Archives for August 2015

Certain Songs #278: David Bowie – “Heroes”

August 11, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: “Heroes”
Year: 1977

Good gods, where do you even start with such a grand, momentous statement? This is my favorite David Bowie song. By such a huge margin that it’s not even close.

From the moment I heard it, “Heroes” utterly floored me like very few songs ever had, so much so that “Heroes” was the first David Bowie album I ever bought.

Put it this way: if David Bowie had been some guy who happened to collaborate with Brian Eno for this one record and then died in a car crash, there would be “Heroes.”

Certain Songs #277: David Bowie – “Rebel Rebel”

August 10, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Diamond Dogs
Year: 1974

Fueled by a guitar riff that Keith Richards is still wondering if he didn’t give to Bowie in a heroin haze and lyrics that aim for the heart of teenagers of every possible gender, “Rebel Rebel” is an undeniable, eternal classic.

It’s weird though: while it seems like Bowie was a huge star from the moment “Space Oddity” hit the radio, Diamond Dogs was actually the first of his albums that made the U.S. Top 10, and that despite the fact that the U.S. single version of “Rebel Rebel” — which was a weird, truncated mix that de-emphasised the guitar riff — didn’t do shit on the charts.

Certain Songs #276: David Bowie – “Panic in Detroit”

August 9, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Aladdin Sane
Year: 1973

Now is probably as good of a time as any to point out that I’m not as big of a fan of David Bowie as many of you are.
I have a shitton of respect for him, obviously, and he’s as important of an artist as any who made their bones in the 1970s.

Probably more important than most, as he clearly was a pioneer in glam-rock, funk-rock and electronic rock. But he’s really only slayed me on individual songs, as opposed to full albums.

Certain Songs #275: David Bowie – “Suffragette City”

August 8, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars
Year: 1972

Is it just me, or has the super-rockin’ straight-forward “Suffragette City” never quite fit upon the album where it lives? It’s probably just me, as I’ve always found The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars to be one of those consensus classic albums that has never completely gelled for me.

Maybe because of that opening riff and pounding piano, but “Suffragette City” never really seemed to fit with rest of the songs on Ziggy Stardust. Those songs were bigger and deeper, while “Suffragette City” was a 1950s-style fucksong dressed up on glam-rock clothing.

Certain Songs #274: David Bowie – “Space Oddity”

August 7, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Space Oddity
Year: 1969

Given its weird history, I’ve occasionally wondered if David Bowie ever regretted naming his first big hit “Space Oddity” instead of “Major Tom.” Probably not, but I’ve always thought that the title was slightly wrong for a song that essentially about a tragedy.

Of course, “Space Tragedy” would have been worse and The Byrds had already beaten him to “Space Odyssey,” but he coulda called it “Major Tom” like everybody else probably did.

Certain Songs #273: Dave Edmunds – “One More Night”

August 6, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: D.E. #7
Year: 1982

After the relative slightness of … Twangin’, D.E. 7th was a definite comeback for Dave Edmunds. Kicking off with a one-two punch of a unreleased Springsteen song and a heavy-rocking NRBQ song, D.E. 7th suggested there could be a career for Edmunds in a post-Rockpile world.

Of course, Rockpile was missed, so while D.E. 7th never quite rose to the heights of Repeat When Necessary and Tracks on Wax 4, it does have one of my all-time favorite ballads, the exquisite “One More Night”

Certain Songs #272: Dave Edmunds – “Girls Talk”

August 5, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Repeat When Necessary
Year: 1979

The Dave Edmunds cover of Elvis Costello’s “Girls Talk” is an object lesson of “the singer not the song.” I mean, Elvis Costello’s version is a nice-enough outtake from the Get Happy!!! sessions, but the Dave Edmunds version is one of the great singles of the 1970s.

Why? Rockpile, that magical confluence of Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Billy Bremner and Terry Williams.

Certain Songs #271: Dave Edmunds – “What Did I Do Last Night?”

August 4, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Get It
Year: 1977

While he kinda seems forgotten these days, Dave Edmunds was really pretty great for awhile in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when — not coincidentally — he worked with Nick Lowe and Rockpile.

But what made Dave Edmunds really special was that he was one of the few artists in the rock era who didn’t write his own material. He just wasn’t a songwriter. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but its hard to name another artist who came out of post-Beatles rock ‘n’ roll and sustained a career without writing their own material.

Certain Songs #270: Danny Elfman – “The Simpsons Theme”

August 3, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Songs in The Key of Springfield
Year: 1989.

I never liked Oingo Boingo. They always seemed too self-consciously wacky to me, like Danny Elfman had heard about new wave from some friends and thought “hey, I can do that!” And proceeded to do so, making sure every note was misplaced just perfectly.

Naturally, the same things I disliked about Oingo Boingo were the things I loved about his scores for the 1980s Tim Burton films, from the frenetic Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure score to the stately Batman soundtrack, so I can now look at Oingo Boingo as Elfman’s extended demo tape for his true vocation as composer of awesome film scores.

Certain Songs #269: Danny & Dusty – “The King of The Losers”

August 2, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Lost Weekend
Year: 1985

At some point in 1984, I started writing record reviews for CSUF’s newspaper, The Daily Collegian. Their building was right next to the Speech Arts Building (where KFSR) was, and there was definitely some crossover — Collegian folks were DJs, and KFSR people like Kirk & I wrote for the paper — as well as a friendly rivalry going on.

After all, the Collegian was a established CSUF institution — they even had Macs! — and we’d only been on the air for a couple years. I’ve already written how, in a parallel universe, I would have been a Journalism major, so I was psyched to be doing record reviews that somebody else was editing and actually publishing.

After all, my two lifelong dreams were to be a DJ and a rock critic — aim high, Jim! — and here I was, doing both before my 22nd birthday.