Archives for October 2015

Certain Songs #338: The Dream Syndicate – “Tell Me When It’s Over”

October 11, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Days of Wine and Roses
Year: 1982

Listen to Steve Wynn’s rhythm guitar. It’s the last thing you notice on this song. You’re listening to Karl Precoda’s endlessly corkscrewing lead, or you’re listening to Dennis Duck’s stop-time on the chorus, or you’re listening to Wynn coming on like the bastard son Uncle Lou had with Sister Ray.

But the key to “Tell Me When It’s Over” — the kick-off track to an album that I love beyond all measure — is one of the great rhythm guitar parts in history. With every scrape of his fingers against the strings, it’s like he’s peeling another layer from his very soul and holding it aloft for the world to see.

Certain Songs #337: Dramarama – “Everybody Dies”

October 10, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Everybody Dies
Year: 2005

Every band dies. Every band is gonna die. For Dramarama, that death a year came after their best album, Hi-Fi Sci-Fi. Of course, life went on: Chris Carter started hosting Breakfast With The Beatles, John Easdale dropped a solo album, and they continued to play together informally.

I didn’t see it, but apparently back in 2003 they were on an episode of VH1’s Bands Reunited reality show, which lead to their resurrection album, 2005’s Everybody Dies.

Certain Songs #336: Dramarama – “Don’t Feel Like Doing Drugs”

October 9, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hi-Fi Sci-Fi
Year: 1993

When I was a kid, my parents got me a book called The Good Drug and The Bad Drug, which, if I remember correctly, described the effects of a whole bunch of drugs, and probably had some kind of lecture as to why I shouldn’t use any of the “bad” drugs.

Instead, I used it as a guide as to which drugs I was interested in trying when I got older (alcohol, marijuana), which ones I’d never try (tobacco, heroin) and which ones seemed scary but kinda cool (cocaine, LSD). Which, I’m guessing, probably wasn’t the point.

Certain Songs #335: Dramarama – “Incredible”

October 8, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hi-Fi Sci-Fi
Year: 1993

I think one of the things I loved most about Hi-Fi Sci-Fi was that while most of the songs were uptempo rockers, the words were about people going through totally fucked up things: homelessness, drug addiction, insomnia and just feeling worthless as a human being.

The grand exception is the beautiful power ballad, “Incredible,” in which one of the fuckups from the rest of the record is going through a good patch for once.

Certain Songs #334: Dramarama – “Work For Food”

October 7, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hi-Fi Sci-Fi
Year: 1993

I don’t know how rare it is for a band’s fifth album to be their best album.

I don’t know how rare it is for a band to make their best album after getting a new drummer.

But somehow, my suspicion is that a band making their best album after combining the two is pretty rare.

Certain Songs #333: Dramarama – “What Are We Gonna Do?”

October 6, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Vinyl
Year: 1991

Always too clever by half, New Jersey’s Dramarama always seemed to be on the verge of making it big, but never quite doing so.

It’s weird: they had a great look and a great sound (though not a great name), but their timing was always a bit off. For example, their biggest song, the demented raver “Anything Anything (I’ll Give You)” was a huge hit on KROQ (and probably still gets played daily, 30 years later) but never really broke nationally all at once.

That said, all of their albums are worthwhile — including the reunion one — and while I’m not writing about songs from their first three albums like “Worse Than Being By Myself,” “Last Cigarette” (Similar Animals used to do a great cover of this one) or the aforementioned song that KROQ made me sick of, I considered it.

Certain Songs #332: The Downsiders – “Mudslide”

October 5, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Downsiders
Year: 1987

After 28th Day — who will have at least two songs on this list — broke up, Barbara Manning became a minor indie star on the basis of her quirky solo albums and Cole Marquis disappeared into The Downsiders, who kept some of the psychedelic sound of 28th Day, but didn’t quite have the same tunes.

And so the songs that got by on the Downsiders self-titled 1987 tended to be the ones that sounded the best, like the gigantic “Mudslide.”

Certain Songs #331: Doves – “Caught By The River”

October 4, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Last Broadcast
Year: 2002

Doves are a band that could have only happened in the late 1990s: they started as a dance band called Sub-Sub and decided to become an anthemic alternative rock band. Kinda like Arcade Fire in reverse.

They were a huge huge deal in the U.K. for their entire existence, but even their big U2-style anthems never really made much of a dent here in the Colonies, not even the biggest, most U2-ist, 2002’s humongous “Caught By The River.”

Certain Songs #330: The Doors – “L.A. Woman”

October 3, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: L.A Woman
Year: 1971

What a difference four years makes! While a lot of big bands these days — ::cough:: Arcade Fire ::cough:: routinely take 3-4 years between albums, The Doors’ entire career happened in that timespan.

All of that drama — stardom, fuck-ups, fatness, rock bottoms, dick flashes, redemption and tons and tons of waking up this morning and getting themselves a beer — happened in less time than it took to make Oliver Stone’s film about all of that drama.

Certain Songs #329: The Doors – “Break on Through (To The Other Side)”

October 2, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Doors
Year: 1967

Like a lot of folks my age, I went through a Doors phase around the time of No One Here Gets Out Alive, buying all of their albums in a two-month period near the end of 1980 — five of them in November — and yet, by the time that Rolling Stone came out with their infamous “He’s Hot, He’s Sexy and He’s Dead” cover a year later, I was already pretty much over the whole thing.

So when I lent someone at my work my entire Doors collection in exchange for three early Kinks albums — Kinks-Size, Kinks Kingdom and Kinda Kinks, so not even particularly good early Kinks albums — and neither of us ever bothered to mention trading them back, I felt like I’d won.