Top 40 Smash Taps: “Ask Me No Questions”

These posts are about the songs that can accurately claim to crossed the key line of chart success, becoming Top 40 hits on Billboard, but just barely. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 40. B.B. King is an undisputed legend of the blues, using a guitar dubbed Lucille (usually, but not always, a black Gibson) to plow through powerhouse songs, many of which he himself established as standards of the genre. Despite all that, he only had modest crossover chart success. From the string of singles that began with “Miss Martha King,” released in 1949, and ended … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Ask Me No Questions”

One for Friday: Billy Bragg, “The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions”

  On this day, when crass consumerism reigns supreme, I woke up with a Billy Bragg song galloping through my head. So even as I watched the morning news programs, wherein all the more important, more meaningful, more troubling developments of the day were pushed to deep on the segment list in favor of grotesquely chipper reports on which sales were generating the most aggressive enthusiasm among desperate holidays shoppers, my mental accompaniment involved a distinct Essex accent delivering the battle cry “We’re making the world safe for capitalism!” Bragg was one of the artists I clung to most gratefully … Continue reading One for Friday: Billy Bragg, “The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions”

Great Moments in Literature

“I stopped listening to tapes at some point: it was a phase. You either get used to noises in your head, or you learn to focus instead on whatever other noises happen to present in the room, like the air conditioner. Still, I kept them, and they’re arranged neatly on the top of the dresser in my bedroom, which means Vicky dusts them once a week. They look like museum pieces now. Chaos Blood, Black Lake, Rexecutioner’s Dream. Sean at sixteen thought Rexecutioner’s Dream was the greatest thing he’d ever heard, something so strange and different it seemed like a … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 6

  6. Fishbone, Truth and Soul Fishbone decided to open Truth and Soul, their second full-length release, with a track that signaled a clear understanding of their forebears. Their ferocious take on Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead” is a clarion call to the rock ‘n’ roll faithful. Fishbone is going to do right by the mélange of genres in which they traffic. “Freddie’s Dead” is steeped in funk authority, but it also blasts forward like a headlong hard rock anthem. Their earlier releases sometimes got Fishbone pigeonholed as an empty party band, maybe in part because it was all too easy … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 6