playlist

Playlist #221

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Happy Monday, folks! After several days of our upstairs neighbors sounding like they were trying to slam their way through the floor into our bedroom (but probably just redoing their flooring, I think), things have quietened down around here, just in time for the wee lad Donovan to come visit. Here’s a playlist.

  1. Queens of the Stone Age, “No One Knows”: Is this the heavy week of songs? ‘Cause this is a pretty heavy song. Kicks some ass. Makes me wish I owned a motorcycle and I could drive it 100 mph down the highway without a helmet on.
  2. Godsmack, “Voodoo”: Yeah, it’s the heavy week! They don’t even say the title of the song until near the very end, but that chorus just rocks.
  3. Lord Huron, “Bag of Bones”: Okay, so maybe calling this “the heavy week” is a bit of a stretch, since this song is pretty hazy and Americana-y. I do like it a lot, though.
  4. Southern Culture on the Skids, “Voodoo Cadillac”: The Regular Joes (Uncle Randy’s old band) used to play this one at their shows, and I’ve always dug it.
  5. The Wallflowers, “Move The River”: I know my brother doesn’t really consider the album this is from to really be a real Wallflowers album, what with it really only featuring Jakob Dylan from among all the folks who’ve ever been in the band, but I still like it.
  6. Matthew Sweet, “Girlfriend”: I always expect the drums to be a fuller, heavier presence in this song than they are, but it’s still a damn good song.
  7. Mike Doughty, “Fort Hood”: Best use of the “Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” chorus that I’ve ever heard.
  8. Jimmy Eat World, “The Middle”: Such a hopeful, upbeat song.
  9. Jason Isbell, “24 Frames”: Such a fuckin’ downer. Also, this album came out ten years ago? It feels like it’s always existed, and Isbell just conjured it into the physical realm.
  10. They Might Be Giants, “Kiss Me, Son of God”: Hey, I can’t help it if everyone thinks I look like Jesus and mistakes me for His second coming. That’s just a side effect of this beard, man.

Playlist #220

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Happy Monday, folks. It’s a stormy one here in Northern Virginia, where we’ve reached the part of the summer when it rains most every afternoon for an hour or so. In unrelated news, I’ve received the edits for Book 8 back from my editor, so I’ll probably sit down sometime in the next couple of weeks and go through those and make the changes so it reads like something that wasn’t written by an unhinged lunatic with a comma addiction. Until then, here’s a playlist.

  1. Andrew Bird, “Frogs Singing”: A quintessential summer song. It always makes me think of a time I was visiting with my great-grandparents and they took me to a church revival at a little country church out in the middle of nowhere, eastern Oklahoma. The place was in a swamp, essentially, and all you could hear were the frogs singing and the cicadas buzzing. That sound was and remains summer to me.
  2. Case/Lang/Veirs, “Atomic Number”: Why does this song always make me feel so sad? Am I just trained to hear Neko Case’s voice and immediately feel like all the good has been sucked out of the universe and right into her vocal chords?
  3. Frank Turner, “Get Better”: A great shout-along song for when the world’s got you down and you feel like, fuck it, I can actually handle everything you’re gonna throw at me.
  4. Josh Ritter, “Getting Ready to Get Down”: If you see me dancing to this song in the car, feel free to dance along. It’s very danceable.
  5. Greg Feldon, “Incoming”: There’s no reason to give up. There’s no reason to give in. Keep your head up and keep fighting. The world will improve.
  6. Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”: The through line from this song to the work of Bruce Springsteen around Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River is just a straight line. I’m not saying Tracy Chapman is the lesbian Bruce Springsteen, but I’m not not saying that, either.
  7. Kris Orlowski, “Go”: There are only a couple of great songs about lighthouses out there in the world. This is one of them, especially the version sung by Glen Phillips.
  8. Van Morrison, “Wild Night”: A song about getting kitted out and going out on the town, as only a young person in their early to mid-twenties could do. I’m too old for that now, I think, but damn if this song doesn’t make me want to give it a try.
  9. James McMurtry, “Just Us Kids”: And then there’s this song to bring me back down to reality and remind me that, no, I’m in my 40s and I have responsibilities, but hey, maybe I can still have some fun if I really put myself out there.
  10. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Spike (Live)”: And then there’s this reminder that sometimes when you put yourself out there, you go into a bar and get made fun of so bad by a bunch of old curmudgeons that you just walk out, hitch a ride on the nearest interstate, and never come back ever again. Life’s funny that way.

Playlist #219

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Happy Monday, folks! The ridiculously high temperatures outside persist, but so do I! I kinda have to, since I don’t think I’m allowed to die anytime in the next thirty or so years. Anyway, here’s a playlist.

  1. Rise Against, “Give It All”: How would I describe this one? Emo? Pop-punk? Alternative? I dunno. It’s just a good song, man. We don’t always have to fit everything into these tiny prescriptive boxes.
  2. 10,000 Maniacs, “Trouble Me”: I go through phases where I want my music to sound like someone else’s. Right now, I want my music to sound like 10,000 Maniacs. There are definitely worse sounds.
  3. Noah Kahan & Hozier, “Northern Attitude”: We get it, things in the northern part of the US are darker and colder and sadder and all that. Just move to Phoenix and get on with things, guys.
  4. Mark Knopfler, “Prairie Wedding”: I love the guitar line in this song, and it’s just such a simple, beautiful song about the power of Mark Knopfler’s letter-writing skills. How else did he convince a woman to move to the barren west and marry him?
  5. Gorillaz, “Some Kind of Nature (Featuring Lou Reed)”: Gotta love a song that uses Lou Reed’s raspy talking as a selling point.
  6. The Gaslight Anthem, “Biloxi Parish”: There’s something nostalgic and sad underlying this song, which is something you could say about a great number of the Gaslight Anthem’s songs.
  7. HAIM, “Now It’s Time”: It uses U2’s “Numb” as a basis, but goes in a totally different direction. Pretty neat.
  8. Murder By Death, “Believe”: Great band, weird name. Not a death metal band, as you may be thinking. Folky alternative.
  9. The Offspring, “Self Esteem”: The sneering “na-na”s in this song are just great.
  10. Enya, “Orinoco Flow”: Apparently she came up with this song after her A&R guy said, “I don’t hear a single.” Enya said, “Oh yeah? Bet,” and came back a couple weeks later with this song. She is now living the dream, only recording when she feels like it, rarely touring, and just hanging out in her freakin’ castle with her cats. We should all be so lucky.

Playlist #218

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Happy Monday, folks! Summer proceeds apace, and we have air conditioning again, thank God. I was not doing well in those higher temperatures we were experiencing last week, let me tell you. Anyway, here’s some songs.

  1. Bruce Springsteen, “Shut Out the Light”: Been slowly working my way through Tracks II the past few days, and I know it’s cliche at this point but holy crap, Bruce throws out entire albums he’s not completely satisfied with? Which makes me wonder what possessed him to release High Hopes (zing!).
  2. Wilco, “Hell is Chrome (Live)”: A new live Wilco set just dropped, but most of what it did was remind me that I really do not remember many Wilco songs after about Sky Blue Sky. These are good songs, expertly performed, but they all feel pretty damn ephemeral to me, just background noise as I go about my day. This song, from A Ghost is Born, still slaps, though.
  3. James McMurtry, “South Texas Lawman”: A new James McMurtry album is a cause for celebration. He does one about 9/11 and W on here, and even though that’s only about a quarter century late it still feels entirely too relevant given the current tensions in the Middle East with another country whose name starts with an “I.” But that’s not this song. This is a country rocker about a lawman who wants to retire to the beach.
  4. Murder by Death, “Believe”: These guys just hit that dopamine button in my brain and make me wanna pick up my guitar and just strum the hell out of a couple of songs.
  5. Better Than Ezra, “Desperately Wanting”: There’s more to this song than the chorus, but all you really want to sing is the chorus part. The band gets that. They keep the verses short.
  6. Adeem the Artist, “Cowards Together”: I wish more country artists had the guts to be as open about who they are as Adeem the Artist, the cast-iron pansexual who pens such beautiful songs about not wanting to fight.
  7. The Wallflowers, “It’s A Dream”: My brother dismisses Glad All Over as “the Wallflowers just trying to sound like the Clash, but we’ve already got the Clash at home,” but I think it plays enough with the usual Wallflowers formula to keep them fresh and interesting and it’s still one of my go-to driving albums.
  8. Jack Johnson, “Taylor”: I remember, back in college, hearing a solo acoustic demo of this song around the time his debut, Brushfire Fairytales, came out, and I loved it. The version included on On and On is still plenty good, mind you, but I’ve been sorely tempted to go digging and see if I can find that original version again.
  9. Counting Crows, “Untitled (Love Song)”: “Throw your arms around my neck” is actually a pretty good chorus, actually.
  10. Aimee Mann, “Columbus Avenue”: Aimee Mann makes me nostalgic for college. Not because I listened to her stuff in college – I was stick pretty deep in the Bob Dylan thing back then – but just the tone of it seems to evoke a nostalgia in me, and when I feel nostalgic, that’s the time I think of. I feel like I could walk the streets of Clarksville at midnight with this song on repeat on the discman and all would be, if not quite right with the world, at least bearable and acceptable.

Playlist #217: Summertime

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Happy Monday! It’s all officially summer now, what with the summer solstice occurring late last week, so let’s look at some of my favorite songs about summer and summer-related stuff.

  1. Don Henley, “Boys of Summer”: Did you know the Ataris did a cover of this song, only instead of a “Dead Head sticker on a Cadillac” it’s a “Black Flag sticker” on the Caddy? I’m pretty sure the Venn Diagram of people who drive Cadillacs and people who would put a Black Flag sticker on their car has zero overlap.
  2. Mungo Jerry, “In the Summertime”: It’s all loosey-goosey and jugbandy. Feels like the most casual, tossed-off thing in the world, which is perfect for summer. We’ll just ignore the bit about, “If her daddy’s rich, taker her out for a meal/If her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel,” which feels a little like Mungo Jerry and his ridiculous hair ought to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
  3. Sublime, “Doin’ Time”: Ever heard a ’90s alt-punk band borrow liberally from Gershwin? Well, you have now! And it actually works surprisingly well.
  4. Glen Phillips, “Winter Pays For Summer”: I rather like the idea that the reward for dealing with the season you don’t like is the season you do like. The winter, that is, pays for the summer, though in my case I think it works the opposite (I hate summer heat. I should escape to cooler climes, but I’m pretty locked-in here in Fairfax County).
  5. Wilco, “Summer Teeth”: Does the title make any sense? Does it matter if it does? Not even a little. This bright bite of poppy bubblegum is from the similarly-named album Summerteeth, which is likewise full of Brian Wilson-esque tunes to bop along to as a summer night stretches out before you.
  6. Better Than Ezra, “Summerhouse”: It’s about a summer house, but more accurately it’s about a murder that no one really seems to care about. So it goes.
  7. Iron & Wine, “Summer in Savannah”: From that weird, experimental period where Iron & Wine tried to pretend they weren’t an old-timey string band sort of thing and were just a bunch of synth nerds. You can be both, Sam Beam. You can be both.
  8. The Head and the Heart, “Summertime”: With enough reverb on the guitar for a Ventures solo and enough yearning to make Brian Wilson blush.
  9. The Beach Boys, “Fun, Fun, Fun”: We’ve already established that the Beach Boys were the quintessential band of summer, and “Fun, Fun, Fun” is one of their absolute best summertime tunes. Joyriding in a T-Bird? Saying you’re going to the library when you’re going out cruising? It’s such a time capsule of the early 1960s. I can just see Harrison Ford and Opie searching for the Wolfman while this song plays.
  10. Ray LaMontagne, “Summer Clouds”: A wistful, finger-picked ballad that feels like a Sunday morning in October kind of song, a longing remembrance of the past.

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.

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…