Archives for July 2015

Certain Songs #257: Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Fortunate Son”

July 21, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Willy and The Poor Boys
Year: 1969

One of John Fogerty’s heaviest and most passionate songs, “Fortunate Son” is also a song that has not aged even a whit in the 40 years since it first burst out of Willy and The Poor Boys.

Which sucks. Because you want songs about economic disparity and how the rich take advantage of their privilege to get out of military service in a way that the poor never ever can to feel completely anachronistic. No such luck.

Certain Songs #256: Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Born on the Bayou”

July 20, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bayou Country
Year: 1969

Ahhh, here we go. With its feedback lick rising like an alligator from the swamp, “Born on the Bayou” is 5:14 of mysterious sonic pleasure.

On one level it’s so simple: Tom Fogerty’s guitar is in one channel and John Fogerty’s guitar in the other, while Stu Cook and Doug Clifford are holding down the fort in the middle. So in that respect, it’s not that different from many other CCR songs. And yet, it’s totally different from not just other CCR songs, but every other song ever.

Certain Songs #255: Courtney Barnett – “Depreston”

July 19, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
Year: 2015.

2015 is only halfway over, but I somehow doubt I will love a song this year more than I love “Depreston,” Courtney Barnett’s brilliant ode to a moment of realization that the world is bigger and more complex than you could have ever imagined.

“Depreston” is hardly the only great song on Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, but its aching guitar hooks and strong sad melody — and the matter-of-fact way she sings it — jumped out at me from the very moment I heard it. That the lyrics tell a singular, relatable story just makes it that much more fantastic.

Certain Songs #254: Courtney Barnett – “Avant Gardener”

July 18, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas
Year: 2014

Ever hear a song and instantly recognize that the artist singing was a completely new and original voice?

That’s what happened to me the first time I ever heard Courtney Barnett’s “Avant Gardener.” I was blown away by how she was able to combine elements of previous things I loved into something totally fresh.

Certain Songs #253: Counting Crows – “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby”

July 17, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: This Desert Life
Year: 1999.

It is a peculiar aspect of a project like “Certain Songs” that entire albums that are pretty great can be ignored if they don’t have that one cut that I will defend to the death. So it goes with Counting Crows second album, Recovering The Satellites which I think is their most consistent record, but without a single track (not even “Monkey” or “A Long December,”) that I have anything to really say about.

And that’s even when I point out that when Rox & Jimmy lived on Hollywood Blvd in 1995, one of their neighbors was Counting Crows’ drummer. I think he was their new drummer, Ben Mize, who powers maybe the best song Adam Duritz will ever write, 1999’s “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby.”

Certain Songs #252: Counting Crows – “Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman)”

July 16, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: DGC Rarities
Year: 1994

I understand why August and Everything After was such a huge record, but it sure seemed seemed uneven to me. So as they became a huge band that shoulda been right up my alley, I was really lukewarm on Counting Crows.

On one hand, I’m never going to quibble with a Billboard Top Ten folk-rock hit single that cops from “Brown Eyed Girl” and features the phrase “I want to be Bob Dylan.” On the other was that the major labels were becoming experts at co-opting indie and it was hard to tell initially if Counting Crows were truly on our or some kind of folk-rock version of Bush or Stone Temple Pilots or (shudder) Live.

Certain Songs #251: Continental Drifters – “Snow”

July 15, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Better Day
Year: 2001.

You’d kinda have to stretch to call Continental Drifters a “supergroup,” even in alt-rock circles. Sure, there was Vickie Peterson of the Bangles & Mark Walton of The Dream Syndicate and Susan Cowsill of the Cowsills, but none of these people were really household names, or the reason I bought their music.

For me, the draw for me was ex-dB Peter Holsapple, whose main band will be discussed just a few weeks from now.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #251: Continental Drifters – “Snow”

Certain Songs #250: The Connells – “Get a Gun”

July 14, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: One Simple Word
Year: 1990.

Gotta tell the truth: I really didn’t like One Simple Word that much at all. They wanted to toughen their sound, so they added big rock guitars all over the record, pummelling every bit of melody right out of the songs. And I really hated the lead guitar that sounded like it was just plugged into the mixing board and played by whomever was walking by.

It’s not that I’m against jangly bands plugging in and getting loud: The Posies, for one, did it quite successfully when they reinvented their sound for Frosting on The Beater. It’s just that the production on One Simple Word felt totally wrong for the songs. And from what I could tell, the songs really up to snuff, either.

Certain Songs #249: The Connells – “Something To Say”

July 13, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Fun & Games
Year: 1989

What I liked about The Connells over so many of their second-tier jangly peers was the fact that they weren’t afraid to go big. To aim for anthems. Not every song, of course, but always a couple on each record.

Fun & Games — which Wikipedia tells me actually made it to #168 on the Billboard charts — probably contained more of these anthems than any of their other albums. Songs like “Hey Wow” (which I also loved cos that was a phrase an ex-girlfriend said all the time) and “Sat. Night (USA)” were full of group choruses and jubilant horn sections that anthem was the lead track “Something To Say,” which is probably my favorite Connells song.

Certain Songs #248: The Connells – “Scotty’s Lament”

July 12, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Boylan Heights
Year: 1987.

In the darker days of late 1987 — when the running joke among my little tribe was that our universe had so sped up that the only possible result was that the world ending on January 1, 1988 — one of the little pieces of sanity I hung onto was a cassette tape I made.

Now, of course, I made tons of cassette tapes. Tons and tons and tons. And this tape was nothing special, except that it contained two records that were both thematically and musically simpatico: Bobby Sutliff’s Only Ghosts Remain and The Connells’ Boylan Heights. Both were guitar-pop albums produced by Mitch Easter and released on TVT records. And both were full of songs about relationships falling apart, so they resonated with me both musically and lyrically.