Author: jeremyfingertips

I’ve curated one holiday-related song into my December playlist, and it’s right there at the top. On the one hand, there are plenty of other places to go for a more generous helping of holiday tunes, if that’s what you’re craving. But I also wanted attention paid to this most humane of seasonal compositions, that it shouldn’t get lost in a candy-coated flow of generic Christmas-ing. “The Christians and the Pagans” by Dar Williams comes to us in 2023 like a long-lost if slightly time-addled friend, a song about personal connection and tolerance, told with open-hearted humor, that reminds us how much these qualities have been shoved aside by the social-media-fueled, extremist-friendly madness that has ruled our collective lives for the past decade. On the one hand, this a straightforward story song with a subtle emotional wallop. (For whatever reason, when Dar sings the line “It’s Christmas and your daughter’s here” I get a lump in my throat, every time. And I’m Jewish.) On the other hand, I read the scene with my 2020s perspective and get a bigger, more intrusive lump in my throat, feeling into the song’s implicit innocence and hopeful fellowship. No one at the dinner table was irrationally angry, no one unwilling to consider another point of view; not unrelatedly, no one at the table was looking at their iPhone, if only because they didn’t exist. Meaning, no one in that world was busy taking pictures of themselves, or insulting strangers from a distance, or blatantly ignoring the people they were sharing space with. I grieve the loss of that world when I hear this song. Whatever improvements we have made together since the 1990s seem not necessarily worth the tradeoff.

Beyond the first track, and perhaps the second, there isn’t any holiday material here, although one can always read between the lines. These mixes, as you know, never arrive to present an overarching theme or particular destination; the ongoing intent is, rather, the (ideally) nimble amalgamation of songs from different eras, a willful stream of divergent sounds towards the goal of one inclusive listening experience. This is the year’s last mix, which means that my self-imposed restriction–no artist featured more than once in a calendar year–will reset the next time we meet. At the same time, I’m always seeking to bring in artists each month that haven’t previously been heard here. This month you’ll encounter nine artists who are entirely new to the Eclectic Playlist Series, not featured at all in any mix dating back to 2014.

Here’s the lineup for December; extra notes below the widget:

1. “The Christians and the Pagans” – Dar Williams (Mortal City, 1996)
2. “Thank God the Year is Finally Over” – Paper Route (Thank God the Year is Finally Over EP, 2009)
3. “Townie” – Mitski (Bury Me at Makeout Creek, 2014)
4. “Whole Wide World” – The Rolling Stones (Hackney Diamonds, 2023)
5. “You’ve Been in Love Too Long” – Martha Reeves & The Vandellas (single, 1965)
6. “Getting Away With It” – Electronic (single, 1989)
7. “Cybernaut” – Tonto’s Expanding Head Band (Zero Time, 1971)
8. “Limbs” – Emma Pollock (Watch the Fireworks, 2007)
9. “Fotzepolitic” – Cocteau Twins (Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990)
10. “Broken Wing” – Lowpines (In Silver Halides, 2018)
11. “All I Can Do” – Carpenters (Offering, 1969)
12. “The Book I Read” – Talking Heads (Talking Heads 77, 1977)
13. “Everything Reminds Me of My Dog” – Jane Siberry (Bound By the Beauty, 1989)
14. “Video Game” – Sufjan Stevens (The Ascension, 2020)
15. “Empty Chairs” – Don McLean (American Pie, 1971)
16. “I Remember” – The Roots (Undun, 2011)
17. “Retour a Vega” – The Stills (Wicker Park original soundtrack, 2004)
18. “Take Good Care of Me” – Rachel Sweet (Protect the Innocent, 1980)
19. “Jeff Goldblum” – Mattiel (Georgia Gothic, 2022)
20. “Astral Weeks” – Van Morrison (Astral Weeks, 1968)

Random notes:

* Mitski is a compelling singer and songwriter, fully inhabiting a variety of sonic landscapes. Her first two albums, in the early ’10s, were recorded as school projects while at SUNY Purchase, and veered mostly towards quiet, off-kilter compositions, some piano-driven, others more idiosyncratically scored. For her 2014 label debut, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, she picked up a guitar for the first time and the music in some cases went in new directions. “Townie” is crunchy and catchy and may take you aback a bit if you’re more familiar with her more recent, silkier (but still idiosyncratic) output.

* I like how the Rolling Stones sound on this new record–snappy, interested, even vibrant, with Mick in fine voice. I’m less in love with the songs themselves; with a couple of exceptions, the songwriting strikes me as humdrummy as some of the generic-sounding song titles (“Depending On You,” “Mess It Up,” “Tell Me Straight”). “Whole Wide World,” however, has a bit of musical sparkle to it, to my ears. The riff-based groove is at once clean and dirty, as Stonesy as they come; on the heels of that, the unexpectedly melodic chorus is a bit of a delight. I salute these guys for still making it happen.

* When visiting the various decades, I often seek to find songs from different years in each decade, for variety’s sake. But sometimes two songs from the same year can be just as illustrative of a decade’s variety. Case in point: “Cybernaut” and “Empty Chairs,” both released in 1971, but would one ever suspect? They seem to be coming to us from different planets, never mind different years. “Cybernaut” is the lead track on one of rock’n’roll’s earliest synthesizer albums, while “Empty Chairs” is a warm and organic song featuring only acoustic guitar and voice. “Cybernaut” is forward-looking, mesmerizing groove, “Empty Chairs” evocative nostalgia. Merriam-Webster, by the way, claims that the first known use of the word cybernaut came in 1989. They are apparently not fans of pioneering electronic music outfits, never mind devotees of the classic British spy show The Avengers, the third episode of the fourth season of which was called “The Cybernauts,” and aired in 1965.

* Most people are familiar with the Carpenters for their run of soft-rock mega-hits in the early 1970s, and perhaps also for Karen Carpenter’s tragic trajectory. But before they became chart-toppers and household names, they had recorded an album called Offering, and were credited as Carpenters (no “the”). The LP went nowhere commercially, but was re-released the following year as Ticket to Ride, after their single “Close to You” went to #1 in the summer of 1970. Offering/Ticket to Ride is notable for being performed largely by Karen and Richard themselves (she on drums, he on keyboards) and for featuring Richard on lead vocals on half of the tracks. As you can tell from “All I Can Do,” the sound is rather different from the vibe they presented as the hits started rolling in that next year.

* While there is nothing at all wrong with Bonnie Raitt’s well-known cover of “You’ve Been in Love Too Long,” the Martha Reeves & The Vandellas original is unbeatable.

* The Stills’ song “Retour a Vega,” sung in French, was an early Fingertips favorite, featured originally here in 2004. The band, formed in Montreal in 2000, were something of a big indie deal back in the ’00s, but called it quits in 2011. The song appeared on the soundtrack to the movie Wicker Park, which featured a purposeful lineup of happening indie bands of the moment, including Death Cab for Cutie, Broken Social Scene, and Snow Patrol.

* I am not normally on board with long, repetitive and/or meandering songs, and furthermore have little patience for Van Morrison’s self-important improvisational shtick. And yet, “Astral Weeks”: somehow it all comes together here–the offhand, inscrutable lyrics, the marvelous acoustic groove, the incisive flute accents, the bass line hook, the wild string arrangements, all conspiring to take listeners, nearly against their will, on a seven-minute ride to some other world than our own. It goes on and on and I guess I enter the slipstream, or some such thing, because it feels over in a flash. For those who may be interested in more background about this song than you thought might be possible to report on, check out the most recent episode of Andrew Hickey’s monumental podcast series A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, which is partially what brought the song back to the front burner here (although I’ll note I had nearly included it in EPS 10.10, before the Hickey episode; it’s been in my “to be featured at some point” folder for a long time).

As the American baseball season has drawn (at last!) to a close, I’m pulling from the immense scrap heap of musical history a semi-obscure piece of jazzy pop named after a baseball player with the unusual name of Van Lingle Mungo. Mungo was a talented pitcher–a five-time All-Star, playing 11 seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers and three for the New York Giants in the 1930s and 1940s–but we’d have zero reason to recall him at this point were it not for Dave Frishberg’s weirdly compelling song. With lyrics that are nothing more than names of baseball players from the 1940s strung artfully together, the song “Van Lingle Mungo” was a favorite of the legendary NYC radio DJ Vin Scelsa back in the day, which is how I came to know of it as a relative youngster. Something somewhere reminded me of it this fall, leading to its inclusion at the bottom of this month’s mix. Enjoy the autumnal mood and marvel in particular at the way the players’ names scan perfectly as lyrics.

“Van Lingle Mungo” also acts as an idiosyncratic, unintended bookend to the playlist’s opener, which is another song, now that I think about it, that features lyrics that are merely a list of items: King Crimson’s “Elephant Talk,” in which each verse is comprised of words related to talking, the verses going in alphabetical order from A to E. My favorite moment is in the fourth verse, when vocalist Adrian Belew breaks the format to sing “These are words with a D this time.”

In between these two odd but potent songs you’ll find the usual brew of different sounds and decades intermingling as one extended listening experience. Here, specifically, is what you are in for; extra notes below the widget:

1. “Elephant Talk” – King Crimson (Discipline, 1981)
2. “Bootleg Firecracker” – Middle Kids (single, 2023)
3. “Her Eyes are a Blue Million Miles” – Captain Beefheart (Clear Spot, 1972)
4. “Driven Away” – Mary Lou Lord (Speeding Motorcycle EP, 2001)
5. “I Can’t Believe You Love Me” – Tammi Terrell (Irresistible, 1965)
6. “That Tone of Voice” – Amy Rigby (Diary of a Mod Housewife, 1996)
7. “Australia” – The Shins (Wincing the Night Away, 2007)
8. “Dreaming” – Blondie (Eat to the Beat, 1979)
9. “Eucalyptus” – The National (First Two Pages of Frankenstein, 2023)
10. “Haunt Me” – Sade (Stronger Than Pride, 1988)
11. “Ugly Beauty” – Thelonius Monk (Underground, 1968)
12. “The Big Show” – The Extraordinaires (The Postcard EP, 2011)
13. “Inbetweener” – Sleeper (Smart, 1995)
14. “I’ve Got a Need For You” – David Ruffin (David, recorded 1970-71; released 2004)
15. “Down in the Valley” – The Broken West (I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, 2006)
16. “The Voice” – The Moody Blues (Long Distance Voyager, 1981)
17. “Red Horse” – Corinne Bailey Rae (Black Rainbows, 2023)
18. “Wanderlust” – Polly Scattergood (Arrows, 2013)
19. “Talisman” – Air (Moon Safari, 1998)
20. “Van Lingle Mungo” – Dave Frishberg (single, 1969)

Random notes:

* “I Can’t Believe You Love Me” was Tammi Terrell’s debut single for Motown, recorded when she was only 20. When her first few records didn’t gain much commercial traction, Berry Gordy partnered her with Marvin Gaye for a series of singles that became major hits, starting with the indelible “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” in 1967. But health problems, which dated back to severe headaches suffered as a child, soon began to interfere with Terrell’s ability to perform. Later that same year she collapsed on stage while singing with Gaye. She was subsequently diagnosed with a brain tumor. After an initial operation she continued to record and perform but her condition would steadily decline. When she died in 1970 she was only 24.

* The National’s cryptically-named album First Two Pages of Frankenstein may be the first release of theirs that captured my ears without hesitation. “Eucalyptus” is one of a number of excellent tracks. That said, I have yet to find time to investigate their surprise follow-up recording, Laugh Track, which shares cover art but offers up 12 new songs just five months after Frankenstein‘s release. It’s almost as if my mind and/or heart can only absorb a certain amount of input from any given artist in the course of a year or so. I’ll get to Laugh Track, which is probably quite good too, but it may yet take a while.

* I missed the memo on this but I am now belatedly glad to know that Mary Lou Lord started singing again in the mid-’10s. I had heard about the serious problem she had with her vocal cords some ten years earlier; it didn’t sound good at the time. And then I lost track of her. (There’s so much to keep track of!) So I’m just now realizing that she returned in 2015 with her first album since 2004, the self-released Backstreet Angels. More recently, the British label Fire Records released a career retrospective double-album last year called She’d Be a Diamond, with all the good stuff–a great introduction to a special artist if you’re not familiar with her. “Driven Away” is a song from the 2001 mini-EP Speeding Motorcycle, and can also be found on the 2022 Fire Records release.

* It’s a bit startling to listen to “The Big Show” and realize that the Extraordinaires, from Philadelphia, released the song in 2011. Were things already that bad back then? They wrote this when Twitter was still on the upswing, and the idea of President Donald Trump would have seemed a bad joke. Here’s how it starts:

We say it like it’s true then watch it put down its roots
And blossom from the gossip into truth
We’re in the weeds up to our knees
It’s hard to tell the poison from the fruit

Little did they know! The Extraordinaires have been a duo, a four-piece, and a five-piece band, while in recent years settling into a trio. Of their dozen or so releases of various lengths, the single “Monika,” from 2020, is their most recent. “The Big Show” appeared on their 2011 EP Postcard. You can explore the whole catalog over on Bandcamp.

* David Ruffin was one of the lead singers for the Temptations during their classic run from 1964 to 1968. “I’ve Got a Need For You” is from a solo album that he recorded in 1970 and 1971 but which, somehow, wasn’t released until 2004. And while I didn’t do this at all on purpose, in doing a bit of research I came upon the slightly uncomfortable fact of Ruffin’s abusive relationship with the aforementioned Tammi Terrell, which included the fact that he proposed marriage to her while (surprise!) it turned out he was already married. Life, in case you aren’t yet aware, is pretty messy.

* The Australian trio Middle Kids remain one of my favorite bands to come on the scene in recent years. Attentive readers here may remember seeing “Bootleg Firecracker” briefly featured here earlier in 2023; I had to take the review down when it came to my attention that the download had been removed from the site that initially hosted it. So here it is more permanently. The other new single the band released this year, “Highlands,” is also excellent. A new album is expected early next year.

* Standard-issue rock music history has it that the mighty prog-rock dinosaurs who ruled the scene beginning in the late ’60s were killed off, asteroid style, by the punk rock assault of the late ’70s. The truth is more nuanced than that, as seen in two divergent entries in this month’s mix. We have the aforementioned “Elephant Talk,” which saw a prog-rock band shift nimbly into new wave territory, managing to create an up-to-date identity while maintaining the King Crimson name. And we also have the Moody Blues, who let the new wave crash all around them, informing some new sounds while they remained true to their musical core; the in-the-moment effort, 1981’s Long Distance Voyager, stands as one of their best, with the lead single “The Voice” sounding at once familiar and fresh. The band’s long and complicated history is too much to get into here; note simply that they persisted, with some commercial success, well past the punk rock interruption, before devolving in the 2000s into a live nostalgia act.

* For those who enjoy these extra notes each month, you should know that visitors who receive the Fingertips newsletter get a few additional blurbs in the email accompanying each playlist. Sign up details are in the sidebar to the right.

Hop-skipping as usual through the decades and musical styles, I seem to have unconsciously leaned in the direction of “interesting juxtapositions” this time around. There’s Lana Del Rey into “Telstar,” for one, and “Telstar” into Depeche Mode, for another. The opening duo is another sort of juxtaposition, offering power pop from 30 years apart, back to back. Then there’s the offbeat sense made from Carole King leading into Jill Scott, or Veruca Salt into that luscious Lydia Luce song. And what to make of Elvis Costello into Buddy Holly? I didn’t adjoin them on purpose but realized afterwards how much Elvis in his early incarnation was identified with his Buddy Holly glasses and wardrobe. I was instead going here for comparing and contrasting the pre-rock’n’roll vibe of the Elvis song with the early rock’n’roll potency of Buddy Holly’s (posthumous) release.

And there’s more, as you’ll see. As always I encourage listening all the way to the end, even if it takes a few sessions: unlike old vinyl albums, the songs don’t get any worse towards the end of side two. The Roches song that concludes (and lends a title to) the mix is in particular a distinctive, overlooked treasure:

1. “Girl of My Dreams” – Bram Tchaikovsky (Strange Man, Changed Man, 1979)
2. “Carly (Goddess of Death)” – The Capes (Hello, 2006)
3. “Twilight” – Shawn Colvin (Cover Girl, 1994)
4. “Mariners Apartment Complex” – Lana Del Rey (Norman Fucking Rockwell, 2019)
5. “Telstar” – The Tornados (single, 1962)
6. “Everything Counts” – Depeche Mode (Construction Time Again, 1983)
7. “Quiet” – Lucy Bell (Emotion Pending EP, 2023)
8. “Pleasant Valley Sunday” – Carole King (demo, 1966; The Legendary Demos, 2012)
9. “Hate on Me” – Jill Scott (The Real Thing – Words & Music, Vol. 3, 2007)
10. “Jimmie Standing in the Rain” – Elvis Costello (National Ransom, 2010)
11. “Love’s Made a Fool of You” – Buddy Holly (demo, 1958; released 1964)
12. “Got to Get You Back” – Sons of Robin Stone (single, 1974)
13. “No Substitute” – The Shivvers (unreleased single, 1980)
14. “Seether” – Veruca Salt (American Thighs, 1994)
15. “Occasionally” – Lydia Luce (Dark River, 2021)
16. “Sorrow” – The Merseys (single, 1966)
17. “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” – The Clash (single, 1978)
18. “Capacity” – Charly Bliss (Young Enough, 2019)
19. “Hang Down Your Head” – Tom Waits (Rain Dogs, 1985)
20. “So” – The Roches (Can We Go Home Now, 1995)

Random notes:

* “Girl of My Dreams” was one of a handful of late-’70s new wave nuggets to hit the US top 40 (just barely: it peaked at #37), and one of the best of the bunch. Bram Tchaikovsky was the stage name adopted by British guitarist Peter Bramall, first as a member of the great pub rock band The Motors and then as leader of his own band, to which he also lent the name Bram Tchaikovsky. The rest of the band’s debut album, Strange Man, Changed Man, thanks in part to the leader’s appealingly resonant voice, was above average guitar rock, but has long since fallen into obscurity. Even the indelible power pop gem “Girl of My Dreams” has but 75,000 streams on Spotify; I guess it has yet to find its way onto a streaming TV series. By comparison, its 1979 new wave top-40 compatriot, Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to be Kind,” has some 27 million streams. Numbers never tell the whole story.

* Along with her masterly strengths as a singer and acoustic guitar player, Shawn Colvin has long displayed a preternatural gift as a covers artist–perhaps, I’m guessing, because of those previously mentioned strengths. In her early years as a performer, many a concert highlight moment came from how she interpreted songs–songs that often arrived from much more of a rock setting than her “girl with a guitar” milieu. And while her cleverly named 1994 album Cover Girl may be a bit too much of a good thing–one or two well-placed cover songs in a concert may have a bigger impact than 13 in a row–there’s no question that the good stuff is top-notch. I’ve always been partial in particular to her transformative cover of the Robbie Robertson song “Twilight.” How she even heard what she does with it in the Band’s slightly (and oddly) perky, organ-frilled arrangement is something of a miracle. But boy does she nail this one–an all-time great cover.

* Veruca Salt has a long, involved history, with a little bit of everything: buzz band status, critical and popular backlash, intra-band feuding, a long hiatus, and, more recently, the unexpected rapprochement and return to form. “Seether” is the song that introduced the Chicago quartet to the world, but American Thighs, the grunge-influenced debut, is possibly not quite as good as the band’s surprise reunion album, 2015’s Ghost Notes. In any case, check that one out if you enjoy their sound and missed the memo. And now the latest news from Verucaland: in June, front woman Louise Post, after all these years, released her first solo album, Sleepwalker. Sounds intriguing after a quick, abbreviated listen–definitely a broadening and/or mellowing and/or 2020-ing of the Veruca Salt palette, with a couple of characteristically crunchy numbers in the mix. I hope to go back and listen more closely.

* While the Monkees made some noticeable tweaks to “Pleasant Valley Sunday” when they did their big hit version, there’s something in Carole King’s delivery of the song she co-wrote with Gerry Goffin that really hits home. She and Goffin were writing from their own experience of having moved out of New York City to the suburbs and their distaste for the lifestyle encountered there. (There was in fact a Pleasant Valley Way in their New Jersey neighborhood.) As for the Monkees’ version, King was reportedly unhappy with the changes that were made, which included a faster pace and some new and shifted words in the bridge. Admittedly the lyric changes robbed them of a bit of sense but this wasn’t Pulitzer Prize winning poetry in the first place. And the musical changes, which included the electric guitar line that opens the song and later recurs, helped flesh out and solidify a song that was a bit on the short side. King apparently made peace with the alterations over time; on her 2005 live album, she sings the song the Monkees’ way, complete with the introductory guitar lick (done here on an acoustic guitar).

* The Lydia Luce song, featured here in 2020, is just gorgeous. The laid-back verse eases you in but that chorus is thrilling, with its melancholy chord changes, dramatic build, and perfect resolution. If you didn’t hear it the first time here’s another invitation.

* Power-pop-oriented Milwaukee band the Shivvers had a brief, shining moment of regional fame in the early ’80s, which included being named best local band by readers of the Milwaukee Journal in 1982. But they never managed to get a record deal during their lifespan, which involved but one officially (self-) released single and a batch of other songs recorded but tucked away for years on (so I imagine) dusty boxes of tape reels. In 2006, a record label specializing in–hang on, this is a mouthful–“rare, obscure, independent and undiscovered punk, post-punk, D.I.Y., and power-pop groups from the U.S. and the U.K. 1977-1984” released an album called–hang on, another mouthful–Lost Hits from Milwaukee’s First Family of Power Pop: 1979-82, featuring every bit of recorded Shivvers material in existence. “No Substitute,” written by front woman Jill Kossoris, is one of 21 tracks. A song very much rooted in its jangly, new-wave-y time, it also has that timeless quality built into power pop, if only because the genre persists against all odds into the current day. You won’t find any on the charts, you’ll see classics generally ignored (see “Girl of My Dreams,” above), but the genre does not die, perhaps because the human yearning for melody, also against all odds, survives even the harshest, unmelodic pop cultural moments, however long-lasting. I’m waiting for the current one to end but am not holding my breath.

* The Philly-based Sons of Robin Stone were also mostly a local, unrecorded phenomenon, but they did at least briefly have a record deal: “Got to Get You Back” was the B-side of their one single for ATCO Records. The song eventually found its way to Northern Soul aficionados, as many great B-sides eventually did and still do. Note that on Discogs it’s listed as an A-side but according to a relative of one of the original band members, in a note on an internet forum from 2002, this was actually the B-side. (I do my homework here.) Note too that the original label does not have an A or a B on either side, but the item number on the label for this song ends in “1” while the number on the flip side ends in “0,” which suggest this is in fact the B-side. (More homework.) These guys were typically classified as “blue-eyed soul,” which was the emergent euphemism in the ’70s for white groups aligning sonically with music Black artists were making at the time. Whatever: it’s a pretty cool early disco song, complete with a time-signature oddity in the chorus that adds a gratifying twist and yet somehow doesn’t interrupt the groove.

* If the opening lines of “Sorrow” ring some sort of distant bell in your mind, it’s probably because George Harrison launches into them, non-sequiturishly, in the extended coda to the great Beatles song “It’s All Too Much”–check it out at 4:17. Like many hits from the past, “Sorrow” has a backstory. Its recording life began, unassumingly, as a B-side of a single by the American band The McCoys, released in 1965. The Liverpool-based band The Merseys (formerly The Merseybeats) recorded their own version in 1966, and this one became the big hit in the UK that Harrison quoted. Digging deeper: the song was co-written by Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer, the team that had written “My Boyfriend’s Back” and the McCoys’ big hit “Hang On Sloopy,” among other songs. They also briefly recorded as a group called the Strangeloves, where they had a hit with the song “I Want Candy” (later revived indelibly by the band Bow Wow Wow). Gottehrer was arguably the most consequential of the three, going on to found Sire Records in New York with the late Seymour Stein, a formative moment in the American new wave scene. He would go on to produce albums for Blondie, the Go-Go’s, Marshall Crenshaw, and, more recently, two 2010s albums by the Dum Dum Girls.