Archives for August 2017

Certain Songs #969: Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty – “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man”

August 21, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man
Year: 1973

Like Rod Stewart or Neil Young, Loretta Lynn was such a juggernaut in the early 1970s that she had two separate careers happening at once: releasing solo records and collaborations with a frightening frequency.

I can’t pretend to heard — well — any of these, but she released 17 solo albums and another 9 collaborations with Conway Twitty in the 1970s, and while they probably weren’t all great, or even good, judging from a song like “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” there were probably gems throughout.

Certain Songs #968: Loretta Lynn – “Fist City”

August 20, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Fist City
Year: 1968

Loretta Lynn wrote enough great songs worrying about other women stealing her man that you could occasionally wonder why she didn’t choose better men in the first place. But maybe we should be glad, because otherwise we wouldn’t have ever gotten a song as awesomely clever as “Fist City.”

Yes, I know that violence is awful and stuff, and apparently the violence threatened in “Fist City” got it banned from Country radio, no doubt because said violence was threatened by a woman, that didn’t matter to the vast majority of the late 1960s country music audience, because “Fist City” was a Country #1 in 1968.

Certain Songs #967: The Long Winters – “Ultimatum”

August 19, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Putting The Days To Bed
Year: 2006

John Roderick thought so much of “Ultimatum” that he recorded two entirely separate versions of it. The first one was the title track of the 2005 EP that also contained “The Commander Thinks Aloud,” and it was lovely, wistful and acoustic.

The other version is loud, raggedly and very much electric, and it’s the highlight of the album that turned me onto The Long Winters in the first place, 2006’s Putting The Days To Bed.

Certain Songs #966: The Long Winters – “The Commander Thinks Aloud”

August 18, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Ultimatum EP
Year: 2005

On the short list of the Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, SPACE! Division, “The Commander Thinks Aloud” is a spiritual & musical sequel to songs like “Space Oddity” and “Rocket Man” but has the extra added frisson-inducing fact of being based upon a real life event: the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia upon reentry in 2003.

It’s one of those songs to which you can listen endlessly and find something new and amazing each and every time.

Certain Songs #965: The Long Winters – “New Girl”

August 17, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: When I Pretend To Fall
Year: 2003

No, you are.

The song that should have been the theme song for the FOX TV show — given that Death Cab For Cutie’s guitarist co-produced When I Pretend to Fall and their lead singer who was Zoey Deschanel’s husband at the time the TV show debuted — “New Girl” is a short, sharp, sweet power pop song chock full of great lyrics, energetic drumming and an unrelenting chorus, featuring a grinning John Roderick just asking one thing:

Certain Songs #964: The Long Winters – “Stupid”

August 16, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: When I Pretend To Fall
Year: 2003

Author, podcaster, songwriter and raconteur, John Roderick of The Long Winters is one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever come across in all of my years of listening to music.

And while it’s been over a decade since he’s released an album — though hope springs eternal — it doesn’t matter, because the final two Long Winters albums (and the EP in between) are chock full of songs combine the melodic sensibility of R.E.M. with the lyrical acumen of Paul Westerberg, and I can’t recommend them enough.

So let’s start with “Stupid,” from 2003’s When I Pretend To Fall, which is one of those songs that I didn’t hear until my 40s that might have been my favorite song ever had it come out when I was in my 20s.

Certain Songs #963: The Long Ryders – “Looking For Lewis and Clark”

August 15, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: State of Our Union
Year: 1985

One of the greatest roots-rock songs to come out of the mid-1980s, Sid Griffin’s “Looking For Lewis and Clark” is a pulse-pounding manifesto of identity and defiance.

In just a few stanzas he’s able to tie a key moment in U.S. history together with punk rock, the Reagan Adminstration, international espionage and The Kingsmen all the while worrying about whether Gram Parsons is watching him from heaven.

Certain Songs #962: The Long Ryders – “I Had A Dream”

August 14, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Native Sons
Year: 1984

Like their cousins in Green on Red and The Dream Syndicate, The Long Ryders almost instantly shed their early psychedelic Paisley Underground roots and went in a different direction, playing a more straightforward version of country-but-only-somewhat-country rock.

As co-led by Stephen McCarthy and music scholar Sid Griffin (whose book on The Basement Tapes is highly recommended), The Long Ryders recorded a pair of roots rock albums in the mid-1980s — Native Sons and State of Our Union — that I’ve always kinda underrated.

Certain Songs #961: Lone Justice – “East of Eden”

August 13, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Lone Justice
Year: 1985

Oh man, there was SO MUCH HYPE around Lone Justice in 1985.

And while it was clear that Maria McKee was absolutely a force of nature and deserved every inch of the voluminous praise heaped upon her, it also seemed like their Jimmy Iovine-produced debut was too slick by half, like he didn’t quite trust their roots rock in the first place.

Certain Songs #960: Lloyd Cole – “Diminished Ex”

August 12, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Standards
Year: 2013

And in the 21st century, I lost the plot a bit when it came to Lloyd Cole. He purposely moved away from making rock ‘n’ roll music: as somebody who was always too self-conscious about aging, he thought he was too old to rock, even though “rocking out” was never something anybody ever associated with Lloyd Cole in the first place.

So while I liked some of the stuff he put out in that period, there wasn’t a whole record that I liked from start to finish until 2013’s Standards, which — of course — didn’t come out here until 2014.