stone temple pilots

Playlist #275

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Happy Monday! I’m back from the beach, a little more tanned and a little less rested than I’d prefer. But that’s okay, because being chronically exhausted is just part of my brand. Here’s a playlist.

  1. Steve Miller Band, “Mercury Blues”: My dad (whose birthday is tomorrow; happy birthday, dad!) owns a early-60s Mercury Comet. It’s his current fixer-upper, the car he is working on restoring from basically the ground up. The song is a banger.
  2. Stone Temple Pilots, “Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart”: By this point (1996), Stone Temple Pilots and many of their grunge peers had already abandoned the grunge label for a broader alternative approach. It pays off in spades here.
  3. The Heavy Heavy, “Go Down River”: The latest in my “heard it in a restaurant” playlist does not really disappoint. It’s a country song, as far as I can tell, but a pretty decent one.
  4. Noah Kahan, “The Great Divide”: Another “hear it in a restaurant” tune. It’s not bad. Is it as good as any of the better songs off Stick Season? Eh. It’s good, but not exactly great. Hard to really put my finger on it.
  5. Jeremie Albino, “Across The Hall”: Guy reminds me a lot of John Fullbright, and that’s a style and musician we could use a lot more of, I think.
  6. The Shins, “Gone For Good”: The world needs more songs with pedal steel and a plot about divorce and leaving your wedding band on the train tracks for the train to flatten. It’s just a fact.
  7. The White Stripes, “The Denial Twist”: You know things will get interesting if (1) Bob Dylan or (2) Jack White gets behind a piano for a song. This does not mean I endorse the whole “I’m going to spend the whole concert at the piano” Bob Dylan we’ve seen over the past decade or so.
  8. Portugal. The Man, “Once Was One”: I think it’s about evolution? I dunno, there’s a line in the chorus about monkeys, and I can’t really get past that for whatever reason.
  9. The Coral, “Dreaming Of You”: I watched the hell out of Scrubs back in the day, and have enjoyed what I’ve seen of the latest revival season. I still remember this song pretty much verbatim from back then. Thanks, Scurbs.
  10. Blur, “Song 2”: I have this thing I do where I recite the lyrics to this song as if I were reading a Shakespearean sonnet, all slow and sonorous and full of self-import. The “whoo-hoo”s are my favorite part. The Wife absolutely hates this and rarely lets me get that far before she shuts it down.

Playlist #228

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Happy Monday, folks! Another week, another batch of tunes to get you started on the right foot.

  1. Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Alibi”: The ease with they toss off song after beautiful song never fails to impress me.
  2. Van Morrison, “Domino”: There are few performers alive who have as much energy as Van when he’s on.
  3. The Wallflowers, “Nearly Beloved”: Reckless runaway rhythm. This song always feels like it’s just on the verge of falling apart to me.
  4. Lord Huron, “Fool For Love”: A long-lost Springsteen song with more reverb than is strictly called for? Could be.
  5. Statler Brothers, “Flowers on the Wall”: Who doesn’t want to be smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ Captain Kangaroo?
  6. Michgander, “Important (with Taylor Goldsmith)”: A beautiful piano ballad. I’ve loved everything this guy’s done.
  7. Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”: I’ve been thinking of Leonard Cohen songs all weekend. Dunno why. This one remains one of my absolute favorites, though.
  8. Stone Temple Pilots, “Interstate Love Song”: If you’re listening to this song while driving down the highway and suddenly find yourself doing 90 mph, don’t be surprised.
  9. Supertramp, “Goodbye Stranger”: Rick Davies, leader of the band Supertramp and singer of most of their hit songs, died over the weekend. I always enjoyed Supertramp. Stupid name, great band.
  10. Josh Ritter, “Galahad”: For some reason, I always imagine this song is about the Monty Python and the Holy Grail Sir Galahad, and it cracks me up.

Playlist #180

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Happy Monday, folks! It’s PSAT/SAT Week here at the school where I teach, which means I get to spend Wednesday administering a test. Joy. In the meantime, here are some tunes to help you get through the next seven days.

  1. Stone Temple Pilots, “Big Easy”: Still follows the soft/loud dynamic of every band that ever heard the Pixies, but the incorporation of acoustic guitars and slide guitar is rather novel. I dig it.
  2. Mount Eerie, “Ravens”: Part of a song cycle/album about the death of the singer’s wife, it’s soft and contemplative and bare bones in its instrumentation, like it was made for Saturday around 3:00 AM.
  3. Buckingham Nicks, “Long Distance Winner”: Early work from Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, pre-Fleetwood Mac, and the album is indeed hard to track down. It’s not available on any of the streaming services I checked, and even a CD version on Amazon was more money than I want to admit I spent on Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. But it’s damn good music, even if some of the lyrics are a little too simple most of the time.
  4. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Breakdown”: Sometimes, I’m just in the mood for some good ol’ fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. And Tom always provides. Always.
  5. The Smile, “Foreign Spies”: More electronic than their previous two albums, but what do you expect from 2/5 of Radiohead?
  6. Jimmy Eat World, “Lucky Denver Mint”: Jumped up rocker is jumped up rocker.
  7. Carole King, “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman”: I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a Carole King song that I didn’t like.
  8. Louis Armstrong, “A Kiss To Build A Dream On”: If you don’t love Satchmo, I don’t think we can be friends.
  9. The Clovers, “Love Potion No. 9”: This will always be the goofiest damn song to me. Dude drinks a love potion and ends up kissing a cop. Classic.
  10. Glen Campbell, “MacArthur Park”: So apparently this song is based on the love story between Jimmy Webb (who wrote it) and Susie Horton. Horton was working at an insurance company office near – you guessed it – MacArthur Park at the time. It’s apparently symbolic of the end of the love affair, according to Webb, but that really makes me wonder what kinda kinky cake-related shenanigans they got up to. Also, original recording of the song was by actor Richard Harris, later of Dumbledore in Harry Potter fame.