It’s December and here’s a last playlist for what has been pretty much of a wreck of a year; I speak both personally and collectively. So there is no overt display of holiday cheer– you can grab that elsewhere if that’s your thing. And yet here’s the magic of music: even songs offering up protestations of various sorts end up somehow fueling an optimistic flame, however fragile and windblown. Some of that is due to the connectiveness of song, which inherently represents an effort by a human being, or a group of human beings, to reach out to other humans, consciousness to consciousness. Some of the subtle optimism comes simply from one person’s saying “I see it too”–whether it’s the dirty world or the hit of a new love. Songs can travel up or travel down and they still move us.
As usual the playlist is enlivened with synchronicities. There’s the unplanned adjacency of the Radiohead song containing the lyric “The sky turns green” with the Peter Green song “In the Skies.” There is the unpremeditated gathering of outtakes, perhaps an unconscious cri de coeur, a seeking of a better place to be than here. And there are the inadvertent appearances, cloaked and uncloaked, of two previous Republican presidents whose questionable moral compasses look benign compared to the sociopathic narcissism of the current office holder, adrift in his self-created sea of grift and cruelty. It’s a damnable ride but one day he’ll be drowning in his own wreckage and, with each of us using our own system of survival, we will arrive, blinking, in the light of a better day.
Here are the specifics:
1. “Private Number” – William Bell and Judy Clay (single, 1968)
2. “News” – Bruce Woolley & the Camera Club (English Garden outtake, 1979)
3. “Lose It Again” – Hatchie (Liquorice, 2025)
4. “Can’t Let Go” – Lucinda Williams (Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, 1998)
5. “Mykynos” – Fleet Foxes (Sun Giant, 2008)
6. “Dirty World” – Meshell Ndegeocello (Weather, 2011)
7. “Forgive Her Anything” – Elvis Costello & the Attractions (Blood & Chocolate outtake, 1986)
8. “Popafangout” – The Sharp Pins (Balloon Balloon Balloon, 2025)
9. “Bring Down the Birds (Outtake)” – Herbie Hancock (Blow-Up Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1967)
10. “Salvation” – Scanners (Submarine, 2010)
11. “Where I End and You Begin” – Radiohead (Hail to the Thief, 2003)
12. “In the Skies” – Peter Green (In the Skies, 1979)
13. “Boy” – Book of Love (Book of Love, 1986)
14. “Lightnin’ Strikes” – lou Christie (single, 1966)
15. “Hit” – The Sugarcubes (Stick Around For Joy, 1992)
16. “Loaded” – The Idle Hands (The Hearts We Broke on the Way to the Show, 2009)
17. “Just Blue” – Space (Just Blue, 1978)
18. “Severed” – The Decemberists (I’ll Be Your Girl, 2018)
19. “Wreck” – Neko Case (Neon Grey Midnight Green, 2025)
20. “System of Survival” – Earth, Wind & Fire (Touch the World, 1987)
Random notes:
* I only recently learned of the existence of a smattering of extra recordings made by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club, a top-notch but short-lived new wave outfit, who had released one dynamite LP in 1979 and disbanded. The easy to love “News” appears to have been recorded at the same time, and the internet tells me that there was actually a second album at least partially recorded that was never released. I may need to spring for the 2024 box set to finally hear it.
* Speaking of something that’s somewhat difficult to locate, the Elvis Costello and the Attractions song “Forgive Her Anything” emerged on a 1990s Rhino Records expanded version of Blood & Chocolate but can’t be found on Spotify. For Elvis fans it’s a terrific find.
* And then for something easy to locate but difficult to understand, give “Popafangout” by Sharp Pins a spin or two. I’m staring at the lyrics and haven’t a clue what Kai Slater is singing about. But you know what? That doesn’t matter. The song connects via vibe and sound, and what a sound it is from a 21-year-old. I’m going to spend some time with this new album of theirs.
* “Lightnin’ Strikes” is an odd, memorable song, Lou Christie’s one claim to U.S. chart-topping fame. Once upon a time this was all we needed to know. But scratch the surface of any so-called “one-hit wonder” (thanks, internet!) and be introduced to innumerable complications and piles of forlorn facts. Let’s just say that Christie was a Pittsburgh area singer and songwriter with a longer-than-anticipated Wikipedia page that is, truth be told, more detailed than interesting. Without any more notable commercial successes to speak of, Christie nevertheless stayed active in the music industry into the 2020s; he died this past June.
* I have long felt that Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief never fully got its due. After the experimental electronics of Kid A, they were expected, somehow, both to continue avant-garde-ishly and yet also to go back to their guitar-based roots. And in sort of doing both many seemed to think they did neither. The album is dark and occasionally dour but there are many excellent songs to be had along the way, including this one.
* Herbie Hancock was just 26 when he recorded the music he composed for the now-classic Antonioni film Blow-Up. The music evokes the so-called “Swinging London” scene depicted in the movie, which came out in 1966. The album was released in 1967. That’s Phil Woods on the alto sax. This was Hancock’s first film score but not his last. He would go on to win an Oscar for his score to the 1986 movie Round Midnight.
Fingertips 