Category: playlist

Who needs a hug? (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.07 – Sept. 2018)

Fingertips is on hiatus for a little while longer but the Eclectic Playlist Series forges on, offering up a “Summer’s Over” playlist aimed to help you find a little bit of solace in a world gone wrong and wronger. We’ve got indie rock and classic rock, rocksteady and R&B, instrumentals and vocal duets, folk rock from the distant past and indie pop from the immediate present, and then some. Some random notes:

* Thanks to George from Between Two Islands for the opening track. I love the Bird and the Bee but had overlooked this song until hearing it in one of his inimitable playlists.

* Yet again illustrated here is the inscrutable difference between a hit and a miss from the classic Soul years—I mean, Diane Lewis, “Keep a Hold on Me”: shouldn’t this have been blasting out of car radios across the country?

* “The Devil Wears a Suit” sounds even more portentous now than when I featured it on Fingertips back in 2012. Kate Miller-Heidke is a force of nature, far more appreciated in her native Australia than here. (Answer to her musical question: We all do. We all need a hug.)

* “Anastasia” was a FM radio staple, at a certain sort of FM radio station, back in the day. You don’t hear much (i.e., anything) of Elliott Murphy these days but he’s been recording albums all these years, his latest in 2013. He’s had a career as a writer too, has been living in Paris for decades, and in 2015 had a documentary released about him. Lots of characters like Murphy have slipped through the cracks of our click-oriented culture, people you have to slow down to get into and appreciate.

* RIP Aretha. I sure hope she’s right, that we are, indeed, at long last, running out of fools. The country can’t survive much longer with so many of them in charge.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Witch” – The Bird and the Bee (Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future, 2009)
“Knocked Down, Made Small (Treated Like a Rubber Ball)” – Was (Not Was) (Born to Laugh at Tornadoes, 1983)
“Keep a Hold on Me” – Diane Lewis (single, 1968)
“Graffiti” – CHVRCHES (Love Is Dead, 2018)
“Island in the Sun” – The Paragons (single, 1967)
“Did You Miss Me” – Lindsay Buckingham (Gift of Screws, 2008)
“The Blacksmith” – Steeleye Span (Hark! The Village Wait, 1970)
“Orchids” – Monster Rally (Return to Paradise, 2013)
“I’ll Do Anything” – Doris Troy (single, 1966)
“Song Against Sex” – Neutral Milk Hotel (On Avery Island, 1996)
“Prime Time” – The Tubes (Remote Control, 1979)
“The Devil Wears a Suit” – Kate Miller-Heidke (Nightflight, 2012)
“Too Fast For You” – The Church (Too Fast For You EP, 1981)
“A Hard Day’s Night” – Sonny Curtis (Beatle Hits Flamenco Guitar Style, 1964)
“Frank Sinatra” – Cake (Fashion Nugget, 1996)
“Anastasia” – Elliott Murphy (Just a Story From America, 1977)
“Runnin’ Out of Fools” – Aretha Franklin (Runnin’ Out of Fools, 1964)
“Come Cryin’ to Me” – The Jayhawks (Back Roads and Abandoned Motels, 2018)
“No Guilt” – The Waitresses (Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?, 1982)
“Walk Away” – James Gang (Thirds, 1971)

The foggy web of destiny (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.06 – Summer 2018)

Yes, Fingertips is on hiatus. But here’s a playlist, which I had started previously, and just seemed to want to be released into the world. It’s suitably eclectic, as always, and manages to feature 16 artists, of 20, that have not previously been playlisted here, even as we are now in the middle of the fifth year of playlists. Some random notes:

* There are two 2018 songs on the list, from two albums that are likely to be among my favorites this year—Beach House’s aptly-titled 7, and the Arctic Monkeys’ strange but endearing Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.

* There are two old songs I’ve only recently discovered:

1) The Northern Soul-reclaimed gem “Please Stay,” from a Chicago group called The Ivories (in its original pressing on tiny Despenza Records, the band was identified simply as “Ivorys”), another song that demonstrates the fine fine line between a huge hit and an ignored piece of vinyl.

2) The gorgeous Dylan song “Born in Time,” in a version that is far more successful, to my ears, than the one that was originally released, in 1990, on his puzzling Under the Red Sky album. This notably altered 1989 incarnation was recorded for the much more successful Oh Mercy LP, but left off it because, well, Dylan routinely left off some really good songs. That’s how he rolled. You can find it on the terrific Tell-Tale Signs compilation.

* Yes, that’s Twiggy, the model. The 1960s were known, among many other things, as an era when anyone who was famous for pretty much anything would eventually end up in a recording studio making an album. Occasionally the end result was a pleasant surprise, as this one is.

* Ian Hunter recently turned 79 and is still out there recording top-notch music. This one is from back in his relatively youth—he was 36 at the time, and had just left Mott the Hoople. The band petered out quickly without him; his solo career has been full of strong but overlooked albums, including 2016’s Fingers Crossed.

* Peter Case is one of those guys who will sometimes receive the ambivalent compliment of being a “songwriter’s songwriter.” I’m not always sure what that means but in his case it rings true, and in any event “Hidden Love” is one of my favorite songs ever.

Reminder: all songs on each Eclectic Playlist Series mix (including, now, this one) have been accumulated into a master mix on Spotify (minus the songs that Spotify doesn’t have); the link to that is:

https://open.spotify.com/user/fingertipsmusic/playlist/2EOYzqn90RRM8HB5R95ED3?si=UYBQKHApThKdKklxo_CdTw

Full playlist below the widget.

“Dark Spring” – Beach House (7, 2018)
“Once It Was Alright Now (Farmer Joe)” – Laura Nyro (Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, 1968)
“Black and White” – The dB’s (Stands for Decibels, 1981)
“Slimcea Girl” – Mono (Formica Blues, 1998)
“Floating Vibes” – Surfer Blood (Astro Coast, 2009)
“Yachting Type” – The Yachts (Yachts, 1979)
“Please Stay” – The Ivories (single, 1966)
“Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino” – Arctic Monkeys (Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, 2018)
“If I Had a Boat” – Lyle Lovett (Pontiac, 1988)
“Girl Anachronism” – The Dresden Dolls (The Dresden Dolls, 2004)
“When I Think of You” – Twiggy (single, 1967)
“Once Bitten Twice Shy” – Ian Hunter (Ian Hunter, 1975)
“World Made” – Land of Talk (Life After Youth, 2017)
“Mockingbirds” – Grant Lee Buffalo (Mighty Joe Moon, 1994)
“Born in Time” – Bob Dylan (recorded 1989, Oh Mercy sessions; released 2008, Tell-Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8)
“Apache” – The Shadows (single, 1960)
“Heard It All Before” – Emiliana Torrini (Me and Armini, 2008)
“Someone’s Looking At You” – The Boomtown Rats (The Fine Art of Surfacing, 1979) *
“Never Broken” – Cassandra Wilson (Traveling Miles, 1999)
“Hidden Love” – Peter Case (The Man With The Blue Post-Modern Fragmented
Neo-Traditionalist Guitar, 1989)

Rescuing classic rock (a playlist)

Is it too late? Has classic rock been bludgeoned to death, far beyond any hope of recovery?

When it comes to the music itself that’s clearly not true—there remains a trove of worthy rock’n’roll that was made in the generation that spanned 1965 (or so) to 1985 (or so). But the genre we employ to refer to much of the music from that era—i.e., classic rock—has twice now gone through the market-driven ringer of over-simplification and reduction, to its great detriment, and ours. By 2018 the genre of classic rock has become not just moribund (hell, the genre is dead by definition) but horribly, fatally uninteresting. Personally speaking, if I never again hear any song that is closely associated with the central core of the classic rock library (I’m looking at you, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”), I will be quite satisfied. (Well, okay, I still kind of like “Layla,” but I would, I’d be okay without it.)

I understand that music evolves. And that, as music evolves, the songs of the past retreat, becoming all but irrelevant to the musical wants and needs of succeeding generations. This is not the problem. If classic rock were simply being ignored, the music could still be accessed by anyone curious enough to explore things a bit. The problem is that classic rock has instead been shrunken and packaged into something that it never was in the first place. And the genre has gone through this diminution process two different times over the years, leaving the music funneled into a tiresome library that is a miserable shell of its former self (or shelf, for that matter).

As with any good capitalist story, things got interesting for rock’n’roll when it started making money. Rock came of age as an artistic medium in the late ’60s, was let loose on the FM radio dial in an unfettered manner beginning in the early ’70s, and had its first golden age right then and there. That was pretty much of an organic and symbiotic process: FM radio promoted rock music as a worthy avenue of musical expression precisely as the quality of the output increased interest in the new FM stations that were playing it—so-called “progressive” radio stations that were willfully blending a freewheeling variety of contemporary sounds: there was prog rock but also folk rock; there was glam rock and likewise southern rock; there was psychedelia and (yet to be named but extant) power pop and a certain amount of British Invasion pop; and then there was music that blended well into the mix even as it arrived from seemingly external genres such as blues, R&B, funk, soul, and jazz. And then of course there was the music that seemed all but genre-free for being at the foundation of rock’n’roll culture: the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin.

As the listening audience grew, the ad sales grew. And as the ad sales grew, economics inevitably began to dictate the aesthetics. On-air talent could no longer be trusted to create a profitable product. And once consultants were brought in to focus a station’s musical offerings on lowest-common-denominator appeal, the expansive playlists of free-form radio were chiseled into the restrictive format known as Album-Oriented Rock (AOR), which began in the early ’80s and took over the FM dial for a few persuasive years. AOR stations retained a generic core of music that “rocked,” reinforced by newer music that rocked both a bit harder and with minimal personality—thus the rise, in the ’80s, of bands like REO Speedwagon and Styx, Journey and Kansas. Ironically, each of these bands began in an authentic effort to make music for progressive radio, where they rarely were embraced. Their songs tested great in focus groups, however, and as they became staples of AOR radio, whatever individual charisma each band might have had was buffed to a faceless shine. All the more regrettable, these bands spawned replica ensembles (cf. Loverboy, Night Ranger, White Lion, etc.) whose musical specifics were vacuumed into the hard-rocking miasma that had overwhelmed rock’n’roll radio and in so doing laid the seeds for what was all too soon to be known as classic rock.

Because, yes, classic rock as a radio format began in this mid-’80s moment, as a new-wave-turned-New-Romantic-induced round of synth pop was, thanks to MTV, becoming mainstream. There remained a Middle-American audience that still craved its guitar rock, and that’s what classic rock radio stations were happy to churn out for the next two decades or so. Along the way, alternative rock came along (never mind hip-hop, a whole prodigious line of discussion), spawning new radio formats while simultaneously hardening classic rock into more and more of a museum piece. And that’s where it remained through to the 2010s: a radio format with an increasingly older audience, somehow satisfied listening to the same few hundred songs, over and over and over, hosted by DJs who, if they actually remembered what progressive radio sounded like, probably tried not to.

As streaming took over music distribution here in last five or six years, classic rock became another genre for playlists to cover, but all too often the end results were reductions of reductions: the limited landscape of classic rock radio either winnowed down further or—worse—expanded without nuance or prowess by amateur playlist makers who cut and paste randomly from their own personal favorite artists and albums. These playlists tend to be hard-rock-oriented, with an occasional nod to prog rock, and in any case pretty much never display the artistic and musical breadth that classic rock actually has to offer.

And so, now, the question: can classic rock be rescued from this ignoble fate? As much as I’d love to think otherwise, I’d say the answer is no, probably not in any immediate or widespread way. It’s just like this: if a significant and vocal plurality of the population gets steered away from reasonable discourse and an understanding of what facts are, those of us who know better are not going to penetrate their bubble of ignorance. Same on the musical front, where bubbles of ignorance are perpetuated by the technologists currently in charge of musical distribution. The best we can do is seek out and identify those souls operating from a place of aesthetic merit and authenticity, and offer encouragement and support. That philosophy underlies my efforts to find the musicians I feature on Fingertips, and I can only hope that I myself occasionally land, however serendipitously, on someone’s screen—someone willing to give an ear to my humble efforts at music curation in a world where much louder and tech-oriented voices tend to prevail.

So if classic rock is to be rescued at all, it will be like this, through small, artisanal undertakings such as my recently posted Spotify playlist, called “Classic Rock You Aren’t Tired Of” (see link below). It’s a work in progress, and has begun with 176 songs by 176 different artists. Eventually I aim to populate the list further with multiple songs by certain key bands. But if you’ve read this far, perhaps you’d be willing to give it a listen in whatever form it’s in right now. One thing I can guarantee is that this playlist is far more representative of the music on which classic rock radio was based, even if the format quickly betrayed its own origins. Whether you’ve heard a lot of this or very little of it I think you may be in for a treat. (Insider tip: be sure to shuffle the playlist for best effect!)

Finally found the proof

Eclectic Playlist Series 5.05 – May 2018

This playlist was already designed and being built via GarageBand when word came in that Philip Roth had died. Amy Rigby’s sardonic tribute to him, via an imagined email the author sent to Bob Dylan on the occasion of Dylan’s winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, is now all the more poignant. Roth never won that award, a fact decried by many for many years. (I love the subtle touch of the email addresses: Roth’s is on Gmail, Dylan’s AOL.)

More poignancy: finally getting to hear Prince’s original version of the song he wrote that Sinéad O’Connor made famous. To my ears, O’Connor’s remains the gold standard, but Prince is no slouch here. Word has it he wrote the song in 15 minutes.

While we’re on the subject of covers, Juliana Hatfield is apparently an unironic superfan of Olivia Newton-John. Not all of the songs she’s constructed a tribute album out of are brilliant but you can’t deny the passion she brings to it, and this one, “A Little More Love,” is fabulous.

And while on the subject of brilliance, “Tightrope” just never gets old. Let’s hear it for ELO, too long shunned when they should have been celebrated.

As for Martha Jean Love, I have no idea who she is and neither, it seems, does the internet. Her two singles have been coveted rarities in the Northern Soul community for quite a while; “Don’t Want You To Leave Me” was, of course, the b-side, as is the Northern Soul inclination. YouTube makes such songs less difficult to hear than they used to be, but the vinyl remains valuable—I notice a near mint single selling currently via Discogs for $87.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Beware of Darkness” – George Harrison (All Things Must Pass, 1970)
“Army of Clay” – Belly (Dove, 2018)
“Nothing Compares 2 U” – Prince (unreleased single, 1984)
“Le Chat Du Café Des Artistes” – Charlotte Gainsbourg (IRM, 2009)
“Happy” – Mitski (Puberty 2, 2016)
“Tightrope” – Electric Light Orchestra (A New World Record, 1978)
“I Try” – Macy Gray (On How Life Is, 1999)
“Sentimental Walk” – Vladimir Cosma (Diva: Original Soundtrack, 1981)
“Today” – Jefferson Airplane (Surrealistic Pillow, 1967)
“Waiting For My Friends” – De Novo Dahl (De Novo Dahl EP, 2003)
“A Little More Love” – Juliana Hatfield (Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John, 2018)
“Going in Circles” – The Friends of Distinction (Grazin’, 1969)
“Modern Love” – Peter Gabriel (Peter Gabriel, 1977)
“From philiproth@gmail.com to rzimmerman@aol.com” – Amy Rigby (The Old Guys, 2018)
“Mimi On the Beach” – Jane Siberry (No Borders Here, 1984)
“Place Out There” – Ass Ponys (Electric Rock Music, 1994)
“Hunter” – Dido (No Angel, 2001)
“It’s Her Factory” – Gang of Four (Yellow EP, 1979)
“Don’t Want You To Leave Me” – Martha Jean Love (b-side, 1964)
“The King Is Half-Undressed” – Jellyfish (Bellybutton, 1992)

While I still remember it (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.04 – April 2018)

With the 2015 edition of the Eclectic Playlist Series in full swing, I thought I may as well review the concept here, for anyone who’s more recently been stopping by to listen.

Each month the Eclectic Playlist Series features a mix of 20 songs, which are purposefully blended to encompass music from at least six decades (typically the ’60 through the ’10s but as you’ll see this week, earlier is definitely possible). Along the way, a variety of rock’n’roll genres and sub-genres are visited; you’ll get your share of R&B and/or soul here too, along with the occasional foray into international pop, jazz, blues, and any other type of music that just happens to work in any given mix.

An important self-imposed restriction impacts these playlists: I will not feature one artist more than once during a calendar year (although I should note it’s happened by mistake once; oops). As of now no artists has been featured more than four times even as we have moved into year five. In this month’s playlist, only five of the 20 artists have been previously featured on EPS mixes.

Bonus notes and observations for April:

* Levon and the Hawks are, essentially, The Band–this was one of the names they used after they quit their gig as Ronnie Hawkins’ backing band but before they became Bob Dylan’s backing band and then sequestered themselves in that big pink house with Dylan and emerged on the other side, once and for all, as The Band. This early single, though, has some rough signs of later greatness, and is just kind of fun to hear.

* Nearly two years after its release, I’m still slowly making sense of the moody but accomplished Radiohead album A Moon Shaped Pool. During a recent listen, “Present Tense” kind of jumped out at me, after my not much noticing it in the past.

* It’s easy to forget what beautiful, effortless-sounding songs James Taylor wrote back in the day. This one, from his Apple Records debut, which didn’t sell at all, quite obviously made an impact on George Harrison, who sang a bit of uncredited backing vocals on the album.

* It’s interesting how new-wave-y 10,000 Maniacs sound on this song. But hey they did form way back in 1981. And while most of their early stuff veered more towards R.E.M.-like proto-alternative/college rock, this one tells me how much they probably listened to U2’s Boy when it came out.

* And speaking, sort of, of new-wave-y things, how about this unexpectedly cool cover of a Chuck Berry song from England’s Ian Gomm, who is known, if at all, for the 1979 single “Hold On,” which somehow cracked the top 15 here in the U.S. that new-wave-y summer. The Berry cover comes from Gomm’s debut album, which came out in the U.K. in 1978 as Summer Holiday, but was slightly fiddled with and retitled Gomm With the Wind for U.S. release in 1979. Bonus trivia: Gomm was a guitarist in the legendary pub rock band Brinsley Schwarz, alongside Nick Lowe, with whom he co-wrote Lowe’s own top-15 U.S. hit, “Cruel To Be Kind.”

Full playlist below the widget.

“The Stone I Throw (Will Free All Men)” – Levon and the Hawks (single, 1965)
“Kick Me Where It Hurts” – The Booze (At Maximum Volume, 2011)
“Misty Blue” – Dorothy Moore (1976)
“Bachelor Kisses” – The Go-Betweens (Spring Hill Fair, 1984)
“¡Que Lleva!” – Juana Molina (Segundo, 2000)
“Lotta Love to Give” – Daniel Lanois (For the Beauty of Wynona, 1993)
“Whenever, Wherever” – Minnie Riperton (Come To My Garden, 1970)
“Present Tense” – Radiohead (A Moon Shaped Pool, 2016)
“Brite Side” – Deborah Harry (Def, Dumb & Blonde, 1991)
“Black Coffee” – Sarah Vaughan (single, 1949)
“Something in the Way She Moves” – James Taylor (James Taylor, 1968)
“Pattern Pieces” – Dive Index (Lost in the Pressure, 2014)
“My Mother The War” – 10,000 Maniacs (The Wishing Chair, 1985)
“Just Because” – Lloyd Price (single 1956)
“Gotta Get Up” – Harry Nilsson (Nilsson Schmilsson, 1971)
“In California” – Neko Case (Canadian Amp, 2001)
“I’ll Bet You” – Funkadelic (Funkadelic, 1969)
“Bedsitter” – Soft Cell (Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, 1982)
“Come On” – Ian Gomm (Summer Holiday, 1978)
“The Bike Song” – Kate & Anna McGarrigle (Matapedia, 1996)

Another thorn in my side (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.03 – March 2018)

Spring is here so of course it’s snowing like Narnia. It’s been that kind of year. But the more I dive into the music, the more I root around, pick up a little of this and a little of that, the more I figure out (usually by accident) that these two songs sound pretty good together, and then this next one too–well, the more I do this, the calmer I get. There’s hope buried in here somewhere. Obscure Northern Soul singles are good, and so are big Madonna hits (sometimes) and semi-forgotten Grateful Dead album tracks and extended drone-y 21st-century electronic tracks with indomitable melodies, and so is Joni with her special chords and so is the first track we ever heard from Fountains of Wayne and so is a dollop of yé-yé to finish us up this time. RIP France Gall, who died in January. The young grow old, the old pass on, the music remains, and maybe that’s where the hope is buried. Don’t let them tell you that guitars are through, don’t let the people who bend over backwards to find art in interchangeable pop radio fodder hypnotize you into overlooking the actual artistry of songwriters who sing and singers who write songs and melodies that nourish you even when it’s the first day of spring and there’s still this shoveling to do.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Information” – Dave Edmunds (Information, 1983)
“Hurt the One You Love” – David Ruffin (single, 1990)
“Bitchenostrophy” – Rickie Lee Jones (The Evening Of My Best Day, 2000)
“Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” – Ezra Furman (The Year of No Returning, 2012)
“Hope You’re Feeling Better” – Santana (Abraxas, 1970)
“Blue Rondo á la Turk” – The Dave Brubeck Quartet (Time Out, 1959)
“Live To Tell” – Madonna (True Blue, 1986)
“Only Shallow” – My Bloody Valentine (Loveless, 1991)
“Doctor Blind” – Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton (Knives Don’t Have Your Back, 2006)
“Remember Russia” – Fischer-Z (Word Salad, 1979)
“Compared to What” – Roberta Flack (First Take, 1969)
“Carlo What Do You Dream” – James Irwin (Shabbytown, 2017)
“Victoria’s Secret” – Lisa Germano (Excerpts From a Love Circus, 1999)
“Skin Deep” – The Stranglers (Aural Sculpture, 1984)
“See You Sometime” – Joni Mitchell (For the Roses, 1972)
“One of Us Should Go” – Heidi Gluck (The Only Girl in the Room, 2014)
“Radiation Vibe” – Fountains of Wayne (Fountains of Wayne, 1996)
“Keep It Clean” – Camera Obscura (Underachievers Please Try Harder, 2003)
“Estimated Prophet” – Grateful Dead (Terrapin Station, 1977)
“Nous Ne Sommes Pas Des Anges” – France Gall (single, 1965)

Why wouldn’t you try? (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.02 – Feb. 2018)

“I hate and I love. How do I do that, perhaps you ask?
I don’t know. But I feel it is happening and I am tormented.”

Those are what the words in the first song mean, translated from the Latin. They were written in the first century B.C. Here they are being sung by a computerized voice. It’s a piece by the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannson, who, sadly, died this month at the age of 48. I have not heard too much of his music but did stumble on this one back in 2006 and featured it here. It’s odd but compelling, and enduring; I urge you to listen with full attention.

From there, we’re off into another irregular journey through the decades. I’ve branched back into the ’50s this time, twice for good measure, and for whatever reason cleared out a little bit of an instrumental section in the middle. It just seemed to want to work out that way.

Random notes:

* Another song I urge your attention onto is “Muddy River,” from Shelley Short’s sadly overlooked 2017 release Pacific City. What a beautiful and powerful collection of acoustic songs; you can listen to it and buy it via Bandcamp.

* There’s actually one more “memorial” song in the mix: the very satisfying if semi-forgotten R&B hit “Don’t Look Any Further,” to honor Dennis Edwards, one-time front man of the Temptations, who also died this month. The song has not only an incisive, melodic bass line, but a surprisingly effective off-the-beat synth motif threading through. Props too to Siedah Garrett, who sings here with Edwards.

* I just stumbled upon the band Scars recently, and enjoy the authentic mid-new-wave vibe of “All About You.” Their album is somewhat hard to find (it’s not seemingly digitized), but I’m going to see if I can track it down, short of paying $35 for used vinyl.

* Favorite segue this time around probably goes to Johnny Cash into the Casket Girls, with R.E.M. into Elbow as honorable mention, if you’re keeping score at home. And note that while I never completely took to the Bill-Berry-less version of R.E.M., I find “Walk Unafraid” to be one of a handful of classic songs they managed without him.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Odi Et Amo” – Jóhann Jóhannson (Englabörn, 2002)
“Chequered Love” – Kim Wilde (Kim Wilde, 1981)
“She Came Along To Me” – Billy Bragg & Wilco (Mermaid Avenue, 1998)
“I Still Miss Someone” – Johnny Cash (The Fabulous Johnny Cash, 1958)
“24 Hours” – Casket Girls (The Night Machines, 2016)
“Don’t Look Any Further” – Dennis Edwards (single, 1984)
“Muddy River” – Shelley Short (Pacific City, 2017)
“American Garage” – Pat Metheny Group (American Garage, 1979)
“Baby That’s Me” – The Cake (The Cake, 1967)
“Days of Steam” – John Cale (The Academy in Peril, 1972)
“Penthouse Mambo” – Xavier Cugat (Bread, Love and Cha Cha Cha, 1957)
“Swapping Spit” – Big Deal (June Gloom, 2013)
“What Do You Think?” – The Sundays (Blind, 1992)
“You Keep Running Away” – The Four Tops (single, 1967)
“Portions for Foxes” – Rilo Kiley (More Adventurous, 2004)
“The Holdup” – David Bromberg (David Bromberg, 1971)
“All About You” – Scars (Author! Author!, 1981)
“Moonshine Freeze” – This is the Kit (Moonshine Freeze, 2017)
“Walk Unafraid” – R.E.M. (Up, 1998)
“Weather to Fly” – Elbow (The Seldom Seen Kid, 2008)

Another one of those dreams

Eclectic Playlist Series 5.01 – Jan. 2018

So it’s been two years now since David Bowie died. Is this even possible? January brings the man inevitably to mind, this time via an incredible cover of a song that was never previously a particular favorite of mine. But boy does Jesca Hoop give herself over to “John I’m Only Dancing,” doing what any great cover should do: opening the ears to a song’s true power. It is no accident that I selected a female vocalist covering a Bowie song, and no accident that this month’s playlist is dominated by female performances. Keep it up out there.

Meanwhile, the Eclectic Playlist Series this month enters its fifth iteration. In January, I reset the accounts, and all artists become available again. (For newcomers: no artist appears more than once a year here.) Even so, I’m happy to report that 15 out of 20 artists on this month’s list have never been on one of my playlists before, including, inexplicably, John Vanderslice, who has otherwise a strong history as a Fingertips favorite, and Lou Reed, who has an inimitable presence in rock’n’roll history.

Random notes:

* Rita Wright is more authentically identified as Syreeta Wright, but this was her first single, and that’s the name she was given for it by Motown chairman Berry Gordy. She was an early collaborator with Stevie Wonder, co-writing many songs, and singing on his albums. They were married in 1970; it only lasted a few years, but they continued to work together into the ’90s. She recorded eight solo albums in the ’70s and ’80s. Wright died at age 58, in 2004, from complications stemming from a long battle with cancer.

* Thanks to the always enjoyable radio show/podcast “The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn” for the classic Serge Gainsbourg song, which some part of me knew from a buried and mysterious point in the past but I’d never have recovered otherwise.

* I don’t think Britta Phillips got enough attention for her wonderful Luck or Magic album from 2016, the first solo release of her acclaimed career (Luna, Dean & Britta). Pitchfork among other places took her to task for the album’s having five cover songs out of 10 tracks, which strikes me as a stupid critique of someone with such a strong interpretive flair. (And never mind the fact that so many of today’s revered pop performers don’t write their songs in the first place.) The album casts a spell; I recommend it.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Trick of the Light” – Matthew Sweet (Tomorrow Forever, 2017)
“Who Do You Love” – Pointer Sisters (Priority, 1979)
“Whirlwind” – Sam Rivers (Inspiration, 1999)
“Keep It Tight” – Single Bullet Theory (Sharp Cuts: New Music From American Bands, 1980)
“Arrow” – Beaches (Second of Spring, 2017)
“La Chanson De Prévert” – Serge Gainsbourg (L’Étonnant Serge Gainsbourg, 1961)
“Crazy Feeling” – Lou Reed (Coney Island Baby, 1976)
“John I’m Only Dancing” – Jesca Hoop (A Salute to the Thin White Duke, 2015)
“Stranger Than You” – Joe Jackson (Night and Day II, 2000)
“We’re Gonna Hate Ourselves in the Morning” – Nursery Rhymes (single, 1967)
“Same Old Scene” – Roxy Music (Flesh + Blood, 1980)
“Diving Woman” – Japanese Breakfast (Soft Sounds From Another Planet, 2017)
“White Plains” – John Vanderslice (Cellar Door, 2004)
“I Can’t Give Back The Love I Feel For You” – Rita Wright (single, 1968)
“Never Go Back” – Christine Lavin (Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind, 1987)
“Nothing Has Been Proved” – Dusty Springfield (Reputation, 1990)
“Fallin’ in Love” – Britta Phillips (Luck or Magic, 2016)
“Forget About You” – The Motors (Approved By The Motors, 1978)
“The Storm” – The Hunters (single, 1962)
“Attagirl” – Bettie Serveert (Attagirl, 2004)

Try to understand (Eclectic Playlist Series 4.10 – Nov. 2017)

Perhaps the least cool band that can possibly be imagined to 2017 ears, the British outfit Renaissance had its moment in the ’70s, with a distinctive, quasi-Baroque approach to the progressive rock that ruled the pre-punk day. Once musical fashions changed, rather abruptly I might add, Renaissance, like prog-rock compatriots Yes and Genesis, attempted to re-jigger their approach towards trimmer, catchier exercises. Because the underlying musicianship was so strong for most of these bands, some of this actually worked, and to me, few better than “Northern Lights.” The melodies here are so unfaltering as to seem pre-existing—verse leading unstoppably to chorus, chorus resplendent beyond reason. It became a top-10 hit in the U.K., and got a certain amount of play on the album-rock stations that ruled the American airwaves in those years, but lord knows if any but the band’s stalwart fans remember it. Such treasures await anyone willing to dig through the past 60 years of popular and semi-popular music. Spotify just can’t find them all for you.

What else this month? I guess it’s all over the place, as usual, from a solo jazz pianist to a one-hit wonder, from the Monkees to Lene Lovich, from the sublime Laura Marling to the recently departed, sadly neglected Fats Domino (a weirdly effective segue, I might add). But it’s not all over the place, not really, because the music absorbs it, the music supports it, and the idea that your ears are too tender to find coherence in a playlist that doesn’t stick to one genre or one era, well, that’s a stupid idea fostered by misguided entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists who feed them, and reinforced by cultural forces that even at this late date resist the manifest truth that diversity is our natural state. Enjoy the adventure, and see you for maybe a bit of a holiday thing in a few weeks.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Lullaby of the Leaves” – Art Tatum (Solos, 1940)
“The Mermaid” – Kate Rusby (Life in a Paper Boat, 2016)
“Ride Captain Ride” – Blues Image (Open, 1970)
“There Goes The Fear” – Doves (The Last Broadcast, 2002)
“Northern Lights” – Renaissance (A Song For All Seasons, 1978)
“Grace” – Jeff Buckley (Grace, 1994)
“I Want Something to Remember You By” – Marvin Smith (single, 1967)
“So Here We Are” – Gordi (Clever Disguise EP, 2016)
“Swamp Thing” – Chameleons UK (Strange Times, 1986)
“Stillsane” – Carolyne Mas (Carolyne Mas, 1979)
“The Girl I Knew Somewhere” – The Monkees (b-side, 1967)
“What Can I Say” – Brandi Carlile (Brandi Carlile, 2005)
“New Toy” – Lene Lovich (New Toy EP, 1981)
“Vapour Trail” – Ride (Nowhere, 1990)
“No Sugar Tonight” – The Shirelles (Happy and In Love, 1971)
“Ta Douleur” – Camille (Le Fil, 2005)
“I Believe” – Tim Booth & Angelo Badalamenti (Booth and the Bad Angel, 1996)
“Someone Up There” – Joe Jackson Band (Beat Crazy, 1980)
“Soothing” – Laura Marling (Semper Femina, 2017)
“Let The Four Winds Blow” – Fats Domino (Let The Four Winds Blow, 1961)

Don’t be so mean (Eclectic Playlist Series 4.09 – Oct. 2017)

For a musician who sold so many records and who meant so much to so many people, Tom Petty still in the end managed to be somehow underappreciated. Maybe it was just his being that half-generation removed from the Mt. Rushmorean figures in rock history (Beatles, Dylan, Stones, etc.) that kept him flying somewhat below the radar when talking about rock’s monumental representatives. Or maybe it was the fact that his music, while cumulatively his own, wasn’t really pioneering, it was just incredibly effective. Anyway, Petty now sets a new if unfortunate template: for the musician who has to leave this world for us to take full note of his beloved place in it. I mean, it’s always something like that, but in this case I felt it keenly. Tom Petty was always just out there somewhere, being Tom Petty. And now he’s not. The time of course will come for all of us. Let’s do our best in the meantime to listen: to our own hearts, and to each other’s, and to the knocking of the door, and the growing of the grass. No more time for bullshit. The nightmare will end, the emperor will stand naked, and we won’t be lost if we stand by each other.

Full playlist below the widget.

“When the Time Comes” – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978)
“12 Bellevue” – Kathleen Edwards (Failer, 2003)
“Theme From ‘Danger Man’” – The Red Price Combo (single, 1961)
“Tips For Teens” – Sparks (Whomp That Sucker, 1981)
“When I Was Your Girl” – Alison Moyet (The Minutes, 2013)
“Wanted” – The Cranberries (Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, 1993)
“What Good Am I Without You” – Darrow Fletcher (single, 1967)
“No More” – Julie Doiron (Woke Myself Up, 2006)
“Now That You’ve Gone” – Chicago (Chicago V, 1972)
“Tear The Whole Thing Down” – The Higsons (single, 1982)
“Hear You” – Waxahatchee (Out In The Storm, 2017)
“I Hear You Knockin’” – Smiley Lewis (single, 1955)
“This Heart” – Nanci Griffith (Flyer, 1994)
“Lost” – Frank Ocean (Channel Orange, 2012)
“Nightmare” – Artie Shaw (single, 1938)
“Life In Dark Water” – Al Stewart (Time Passages, 1978)
“Somewhere Sometime” – Roseanne Cash (King’s Record Shop, 1987)
“I Can Hear the Grass Grow” – the Move (single, 1967)
“Villain” – CocoRosie (Tales of a GrassWidow, 2013)
“The Emperor’s New Clothes” – Sinéad O’Connor (I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, 1990)