Mick Jagger moves, Mick Jagger looks, Mick Jagger looks—forget it. If you’re in the market for raw sex appeal, aging rockstar style, it’s Buckingham or bust.
Top weekend video: Daft Punk/ Soul Train
Because don’t deny it, you want life to look and sound more like this. Girls in pastel shorts suits, you are my summer fashion heros.
Top rock history song you’ve never heard: “That Made Me Stronger” by Stevie Nicks
This album, Trouble in Shangri-La, is a bell-sleeved, sorcerer and witch filled, beautiful slice of cartoonish Stevie Nicks perfection that will make you want to buy a Nicks style top hat and some crystals. It also has some incredible lyrical gems, including “That Made Me Stronger,” a thank you to Lindsay Buckingham for pushing her to write her own songs when they were kids.
Lots of classics and new discoveries here (Did you all know that Fire of Love by The Gun Club is the jam and forget to tell me?), though 1972 and 1978 earn a hearty “Really?! As for 1985, Tim wins everything, always, especially when it stands next to 80′s punchline, Kate Bush.
Top Discussion Question, by Joshua: What’s your perfect show? No time restrictions, you pick the venues and feel free to spruce them up, and there are two opening acts and one special guest. Go.
Aimee Mann and Lauryn Hill (circa Miseducation of Lauryn Hill) in my living room. We walk outside after, right into the filming of “Stop Making Sense,” where a time traveling from circa- Rei Momo David Byrne shows up, and double David Byrne duets on “Life During Wartime.”
Catwalk’s [Please] Don’t Break Me is technically a single, though definitely a bit more than that since it features two distinct and different songs. I like them both, and I’m glad I do, since at first I was simply mesmerized by that fresh, pretty cover art.
In other news, I thought a several month long streak of music apathy was over, but the cure hasn’t stuck. I am now officially in a listening rut. What are you listening to? Let me know in the comments.
I am back on the first substances we ever embrace—caffeine and sugar. I have Easter egg foil on my bedroom floor and heaps of coffee grinds rotting in my compost bin. I devour a square of chocolate on the walk home from the grocery store, handfuls of dried chili rubbed mangoes (“They’re healthy?” I think, despondently scanning the label). Another black coffee, another, a third—I would like to sip it straight from the pot. I stopped drinking alcohol a month ago: out of nowhere, it started giving me vicious heart flutters. So now I embrace caffeine shivers and scrape together spare quarters for candy like a kid. The Cults sing ‘What I most want is bad for me, I know,” and I nod in agreement.
“What a perfect love song,” I thought the first time I heard “Baby” by Devendra Banhardt. It’s a tall order, modern love songs—so easy to be cheesy or overly simple, so much easier as a listener to lean on the greats from a few decades ago when it comes to romantic music. But this song is silly, pure and joyful, fun to hum and play loudly. And my heart is silly, pure and joyful, it hums and plays loudly, because last month the person I love the most asked me to marry him and I said yes. You can see the happy, bejeweled owl that sits on my left ring finger and makes me smile.
It’s warm and there are little jasmine blossoms on the bushes when I take my walk, there’s a cherry tree that’s flushed and frilly. The sun is out at seven o’clock and I swear I was wrong, San Francisco does have seasons, you just have to live here for three years to feel them. It’s Spring, and the cheerful chorus of “Polaroid Song” is spot-on: “Feel like dancing on my own/ To a record that I do not own/In a place I’ve never seen before.”
It’s Spring, and Van Morrison is a man for all seasons. Every crunchy leaf or drift of snow, every soft pastel April day or first humid morning is best met with a Van Morrison song. I’m sending you glad tidings, from San Francisco.
“Strawberry Bubblegum” sounds like being a teenager in the summer, when you just started driving and there’s that one song that makes you feel sexy and alive, so you play it as much as you can, and the local station follows suit. I’m so tired of the eight minute song, a new favorite of intelligent popstars and rappers, but my weak attention span and jam band hangover didn’t stop me from loving the new Justin Timberlake album. I didn’t expect to, but how can you say no to something so fun and summer-perfect when soaring temperatures and swimming pools are around the corner?
And speaking of things I didn’t think I’d love, a lesson learned: Try the music you hate again. Just like every taste, your music tastes change without you even noticing. And speaking of songs that sound like being a teenager in the summer: “Keep the Car Running” by Arcade Fire fits the bill. Yes, I said I didn’t like them and believed it. Changing my mind was refreshing, and made me wonder what else I was missing. Could I enjoy other things I’ve disliked for years, like Twizzlers or horror movies? A Freon and fake butter scented movie theatre in Baltimore is surely the place to find out. I’ll keep you posted
Of course I was happy to see the Jackson 5 twice on Joshua’s 1970 list, who isn’t? (Shockingly a lot of people: Check out the comments section here.) And any day that involves a surprise visit from a classic Stevie Wonder jam is a good day to me. But when I took a gander at that list, I saw something major was missing: The ladies! Where were the ladies of 1970?
Joshua’s got a tall order grappling with Cassie’s dislike of 70′s music, and while he finagled and listened and tried to pick the very best for his fickle friend, he forgot about the grand musical dames of 1970. He’s onto 1971 (coming soon! get excited!), and asked me to round up the ladies for the previous year. Did I miss anyone? Let me know in the comments.
“Call Me” by Aretha Franklin
A great chef doesn’t need a laundry list of ingredients. They don’t require inexplicably braided saffron threads and eggwashed pastry replicas of famous landmarks. They can salt a perfect, sliced tomato and the world falls to pieces. That kind of finesse and simplicity is what’s happening in this song, where Aretha Franklin proves once again that she is the maestro. “Call Me” is simple, repetitive, focused on something a little inane (Wanting the person you love to call you back—a sentiment also housed in a million misspelled text messages). And yet I could listen to it every day and never tire of it. Walking down the street with Aretha Franklin cheerfully cooing “Call me!” in your ear is a pure and perfect pleasure.
“I Want to Take You Higher” by Ike and Tina Turner
Okay, Ike throws my ladies of 1970 list off, but we all know this song belongs to Tina Turner (as most songs do). “I Want to Take You Higher” is a 70′s delight—from the “Boom-shock-a-locka” chanting back-up singers to the insistent drums to the complex funkiness of layer upon layer of sound. It’s guaranteed to make you drop what you’re doing and dance, or wish that you could leapfrog out of your workday and have Tina Turner take you higher, whatever that means for you.
True story: When my sister and I were really little, my mom would have us do the “Proud Mary” dance all the time. My greatest fourth grade wish was that I could get a flippy Tina Turner dress with flippy hair to match.
“You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” by Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn delivers sharp barbs with a smile, letting her husband’s mistress know that “For you to get to him I’d have to move over/ and I’m gonna stand right here” and “It’ll be over my dead body/ So get out while you can.” Woman on woman fight songs, especially over men, aren’t usually my favorite, but the set up of the story warrants this reaction. Her husband’s mistress breaks the news and lets Lynn know that she plans to steal her husband. While I question why Lynn would want to keep that man after all this, I appreciate when someone needs to be put in their place. This is one of those times.
Loretta Lynn was a hit machine in 1970, the same year she released “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” a great song that was my original pick for this list. But this song won me over because of how deftly Lynn pulls off a rare combination of chipper and badass, shown perfectly in the peppy way she sings “It will be over my dead body”
“Woodstock” by Joni Mitchell
What’s a better kick off to the 70’s then a proper farewell to the 60’s? And what’s a better goodbye than Joni Mitchell singing about Woodstock with the same fevered devotion as all the other kids across the country, watching the show through their TV sets? Mitchell missed Woodstock, and based her iconic lyrics on stories from her then boyfriend Graham Nash and TV footage she watched in her hotel room. It’s wistful, pining for something so close that was gone forever. Joni Mitchell, who spent the previous decade discarding her art dreams in favor of writing songs, would go on to own the decade, releasing both Blue and Court and Spark in subsequent years.
“Just Like A Woman” cover by Roberta Flack
A lovely cover that makes you forget Bob Dylan—a difficult feat in 1970, when Dylan was still omnipresent, and a difficult feat for this particular listener since “Just Like A Woman” is one of my favorite Dylan songs. But I love this—the slow pacing, Flack’s flipped point of view, her warm vocals that expand and contract, vowels pulled like taffy and soaring moments framed in a whisper. It’s such a different song in Flack’s hands, and so independent from the original. After a month of cover songs on this blog, I was half done with them. Roberta Flack roped me back in.
A long February weekend in San Diego was all day-glow smoothies, hefty breakfast burritos, and Fleetwood Mac, maybe in that order. It’s not a beach vacation if you don’t listen to Rumours at least twice, preferably while accumulating sand in the tiny crevices of your toes, or chugging down the main drag with the windows down. And it’s not Rumours if it’s not stuck in your head for at least another three weeks, conjuring the smell of melting sunscreen and coconut surf wax as the wind cuts clean and cold against your cheeks. Summer is months away, but when it comes, listen to “Never Going Back Again” while tracing the edge of the ocean with your bare feet.
I wore my “Happy Songs” playlist down to the bone months ago, and I’ve needed a set of musical uppers ever since. “I’ll Come Running to Tie Your Shoes” by Brian Eno and “Swimming Pool” by Toy Love both do the trick, as does old favorite “Day Dreaming” by Aretha Franklin. My nerves have been fried and scattered like some strange delicacy lately; music puts them back on the mend. (Wasn’t it Frank Zappa, my spirit animal right now, who said “Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid”?)
Misheard lyrics abound—“Medicine Wheel” spun circles between my ears for a month at least, and I always thought the chorus was “Are you salmon, baby/under the bridge” instead of “Are you saddened baby/under the bridge.” “Dry the Rain” played a similar trick for years, when I turned it up and was convinced that they were saying, over and over again, “You will be all right” because I needed to hear that. “I will be your light” is still good though, maybe better. If we’re talking about the how and when of consuming songs, I recommend taking a long walk up big hills in San Francisco, and timing this six minute gem just right so that you reach the crescendo of your walk, peer out at the city, as the Beta Band chants “I will be your light.”
Remember when I made fun of Bob Dylan’s, well, Dylanyness this week? I felt bad. I contracted Bob Dylan guilt. Do you, Dylan, and I’ll promise to never see you in concert again and keep listening to you and half-heartedly defending you to haters. In the meantime, haters and non-haters, “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” is one of my favorite Dylan songs. It’s sunny and lovely and always reminds me to watch High Fidelity again if its been too long. It also pairs well with “Help Me Make It Through the Night” by Johnny Cash and June Carter.
Sometimes you’re sitting at your desk, rattled and riddled with racing thoughts, and the right song comes on. The right song, one you’ve never heard, one you absolutely needed. It’s a rare gift from the universe. Celebrate it. Cheers to The Belle Brigade’s “Loser” (which I had heard once or twice, but only paid a fraction of my attention to it each time), which appeared and filled my speakers when I needed it most.
Ahh covers month—it has been a sprawling, really generous definition of a month here at Charm City Jukebox, and I swear for all you covers-haters out there (do you exist? I would find that totally fascinating—leave a comment), we’re almost done.
As covers month comes to a close, it’s time to talk about cover song ignorance. Know thy covers, friends—know who sang the original, so you can win all the trivia nights and avoid being the butt of jokes from your music snob buddies (not us, of course).
Embarrassed at your original vs. cover song knowledge gaps? I’ll get you started. Here are the top five songs that I didn’t know were covers. Leave yours in the comments!
“One More Cup of Coffee” cover by The White Stripes, originally by Bob Dylan
Everyone has a serious “how did I not know this was a cover?” song (I think the top two most common “How did I not know this was a cover?” songs are “I Will Always Love You” and “Son of a Preacher Man.”) While I just feel surprised by the other songs on this list, “One More Cup of Coffee” makes me blush. Bob Dylan and Jack White have many things in common, but one that sticks out is how often listeners who don’t like them point to their unconventional voices as the reason why. Jack White’s voice is perfect here—this is a great example of why and how his voice works. Bob Dylan’s voice…well, even as a Dylan fan, this is one of those songs where I really understand the dislike.
“Strange Little Girl” by Tori Amos, originally by The Stranglers
Sure, Amos purists, this should be obvious since it’s plucked off of an album of covers. But Amos covers “Strange Little Girl” with such authority and ownership that it seems impossible that it could be by another artist. It’s a natural fit, and her delivery of this song by The Stranglers sets the tone and creates the title for the rest of the album.
Sidenote: If you love covers (we do, haveyounoticed?), check out the entire Strange Little Girls album, which has some solid, sometimes strange tracks, and will make you wonder why we didn’t make a bigger deal about the original “Kim,” Eminem’s ode to uxoricide and domestic violence.
“I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll” by Joan Jett, originally by Alan Merrill
Speaking of authority and ownership, how often do you think people compliment Alan Merrill on his Joan Jett cover when he performs this? Every version since Joan Jett has been a cover of Joan Jett, not Alan Merrill; we all know it. It doesn’t matter how loyal Jett’s version was to the original; this is her song. I can’t find the quote, but I swear I once read that Dusty Springfield ended up preferring Aretha Franklin’s more popular version of “Son of a Preacher Man” than her own. I wonder if Merrill feels the same way.
“Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, originally by Gloria Jones
I’ve definitely heard the Gloria Jones version before, but for some reason always thought it was a Soft Cell original. I prefer the original, not just because it’s a great recording, but because “Tainted Love” may belong on our long ago “Top 5 Songs Classic Rock Radio Has Ruined” lists. A great song, for sure, but it’s predecessor sounds fresher, less exhausted by years whirling around on car radios and in grocery stores.
“Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia, originally by Ednaswap
I think I bought Natalie Imbruglia’s album in middle school based on my unrequited love for this song, which haunted every kind of radio station for about two years straight. The fact that this is actually a cover deserves a sitcom style “Whaaaa?!” sound effect. (Found one!)
Imbruglia’s version is a pretty straightforward cover, except for some obvious pop glossiness. Is it weird that I feel a little betrayed? What other classic 90′s hits are undercover covers? Other than “Return of the Mack,” which everyone knows is by Patsy Cline.
