A few days ago a friend of mine posted the song “I Am…I Said” by Neil Diamond, and I was reminded of how much I loved that song and “I Am a Rock” by Simon and Garfunkel, back in the day. I was a teenager, and my main occupation at the time was feeling sorry for myself. Oh yeah – “Everybody Plays the Fool” by the Main Ingredient, too!
This song offered a little hope in the middle of all the wildly swinging emotions and hormones. If you think that life and love has passed you by, don’t give up.
Michelle reminded me of this song, one of my favorites by Bob Marley, who passed away 28 years ago last Monday.
May 19, 2009 – “Raise the Roof” – Tracey Thorn
Tracey is one half of the duo Everything But the Girl, who put out a number of terrific albums. This is from Tracey’s 2007 CD, Out of the Woods, which inexplicably was not part of my collection until recently.
May 20, 2009 – “Pocket Calculator” – Kraftwerk
Now is the time on “Sprockets” when we dance.
Kraftwerk didn’t invent electronic music, they just pushed the boundaries of electronic music. To the average listener in the ‘70s, this was off the charts on the weird scale.
This is the German version. The English lyrics include the deathless prose:
“I’m the operator with my pocket calculator
I am adding and subtracting
I’m controlling and composing
By pressing down a special key, it plays a little melody.”
This is such a great band. Their lead singer (and only songwriter worth mentioning), John Fogerty, really knows how to write a hit single. It’s a travesty that they were only able to last a few years and that business wrangling kept Fogerty from any work for more than a decade after that.
This particular song gave rise to one of the most famous mondegreens, or misheard lyrics: “There’s a bathroom on the right.”
May 22, 2009 – “Turn Your Pretty Name Around” – Olson/Louris
This is a low-key performance by the songwriting/vocal team behind the Jayhawks, a band I featured earlier this year. This song is from their (relatively) new album, “Ready for the Flood”.
May 23, 2009 – “Once in a Lifetime” – Talking Heads
Same as it ever was…
“You may ask yourself, how do I work this?”
May 24, 2009 – “Good Intentions” – Toad the Wet Sprocket
A ‘90s folk-pop band named after a Monty Python sketch? Sounds like the ingredients for mainstream success, right?
Glenn Phillips and the band did have a few Top-40 hits – and this song was included on the “Friends” soundtrack, although I can’t remember where it was actually used (Courtney’s in the video) – but broke up in the late ‘90s. They have re-formed for touring and play the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta tonight.
Truth in lyrics over a beautiful Simon and Garfunkel-esque melody. I can’t get enough of this song.
I was raised up believin’
I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes
Unique in each way you can see.
And now after some thinkin’
I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery
Servin’ some thing beyond me
But I don’t I don’t know what that will be.
I’ll get back to you someday
Soon you will see.
What’s my name what’s my station
Oh just tell me what I should do
I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night
That would do such injustice to you.
Or bow down and be grateful
And say “sure take all that you see”
To the men who move only in depleted halls
And determine my future for me.
And I don’t I don’t know who to believe
I’ll get back to you someday
Soon you will see.
If I know only one thing
Is that everything that I see
Of the world outside is full of such wonder
That often I barely can speak
Yeah I’m tongue tied and dizzy
And I can’t keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues?
Why should I wait for anyone else?
And I know I know you keep me on the shelf
I’ll come back to you someday
Soon myself.
If I had an orchard
I’d work ’till I’m raw.
If I had an orchard
I’d work ’till I’m sore.
And you would wait table ’till you ran the store.
According to the notes for this video, it’s a new video for a twenty-year-old song. The song was released on 1991’s Crawdaddy, and the footage was shot, but it was never cut together and released until now.
May 11, 2009 – “Crayola Doesn’t Make A Color For Your Eyes” – Kristin Andreassen
Indie folkie Kristin Andreassen performs her signature song here. I heard it when I saw her and her then-group, Sometimes Why, open for Nickel Creek at the Variety Playhouse. Really clever lyrics about all the colors in the rainbow – or at least in a box of 64.
May 12, 2009 – “Dance with Me” – Nouvelle Vague
Nouvelle Vague is a French group that does bossa nova versions of new wave songs. Here they cover “Dance with Me” by The Lords of the New Church.
It is tres cool.
March 27, 2011 – as a sheer coincidence, my cousin posted the original portion of the Godard film Bande à Part that this video uses. Bande à Part is also the name of the Nouvelle Vague album.
May 13, 2009 – “Town without Pity” – Gene Pitney
This is Pitney’s first Top-20 hit, and a fine example of his melodramatic singing style. (Hey, it worked for Roy Orbison, why not for him?)
The video features him singing live over the original backing track, which was unlike most of the lip-synced TV performances of the day.
May 14, 2009 – “In This Life” – Chantal Kreviazuk
I like this quote from AMG about this artist: “A young classically trained pianist from Winnipeg, Chantal Kreviazuk gained a record contract from Sony — as a vocalist — without ever having performed live.”
This is from her 2003 release, What If It All Means Something.
May 15, 2009 – “Jukebox (Don’t Put Another Dime)” – The Flirts
Hey, just because he’s a jerk, it doesn’t mean you have to destroy the records!
Won’t somebody please think of the records?!
May 16, 2009 – “New Mistake” – Jellyfish
More power pop, this time from the early ‘90s. Jellyfish broke up after only two albums, but what grand and glorious albums they were!
May 17, 2009 – “Love the One You’re With” – Stephen Stills
As part of Buffalo Springfield, CSN(&Y), and Manassas, Stills has put out an enormous amount of quality music. This solo number (solo? Who’s he trying to kid?) is probably the catchiest song he’s ever written.
Also, I prefer to think that the song doesn’t mean “jump on anything that moves”, but rather “enjoy the company of whoever you happen to be with”.
May 4, 2009 – “You’re a Friend of Mine” – Clarence Clemons & Jackson Browne
A few days ago, I posted “Trapped”. Who thought that the guy doing the blistering sax solo in that song would team up with Jackson Browne? The big man can sing, too – get the CD with his two solo albums on one disc “Rescue/Hero” if you can.
Sure, this video makes it look like a “bromance” was going on, but Jackson girlfriend-of-the-time, Daryl Hannah, was there to make sure things stayed G-rated.
May 5, 2009 – “Chuco’s Cumbia” – Los Lobos
I usually choose songs a week or two ahead of time, to make sure I stay caught up. However, that makes it easy to forget things like “Hey, it’s Cinco do Mayo!” So, this song “jumps the line” into today’s position.
Los Lobos has proved, year after year, that they are not “just another band from east L.A.” They play whatever kind of music they like with such professionalism and such feeling that they can get away with such rampant genre-jumping. But they stay true to their beginnings by continuing to play norteña songs like “Chuco’s Cumbria”.
(Got to love Steve Berlin on the sax!)
May 6, 2009 – “It Will Stand” – The Showmen
As is explained in the video, Norman Johnson fronted the Showmen before leaving to form the Chairmen of the Board in 1968. He would then beg, “Give Me Just a Little More Time”. Although he was unable to garner any more hits himself, he wrote some immortal songs, including 3 for the Honey Cone – “Want Ads”, “Stick Up” and “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show”.
May 7, 2009 – “Kate” – Ben Folds Five
You may have heard Ben before. He did a lovely song about one seriously selfish guy (“Brick”). This song, on the other hand is relentlessly cheerful – “She smiles and it’s a rainbow!”
May 8, 2009 – “Trouble” – Lindsey Buckingham
Why, oh, why does Lindsey want to look like David Hasselhoff?
May 9, 2009 – “Satellites” – Rickie Lee Jones
If you’ve heard of Rickie Lee, it’s probably because of her one and only hit, “Chuck E.’s in Love”. For much of her career, she’s given off this beatnik vibe, with some of her songs in the sing-song, talky manner of her former lover, Tom Waits. But she’s got a number of beautiful songs, too, like this one from her 1989 album, Flying Cowboys.
May 10, 2009 – “Uncontrollable Urge” – Devo
I wanna tell you all about it, I got to scream and shout it.
This song is from the first album by the boys from Akron, but the “flowerpot” headgear tells us that the performance is from the 1980 tour for their third album “Freedom of Choice”.
The first song I sang for my daughter as we left the orphanage in China was “Whip It”. True story.
Former Christian music artist Leslie Phillips (now Sam) was obviously heavily featured on the soundtrack to the TV show Gilmore Girls. This particular song predates that show, appearing on 1988’s The Indescribable Wow. Yet another criminally underappreciated artist.
My favorite song from the album, “She Can’t Tell Time”, is unavailable as a video. Maybe I’ll have to throw one together someday.
Member of Brinsley Schwarz and Rockpile, producer of albums by Elvis Costello, the Damned and the Pretenders, former husband to Carlene Carter – Nick Lowe’s musical creds are extensive. But he’s put out a lot of great music himself, and his second album, Labour of Lust, has just been reissued in a remastered version.
Here is his most famous song, penned with his Stiff Records stablemate, Ian Gomm.
enthusiasm noted 