Category Archives: Start Your iPods

Start Your iPods

Shuffle your music playing device. Tell us the first two songs that come up!

  1. Anita O'Day - Taking A Chance On Love. O'Day does a fine job on this happy, snappy jazz standard. Wiki lists 70 or so musicians who've covered it - everyone from Judy Garland and Bennie Goodman to Harpo Marx and Rod Stewart.
  2. Pentangle - Light Flight. It's always hard to make odd time signatures catchy, but they manage it here - just barely. It's tricky to hum along to, but if I just let it fly on by, it's fun.

Try it! It's fun!

Start Your iPods

Five songs, shuffled, described.

  1. Pretenders - Sabre Dance (live). This is the song that everyone knows from cartoons. No, not Powerhouse, the other one. It's just frantic drums and screaming guitar with Chrissy Hynde singing bits of the words to "Stop You Sobbing" here and there. It's from the extended re-issue of their first record. Link is to a live "Needle And The Damage Done".
  2. Fleetwood Mac - Did You Ever Love Me. A perfect example of an upbeat Christine McVie soft-rock love song: she singing a bright sweet melody over a gently rocking base. The steel drums are a bit distracting, but otherwise, it's a decent tune. I like the guitar line.
  3. Sonic Youth - Catholic Block. This song kills. Love this sprawling, twisting monster.
  4. The Sea And Cake - You Beautiful Bastard. A long, slow mellow thing. It's in no hurry, as it glides farther and farther into the Golden Land of Mellow. I like it, but I can understand why some might not.
  5. Led Zeppelin - Dancing Days. Love this, too. Page's elastic guitar is just so cool - that intro riff, especially. And then Jones' slippery organ gets on that lick about halfway through - very slinky.

OK. You try it.

Start Your iPods

Random five, described!

  1. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Phantasies. I didn't care for this record at the time, but it's grown on me over the years. It was hard to let him do anything outside of Pavement.
  2. Nick Drake - Hazy Jane II. From whence sprung Belle & Sebastian. That's Richard Thompson on lead guitar.
  3. Harlem - Scare You. A snappy Flamin Groovies-style rocker.
  4. Paul Simon - Kodachrome. Crazy catchy song, despite the questionable chorus.
  5. Blue Sky Boys - Dust On The Bible. A cautionary tale about letting your Bible go unread. One of many maudlin Jesus-centered songs from these guys.

Oh yeah.

Start Your iPods

Shuffle. List five. Describe. Pick your favorite.

  1. Minor Threat - Minor Threat. Whew. An adolescent kick in the neck to start the week. 90 seconds.
  2. Pixies - Is She Weird. This song sounds like Pixies-by-the-numbers.
  3. Bob Dylan - Visions Of Johanna (live). This is my favorite Dylan song. Though it's long, and contains a harmonica (an instrument that typically makes my skin crawl), the lyrics are Dylan's best.
  4. Beatles - Hello Goodbye. This song just screams "PAUL!" Link is to the Magical Mystery Tour video. Ringo is playing a tiny kit, with the drums drums at knee-level. John looks completely bored. And then there's a wacky 60's dance party at the end.
  5. Charles Mingus - Self-portrait in Three Colors. Nice, mellow, concise.

I choose Dylan.

Start Your iPods

Shuffle five, describe:

  1. Lilys - Coby. This is from a split EP they did with Aspera Ad Astra. It's in their/his shoegaze style: lots of fuzzy, screaming, droning guitars; vocals buried in reverb. I like this little EP, and the bands are so similar I spent years without knowing which songs were from which band (I also didn't bother reading the liner notes). Love the Lilys. Guess I probably love Aspera Ad Astra, too.
  2. SRV - Testify (live). Wow. That guy was awesome.
  3. Bauhaus - Rosegarden Funeral Of Sores. A fun little song about the whores next door. Daniel Ash is a different kind of guitar genius - a screechier kind.
  4. Big Star - Nightime. This would've been one of many sweet little acoustic tunes, on either of Big Star's first two records. But Chilton had given up on sweetness, on this record. And so this is decorated with a wailing, reverb-soaked, electric, slide guitar, which makes the whole thing feel disoriented and drunken.
  5. Hank Williams - Window Shopping. This was the B side to one of the last singles released while he was still alive: 1952's "Jambalaya". It's a nice enough tune, does everything you'd expect from a Hank Williams song. It's just not one of his absolute best songs.

Your turn!

Start Your iPods

Another week, another broken hot water heater.

Random five, describe!

  1. Allman Bros - Don't Keep Me Wonderin' (live). I can appreciate the Allman Bros' talents, but on the whole they've never been able to reach the level of essential, in my estimation.
  2. The Sundays - I Won. This little flash-in-the-pan band, with that Smiths-y guitar sound, and that very English singer... somehow this album grabbed me, in 1990, and it has yet to grow old. Odd.
  3. John Mayall - Bernard Jenkins. It's just Clapton's guitar and Mayall's piano. Makes you realize that even the best rock guitar players will sound simple next to a great piano player. While Clapton is wheedling away, one or two strings at a time, Mayall is playing bass, rhythm chords, and a bit of a lead accompaniment. And when Clapton sits back on a verse, and Mayall steps it up, it's obvious that Mayall could easily handle this one on his own.
  4. John Coltrane - Cousin Mary (alternate take). One of my favorite Coltrane tunes. He doesn't go all sheets-of-sound on this, and the melody is nice.
  5. The Cure - Happy The Man. One of their early B-sides. Guessing, I'm going to say that this was recorded around the time of The Top... (looking it up... I'm right! It's a B-side to "The Caterpillar"). I've always dug this one. For The Top, Smith was almost done with the minimal gloom of the Faith era, but hadn't fully embraced the catchy pop side of the Japanese Whispers singles. So, The Top stuff feels a little unsettled, experimental, transitional. Lots of interesting stuff.

Try it yourself!

Start Your iPods

Monday...

iPods.

Shuffle.

Five songs.

Describe, thusly:

  1. Louis Armstrong - St James Infirmary. The ancient jazz standard; and perhaps its most-famous version.
  2. Bob Dylan - Talkin' World War III Blues - Really early footage of Dylan at that link. Singing to the roughneck workingmen in something like a lumberjack lodge.
  3. Pink Floyd - One Slip. That bass, that bass, where have I heard that bass sound before? Oh yeah... it's Tony Levin.
  4. Bill Monroe - Linda Lou. High and lonesome.
  5. Smaller Animals - Mr Soul. Yeah, it's the Buffalo Springfield classic, as done by ... me. I don't have this on-line anywhere, and I'm not inclined to post it because, while I quite like the music, I don't really dig my voice, so... I'll link to something else: Interstitial Love Song.

What you got?

Start Your iPods

Shuffle-up five, describe!

  1. Rolling Stones - Carol. It's unmistakably a Check Berry song, and the Stones do a respectable job of it. Fun, ancient, live performance of it, in that link.
  2. Nod - 500 Hurts. A sing-songy yet atonal thing that devolves into feedback and anarchy - pretty standard for Nod! I wish they had more YouTube vids.
  3. Gillian Welch - The Way It Will Be. Love those narcotic minor key harmonies.
  4. Beatles - Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!. I'm not really familiar with their really early period, so it took me a minute to figure out who this was. Plus, McCartney's voice sounds rough and ragged and a bit deeper than usual.
  5. Sea And Cake - Flat Lay The Water. A snappy, breezy, tune from their first record. I could do without the flanger solo, but the verses are nice.

Easy. Now you do it.