( continues...) worthy of disdain. I will also note for the record that the Tappan Zee is a great bridge.
9. A song about committing a crime:
"White Collar Boy" -- Belle and Sebastian
This is off B&S’s latest album, and is eerily reminiscent of another song about crime, 10cc’s “Rubber Bullets.”
10. A song from a tribute or charity album:
"The Lottery Song" -- Bill Lloyd
A cut from For the Love of Harry: Everybody Sings Nilsson, this song was originally from the aforementioned Son of Schmilsson.
11. A song with a year in the title; and
18. A song that reminds you of your first love:
"Disney Girls (1957)" -- The Beach Boys
My original plan was to use RT’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” since it’s a great song and includes my birth year, but Corwood foiled that plan. Then serendipity struck. The first love in question was a huge Beach Boys fan, and I remembered her favorite song as being “Disney Girls,” off the Surf’s Up album. Looked it up, and discovered that the actual title of Bruce Johnston’s paean to the fifties included a year. Whoot!
12. A song about traveling:
"Twisting By the Pool" -- Dire Straits
Following the Beach Boys with a surf song off the old EP of the same name.
13. A song that does not feature a guitar or a piano as the main instrument; and
17. More cowbell: A song containing that essential instrument:
"Sing Sing Sing" -- Benny Goodman
The lead instrument is Goodman’s clarinet, but the main instruments in this are Gene Krupa’s drums, which he pounds on ferociously. Plus, he adds just a touch of cowbell to spice things up. This turns out to be a great song to listen to on a car stereo as the drums go back and forth between the speakers. Not bad for a seventy year-old song.
14. A song by a band that you could have, but didn't, write about for Lost in The Grooves:
"Down on the Bay" -- The Move
The Move always seemed to manage to shoot themselves in the foot, reload, and then blast away some more. When they finally ran out of bullets, they morphed into ELO, and went on to fame and fortune. This is my favorite track off Split Ends, a melding of half a failed album (Message from the Country) plus five terrific singles (among them, “Do Ya,” which probably deserves its own book). Sort of the Move’s equivalent to the Great Lost Kinks Album.
15. An upbeat song about a sad thing.:
"Cannibals" -- Mark Knopfler
I kept going back and forth about whether this song should be here, or swapped with “Dead Skunk.” Both songs fit both categories, but in the end, I thought this song about a little boy frightened that a hurricane is going to hit Louisiana is a little sadder right now than roadkill. At least here there’s a happy ending. It also seems to fit here little better musically.
16. Midnight driving in the rain music.:
"Four-Eyed Girl" -- Rhett Miller
You know how when you’re driving through a place you’ve never been before... in the middle of the night... in the midst of an incredible downpour... after having just dropped off the most interesting person you’ve met in a long, long time... and you’re happy... and excited... and have absolutely no clue where the frell you are other than that you missed a left turn somewhere? Nope, me neither.
20. A song with a chorus that compels you to sing along or that you cannot not dance to:
"Dead Skunk" -- Loudon Wainwright III
This is another upbeat, albeit sad, song, but it’s also almost impossible not to sing along to.
21. A song that starts with a bassline:
"Let the Good Times Roll / Feel so Fine" -- Slade
One of the great glam rock bands, it’s weird that nowadays they’re probably best known for “Merry Xmas, Everybody.” This track comes from (continued...)
Oliver ,'Conviction (1)'
Buffista Music III: The Search for Bach
There's a lady plays her fav'rite records/On the jukebox ev'ry day/All day long she plays the same old songs/And she believes the things that they say/She sings along with all the saddest songs/And she believes the stories are real/She lets the music dictate the way that she feels.
( continues...) Slayed?, another possible LitG entry.
22. A song that relates to science:
"Why Does the Sun Shine?" -- They Might Be Giants
I was worried that Erinaceous would snag this cover of an old science education song, but she didn’t, so here it is.
23. A song you sing (or would sing) to your pet and/or child:
"Fred" -- Tom Paxton
I used to sing this to my dog all the time.
24. A song that haunts you:
"He Didn't" -- Bob Mould / the 6ths
What can I say? This one haunts me.
25. A song that you would sing to yourself if you were ever in a dire situation and needed it to keep going:
"There's a Fire" -- Longwave
Despite having grown up listening to Bill Cosby talk about keeping his music with him in scary situations (nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nahhh…), I never picked up the habit. I tend to get quiet and focused instead, like when my students used to try to set the lab on fire, and I’d have to put it out before it reached the bottles of acetone and methanol. Good times. This one time, while I was working with some students in another lab, one of my students came in, stood next to me, and very politely waited for me to finish what I was explaining before calmly saying, “Mr. Machina? There’s a fire next door.”
26. A song by a band with an awful name:
"Stormy Down" -- The Strawbs
They started out as the as the Strawberry Hill Boys, which wasn’t much better, then shortened it as they moved from English folk towards prog rock. The DJs on WNEW-FM used to pronounce it “the Strobbs.” This is from Bursting at the Seams, another potential LitG piece, and another member of the class of ‘73.
27. A song that even when you know it's time to LEAVE the BAR someone can put on the jukebox to make you stay:
"Goody Two Shoes" -- Adam Ant
I’m deliberately picking a song that might actually be on a jukebox, at least one of the jukeboxes around these parts. Could’ve also used this for the first love (and several of the later ones, too).
This song is from McCarty’s Dead Dog's Eyeball: Songs of Daniel Johnston, a great tribute album to Johnston that Corwood was kind enough to send me.
And that I wrote about in LiTG. Speaking of which, I did consider including that Nicky Hopkins record and The Move in the book. Not Slade, but that was a lack of imagination on my part.
Also, I love "The Lottery Song" and that cover of it, and predict that all Buffistas will be whistling it by next week.
Excellent, DXM!
I am going to be away with no interbunny for the weekend, so the rest of my mix will go up early next week, if Gmail will behave.
it’s weird that nowadays they’re probably best known for "Merry Xmas, Everybody."
D'ya think? Come on Feel the Noise!
D'ya think? Come on Feel the Noise!
Yeah, but I'll bet a lot of folks think Quiet Riot wrote it. :)
Bye, Buck. Who's gonna mow your lawn? Who's gonna twang the Tele?
Another splendid exemplar of the Village Voice school of music criticism:
Karen's crypto-candid lyrics, inevitable but not therefore unmoving day-after assessments, pile on the contradictions:
Allow me to be crypto-candid for a moment when I say that I, like many Americans, sometimes find myself.
OMGoth! I just got back from the Sisters of Mercy show. Yes, all the reviews are true: the sound is crap, and the fog machines have been cranked into overdrive, so you can barely see the band. I don't care. I have finally seen SoM live.
Plus, thanks to a couple of happy coincidences, I was standing on the side of the stage when they started playing "Dominion/Mother Russia". No, I didn't get to meet them, but I was 10 feet away from them. Squeee!