patti smith

Playlist #130

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folk! This is moving week, the week where all of my sanity leaves my body in a sudden rush and I wake up on Friday, hopefully in a new place with all of my stuff there. If not, well, I know how to cry.

  1. Paul McCartney, “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”: I tell myself this one is about me. I’m not 100% convinced I’m wrong. My wife thinks I’m handsome, at any rate.
  2. HAIM, “The Wire”: I have heard exactly three (3) songs by this band in my whole life, and I’ve like all three of them. This one cops the drum rhythm from the Eagles’ “Heartache Tonight,” which is actually pretty dope.
  3. The Gaslight Anthem, “Our Father’s Sons”: It’s not a finished song. Bits and pieces of it end up in other songs off The ’59 Sound album. But the lyrics are fairly unique to this particular version, and I like those.
  4. Joe Cocker, “The Letter”: Oh, so a fast train ain’t good enough for ya, Joe? You gotta get on an aeroplane instead? I mean, I guess it makes sense, at least here in the States where high-speed rail just isn’t a thing. But if you were in Japan, you’d be rethinking that train.
  5. Amanda Shires, “Pale Fire”: I keep coming back to this song every few months. I love it. There’s a simplicity and honesty to it that I really appreciate and tend to look for in music.
  6. Patti Smith, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”: If you’d told me there’d be a version of this song that features stand-up bass and a banjo and that I’d love this particular version of the song, I’d…probably have believed you, that sounds right up my alley.
  7. The Beatles, “Two Of Us”: “On our way back home.” Yeah, this one is a stealth moving song!
  8. Muddy Waters, “Goin’ Home”: If it’s good enough for Muddy, it’s good enough for me.
  9. Moxy Fruvous, “Boo Time”: I will never, until the day I die, truly understand or maybe even be able to appreciate this band’s bizarre name, but I can get behind some of their stranger songs like this one. What the hell is “Boo Time,” anyway? Is this a Halloween song? Or is it the time when you cuddle up close to your boo? I honestly don’t know, and it keeps me up some nights.
  10. Electric Light Orchestra, “Roll Over Beethoven”: The pinnacle of early ELO. I will not be taking comments about it at this time, or ever.

Playlist #19

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Week three of the school year rattles on. Here’s some tunes to carry you through.

  1. Gin Blossoms, “Just South of Nowhere”: The Gin Blossoms have become one of my favorite bands from the 90s, and this is one of my favorites by them. Pre-New Miserable Experience.
  2. Electric Light Orchestra, “Daybreaker”: An instrumental from the Jeff Lynne-led band. It’s off of On the Third Day, where ELO really became ELO.
  3. Rhiannon Giddens, “Better Get It Right the First Time”: This woman can write a damn song, lemme tell you. She also plays a mean banjo, though that’s not present on this track. This is more of an old-school R&B number, with a rap break that actually really works well.
  4. Robert Earl Keen, “The Road Goes On Forever (Live)”: “The road goes on forever/and the party never ends,” he sings, and I’m still not sure if that’s a statement of undeniable fact or a plea to never let go.
  5. The Who, “The Seeker”: Any song that references the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Timothy Leary in the same verse is some kinda wonderful.
  6. Patti Smith, “Because The Night”: When Bruce Springsteen gives you an unfinished song, you take it and you rock it out. Patti Smith definitely did.
  7. Paul McCartney, “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”: Shortly after his first wife, Linda, passed away, Paul got into the studio with a bunch of buddies (including guitarist David Gilmore) to record a bunch of old 50s rockers and a few new tracks written in the same vein. They slap. They all slap. This one especially.
  8. Dawes, “That Western Skyline”: The first song off their first album is filled with so much promise. So much. Those Laurel Canyon harmonies are just perfect. The rest of the album – and honestly, everything they’ve put out since – feels like a failure of that promise.
  9. fun., “Some Nights”: Another band that falls flat right after their first song or two. Maybe what I expected from this song and what the band actually want to do are two very different things.
  10. Elliott Smith, “Either/Or”: It strikes me to this day that Elliott Smith died far too young. If I can be half – hell, even a quarter – of the guitar player or musician or songwriter that he was, I’d be perfectly happy with that.