Archives for July 2017

Certain Songs #938: Liz Phair – “Fuck and Run”

July 21, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile in Guyville
Year: 1993

Of course, part of the thing surrounding Exile in Guyville was Liz Phair’s utterly fearless openness about her sexuality. It wasn’t unprecedented, of course — Chrissie Hynde, among others wrote with the same fearlessness — but her explicitness did feel fresh.

And so you had a song like “Fuck and Run,” which not only had an explicit title — “fuck” is right there in the title, as a-verb-not-an-adjective — but was right there with Liz the morning after a one-night stand.

Certain Songs #937: Liz Phair – “Explain it to Me”

July 20, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile in Guyville
Year: 1993

Of course, if Exile in Guyville had been nothing but straight forward indie pop songs, it wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting.

Instead, Liz devoted a significant chunk of the album’s running time to more experimental or atmospheric songs, featuring offbeat sounds, slow tempos and, in the case of “Dance of the Seven Veils” and “Flower,” some of her most explicit lyrics, as well. My favorite of all of these was the sad, shimmering “Explain it to Me.”

Certain Songs #936: Liz Phair – “Never Said”

July 19, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile in Guyville
Year: 1993

Ah, 1993. I’ve pointed out a few times how weird 1993 was, especially from the perspective of nearly a quarter-century later, when artists as seemingly uncommercial as Lemonheads, Belly and The Breeders could have at least minor hits on MTV.

So it wasn’t all that surprising to see the video for Liz Phair’s “Never Said,” on MTV. In fact, given all of the hubbub surround Exile in Guyville, it seemed almost natural.

Certain Songs #935: Liz Phair – “6’1″”

July 18, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile in Guyville
Year: 1993

An instant landmark when it appeared in 1993 and a record that I hope is passed down through the ages in the same way that Violent Femmes debut has been, Exile in Guyville still sounds as amazing as ever.

Of course, “amazing” is a relative term for an album that helped define what we all called “lo-fi” back then: records that sounded unfinished and unpolished, with all of jagged edges sticking out for unsuspecting folks to scrape themselves against.

Certain Songs #934: Liz Phair – “(Sometimes a Dream) Is What Makes You A Slave”

July 17, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Girlysound
Year: 1991

I think it was Ranjit who sent me a copy of Liz Phair’s Girlysound tape. This was, of course, after Exile in Guyville came out, and definitely after he and I had met in person after becoming friends on Prodigy’s Replacements bulletin board.

I got quite a few tapes (and hopefully sent a few) that way. People who I met online from all over the country exchanging music with people who were otherwise just words on a low-rez computer screen, and without even the benefit of avatars or bios or anything, you had to determine who you liked or disliked just by the words they wrote.

Certain Songs #933: Living Colour – “Type”

July 16, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Time’s Up
Year: 1990

Outside of “Open Letter (To A Landlord),” the dazzling virtuosity on display throughout Living Colour’s debut album Vivid left me kinda cold, so I was surprised how much I loved the follow-up, 1990’s Time’s Up.

All these years later, I don’t know why that is, I just know that from the opening notes of the thrashfunk title track to the final fadeout of the proggy “This Is The Life,” I totally grokked what they were up to, and it became one of my favorite albums of that year.

Certain Songs #932: Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul – “Men Without Women”

July 15, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Men Without Women
Year: 1982

Guitarist, songwriter, actor, producer, broadcaster, raconteur and the only human being ever who could claim to be the consigliere to both Bruce Springsteen and Tony Soprano, Steven Van Zandt has had such a wide and varied career that it’s amazing it took Springsteen until 2010 to write a song called “Jack of All Trades.”

None of this was apparent, of course, when Van Zandt took his leave of his boss to put out his first solo album, 1982’s stellar Men Without Women.

Certain Songs #931: Little Roger & The Goosebumps – “Gilligan’s Island (Stairway)”

July 14, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Single, 1978

If there were two things that were utterly inescapable in the 1970’s, those two things were hearing “Stairway to Heaven” on the radio and reruns of Gilligan’s Island on TV.

As someone who experienced shitloads of both throughout that decade, I can’t tell you how pleased I was when I first heard this on the radio. Who would have thought that you could combine two totally different pieces of music — the words from the theme song of Gilligan’s Island and the music of “Stairway to Heaven” — to create a third one?

Certain Songs #930: Little Richard – “Good Golly, Miss Molly”

July 13, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Single, 1958

Like all of Little Richard’s greatest songs, “Good Golly, Miss Molly” is a pure unfettered jolt of adrenaline and energy.

With Richard himself leading the musical attack on the piano and drummer Earl Brown doing some serious demolition in between leading the band in and out of all of the stop times, “Good Golly, Miss Molly” must of felt so weird and wild that nobody noticed how incredibly dirty it was.

Certain Songs #929: Little Girls – “The Earthquake Song”

July 12, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rodney on the Roq, Volume 2
Year: 1981

I didn’t grow up in Los Angeles, but even in Fresno, the legend of KROQ and their tastemaking DJ, Rodney Bingenheimer was a part of the 1980s alt-rock scene. As one of the first “commercial alternative” radio stations serving one of the largest markets in the world, KROQ was a 400-pound gorilla wading through a pool of guppies.

Which was why they got to put out compilation albums that were basically glorified mix tapes of one dude’s taste. “Rodney on the Roq” is, of course, a thing that literally just ended a couple of months ago, long after Bingenheimer had any kind of cultural influence, but there is also no doubt that he did back in the day. (And no, I’ve never seen Mayor of the Sunset Strip.)