Archives for September 2017

Certain Songs #1000: Lucia Pamela – “Walking on the Moon”

September 26, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Into Outer Space With Lucia Pamela
Year: 1969

Well, of course I’m incredibly proud at having cranked out 1000 of these suckers in a little under three years, but for all that, I’m not nearly as proud as Lucia Pamela was of her magnum opus, 1969’s Into Outer Space With Lucia Pamela.

And why not? While she’d done enough noteworthy things in her life to rate an obituary in the New York Times and a Tony Kushner play after she passed in 2002 — not to mention a Stereolab song in the mid-1990s — none of it came close to her major achievement: recording an album on the Moon in the city of Moontown.

Certain Songs #999: Low Cut Connie – “Montreal”

September 25, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: “Dirty Pictures” (part 1)
Year: 2017

Low Cut Connie is a roots rock band from the East Coast that I know very little about. Though I do know that one of the things that distinguishes them is that their lead singer, Adam Weiner, plays piano instead of the expected guitar (or bass).

I first heard of them when Weiner appeared on one of my favorite podcasts, The Great Albums, to discuss Willy and The Poor Boys. And honestly, he kinda bugged the shit out of me for reasons I can’t even remember.

Certain Songs #998: Low – “Just Make It Stop”

September 24, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Invisible Way
2013

Produced by Jeff Tweedy, 2013’s The Invisible Way wasn’t really much of a departure from the now well-established Low sound. Maybe slightly few atmospherics. Maybe slightly more piano.

That said, my favorite song on the record, the Mimi Parker-driven “Just Make It Stop,” did had something approximating a fast tempo.

Certain Songs #997: Low – “Nothing But Heart”

September 23, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: C’mon
Year: 2011

I’m nothing but heart

Repetition is a tricky thing. Building an entire eight-minute song around singing a single lyric over and over and over again in theory probably shouldn’t work, but on their greatest song, Low slowly builds an entire tower of song around a single, slowly repeated phrase.

I’m nothing but heart

Certain Songs #996: Low – “When I Go Deaf”

September 22, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Great Destroyer
Year: 2005

But it was this song that made me a fan.

As somebody who’s been told that “the music’s too loud” for over four decades (and now has to watch TV with the closed captions on), “When I Go Deaf” resonates with me on multiple levels. For one thing: it’s almost unutterably gorgeous. Until it isn’t. And even then, it really is.

Certain Songs #995: Low – “California”

September 21, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Great Destroyer
Year: 2005

I’m going to be honest: if Low has made a great song between 1994’s I Could Live in Hope and 2005’s The Great Destroyer, I haven’t heard it.

And I’m not being snarky: outside of Long Division, which I’ve just added to my current mix and haven’t remotely processed, I just haven’t heard any of their records in that period. That said, The Great Destroyer was the first Low album I ever heard, and I haven’t missed one since.

Certain Songs #994: Low – “Words”

September 20, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: I Could Live in Hope
Year: 1994

Often credited with helping to invent the sub-genre known as “slowcore,” a reaction to the noisy noisiness of grunge, Low had their sound dialed in from the very start of their debut album, I Could Live in Hope.

With Alan Sparhawk’s guitar tuned way down, John Nicols’ bass dominating the mix and Mimi Parker’s drums approximating someone walking down the street lost in thought, “Words” was a perfect way to introduce them to the world.

Certain Songs #993: The Lovin’ Spoonful – “Do You Believe in Magic?”

September 19, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Do You Believe in Magic?
Year: 1965

Ah, folk rock. It was once such a thing that MTV dedicated the debut episode of a show called Rock Influences in 1984 to the genre, then thought to be undergoing a resurgence due to a little band from Athens, GA called R.E.M.

Whether or not R.E.M. were really folk rock is a thing we’ll get to when we get to R.E.M., of course, but for now, one of the highlights of that episode was an excerpt from a R.E.M. concert where they brought Lovin’ Spoonful singer-songwriter John Sebastian to do an incredibly awkward version of “Do You Believe in Magic?” Side note: he seemed so old compared to R.E.M. at the time, but of course he was 15 years younger than I am now.

Certain Songs #992: Love – “You Set The Scene”

September 18, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Forever Changes
Year: 1967

The sessions for Forever Changes were famously difficult.

Well, maybe not “famously,” given the fact that Forever Changes is a forever cult album, but you know what I mean. Written under the watchful eye of Bela Lugosi’s ghost, who no doubt watched with a combination of jealousy and head-shaking as the band dabbled in acid and smack and fought enough to hemorrhaged members.

Certain Songs #991: Love – “A House is Not a Motel”

September 17, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Forever Changes
Year: 1967

One of the things that made Forever Changes such a marvel was the interplay between Michael Stuart’s drumming and Bryan MacLean’s acoustic guitar.

Like, check the opening of “A House is Not a Motel:” MacLean starts with a rolling roiling half-strum half-pick, and instead of finding the beat in the middle of it, Stuart focuses on duplicating it with his drum kit. What this does is give the song an almost unsettling lightness, like it could just float away at any time.