4. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Peepshow When Peepshow arrived in the fall of 1988, it was seen as something of a resurrection for Siouxsie and the Banshees, touched with a little welcome reinvention. The post-punk and goth-rock pioneers hadn’t exactly … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 4
There are those songs that are immediately rejuvenating. I suspect we all have them, those tracks that are perhaps somewhat designed to have that effect (uplifting lyrics, soaring melodies, music that builds and builds), but, more importantly, hold with them some beneficial added history. They were there at exactly the right time, the message, the sound, and everything hitting in the right way, like tumblers in a lock falling into proper place. Maybe the sweet spot was hit even more cleanly because the accumulated history of prior listens had finally accumulated to the point that the song shifted from casual … Continue reading One for Friday: Guadalcanal Diary, “Litany (Life Goes On)”
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”
5. Billy Bragg, Workers Playtime Billy met Mary in 1986. Specifically name-checked in the song “The Short Answer” (“Between Marx and marzipan in the dictionary/ There was Mary/ Between the deep blue sea and the devil/ That was me”), Mary … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 5
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”
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
This is the way I like to imagine it happened: director Peyton Reed and his collaborators on the 2003 film Down with Love, part pastiche of and part spoof of old Rock Hudson-Doris Day sex comedies, were almost done with … Continue reading One for Friday: Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, “Here’s To Love”
According to Dion DiMucci, his time fronting the Belmonts came about because he decided to take his fledgling career into his own hands. In 1957, the Bronx-born singer signed to the newly-formed Mohawk Records. Almost immediately, the label heads had him record lead vocals for a pre-existing backing tracking, resulting in his first single, “The Chosen Few,” credited to Dion and the Timberlanes. DiMucci claimed he never even met the other individuals who performed on the record. He also found them unbearably bland, which inspired him to do what presumably any kid from the Bronx would do. He went back … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Don’t Pity Me”
7. Let’s Active, Every Dog Has His Day Back around #15 on this particular countdown, I noted the elevated stature of North Carolina-based producer Mitch Easter at the end of the nineteen-eighties, at least within the aspirational, twentysomething Neverland of … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 7
Because some days more than anything else you need a Japanese art rock band heavily influenced by Devo covering the Knack’s biggest hit. There’s just no getting around it. Though I wrote a rave review of one of their albums … Continue reading One for Friday: Polysics, “My Sharona”
Coffee for Two 