1982)
“Sorry Is Gone” – Jessica Lea Mayfield (Sorry is Gone, 2017)
“The Duke” – Menahan Street Band (The Exciting Sounds of Menahan Street Band, 2021)
“Hard Line” – Jill Barber (For All Time, 2007)
“Life and How to Live it” -R.E.M. (Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985)
“Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide From Love)” – The Delfonics (single, 1968)
“Hotel Lights” – Amy Cook (Let The Light In, 2010)
“Firewalker” – Rickie Lee Jones (Ghostyhead, 1997)
“Knives Out” – Radiohead (Amnesiac, 2001)
“Dolphin” – Linda Perhacs (Parallelograms, 1970)
“Cheese Cake” – Dexter Gordon (Go, 1962)
“Ice Fishing” – The Cairo Gang (Goes Missing, 2015)
“Soul Kiss” – Joe Jackson (Big World, 1986)
“Sit On My Hands” – Frente! (Shape, 1996)
Stray observations:
* You may not have heard of The Brakes–I did not until this month, via Willfully Obscure–but there seems little doubting that this overlooked British band is from the late ’70s; “The Way I See It” in fact all but screams 1979, from the “Starry Eyes” echo of its introduction through its proto-new-wave vocal stylings and overall power-pop goodness. (This was a year that gave us not only The Records but “Girl of My Dreams,” “Oliver’s Army,” “Girls Talk,” “Back of My Hand,” “Too Late,” etc. etc.)
* Maybe it’s because of the long pandemic, maybe it’s because of the even longer-standing cultural trend that has splintered music into a dizzying variety of sub-genres (any number of which strike me better identified as “sound” rather than “music”; not a judgment just an observation), but I hear “The Duke,” from the venerable Brooklyn collective Menahan Street Band, and something in me warms and settles. Here are people playing solid three-dimensional instruments together; here is a groove and a melody; here is something that sounds like a party and a discussion at the same time. I missed hearing about these guys–and their music’s popularity among samplers–when they first appeared on the scene in the later ’00s. “The Duke” comes from their first album in nine years, and it’s laden with groove and melody from top to bottom.
* Linda Perhacs has an unusual history I can’t effectively summarize in this short space; check out her bio on Allmusic if you’d like the details. The executive summary is that she made one album, in 1970, considered something of a lost psych-folk classic, then disappeared so thoroughly that an indie label that re-released it in 1998 had to write in the liner notes that they had tried to find her and couldn’t. She had been working all those years as a dental hygienist in California. She was finally located and Parallelograms was not only given a more official re-release, she has eventually recorded, after all this time, two new albums, one in 2014 and one in 2017.
* Joe Jackson’s Big World, released in 1986, is an underrated landmark, an album recorded across a series of live performances in New York City during which the audience was instructed to refrain from applauding. The end result fit onto the relatively new CD format without a problem, but was too long for a standard vinyl record. It ended up being released as a three-sided album (the second side of the second record was simply left blank), which was kind of strange and kind of cool. For whatever reason, the album was a commercial disappointment after his previous two very successful releases (Night and Day, Body and Soul); in retrospect, this was something of a turning point in his career: Jackson, while musically active to this day, has yet to regain a mainstream audience.
* Is it my imagination or does the Delfonics “Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide From Love)” sound a little stalk-y here in 2021? Let’s assume songwriters Thom Bell and William Hart meant no harm in crafting this early Philly soul treasure. The single came out in 1968; it appeared on the group’s second album, Sound of Sexy Soul, the following year. Bell would soon hook up with Leon Huff and Kenny Gamble and produce any number of big hits; William Hart was the lead vocalist of the Delfonics, who numbered among group members Hart’s brother Wilbert.
* Bonus info for the extra curious: besides the Amy Cook song, the other songs this month that were previously reviewed on Fingertips as MP3s are “Wreck” by the Bittersweets (2008), “Sorry is Gone” from Jessica Lea Mayfield (2017), “Hard Line” from Jill Barber (2007), and The Cairo Gang’s “Ice Fishing” (2015).
Fingertips 