Category Archives: Friday Music Day

FMD: October

A lot of new albums coming out this month that I'm interested in:

Danny Brown
Nick Cave
Angel Olsen
Wilco
Big Thief
Blood Orange
Battles
Vagabon
FKA Twigs
Guided By Voices (okay, not really this, but I'll mention it for free's sake)

Anything you're looking forward to?

Oh yeah, and drop your lists.

FMD – Ric Ocasek’s “Other Career”

Lots of love and sadness for Ric Ocasek, especially for his work with The Cars. I was lucky enough to be in high school when those first two albums came out and they are still active on my playlist. In fact two good high school friends had a “Best Friends Girl” issue way back when and we still joke about it using that song.

Besides fronting The Cars, Ocasek produced 38 albums, some of which were The Cars of course, but a wide variety of others. Researching this post, I discovered he produced two Bad Brains albums, which I find amazing. Those are classic punk albums.

In the GBV world, Ocasek is known for producing Do The Collapse, which was Guided By Voices first foray into a highly produced rock album for a “big” label (Matador). Generally the album was well received and GBV fans have come around to the fact that it’s an album that wasn’t produced on a 4-track in the garage. The only issue that remains today is that Teenage FBI is probably over produced with a weird synthesizer effect that really isn’t needed oh and Hold on Hope was too much of a syrupy ballad. See video below.

Any way, Ric, you were your one weird looking dude who got to marry a super model and made or had a hand in a shit-ton of cool music. Plus you made me post about you instead of the the 50th anniversary of Abbey Road, which is my favorite album of all time. So good for you.

FMD: Songs About Real People

On Wednesday of this week I heard The Vaccine's "Norgaard" (not a new song, and not new to me either), and I got caught up in who this person was that they were singing about. It felt like there had to be a specific muse, at a minimum. Turns out, there's a whole story there, and the person's name actually was Amanda Norgaard.

It was pretty fun to track this down, learn a little bit about a person I had previously been unaware existed, etc. I had kind of the same experience once upon a time with Leonard Cohen's "So Long Marianne". And while there are plenty of songs about people who are famous or otherwise known to the public, I think there's something especially engaging in a song about a real person who is unknown to you.

Anyway, talk songs about real people, especially the unknowns, and drop lists if you got them.

FMD – Woodstock at 50

So the past week or so I've been listening to music from the Woodstock festival from 50 years ago. The performances that we all are familiar with were great of course, but the others I found were not so compelling and downright tedious at times (lots of drum solos). Some of the Santana stuff put me to sleep. Also I noticed that most of the performances would fall under the rhythm and blues category of rock. I'd argue that if the same event was held today it would be classified as blue festival. Interesting how music has changed over the past 5 decades.

Anyway that's all I got. Drop 'em if you got 'em.

FMD – Good songs you don’t like

The other day Jeff A mentioned that he didn’t see the big deal about Pancho and Lefty. In true Padre fashion, he admitted that it was a popular song, he just didn’t get it. Well Pancho and Lefty is a popular song. Considered Townes Van Zandt’s best song, covered numerous times. Even considered the 17th greatest western ong ever written by American Cowboy magazine. (True story). The song has earned its bona fides.

It got me thinking, are there popular, well regarded songs out there that you “should” like given your particular tastes but just don’t? I know someone who is a big Beatles fan, but can’t stand Hey Jude. How about you?

Also drop ‘em if you got ‘em.

FMD: BNL

So on my summer mix for 2018, I ended with Barenaked Ladies' "If I Had A Million Dollars". My kids had been listening to the mix again, and my daughter and I were driving last night and that song came on. She asked about the artist, and I mentioned that she knew a couple of their songs ("Old Apartment" - also on a summer mix, "When You Dream" - often sung to them at bedtime). So I pulled out my old Stunt CD and started listening to that.

Man, there were a lot of songs on there that I had no desire to listen to.

But! There were other songs that I absolutely adored and wanted her to hear.

At the time it seemed a somewhat strange dichotomy. And really, though I acknowledge it isn't all that uncommon, isn't it a little weird? Are there authors who you say "I love these 3 books, but can't stand these other 3?" Probably not too many. Or painters where you look at half of their paintings and love them, but you'd be glad to toss the other half? It seems unlikely.

So what is it about music that can make it so hit or miss? And are there other artists out there for you where this is the case? Who typifies hit and miss music to you?

And drop lists if you got 'em!