loose fur

Playlist #237: Wrecks

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks. We’ve got a short week this week, what with Veterans Day happening tomorrow, but we’ve also got a historically-based playlist for you today. Starting with:

  1. Gordon Lightfoot, “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”: Fifty years ago today, the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in Lake Superior, taking twenty-nine men with it. Lightfoot apparently wrote and recorded the song just a month later, and it was released in August of 1976, giving him the biggest hit of his career.
  2. Tom Petty, “You Wreck Me”: Is there a better Tom Petty album than Wildflowers? If so, I haven’t heard it (and neither, I’d assume, has anyone else, ’cause this is clearly his best album). That chorus is so good to sing along to.
  3. Pearl Jam, “Wreckage”: Pearl Jam’s latest studio album included this gem, an acoustic-based song that stands as one of the best they’ve written in the past fifteen, twenty years.
  4. Bruce Springsteen, “Wrecking Ball”: It’s a song about Giants Stadium in New Jersey. They were about to tear it down, and the Boss had to write a song in ode to it. It’s one of his better latter-day songs.
  5. George Harrison, “Wreck of the Hesperus”: Based on a Wordsworth poem about a shipwreck? Or a Procol Harum song of the same name? I dunno. It’s mostly George Harrison lamenting getting older, but still being able to rock out. It’s chock-full o’ puns, which is one of my favorite forms of song lyrics.
  6. Loose Fur, “Wreckroom”: Look, Loose Fur is weird. Just…really weird. But also nifty. Mostly weird.
  7. They Might Be Giants, “Wreck My Car”: Please do not wreck someone else’s car, even if they ask you to. That’s probably insurance fraud, and you don’t wanna be involved in that.
  8. Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs, “Wreckless Abandon”: Mike Campbell’s solo work is more workmanlike than anything he did with the Heartbreakers, but c’mon, not everyone is a songwriting dynamo like Tom Petty was.
  9. Emmylou Harris, “Wrecking Ball”: A different “Wrecking Ball” than the Bruce Springsteen one. It’s a beautiful song, though.
  10. Wreckless Eric, “Whole Wide World”: Featured to great effect in the movie Stranger than Fiction, it’s one of those three-chord garage rock songs that you can learn in two minutes and play all by yourself forever. We recommend turning the amplifier way up for this one.

Playlist #68

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday! I’m back in the school building, or at least adjacent to it in one of the “learning cottages” (what they’re calling the portable buildings) where our classes will be held this year. In the meantime, I am still doing the Patreon thing.

  1. Jimi Hendrix, “Fire”: Brother Clyde was telling me a story from Woodstock ’99 yesterday, about how they handed out candles to everyone and everyone immediately started setting things on fire. They asked the Red Hot Chili Peppers, of all people, to calm the crowd, but instead the band ripped into this song.
  2. Buddy Guy (Featuring Jason Isbell), “Gunsmoke Blues”: Too topical. Far too timely. It’s always too timely when you’re talking about gun violence in America, but Buddy Guy does it beautifully.
  3. The Clash, “Spanish Bombs”: Poor Andalucía.
  4. Colin Hay, “Beautiful World”: Yes, I originally heard this acoustic version on Scrubs, like so many other people. Doesn’t matter, it’s still amazing and beautiful.
  5. Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, “The Ballad of Speedy Atkins”: Psychobilly at its finest.
  6. Tom Waits, “No One Knows I’m Gone”: I’m still waiting to hear the version of this song my brother recorded, but I think it probably still needs vocals from his vocalist on it.
  7. Andrew Bird, “Not A Robot, But A Ghost”: Either way, Mystery Inc is on the case!
  8. Paul McCartney, “Try Not To Cry”: A McCartney rave up, because why not?
  9. Frank Turner, “Silent Key”: We’re fairly certain at least a couple of the astronauts from the doomed Challenger space shuttle survived the explosion that destroyed the shuttle, because their personal egress air packs (PEAPs) were used. There is no indication they radioed to let anyone know they were still alive in freefall, but it’s still a touching song.
  10. Loose Fur, “Laminated Cat”: Please do not laminate your cats. They do not like it.