the mountain goats

Playlist #128

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, or Indigenous People’s Day as we call it around here. If you wanna celebrate that Columbus guy, go get lost in the spice aisle at the Kroger.

  1. Wreckx-n-Effect, “Rump Shaker”: My wife was not familiar with this song, somehow. Even I know this song, and I spent the 90s in a virginal haze of video games and Pink Floyd music.
  2. The National, “Terrible Love (Alternate Version)”: I prefer this version because the drums are better than the original.
  3. The Mountain Goats, “This Year”: Never not good.
  4. David Gray, “Stella the Artist”: Somehow, over the years, Hold the Line became my favorite David Gray album. I know there aren’t too many people with a favorite David Gray album, but I have one. It’s Hold the Line.
  5. Richard Thompson, “Beeswing”: Just such a beautiful song.
  6. Glen Phillips, “Everything Matters”: A heartfelt love song that encourages me on dark days.
  7. Van Morrison, “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m In Heaven)”: The rave up we deserve. If more Van Morrison songs were like this, the world would be better.
  8. Murder By Death, “Creep”: You just have to listen to this one to full appreciate it. It’s not the Radiohead “Creep,” and it’s not the Stone Temple Pilots “Creep.” No, it’s the other one. The one you wouldn’t think a crusty-sounding white dude would sing.
  9. Moxy Fruvous, “Greatest Man in America”: Who doesn’t love a song that just gives the middle finger to Rush Limbaugh? Fuck that dude, even if he is dead already.
  10. The Who, “A Quick One, While He’s Away”: If I asked for an orchestra, and the suits told me no, I’d probably have just sung the word “cello” instead of hiring a cellist out of my own pocket, too.

Playlist #121: Back To School

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday and welcome to the new school year, everyone! Today is the official first day of school here in Northern Virginia, and I’ve got a new playlist bursting with new school year vibes for ya.

  1. The Call, “Let The Day Start”: As I think I mentioned the first time I featured this song on a playlist, this song was played on KRXO (the classic rock station in OKC) every morning as I was going to school. I equate it with the beginning of the day and with the beginning of a school day in particular. And so here it is, to inaugurate my 19th year of teaching.
  2. OK Go, “Here It Goes Again”: As I just mentioned, this will be my 19th year teaching. It’s all pretty old hat at this point. For the first time in nearly two decades, I actually slept really well the night before the first day of school this year. I know! I’m surprised, too. Anyway, this song just reminds me that we’re on this merry-go-round again.
  3. The Mountain Goats, “The College Try”: No, I don’t teach college. But I’m also pretty sure he’s not singing about college spirit at a football game in this song, either.
  4. T. Rex, “20th Century Boy”: I just need this riff injected straight into my veins, man.
  5. Taylor Swift, “Anti-Hero”: I aspire to be like Taylor Swift: not just part of the problem, but the whole problem.
  6. Tom Waits, “Get Behind The Mule”: Teaching is a lot like walking along behind a mule: there’s the smell, and occasionally you have to shovel some shit out of your path.
  7. Wreckless Eric, “Whole Wide World”: It’s garage rock at its finest and sloppiest, and I love it.
  8. The Raconteurs featuring Pete Townsend, “The Seeker”: If I had the chance to play a song with Pete Townsend, this one would probably be pretty high up on the list. And “Squeeze Box.”
  9. Sex Bob-Omb, “Threshold”: Did you see they’re doing a Scott Pilgrim animated series with the voice cast being the cast from the movie? I am super stoked.
  10. Adeem the Artist, “My America”: There’ve been a couple of country songs lately that espouse a very conservative, reactionary ethos that have rubbed me the wrong way. And I’ve thought about writing a response song to them. But Adeem the Artist beat me to the punch, penning this song that digs into the heart of what these newer songs that I don’t care for are trying to say: “The America I love seems to be disappearing and no one seems to care, and that makes me feel afraid.” Adeem is a self-described “cast iron pansexual,” so I don’t think they’re doing this as a “this is how I really feel about things” sort of song. That’s not the way they’ve described it, at any rate. But it does make me feel a little empathy for these white men who are so afraid and so angry that all they can do is lash out.

Playlist #113

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

By the time you see this, I’ll be in Oklahoma for my grandmother’s funeral. It’s going to be rough, but I’m glad I get to be back home for it.

  1. John Mellencamp, “Circling Around The Moon”: I have a soft spot in my heart for the Mellencamp album Mr. Happy Go Lucky. It’s very much of its time, with the drum machines and nods to rap and hip-hop in the music.
  2. M. Ward, “Hi-Fi”: M. Ward always delights and always puts out something clever and ephemeral.
  3. Matchbox 20, “Damn”: I don’t know why I like Matchbox 20 so much. I can’t explain it.
  4. MILCK, “Quiet (Stripped)”: A more subtle, acoustic version of this song that I liked very much when I heard the original version.
  5. Molly Lewis, “Our American Cousin”: Who doesn’t love a song about Abraham Lincoln’s trip to Ford’s Theater?
  6. The Mountain Goats, “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome”: When doesn’t a Mountain Goats song make you want to eat the rich?
  7. The Mystiqueros, “Good”: I learned this song years ago at the Mansion on O Street from the band I used to play with on Sundays. It’s a pretty decent little number.
  8. The Yardbirds, “Smokestack Lightning (Live)”: Who doesn’t love the Yardbirds?
  9. Rhett Miller, “Terrible Vision”: This song is sad and beautiful and I love it.
  10. Pixies, “Debaser”: Why. not round things out with some screaming?

Playlist #103

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday. We’re in the 4th quarter of school out here in Northern Virginia now. The home stretch. Here’s some songs to get you through the week, at least.

  1. Adeem the Artist, “Books & Records”: A song about leveraging the things you love just to survive and the hope that you’ll be able to recover them someday. It’s so sad and heartbreaking and hopeful that I just can’t help but love it.
  2. Dion, “Runaround Sue”: The song itself is pretty good, yeah, but it’s the vocalizations at the beginning and end that really get me on this one.
  3. Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, “What I Am”: Someday, I’m going to put together enough songs for a philosophy playlist. This will be the first song on that playlist.
  4. The Elected, “I’ll Be Your Man”: Did you want a sad some about trying to win someone’s heart? Because here’s a sad song about trying to win someone’s heart.
  5. The Mountain Goats, “Woke Up New”: If you really want to twist the knife in your own guts, you listen to the Mountain Goats. Because that’s all those guys do.
  6. Roy Orbison, “Workin’ For The Man”: “Well, I’m pickin’ ’em up and I’m layin’ ’em down/I believe he’s gonna work me into the ground” is just a banger of a couplet.
  7. Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, “Killing The Blues”: What did we do to deserve not one, but two whole albums of these two duetting? What dark pact did we make? What price will we have to pay on down the road?
  8. Paul McCartney, “Ballroom Dancing”: I had the album this song is from, Give My Regards to Broad Street, on a tape that my uncle (I think) made for my dad back in the 80s. Damn near wore that thing out. Kinda giggle at the line “Big B.D.” now (it stands for “Ballroom Dancing,” FYI).
  9. The Flaming Lips, “Vein Of Stars”: “Who knows, maybe there isn’t/A vein of stars calling out my name.” Wayne Coyne just knows how to write a good song, eh?
  10. Fleetwood Mac, “Storms”: I’ve come to appreciate the album Tusk over the past couple of years.

Playlist #102: Memory

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks. I spent last week visiting family in Oklahoma; specifically, I went to see my grandparents. They’re all getting up there in years (all of them are now well into their 90s), and their health is in decline. They take it with the same sort of Okie stoicism I’ve come to know from them over the past 40-odd years, but it doesn’t make it any easier to see these remarkably strong people become increasingly weaker and less able to do things they used to do with such ease.

Of particular concern is my maternal grandmother. She, like her husband before her, has started to suffer from dementia. We finally got her into an assisted living center last month, but that was a trial and a half and thank God it’s over. While she seemed resistant to it at first, she seems to have settled in and is doing quite nicely. She likes all of the staff and she’s made friends and is participating in activities. Everyone keeps talking about how sweet she is, to which I replied, “Really? My grandmother? The sour-faced lady?” But she does seem to be genuinely happy for the first time in . . . years, I’d say. Since before my grandfather got poorly, at least.

Anyway, all of that had me thinking about memory and the things we carry with us and the things that we try to carry with us but, ultimately, can’t, and this playlist popped out.

  1. Glen Campbell, “I’m Not Gonna Miss You”: Glen Campbell suffered from Alzheimer’s, and toward the end of his life couldn’t really do much as that disease robbed him of everything that made him, him. But he gave us one last song, and damn if it isn’t a doozy. Contemplating life, death, and loss, he reflects on the fact that while the Alzheimer’s might be destroying him, it’s really those around him who will suffer from it.
  2. The Pixies, “I Can’t Forget”: The Pixies cover a Leonard Cohen song. About trying to remember but being unable to do so.
  3. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”: A long, sinuous jam of a song, the sort I’m usually not that in to. But this one is pretty good, as those things go.
  4. Billy Bragg & Wilco, “Remember The Mountain Bed”: Woody Guthrie’s words are so evocative here, so painfully, painstakingly clear, that I can picture the mountain bed of the title in my mind. I can picture the girl, and the leaves, and the boy lying beside her, whispering things to one another that are just on the edge of hearing. And it feels a little bittersweet. This is clearly a moment from the distant past, a stolen piece of time between two people who are no longer in each other’s lives. And it’s beautiful and ephemeral and it’s one of my favorite songs ever.
  5. Jars of Clay, “Unforgetful You”: Now, just for a minute, forget that the song is a Jesus song. I know, it’s hard to take it out of that context, but work with me here. It’s still a fun song about someone who absolutely refuses to forget about you, and we all kinda need someone like that in our lives.
  6. The Mountain Goats, “You Or Your Memory”: Once more proving the adage that there’s not a playlist yet that can’t be improved with a Mountain Goats song, we’ve got this one. As per usual, Darnielle cuts through the noise and rips out your heart, and he does it all in under 2 and a half minutes. That’s just efficient.
  7. Neko Case, “Don’t Forget Me”: It’s an old cover. It’s beautifully sung, because it’s Neko Case. I don’t know what else you need to hear.
  8. Peter Gabriel, “I Don’t Remember”: This song and the Glen Campbell song were the two that sparked this whole playlist. The Gabriel song is edgy and nervous, anxious about the loss of memory, while the Campbell song is resigned to it and leaning in.
  9. Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, “If I Am A Stranger”: There were quite a few Ryan Adams songs I could have put on this list (and more than one from the album Cold Roses), but I settled on this one because I remember my grandfather going from knowing everyone who was around him to being surrounded by strangers. I think it scared him sometimes, not recognizing our faces.
  10. George Harrison, “All Things Must Pass”: The song I always come back to for comfort. George understood the world and our place in it better than just about any other musician, and he understood that death comes for everyone eventually. And he accepted that with grace and dignity. It’s just wild to me, and helps me come to terms with things myself.

Playlist #74

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Tuesday, folks. Got sick over the weekend, and took yesterday off to recover. Still feeling under the weather, but good news! It’s not Covid this time.

  1. Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill”: We finally got around to starting Stranger Things season 4 over the weekend, and it’s quite good. The use of the Kate Bush song is perfect. I’m not ashamed to say I haven’t listened to much Kate Bush over the years; her stuff always struck me as too weird for my tastes. But this song slaps and deserves the attention it’s getting.
  2. Glen Phillips, “Held Up”: Sorta went through a Glen Phillips thing over the weekend, and this song especially spoke to me. Sung to me. Whatever.
  3. Bear Cub, “Hey B”: My brother used to play with this guy way back in the day (back when both of us had full heads of hair). He and his current singer, Kelly, did a cover of it about eight years ago. It’s quite good.
  4. Michael Penn, “No Myth”: Man, does this guy know how to write a bad song? No, no he does not.
  5. The Mountain Goats, “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome”: Speaking of great songs, this one’s title tells you everything you need to know about it and then some.
  6. Paul McCartney, “Beautiful Night”: I rather liked McCartney’s Flaming Pie album, with its Beatles allusions and smooth early aughts production values and him obviously playing most every single instrument on the thing. Plus, it frequently featured Steve Miller (Mr. Space Cowboy himself), who is coincidentally still alive and still touring, God bless ‘im.
  7. Rhett Miller, “Terrible Vision”: I dig the Old 97s, and actually found them through the backdoor of lead singer Rhett Miller’s first solo album, The Instigator. This is the closer from that album, and it’s beautiful and flawed and wonderful.
  8. Jars of Clay, “Frail”: The re-recorded version of this song from the Furthermore collection. Their second album left me rather underwhelmed, compared with their debut and their third album, If I Left the Zoo.
  9. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, “Hope The High Road”: I don’t think anyone else out there writes songs like this right now, and that’s a shame. Isbell is great at the hopeful, rocking anthem, and we could use more of those in these dark days.
  10. Toad the Wet Sprocket, “Enough”: Sounds like a classic Toad song with modern production, which is exactly what new Toad the Wet Sprocket albums should sound like.

Playlist #69 (Nice)

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

I was this close to just making it all songs about sex. But aren’t all songs about sex, when you get right down to it? Anyway, give me a follow on Patreon and support your local author/songwriter. Anyway, here’s the first playlist of the new school year!

  1. The Mountain Goats, “Training Montage”: “I’m doing this for revenge!” John Darnielle cries out at the start of the chorus, and damn if that isn’t just the best line in a song I’ve heard this year.
  2. Iggy Pop, “The Passenger”: Is it the most relentless chord progression you’ve ever heard? Maybe. Are Iggy and David Bowie’s yelped “la”s in the chorus earwormy? Definitely.
  3. Bruce Springsteen, “Ain’t Good Enough For You”: I’ve featured this song on a playlist before. It still slaps.
  4. Calexico, “Cumbia De Donde”: Did you know cumbia is a type of Latin American dance music that originated in Colombia? Because the guys in Calexico sure do, and they want you to know they do.
  5. Spoon, “Don’t Make Me A Target”: I don’t know what it is about the way this band breaks down a song and then rebuilds it using the same basic instruments as every single rock and roll band that has ever existed that kicks me in the ass every time, but it kicks me in the ass every time.
  6. ZZ Top, “La Grange”: Back when I worked at a private school, I taught one of my students how to play this on the bass (it’s only three notes that even I could figure out). It’s fun.
  7. Pearl Jam, “World Wide Suicide”: Even late into their career, Pearl Jam can still pull out all the stops and offer a rocker that rips the doors off.
  8. John Mellencamp, “Right Behind Me”: Meanwhile, John Mellencamp has resorted to recording in hotel rooms with equipment from the 1950s to get that sound just right.
  9. Jay Farrar, “Feel Free”: Jay Farrar’s songs have gotten more esoteric and inscrutable as time passes, but this one is still early enough in his solo career that the lyrics make some sense. And it references “non-profit radio,” which is what I thought NPR stood for for far longer than I’d care to admit.
  10. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, “Be Afraid”: “Be afraid, be very afraid/But do it anyway,” is just some of the best damn advice you can hear right now, I think.

Playlist #65 – Stranger Things

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Monday was the Wife’s birthday! In her honor, you could contribute to her GoFundMe. Covid hit her hard and our finances harder, so every little bit helps. And I’m doing my usual thing over at Patreon, where a new song will drop this Friday! This week’s playlist is inspired by my Wife, who – when hearing the Tom Waits song on last week’s playlist – said, “Why not do a whole playlist of weird songs?” To which I replied, “You mean a Tom Waits playlist?”

  1. Tom Waits, “The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)”: I dunno, Tom. Your words are more than a little slurred here. I have my doubts about the veracity of your claim.
  2. The Magnetic Fields, “Epitaph For My Heart”: The Wife’s favorite Magnetic Fields song. It starts with a recitation of a warning on a door that threatens electrocution if you open it and gets weirder from there.
  3. Marcy Playground, “Sex & Candy”: Every time I hear this song, I think of that time I was working at the YMCA the summer after my first year of college, and when this song came on the bus, all the little children (like, 10 year olds) sang the first three words of the chorus – “I like sex” – and nothing else.
  4. Melanie, “Brand New Key”: Do roller skates even need keys anymore? It’s been so long since I wore a pair, but I’m pretty sure they don’t. Kids these days will never understand this song (not that I necessarily understand it myself, mind you).
  5. The Mountain Goats, “Cadaver Sniffing Dog”: Now, this playlist could have also just been a Mountain Goats playlist, and this song is a good example of why.
  6. REM, “Swan Swan H”: Does anyone ever know what Michael Stipe is singing about, including Michael Stipe? I’d wager the answer is “no.”
  7. Tom Lehrer, “Poisoning Pigeons In The Park”: This man takes a certain glee from killing pigeons in the park. He might be a serial killer.
  8. America, “A Horse With No Name”: Hint: you can give the horse a name, dude. You can call it whatever you want. It’s a horse, it don’t care.
  9. The Presidents of the United States of America, “Peaches”: Again, another band where I could have made a playlist just out of their songs and it would have fit right in.
  10. Carl Douglas, “Kung Fu Fighting”: As the t-shirt says, surely not everyone was kung fu fighting.

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 #39

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks. Does the Wife get to come home this week? Who knows! Her doctor, possibly. Anyway, here’s a new playlist of songs to get you through the week.

  1. Andrew Bird, “Tin Foiled”: “What is moving will be still/What is gathered will disperse/What’s been built up will collapse/All of your dreams, they’re all fulfilled.”
  2. Bo Diddley, “Bo Diddley”: I hope to someday have the brass balls to write a song and just give it my name as a title. I doubt I ever will, though.
  3. Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”: “There is a crack, a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”
  4. Les Paul and Mary Ford, “How High The Moon”: Les Paul just tears it up on this song.
  5. Tom Petty, “This Old Town”: There you go, Dad. A Tom Petty song from Highway Companion.
  6. Sean Lennon, “Would I Be The One”: Feels much like a song his dad would’ve written (admittedly, so does most everything else on this album. It’s a good album).
  7. The Rolling Stones, “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”: Sometimes, you just need a rootsy Rolling Stones rocker in the playlist. Here’s this one’s.
  8. Ray Charles, “Unchain My Heart”: And sometimes you need some Ray Charles.
  9. The Mountain Goats, “Going Invisible 2”: Don’t look for “Going Invisible 1,” as there isn’t a song called that. This is rather a D&D reference to Invisible 2, a spell. I’m now going to go crawl back into my cave.
  10. Ronnie Spector, “Be My Baby”: I would die to have written the drum part for this song. Or the lyrics. Or the guitar. Or literally any part of it. It’s a damn fine song.

Did you know I don’t just write about music I like to listen to, but that I also write music? It’s true, and you can support me on Patreon in this endeavor! I’ll be releasing a new song there every month this year, so check it out!