aerosmith

Playlist #153 – Annabelle the Horsewoman

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Happy Tuesday, folks! I returned from the great wide west to my humble abode in Virginia safe and sound. And today is eldest niece Annabelle’s birthday! In her honor, all of the songs have to do with horses, ’cause that girl is equestrian.

  1. Bob Dylan, “All The Tired Horses”: The kickoff to the infamous Self Portrait album doesn’t even feature any Dylan vocals. Which probably should’ve been a sign to folks, I think.
  2. Moxy Fruvous, “Horseshoes”: “You keep handin’ out horseshoes/Horseshoes have gotta be tossed.”
  3. America, “Horse With No Name”: Spoiler alert: you don’t have to keep riding a nameless horse. You can give it a name anytime you want. Horses don’t care. They don’t know their names.
  4. Bruce Springsteen, “Silver Palomino”: According to britannica.com., a palomino is a “colour type of horse distinguished by its cream, yellow, or gold coat and white or silver mane and tail.” Which…I mean, I guess you can refer to a horse by its mane color primarily, sorta like we do with hair color, except humans aren’t completely covered in hair that gives us a much better descriptor we could use, Bruce.
  5. Aerosmith, “Back In The Saddle”: If you fall out of the saddle, this song encourages you to get back up and climb back into it once more. Whereas I would say, “Bugger that for a lark, I’m gonna go have a lie down.” Because I apparently became British when I fell.
  6. Counting Crows, “Another Horsedreamer’s Blues”: Why does dreaming of horses give one the blues? I do not know. Maybe it’s because they’re so expensive?
  7. The Rolling Stones, “Wild Horses”: I dunno, I get the feeling wild horses would not want to be employed, let alone to drag anyone anywhere. But maybe that’s just me.
  8. Soul Coughing, “16 Horses”: I have so many questions. Why is she pushing the horses? Why sixteen of them, specifically? You guys have a lot of explaining to do.
  9. The Beatles, “Dig A Pony”: But not as much explaining as John Lennon has. Why do you dig a pony, John? And how? What is…is this a sex thing? Do I really even want an answer to that question?
  10. Tom Waits, “Pony”: Why does he sound so sad while he sings about riding his pony? I thought these things made people happy. I don’t understand.

Playlist #93 – Charlie Loves the ’70s

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Happy Monday morning, folks! Now, around here, we have a saying: “classic rock” is music from the 1970s. No, I didn’t make this saying up, it’s just a true fact of life. All of you folks who have added Guns ‘n’ Roses and Nirvana to the “classic rock canon” are just wrong. Those two bands are great (well, Nirvana is), but they belong to other genres. If we just go around expanding our definition of classic rock, what’s next? Nickelback counting as classic rock? I don’t think so.

This isn’t to say that some of those now-classic bands from the ’70s weren’t complete meatheads. They most definitely were. And the arena-rock stylings of a lot of ’70s acts just proves what I’ve also always said: the ’70s were bombastic and occasionally kind of awesome. Cocaine must be a helluva drug.

Anyway, here’s ten ’70s rock anthems for your listening pleasure. This list could have been ten times longer and still not have fully encompassed the meatheadedness of the ’70s. There’s no KISS on this list, for instance. I’m putting this one up on Spotify, where it will end up significantly longer, I’m sure. There’s still lots of ’70s meathead out there.

  1. Aerosmith, “Toys In The Attic”: The boys from Boston are pretty quintessential ’70s sleaze; it oozes out of every word Steven Tyler sings.
  2. Alice Cooper, “School’s Out”: The guy your parents’ parents were scared of, sorta the way your parents were afraid of Marilyn Manson (and probably for similar reasons).
  3. Bad Company, “Rock & Roll Fantasy”: When I think of bombastic, Bad Company is actually one of the first bands that comes to mind. Not because their songs are over the top glam or anything; no, far from it. This is straight-ahead 4/4 rock and roll, but it comes with all the trimmings and trappings of fame, that rock and roll fantasy of the title. What makes this band over the top is the earnestness with which Paul Rodgers sings every song. It comes off as goofy as hell to me.
  4. Foghat, “Slow Ride”: “Slow ride! Ban-nan-na-na, nan-na-na, take it easy!” Try not to sing along, especially with the guitar riff. You can’t.
  5. Deep Purple, “Smoke On The Water”: Speaking of guitar riffs…
  6. Boston, “Foreplay/Long Time”: Or just guitars in general. This band was two guys. Two! And all one of ’em did was sing! All the instruments were layered in there, one at a time, by a single guy in his basement studio. It’s awe-inducing.
  7. .38 Special, “Hold On Loosely”: The ’70s were especially well-known for their band made up of guys who could’ve just been a group of dads jamming in the garage and drinking beer on Friday nights. This is one of those bands.
  8. Grand Funk, “I’m Your Captain”: The ’70s were also known for their overblown, overlong story songs about boats and stuff. Pretty sure Kansas did a boat song, too.
  9. Meat Loaf & Ellen Foley, “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”: While we’re on the subject of overblown meathead songs, I’m pretty sure this is the epitome of that genre of music. Overdramatic, quasi-operatic, and all about teenagers gettin’ down and gettin’ nasty.
  10. Jethro Tull, “Aqualung”: I’m still not really sure who this Aqualung guy is, but he’s skeevy as all hell. “Eying little girls with bad intent?” Dude. Pedophile. Go sit in your aqualung, you’re on time out, mister.

Playlist #66

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Happy Monday and welcome to August, everyone! As always, you can back me on Patreon, and there’s still that GoFundMe for my wife. We’re woefully underfunded for the month of August, so any little bit helps.

  1. Simply Three, “Dance Monkey”: The podiatrist my wife goes to always has some interesting music playing in the waiting room. This was playing there last week, and I kinda dig it.
  2. Jackson Browne, “Jamaica Say You Will”: Jackson Browne is just hands down one of the best songwriters of the 20th century, and this song – which opens up his self-titled album – is a good example of his songcraft.
  3. Aerosmith, “Big Ten Inch Record”: Aerosmith are the masters of what Nanny Ogg would call “single-intenders.” They’re not quite double entendres, because there is no subtlety to them whatsoever. But my, are they fun.
  4. The Wallflowers, “I’ll Let You Down (But Will Not Give You Up)”: Oh, Jakob. You know what a Wallflowers song sounds like, and you hit so close on most of this album. Letting Rami Jaffe go was a mistake, though.
  5. Toad the Wet Sprocket, “I’ll Bet On You”: The chord changes and melody for this song are based on a Lapdog song (made up of half of the band while Toad was on hiatus back in the early oughts), but then Glen Phillips came in and said, “Hey, this sounds great, but you know what would sound greater? If I wrote new lyrics for it and sang on this one instead of one of you other yokels.” And then they did that.
  6. Three Dog Night, “Shambala”: Shambala is a mythical place, rather like El Dorado or that Tibetan monastery where the Iron Fist trained. It’s also a pretty good song.
  7. Billy Bragg & Wilco, “When The Roses Bloom Again”: Yeah, the third volume of Mermaid Avenue was a collection of diminishing returns, but even in among all the fair-to-middling stuff on there, you find the occasional gem such as this one. It’s a gorgeous song and Jeff Tweedy’s vocals are perfect.
  8. Radiohead, “Ill Wind”: It’s an ill wind blows no man good, or something like that. Hey, I wrote a book with a title very similar!
  9. The Regular Joes, “Restless”: Found an email from my uncle the other day that he wrote back when I first moved out to Virginia (some 17 years ago now). It has the chord changes for this song in there, ’cause I wanted to learn to play it on guitar. It’s a very simple song, chords-wise, so I’ll probably be playing it later today.
  10. The Allman Brothers Band, “Midnight Rider”: They are just determined not to let the midnight rider catch them. Nosiree, not those Allman boys.

Playlist #44: Back in the Saddle

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Happy Monday! I’m actually back to work today, after a month away taking care of the Wife. She’s improving every day, slowly but surely, and she’s well enough I’m comfortable leaving her home alone while I come toil away in education mines. A reminder that, if you want to support me making my own music, I’ve got that Patreon you can contribute to! I actually drop February’s song today!

  1. Genesis, “Turn It On Again”: I recently downloaded the album this song came from, Duke, and while this is definitely my favorite song off the whole record, the rest of the songs ain’t too shabby, either.
  2. Steve Winwood, “Back In The High Life Again”: “All the doors I closed one time/Will open up again.” Yes, they will.
  3. Aerosmith, “Back In The Saddle”: A bit of my anthem this morning.
  4. Andrew Bird, “Orpheo Looks Back”: Every playlist could benefit from some Andrew Bird, and I love this song.
  5. Bob Dylan, “Beyond Here Lies Nothin'”: “Beyond here lies nothin’/But the mountains of the past.” Maybe not Dylan’s most profound work ever, but I still dig the rhythm of this song and the guitar work.
  6. Gorillaz, “DARE”: I could dance this morning, I think.
  7. Glen Phillips, “Duck And Cover”: A more stripped-down version of a song that appeared on his Winter Pays For Summer album off of Tornillo.
  8. The Gaslight Anthem, “Stay Lucky”: Someday, I’ll put together a playlist of songs that I love to play on the guitar. This song will also appear on that list.
  9. Frank Turner, “The Way I Tend To Be”: I love this song for the mandolin mostly.
  10. CCR, “Midnight Special”: Another that I love to play on the guitar and howl along to at the top of my lungs, as one does with CCR songs.