wreckless eric

Playlist #237: Wrecks

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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 #121: Back To School

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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.