Author: xeyeti

Playlist #216: Brian Wilson

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Happy Monday, folks. it’s a rainy one here in Northern Virginia, which befits a summer bereft of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. The Beach Boys were part of my summer soundtrack growing up, and Brian Wilson moved heaven and earth to create his “teenage symphony to God.” Here are some of my favorite Beach Boys tracks in his honor.

  1. “Sloop John B”: The poor narrator of this song, a sailor on the eponymous ship, just wants to go home. Seems like everyone else on the boat does, too.
  2. “God Only Knows”: Pet Sounds is widely regarded as the best Beach Boys album ever recorded. I’m not going to disagree with that notion. This song is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever heard.
  3. “Good Vibrations”: Cobbled together from something like 60 hours of various recording sessions, this song was, for the longest time, the only song we really had from the fabled Smile album. It’s groovy, weird, and kinda eerie.
  4. “My 409”: I do not, generally speaking, no a whole lot about cars, much to my father’s chagrin. That being said, I do know that a 409 is a pretty good, souped-up engine.
  5. “California Girls”: Cali girls are great, yeah, but have you met New York girls? They’re smart, sexy, and can shove a dude’s teeth through their digestive system if they cause trouble.
  6. “Do It Again”: “I love the drum sound in this one. Simple, almost primal.
  7. “All Summer Long”: If there was a better way to end the movie American Graffiti, I don’t know what it is.
  8. “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”: “Sometimes I feel very sad” is one of the most heartbreaking lines in all of musical history.
  9. “Help Me, Rhonda”: That guitar riff, those harmonies…this song is great, no arguments allowed.
  10. “Surfin’ USA”: Just a simple declaration of love for a simple sport. Just a bunch of guys letting their California flag fly, letting you know that if everyone had an ocean the way they do, everyone would be surfing. It might create world peace, who knows.

Playlist #215

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Happy Monday! We’ve finally made it: the last week of school. And not even really a whole week. Just three days with the students and two teacher work days, and it’s all over and done until August, when we start this whole bag of nonsense all over again. Here’s a playlist to count down the hours:

  1. REM, “Everybody Hurts”: I should probably be joyous at the end of the school year, but I mostly find myself exhausted. And thinking about this song a lot. Sometimes all we see are the things and the people we’ve lost. All we see is the loss. But there’s far more to life than that. Remember the good, forget the bad, and always choose love.
  2. Van Morrison, “Only A Dream”: I still tend to think of 2002’s Down the Road as a recent or even new Van Morrison album, even though it’s old enough to drink. But the military march of this song and that beautiful sax solo get me every time.
  3. Stereo MCs, “Connected”: Connection is important. If you stumble, you might fall.
  4. Townes Van Zandt, “If I Needed You”: I’d only ever heard the Andrew Bird cover of this one. Townes’ version is a little rougher, a little simpler, but just as heartfelt.
  5. Counting Crows, “Up All Night (Frankie Miller Goes To Hollywood)”: Wait, am I just going through a depressive episode here? I think I might be. Also, I’ve struggled the past few weeks with getting to bed and sleeping at a reasonable hour. Summer tends to screw up the sleep schedule even further. This could be a problem.
  6. David Gray, “Please Forgive Me”: Okay, we’re just leaning into this now.
  7. Rilo Kiley, “A Better Son/Daughter”: “Sometimes when you’re on/You’re really fuckin’ on” is one of the best lines in music.
  8. Jackson Browne, “Fountain Of Sorrow”: It’s a good story song. I like a good story song.
  9. Jay Farrar, “Feel Free”: I like Jay Farrar’s songwriting, I really do. He’s made some great songs, some great albums, both with Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt and all by his lonesome. What are those songs about? Damned if I know. He’s great, but his writing is rather…elliptical, let’s call it.
  10. The National, “Lemonworld”: If we’re going to put together what is, essentially, a playlist of sad bastard songs, we can’t leave the National off the list. I also like the fact that the little guitar sting – that two chord strum they do in this song – gets used as interstitial music on NPR all the time.

Playlist #214

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Happy Tuesday! We’ve eased into June and the last couple of weeks of the school year here in Northern Virginia. We’re down to just half days now, and you can tell the students are really ready to just be done with it all. I also have a new closet! It should be able to sustain the weighty heft of all of our clothes, unlike the previous, crappy closet. Here’s some songs.

  1. Matt Berninger, “Times of Difficulty”: It seems that all the forward momentum the National albums used to have was saved up for the lead singer’s new solo album, Get Sunk. The songs on it are catchy and remind me of when the National weren’t just a drone-y, sad-sack band with lots of keyboards and a drum machine, but a drone-y, sad-sack band with lots of guitars. I like guitars.
  2. The Minus 5, “Blow In My Bag”: I’m reasonably certain the title refers to someone trying not to hyperventilate, not the contents of Scott McCaughey’s luggage. Reasonably certain.
  3. Earth, Wind, and Fire, “Boogie Wonderland (feat. The Emotions)”: One of the quintessential disco songs. It’s got a beat and you can dance to it.
  4. The Faces, “Three Button Hand Me Down”: I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write a song that rocks as hard as this song Rod Stewart wrote about a hand-me-down jacket.
  5. The Animals, “Gonna Send You Back To Walker”: It’s one of those songs about a girl who saw the bright lights of the city and decided to never, ever stop partying. Honestly, I get it.
  6. Linda Ronstadt, “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me”: The way she just rips through this song like a woman on fire never fails to entertain and delight me.
  7. John Mellencamp, “Right Behind Me”: At some point in the past fifteen, twenty years, John Mellencamp stopped trying to be relevant and just started writing strange little songs about whatever the hell he wanted to. And I’ll admit, I love it. He did a whole album like it was straight out of the 1950s, with improvised recording set-ups and carefully-placed single microphones to pick up all the instruments (and voices!) all at the same time. It sounds fantastic, and this song is a stellar example of it all.
  8. Rufus Wainwright, “Going To A Town”: As with Rufus, I am also tired of you, America.
  9. Josh Ritter, “Golden Age of Radio”: I dig me some Josh Ritter, even if his most recent couple of albums have sounded rather bland and uninteresting to me. This song reveals that the man knew what he was doing from the very start, and I really kinda wish he’d get back to this looser, more country sound.
  10. Drive-By Truckers, “Decoration Day”: Sure, Decoration Day was technically last week (we call it Memorial Day now), but there’s never a bad time to listen to this song.

Playlist #213 – The Boss

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Happy Tuesday, folks! Yes, a holiday delayed the playlist again. We should be used to this by now. The school year is winding down, the parking lot at school is being eaten up by the construction, and I’m forced to get my steps in just to get to my classroom (in a trailer, where it’s been for the past three years). But none of that stops me from delivering unto you a playlist of some of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, inspired by (1) Memorial Day and (2) the fact that Trump hates the dude.

  1. “Downbound Train”: I think people sometimes forget just how dark the songs on Born in the USA are. Sure, the title track seems anthematic and fist-pumping, the sort of thing you expect to come blasting out of the speaker stack in an arena, but the lyrics to that one (and virtually all the rest of the songs on the album) are dour and troubled. At least here, the lyrical themes are matched better by the music, and I absolutely love the atmospheric keyboard part where all the rest of the instruments drop out and it’s just Bruce’s voice and that keyboard underneath.
  2. “Ain’t Got You”: Is Bruce as clever a wordsmith as Bob Dylan? Lord, no. And that’s okay! Dylan is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of talent. Bruce is a working man’s lyricist, but he can turn a clever phrase when he wants to. And he does several times in this song, discussing how all the riches and success he’s gathered unto himself mean nothing if he doesn’t have the girl.
  3. “Stolen Car”: Bruce tends to over-emote. It’s not his fault, of course; the guy grew up idolizing Roy Orbison, a man who turned a two-syllable word (“cryin'”) into a five-syllable word. But here, Bruce manages to tone down everything and just let the desperation and the defeat the character feels permeate everything, until you’re left feeling just as empty as the night was.
  4. “The Promised Land”: Despite the downer tone of a lot of his work, I think Bruce is, at heart, an optimistic guy. He wants the characters who populate his lyrics to be successful, to be happy, to win, dammit, and nowhere is that more obvious than in this song.
  5. “Rockaway the Days”: Of course, Bruce seems to me, first and foremost, to be a storyteller. His characters are hopeless romantics and strung-out losers, guys on the street corner begging for just one shot at glory and girls who sit at home, wistfully re-reading love letters and wondering when the dream died. And sometimes, the protagonists like to “drink and gamble . . . like to fight,” like Billy here. Ol’ Billy, he had some problems, and wasn’t able to overcome them.
  6. “All the Way Home”: A song of hope and longing with a great, driving beat.
  7. “Reason to Believe”: I think this is the song that summarizes Bruce’s beliefs more than any other. Yes, times are hard. Yes, life seems to beat you down day after day. Yes, there are hardships that seem impossible to overcome, frustrations that build up and overwhelm you. But, at the end of every hard-earned day, people do find some reason to believe. What else can you do?
  8. “Ain’t Good Enough for You”: More sardonic, clever Bruce. Sometimes, you just aren’t good enough for the girl, no matter what you do.
  9. “Wrecking Ball”: Is it about the tearing down of a football stadium? Or is it about a person smashing into your life and completely changing everything? Or maybe both? I think maybe both.
  10. “My City of Ruins”: At the moment, one of my absolute favorite Bruce songs. It’s sad and hopeful and full of life in all its messiness. It’s a prayer for a better world, one where everyone can “rise up” and be our better selves. It came out in the shadow of the September 11th attacks, part of Bruce’s reckoning with that event and the changes it brought to the country.

Book 8 Update

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Hey, did you know I was still writing novels? It’s a true fact! Another true fact is that I finished up the latest Hazzard Pay novel, Book 8, just yesterday. I sent it off to my editor, who should be able to look at it next week and then I’ll be able to make her recommended changes and then you’ll all be sorry!

Or you won’t. I dunno.

Anyway, the new book is a little different than the past ones. My other novels are all just one long, single story, but for this one I divided it up into four separate, shorter stories that all come together to form a bigger story at the end. Hey, if it’s a technique that works for John Scalzi, I’ll make it work for me, too!

So yeah, after I get the editing done and get a cover for this bad boy, I’ll release it upon the unsuspecting world. That should be…some time this summer, I guess? Wild. So expect to hear more about that soon.

Playlist #212

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Happy Monday, folks! The end of the school year always seems so far away, until suddenly it’s upon you. We’ve only got a few classes left with each of our cohorts, and then it’ll be summer time! In the meantime, I finally have physical CDs of the new album, Beard Situation, so hit me up if you want a copy of that. And now, on with the playlist!

  1. The Record Company, “So What’cha Want”: Did you ever want to hear the Beastie Boys as a blues jam? ‘Cause this is what that would sound like.
  2. The Lemonheads, “Sad Cinderella”: Nothing better than a Townes Van Zandt cover to get your Monday started off right. Or wrong. I don’t know you, I don’t know how you feel about Townes Van Zandt. I know how you should feel about his music. You should feel good knowing you yourself are not Townes Van Zandt and are, statistically, not nearly as fucked up as he was.
  3. Macy Gray, “Creep”: Macy Gray did a covers album, and if you’re wondering, “Do all the songs sound like I think they should sound by the lady who sang ‘I Try’?” well buddy, I’ve got some good news for you. This is a cover of the Radiohead song. Not the one by Stone Temple Pilots. Or TLC.
  4. Fiona Apple, “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)”: A damn good song about a pressing topic: maybe we shouldn’t lock people up just because they can’t afford bail, then take away their children because they can’t get out of jail to go home because they can’t pay bail. Cash bail is a huge scam, is what I’m saying.
  5. Thom Yorke, “And It Rained All Night”: I like my Thom Yorke drone-y and paranoid.
  6. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Ways To Be Wicked”: Not a week goes by where I don’t think, “Man, I need to add [fill-in-the-blank-Tom-Petty-song] to a playlist!” This week, it’s this song.
  7. JD McPherson, “Signs And Signifiers”: Any ideas what kind of guitar is on the cover of this album? I wanna say it’s an Epiphone, but my knowledge of guitars from the 1950s and 1960s is sketchy at best.
  8. Jelly Roll Morton, “Black Bottom Stomp”: According to his own self-mythology, Jelly Roll Morton invented Jazz with this song. I don’t know how true that statement may be, but it’s a fun song. It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.
  9. Watkins Family Hour, “Steal Your Heart Away”: A cover of a Lindsey Buckingham song and not, as I first kinda hoped, the Van Morrison song of the same name. Oh well. It’s still a beautiful string band ballad.
  10. The War On Drugs, “Living Proof”: An original, not a Bruce Springsteen cover. Though that is a cover I would now like to hear…

Playlist #211

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Happy Monday, folks. The school year is starting to wear thin. I know my niblings are all out soon, though Oklahoma always ends before Memorial Day (we’ve still got a whole month left here in Northern Virginia). Anyway, here’s some music to get us through another week.

  1. Counting Crows, “Virginia Through the Rain”: The latest Counting Crows album is…fine. It’s classic Counting Crows. Good melodies, excellent instrumentation, but I don’t really remember much of the song after it’s done playing. This one’s pretty nice, though.
  2. Fugees, “Ready or Not”: I listened to the Fugee’s album The Score over the weekend for the first time. I was already aware of “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” their breakout hit from this album, but this one is a pretty solid tune, too.
  3. The Grass Roots, “I’d Wait a Million Years”: Such a great song. The chorus is just a study in how to write a killer hook and deliver it with energy.
  4. Jefferson Airplane, “Volunteers”: Speaking of energy, this one’s full of it. And probably drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
  5. Procol Harem, “A Whiter Shade of Pale”: Never really been sure what this song is about, though I’ve heard it’s about the negotiation of sex between a guy and a girl. I just know it always feels a bit melancholy and sad to me.
  6. Bob Dylan, “Boots of Spanish Leather”: Speaking of songs that make me feel sad, this one just hits in a strange way. Ostensibly a conversation between a couple about a souvenir from a trip to Spain, there’s more to it than that. Young me was obsessed with this one for a while, and older, theoretically wiser me still puts it on repeat sometimes.
  7. Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, “Let It Ride”: Probably one of the better songs off Cold Roses, which I still argue is the best Ryan Adams album in his lengthy (possibly unwieldy) catalog.
  8. Electric Light Orchestra, “Long Black Road”: An ELO song I’d never heard? Apparently it was on the soundtrack to American Hustle back in 2001. Comes across as a song recorded especially for the movie. It’s classic Jeff Lynne.
  9. Macy Gray, “I Try”: Did you know she had not only other songs on the album this song came off of, but other albums, too? It’s wild!
  10. Spoon, “I Turn My Camera On”: Can you believe Gimme Fiction came out 20 years ago? It’s true. And now I feel like all my bones are turning to dust.

Playlist #210

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Tuesdays are the new Mondays, at least when you spend your Monday sitting at home waiting for the HVAC guy to show up. When he finally does, he’s gonna tell you that you need a whole new system, won’t that be a fun and adult experience to have! Anyway, here’s some songs.

  1. Fleetwood Mac, “Everywhere”: Why do I hear this song as interstitial music, like, everywhere? It’s a good song, mind you – not one of their absolute best, but good – I just don’t see why everyone from Target to NPR is using it.
  2. Daughter of Swords, “Hard On”: Yes, it’s about what you think it’s about, but humorously so and from the woman’s perspective, I think? Or maybe the singer is taking on the role of a man? Either way, it’s a good song, Jerry.
  3. Warren Zevon, “Lawyers, Guns and Money”: If you’re gonna send anything, you could do worse than these three things, I guess.
  4. Mark Knopfler, “Don’t Crash the Ambulance”: So, this song came out in 2004. Is the intended target George W. Bush? Because he ran for reelection that year, sure, but it was re-election. I’d think the kind of advice this song offers – such as “don’t push the big red button or you’ll kill us all” – would have been far more useful and effective about four years earlier.
  5. Uncle Tupelo, “No Sense in Lovin'”: Latter-day Uncle Tupelo sounds like more of a set-up for future bands Son Volt and Wilco, and no more so than on this Jeff Tweedy number that wouldn’t have felt amiss on Wilco’s A.M.
  6. The White Stripes, “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine”: Just tell us she’s anti-vax and move on, Jack.
  7. Albert King, “Born Under a Bad Sign”: Now, I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious. That being said, I’m usually fairly certain I wasn’t born under a bad sign, and wouldn’t really know how to recognize if I was, and I treasure this ignorance. Please, no one tell me what it means, as I might lose some other, more vital, piece of information. I can only keep so many things in my head, and I’d hate to lose something important like my social security number or my wife’s birthday.
  8. Jars of Clay, “Reckless Forgiver”: I probably forgive recklessly. If there’s anything I took from my Christian upbringing (aside from a sense of compassion for those less fortunate and a weird anti-authoritarian theological streak that I cannot get rid of), it’s that forgiveness is vital to a good life. Also, don’t be a dick to other people.
  9. John Prine, “Spanish Pipedream”: I’m not really certain why it’s important that “she was a level-headed dancer,” but I’m sure it must have been important ’cause it’s the first line of the song. You don’t include a detail like that unless it’s vital to understanding the character or plot. Maybe it’s designed to make you think her advice – to “blow up your TV, throw away your paper, move to the country, build you a home, plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, try to find Jesus on your own” – is more grounded that it sounds at first blush.
  10. Joe Walsh, “Rocky Mountain Way”: I almost learned to play a B chord for this song, but in the end I just cheat and slide my A chord down two frets and only strum three of the six strings. It’s a cheater B, as I call it, but it works for all the longer you actually have to play that chord in the song. Song’s a banger, though.

Playlist #209

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It’s Monday again, somehow. Time continues forward. SOL testing starts this week at my school, so we’re stuck in one class each day for two periods instead of one. I’m thinking the kids are gonna get real sick of my dad jokes before that time ends.

  1. Dire Straits, “Your Latest Trick”: It’s one of those classic ’80s songs with saxophone solos in it.
  2. Elvis Presley, “Run On”: I’d only ever heard the Johnny Cash (and, by extension, the Gaslight Anthem) version of this song, which is slower and more menacing. Elvis’s version sounds like a tent revival on speed.
  3. Kenny Rogers & the First Edition, “Just Dropping In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”: Kentucky-Fried Kenny was apparently a bit…psychedelic back in the day? I somehow never realized he’d done this song, but it’s groovy.
  4. Drive-By Truckers, “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac”: I love story songs, and ones based on reality (Carl Perkins really did win a Cadillac from Sam Phillips) are just always pretty great. And no one really does them better these days than the Drive-By Truckers, who have such an eye (and ear) for detail.
  5. Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins, “Born Secular”: Such a sad, deep song, driven by that drum machine loop and the big chords on the piano. There really isn’t a bad song on that album.
  6. Nanci Griffith, “This Old Town”: Oklahoma is littered with towns like the ones this song is about: small, isolated communities that should have shut down years ago, shoud’ve become ghost towns a dozen times over, but still somehow cling to life and continued existence. Most of them are built around the local public school, actually.
  7. Tom Petty, “Crawling Back to You (Alternate Version)”: The original version of this song remains one of the absolute best on his best album, Wildflowers. This alternate take feels looser and somehow sadder.
  8. Bruce Springsteen, “O Mary Don’t You Weep”: The Seeger Sessions collection is such a strange aberration in Springsteen’s catalog. It’s loose and celebratory and fun, without the dozens of layers of post-production and overdubs and the agonizing over mixing and mastering that usually accompanies a Bruce production.
  9. Van Morrison, “Almost Independence Day”: While the guitar riff sounds almost like “Wish You Were Here,” the song’s other Pink Floyd connection is the length – it’s over ten minutes – if not the thematic content. Van sorta goes on a rambling, stream-of-consciousness sort of thing over the course of the song, but it sounds amazing. The low buzzsaw of that keyboard (or is it a cello or a double bass? I honestly don’t know) that cuts through occasionally gets me every time, and I wish I could figure out how he got that tone out of it and how I could duplicate it.
  10. Collective Soul, “Shine”: So apparently the entire album this song is off of was just the demos the lead singer did on his own, playing all the instruments himself. The little “yeah” before the chorus was sung through a toilet paper roll, which is a hilarious bit of trivia with which to impress your friends.

Playlist #208: Uncle Gert

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It’s Tuesday, but I only just got back from a quick trip to Oklahoma last night. Yes, I said I was going to Ohio last week for Spring Break, but then a difficult and unfortunate thing happened: my Uncle Randy died. So instead of Ohio, I headed to Oklahoma. Anyway, here are ten songs that I think of when I think of my uncle.

  1. The Traveling Wilburys, “Poor House”: Whenever the family gets together, the guitars come out. And whenever the guitars come out, we play this song. Uncle Randy was the lead player of the family, the guy who knew all the parts in each song and can usually come up with something on the spot that perfectly fits the song. He loved playing this one and asked me to sing it every time.
  2. Chicago, “25 or 6 to 4”: Apparently both my dad and my uncle were completely and totally in love with Chicago back in the 70s, and this was always their favorite by them. The Terry Kath guitar solo in this one is a hell of a challenge, but apparently Randy was able to master it in high school.
  3. The Beatles, “Two Of Us”: We loved playing this one in the guitar pickin’ circle. It’s got beautiful vocals from Lennon and McCartney, giving my dad and me a chance to each sing one part. This generally works better when we’re not trying to harmonize, as I tend to follow any other voice I hear in terms of how they’re singing.
  4. Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here”: My uncle did a long-running series of covers called “Family, Friends, and Me.” He did well over 100 covers of rock and roll songs over the years, recently releasing the seventh volume online just a couple of weeks ago. One of the songs for this most recent collection was this Pink Floyd tune, one I’ve loved since I heard it so many years ago.
  5. The Eagles, “Desperado”: A beautiful ballad that Gert’s friend Teresa sang on the seventh volume of “Family, Friends, and Me.” She does it perfect, and I honestly can’t imagine anyone else ever singing it.
  6. The Regular Joes, “Flame On, Fire of Love”: My uncle was in a number of bands over the years, but the one I will always remember was called the Regular Joes. They were a rock and roll band who did a share of covers and originals, and this original was on their last record. It’s one of those rock songs that manages to be wistful and sad and beautiful all at once, and it’s always been one of my favorites of theirs.
  7. Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Who’ll Stop the Rain”: There are good songs on every single CCR album, even the really terrible last couple. But this one stands tall even among their vaunted catalog. We played this one all the time in the pickin’ circles.
  8. Boston, “More Than a Feeling”: The guy behind the band Boston, Tom Scholz, reminds me a lot of Uncle Randy. They were both perfectly at home in the studio and crafted multi-layered, phenomenal songs.
  9. The Cottrell Boys, “Rainin’ on a Thursday”: My dad and Randy recorded a few songs themselves, just for fun, and I usually wrote lyrics for them. This is one of the songs dad and I are most proud of, and they made it sound perfect in my opinion.
  10. Foo Fighters, “My Hero”: There’s a photo of my uncle, from when he was young, sitting there in sunglasses and holding a Strat. For his birthday a few years ago, his son, my cousin Chris, gave him a blown-up version of the photo with the lyrics to this song on the back. It featured in the funeral, even. It’s a song that’s now indelibly linked with my uncle in my mind.