Discography - Week #5

As we enter the fifth week I don't know if we can touch the transcendence of a week that included Blessed from Lucinda Williams and I Want to Take You Higher from Sly and the Family Stone; however, they are some amazing eclectic choices this week. And I think Gary Beatrice is the early leader in the Totally Eclectic Didn't See That Coming Award competition.

Dave Wallace

Lush, Ladykillers

Lush was a female-led shoegaze band out of the UK when Brit-pop was big.  Hugely underrated here in the US, their music was melodic, ethereal, moody, epic, and powerful; they're one of my favorite band of the last 20 years.  (And their inevitable reunion has just taken place!)  So, of course, my favorite song by them sounds like nothing else that they've done.  A thundering feminist anthem, with a killer guitar riff, Miki Berenyi slams the vain, shallow guys who pursue women without understanding who they are or want they want.  "I'm as human as the next girl, I like a bit of flattery / But I don't need your practised lines, your school of charm mentality so / Save your breath for someone else and credit me with something more / When it comes to men like you, I know the score, I've heard it all before."  

Gary Beatrice

Justin Timberlake, SexyBack 

Justin Timberlake, guilty pleasure? Hell no. This motherfucker knows how to act.

My daughter came of age during the great boy band era and we frequently argued the merits of N'Synch versus the Beatles. Ultimately I won that battle (and yes I took the Beatles) but mostly because I could send her to bed without desert. Oddly enough now that Margie and I think JT rocks, Jessica will have nothing to do with him. Such is life.

At any rate, you will never convince me that this song doesn't kick ass. Take it to the bridge.

Dave Kelley

Gary Beatrice was the first, but certainly not the last, to include a Lucinda Williams selection.  I second every comment that he made about her and applaud his particular song choice.  She works in a musical style that I love and is certainly one of, if not the best, lyricists going.  What I particularly love about her (other than the ridiculously sensual way that she sings the word "baby" in a number of her songs) is that she does not shy away from any subject no matter how painful or personal.  To say she "keeps it real" would be a huge understatement.  I had a hard time figuring out my selection for her.  "Bus to Baton Rouge" is on my short list for best lyrics ever.   In a very frank song about a difficult childhood she concludes that: 

"The ghosts in the wind that blow through my life

Follow me wherever I go

I'll never be free from these chains inside

Hidden deep down in my soul"

However, that isn't my choice.  This is.

Lucinda Williams, Lake Charles

This is an unbelievably moving and poignant song that she wrote about a former lover and key influence who died young as a result of cirrhosis of the liver.  It is off of her album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" which is one of my favorite records of all time.  He was apparently someone who loved life, music, Lake Charles, and unfortunately alcohol.  She apparently rushed to see him before his passing but got there too late.  Although he was not born there, Lake Charles was where he considered home and where his friends scattered his ashes.

"We used to drive through Lafayette and Baton Rouge

In a yellow El Camino, listening to Howling Wolf

He liked to stop in St. Charles, cause that's the place that he loved"

"Did you run, about as far as you could go

Down the Louisiana Highway, across Lake Ponchatrain

Now your soul is in St. Charles, no matter what they say"

The chorus of the song is what gets me every time.  Apparently it gets to Lucinda as well because I have heard her say that she typically is unable to bring herself to play the song live because she has difficulty getting through it without becoming too emotional.  Although she missed being at his bedside when he died, Lucinda envisions how she hopes that it went down.

"Did an angel whisper in your ear

and hold you close, and take away your fear

in those long, last moments"

Just about exactly ten years ago, I made a rushed middle of the night drive to the emergency room where my mother passed away shortly before I arrived.  Driving home after doing the shit you have to do in that situation, the chorus of Lake Charles came uninvited into my head and brought me a certain amount of peace.  The friends who are by our side when the shit is not only hitting the fan but burying it are the friends we keep in our life and our heart forever.  I guess the same is true about songs.  Thanks Lucinda.

Sorry to get so heavy this week.  Next week I will revert to a sha la la la sing along song.  :) 

Gary Scudder

Neil Young, Birds

Yes, the question that has riveted America - that is, how long would it take me to include a Neil Young song - has finally been answered.  Actually, I was going to hold out longer as a personal challenge, but this song came up in conversation with the excellent Dave Kelley on my trip back to the Midwest and I decided to go ahead and face the unavoidable.  That said, I chosen a relatively obscure choice, Birds from the album After the Gold Rush, one of my favorite albums and one that might be my choice for greatest album cover (now that would be an odd choice for a thematic discussion week).  Another thematic topics would be: songs you can barely listen to because they cause you physical pain, and Birds would fall into the category.  First off, however, there are more pleasant reasons for me choosing the song, starting with the fact that I just think it's beautiful.  I also like the fact that it's short - I've found versions that are barely a minute and a half - and I like the fact that Young wrote and recorded songs for the song itself and not for the demands of radio stations.  Essentially, Birds is a two minute song and Cowgirl in the Sand in a ten minute song because that is what it took to tell the story, and if it doesn't fit the rotation then don't play it (I don't know if he then said, "well, duh" but he might have).  Now, the darker side of it is that I always associate it with my ex-wife, which has both wonderful and painful associations.  One of the first things that we had to talk about was a shared love for Neil Young, and I used to joke that she just married me for my Young album collection.  However, it's also a song about the end of a relationship, especially one person leaving, and thus it hits home in a very painful way on the loss of a relationship and friend and also my extreme guilt over my failings.  I was listening to part of Young's discography on the drive in and there were two different versions of the song on both disks I pulled out randomly from the backseat, which meant that it was determined to be heard - and that it decided to also be a metaphor for the weekend of my mother's funeral.

Bob Craigmile

Ryan Adams, Dirty Rain

Many people think that Ryan Adams’ best album is “Heartbreaker”. To be sure, it’s a strong album with “To be young (is to be sad, is to be high)” and “Come pick me up”.  But for me Ashes and Fire is better and the second cut, Dirty Rain, is great.

It’s a classic Adams sad song.  Sadness about relationships is what Adams does.  He described it in one youtube video as “can’t get out of fucking bed” songs.  He recently reinterpreted Taylor Swift’s 1989 album in its entirety as a way to deal with the end of his marriage.  The fact that he started out in country rock may mean he’s finally coming full circle.  He has said he used country as a means to an end (getting heard).  It seems like an unlikely strategy.  But this song has a country heart at its core.

In any case, I rediscovered him after my own marriage imploded and I began a bit of an obsessive period with his stuff.  This is not a great strategy for rebuilding your life and ego.

“Now I'm here lookin' through the rubble

Tryin' to find out who we were”

The end of a relationship is (or should be or can be) a time to reflect on who you are and were.  Sometimes this leads to new growth, or to simple festering of old wounds.  

“And your eyes were filled with

Terror and smoke from the gasoline”

The whole thing of “stages of grief” is a myth.  This is what Adams is here to tell you.  You should listen, because there is no linear path through grief.  One of my group therapists says “it ain’t over till it’s over, the only way through it is through it.”  Avoiding your grief (and other feelings) is a cherished american white male tradition.  Maybe music helps us to deal with it subconcsiously.   Maybe, and certainly at times for me, it makes it worse.   

“So, may the wind blow, may the moonlight know your name

So, let the needle move the record 'round

'Til the walls cave in and you and I are out there

Dancin' in the dirty rain”

It may be dirty rain, this world, but we can still dance.

Miranda Tavares

Jack Schultz

Nate Bell

Dave Mills

The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Television the Drug of the Nation

This is basically Marshall MacLuhan in 1990s West Coast Industrial Hip Hop form. Need I say more? All things considered, it's a bit lacking in subtlety, but so too was pretty much everything in the 90s. If we can forgive it for being from the 90s, we can see that it carried the legacy of Gil Scott-Heron ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised") into the late 20th century and paved the way for later socially-conscious hip-hop acts like the Fugees and Wyclef Jean. Michael Franti, half of the Disposable Heroes, went on to form Spearhead, which has produced some good angry politically activist music over the years, before turning a bit too "We Are the World" for my taste with their recent stuff, like last year's "Once A Day" or last month's "We Are All Earthlings."

Mike Kelly

Here it is.  The first iteration of "Best Songs Ever" is here just in time for gin and tonic season.  Feel free to pass this along to others who may enjoy it, but know that you guys are my beta testers so you also get to suggest revisions.  

The methodology was simply this-  Songs I remember and love subdivided into four categories:  Hair Band, 120 Minutes, Rap and One-Hit Wonders.  It is absolutely an incomplete list, however there will be fierce debate and much joy that results.  I'll try to find an actual bracket and fill it out.  

A few notes:  I tried to end at 1990 but really it's "Pre Nirvana" that's the cut off.  Alternatively, the dates could be titled Mike's Life in Songs: Kindergarten to Puberty." Also, since this is (at the bottom of it all) a drinking game, the 120 Minutes bracket won't be filled with enough somber brit rock for Cindy's sensibilities.  

Enough with the blather.....

Hair Band Division

1) Living on a Prayer -- Bon Jovi 

16) Up All Night --- Slaughter

8) Tesla -- Love Song

9) Aerosmith -- Angel

4) Home Sweet Home -- Motley Crew 

13) Nothing Else Matters -- Metallica

5) Heaven -- Warrant 

12) Sweet Child O Mine -- Guns and Roses 

3) Pour Some Sugar on Me -- Def Leppard

14) When the Children Cry -- White Lion 

6) Patience -- Guns and Roses

11) Here I Go Again -- Whitesnake 

7) 18 and Life -- Skid Row 

10) Born to be My Baby -- Bon Jovi 

2) Every Rose Has Its Thorn -- Poison

15) Once Bitten Twice Shy -- Great White 

Matt Pinfield Division

1) Boys Don't Cry -- The Cure

16) Heartbreak Beat -- Psychedelic Furs

8) Boy With a Thorn in His Side -- Smiths

9) Ball and Chain -- Social Distortion

4) Bizarre Love Triangle -- New Order

13) Greetings to the New Brunette -- Billy Bragg

5) Punk Rock Girl -- Dead Milkmen

12) I Melt With You -- Modern English

6) Anchorage -- Michelle Shocked

11) Fall on Me -- REM

3) Knock Me Down -- Red Hot Chili Peppers

14) Under the Milky Way -- The Church

7) I'll Be You -- Replacements

10) Beds are Burning -- Midnight Oil

2) Wave of Mutilation -- Pixies 

15) So Alive -- Love and Rockets 

Alpine Blast Division

1) Humpty Dance -- Digital Underground

16) Me Myself and I -- De La Soul 

8) Straight Out of Compton -- NWA

9) Me So Horny -- 2 Live Crew 

4) It Takes 2 -- DJ Easy Rock and Rob Base 

13) Funky Cold Medina -- Tone Loc 

5) Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta -- Geto Boys 

12) My Mind's Playing Tricks on Me -- Geto Boys 

6) Bust a Move -- Young MC

11) Push it -- Salt and Pepa 

3) Freaky Tales -- Too Short 

14) Brenda's Got a Baby -- 2Pac

7) Children's Story -- Slick Rick

10) Do Me -- Bell Biv Devoe 

2) Push It -- Salt and Pepa

15) Everything's Going to be Be Alright -- Naughty by Nature

One Hit Wonders 

1) To Be With You -- Mr Big 

16) Heart and Soul -- T'Pau

8) Keep Your Hands to Yourself -- Georgia Satellites 

9) What I Am -- Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians 

4) Angel Eyes -- Jeff Healy Band

13) Power Windows -- Billy Falcon

5) High Enough -- Damn Yankees

12) Walking in Memphis -- Marc Cohn

3) Nothing Compares to You -- Sinead O'Connor 

14) I've Been Thinking About You -- Londonbeat

6) She's Like the Wind -- Patrick Swayze

11) Almost Paradise -- Mike Reno 

7) Joey -- Concrete Blonde

10) And We Danced -- The Hooters

2) Wicked Game -- Chris Isaak 

15) Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover -- Sophie B Hawkins