Archives for February 2016

Certain Songs #466: Fountains of Wayne – “No Better Place”

February 29, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Welcome Interstate Managers
Year: 2003

Here is the list of songs from Welcome Interstate Managers that I almost wrote about: “Bright Future in Sales,” “All Kinds of Time,” “Bought For a Song,” “Supercollider,” and of course the actual hit single, “Stacey’s Mom,” which rode a brilliant Cars rip and a problematic MILF-tastic video to just outside the top 20.

But it always seems like doing that many songs an album is excess, except when it doesn’t. None of which has anything to do with today’s song, “No Better Place.”

Certain Songs #465: Fountains of Wayne – “Mexican Wine”

February 28, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Welcome Interstate Managers
Year: 2003

After 1999’s Utopia Parkway, which seemed to be a step back from their debut (though it did feature a song I almost wrote about, the gorgeous “Amity Gardens”), Fountains of Wayne came roaring back in 2003 with the album I consider to their masterpiece, Welcome Interstate Managers.

In my original review of Welcome Interstate Managers for Neumu, I predicted it would “go down as a guitar-pop classic, smack dab in the midst of the pantheon with any Big Star, dBs, Posies, etc. record you might want to name.”

Certain Songs #464: Fountains of Wayne – “Leave The Biker”

February 27, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Fountains of Wayne
Year: 1996

One of the great things about Fountains of Wayne is that even when they write songs about well-worn territory, they’re able to come up with enough detail to make it fresh and funny.

Which is one of the reasons I love “Leave The Biker:” it’s full of what all of my English teachers used to call “telling details,” which give real heft to the story of an (ostensibly) Nice Guy who has a thing for a girl who is hanging with a douchebag.

Certain Songs #463: Fountains of Wayne – “Sick Day”

February 26, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Fountains of Wayne
Year: 1996

In retrospect, it makes sense that a band that named themselves after a local retail store would end up penning some of the best songs ever written about an underserved rock ‘n’ roll subject: the 9-to-5 white collar workplace.

After all, part of the ethos of pop music is not having to work a day job, and that ethos — fantasy, really — fuels song after song about a life where you aren’t expected to be at a desk or a counter five days a week.

Certain Songs #462: Foo Fighters – “Everlong”

February 25, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Colour and The Shape
Year: 1997

Two decades down the road, Dave Grohl has remained so consistent and so successful at what he does — the honorable profession of providing radio-friendly punk-pop to the masses — that he is overexposed and underrated at the same time.

And two decades after the suicide that may not have launched his career — he probably would have done a solo record anyways — but certainly solidified, it’s tempting to forget how weird it seemed at the time that Nirvana’s drummer also had songwriting ability.

Certain Songs #461: Foghat – “Fool For the City (Live)”

February 24, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Foghat Live
Year: 1977

The summer of 1977 was when I started buying albums in earnest. I’d gotten my first job — doing data entry on the giant computer at my dad’s office — and whenever I got a paycheck, I would hop on my 10-speed and ride to Tower Records to buy a couple of albums.

And on one those trips, I succumbed to the hype and bought Kiss’ Love Gun, because it was mandated by law in the mid-1970s that every teenage boy buy at least one Kiss album. And since Craig across the street had Alive! and my brother Joe had Destroyer, I went with Love Gun, which was . . . OK.

The other album I bought that day was and is an eternal classic 1970s live album: Foghat Live.

Certain Songs #460: Flying Color – “Dear Friend”

February 23, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Flying Color
Year: 1985

Outside of the various local bands and inside jokes that I’m going to write about, this power-pop gem is a definite contender for the most obscure Certain Song.

For one thing, while this single showed up in the KFSR studios as a 7″ single in 1985, I don’t remember the actual album — which didn’t come out until 1987 — ever making it our way. Such was the vagaries of the pipeline that serviced college radio with indie records: it was always hit-or-miss, even with a band from San Francisco.

Certain Songs #459: The Flying Burrito Brothers – “Christine’s Tune”

February 22, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Gilded Palace of Sin
Year: 1969

There was no doubt that Gram Parsons followed his own path, and after successfully wresting the equally willful Roger McGuinn onto that path for Sweetheart of The Rodeo, he left The Byrds and formed The Flying Burrito Brothers with Chris Hillman, who’d been on that path from the start.

Because people worked insanely fast back then, The Gilded Palace of Sin came out only six months after Sweetheart of The Rodeo, and kicked off with the utterly soaring “Christine’s Tune”

Certain Songs #458: Flor De Mal – “Good Advices”

February 21, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Surprise Your Pig: A Tribute to R.E.M.
Year: 1992

Aren’t tribute albums terrible? That’s a running truth masquerading as a joke in Greil Marcus’s recent compilation of his Real Life Rock Top Ten lists, and he’s absolutely correct.

Out of all of the tribute albums ever, the only one that was worth a shit was Sweet Relief, the Victoria Williams tribute, an exception that proved the rule once and for all.

Certain Songs #457: A Flock of Seagulls – “Space Age Love Song”

February 20, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: A Flock of Seagulls
Year: 1982

Looking back, it seemed so simple: take one part soaring synthesizers, one part mechanical drumbeats and one part echoing guitar parts, and voila! futuristic-sounding pop music that was completely of the moment.

That was the formula that A Flock of Seagulls rode for three successive killer singles from their eponymous debut album. “Telecommunication was the weird one, “I Ran” the massive one and “Space Age Love Song” the wistful one.

Not to mention, you know, SPACE!