sam cooke

Playlist #58: End of the School Year

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

It’s the last week of school finally. It’s been a difficult year, to say the least. But I keep posting new stuff on Patreon and I keep coming up with new playlists here.

  1. Alice Cooper, “School’s Out”: Yeah, of course this song was gonna be on here.
  2. The Mountain Goats, “Fall of the Star High School Running Back”: Who hasn’t gone from being the star player on the football team to selling acid to cops?
  3. Paul Simon, “Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard”: Ever have one of those troublemaker friends that your parents just couldn’t stand? Yeah, I did, too.
  4. Pearl Jam, “Education”: “I’m questioning my education.” Me too, Eddie. Me too.
  5. Sting, “History Will Teach Us Nothing”: I mean, maybe you just didn’t learn from your history class, Sting. Ever think it was you, not history?
  6. Sam Cooke, “(What A) Wonderful World”: I think I teach several Sam Cookes. “Don’t know much about history,” he sings. Yeah, my kids could sing that, too.
  7. Chuck Berry, “Schooldays”: “RIng, ring, goes the bell.”
  8. Nirvana, “School”: Kurt Cobain recognizes the need for recess and laments the lack of it in the modern educational schema.
  9. Belle & Sebastian, “We Rule The School”: The number of students in Belle & Sebastian who probably got beat up in high school on a daily basis is a nonzero number.
  10. Pink Floyd, “Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2”: The use of the double negative in the chorus indicates you do, in fact, need education, Mr. Floyd.

Playlist #52

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

This marks the one-year anniversary of me starting this playlist project. It’s kept me writing here for the whole year, which I like. I’ve even gotten back into working on Novel #7 (I’m well-past the halfway point, I think).

For this playlist, I thought about doing a retrospective, selecting my favorite songs from other playlists. But I decided against that. I’ll do another post later this week where I examine the playlists as a whole, looking at who got played the most and how many songs I repeated (I think just one? I’m not sure, but I’ll find out!).

Anyway, remember there’s the Patreon. I’m about to post April’s song. I’m pretty proud of it. Anyway, without further ado, here’s this week’s playlist:

  1. Dr. Dog, “Lonesome”: I love the guitar in this one. Pretty sure it’s a dobro or resonator.
  2. Andrew Bird, “Atomized”: Andrew Bird has a new album coming out this summer. I’m stoked. If this song is any indication, it’ll be a great one.
  3. Jorge Orozco, “Gran Vals”: Orignally composed by Francisco Tarrega, this is the song that Nokia got its ringtone from. It’s a very pretty song.
  4. Langhorne Slim & the Law, “Put It Together”: I’m a sucker for a shout-along chorus.
  5. The Doubleclicks, “This Is My Jam”: I like jam. Who doesn’t like jam? Commies, that’s who.
  6. Dolly Parton, “Jolene”: This is the slowed down version, the one from the 45 played at 33 1/3 RPM. It’s haunting.
  7. Aimee Mann, “Phoenix”: What is it about the way Aimme Mann writes and plays songs that just captivates me? I just love everything about her sound.
  8. Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come”: Some days, you just need to let Sam take you home.
  9. Santana, “Evil Ways”: The way they add the, “baby,” to the end of certain lines in this song amuses me to no end.
  10. Bob Dylan, “Paths Of Victory”: My love for Dylan is no secret at this point. Someday, I’ll figure out an arrangement of this song for the guitar (rather than the piano he plays in this version). Until then, I’ll just have to sit and marvel at how well that man puts words together.