Archives for February 2018

Certain Songs #1142: Mike Doughty – “No Peace, Los Angeles”

February 28, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Skittish Sessions
Year: 2000

On the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Written: Scoring Drugs in Los Angeles Department, “No Peace, Los Angeles” is a song with a helluva backstory.

Mike Doughty was the famously unhappy lead singer in a 1990s band called Soul Coughing, who kinda worked the same territory as Beck, and put out three records — 1994’s stone classic Ruby Vroom is the one to get — before calling it quits before the end of the decade.

Certain Songs #1141: Miguel – “leaves”

February 27, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Wildheart
Year: 2015

For the vast majority of “leaves,” the low-key highlight of Miguel’s 2015 album Wildheart, it’s just Miguel singing about “sweet California” over an sadly echoing guitar, making it yet another Certain Song about the state in which I live.

In this particular case, Miguel is equating California’s relative lack of seasons with his surprise at a relationship gone sour.

Certain Songs #1140: Miguel – “Use Me”

February 26, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Kaleidoscope Dream
Year: 2012

What if Prince was influenced by The Jesus and Mary Chain?

That is the question that Miguel seems to be trying to answer with “Use Me,” the shimmering, hazy psychedelic highlight from Kaleidoscope Dream, the second album from one of the more interesting crossover artists of the 21st century.

Certain Songs #1139: The Mighty Lemon Drops – “All The Way”

February 25, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Happy Head
Year: 1986

Shamelessly picking up Echo & The Bunnymen’s original neo-psychedelic sound from the the mouth of the cave where the Bunnymen abandoned it for good on Ocean Rain, Happy Head, the debut album from the even sillier-named The Mighty Lemon Drops was a bit of a salve for those of us who wondered what a less gloomy follow-up to Crocodiles might have sounded like.

So Happy Head was full of guitars that reached out and stabbed, basslines that circled back into themselves and drum rolls that stayed on the snare a bit too long and massively anthemic choruses, like the one on “All The Way:”

Certain Songs #1138: Midnight Oil – “One Country”

February 23, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Blue Sky Mining
Year: 1990

After having their biggest world-wide album ever with Diesel and Dust, the Oils took a couple of years off and followed it up with 1990’s Blue Sky Mining, which was nearly as good, spawning a couple of major radio songs in “Blue Sky Mine” and “Forgotten Years.”

As good as those songs were, my favorite song on the album was the slow-burning “One Country,” which I guess is the closest Midnight Oil ever got to doing a U2-style anthem.

Certain Songs #1137: Midnight Oil – “The Dead Heart”

February 22, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Diesel and Dust
Year: 1987

Midnight Oil followed 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 with 1984’s Red Sails in The Sunset, a record that I found almost unlistenable, though I know that it got good reviews at the time, and at least one of you might lecture me about how great “When The Generals Talk” or “Best of Both Worlds” are.

And of course, I pretty much assumed that was going to be it with Midnight Oil: plenty of bands make records that I liked well enough and that was pretty much it: so in no way, shape or form was I prepared for how much I liked 1988’s Diesel & Dust, which stripped out much of the artiness that made their song structures so crazy, leaving pure delicious hooks upon which Peter Garrett could hang his radical leftist politics.

Certain Songs #1136: Midnight Oil – “Read About It”

February 21, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
Year: 1982

After three practice albums that built up a huge fanbase in their native Australia, but didn’t do jack shit here, Midnight Oil had a minor breakthrough on MTV and a major breakthrough on college radio with their fourth album 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, which combined lead singer Peter Garrett’s walked-it-like-he-talked-it politics with his band’s unique brand of beat-heavy post-punk.

And for me, no song resonated more on that record than the nuclear paranoia of “Read About It.”

Certain Songs #1135: Mick Jagger – “Memo From Turner”

February 20, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Performance Soundtrack
Year: 1970

This will be the only song from Mick Jagger’s solo career that I will be writing about.

And in fact, there might be some confusion as to whether or not “Memo From Turner” is truly a Mick solo song. Not only was it co-written by Keith Richards, the Stones themselves — or some semblance thereof — recorded a version of it in 1968 that ended up on Metamorphosis some years later.

But that version is a run-through, a trifle, when compared to the version that Mick put out as what stood as his only solo single until he actually thought he could sustain a career without the riffs of Keith Richards upon which to stack his vocal dexterity.

Certain Songs #1134: Michael Jackson – “Beat It”

February 19, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Thriller
Year: 1982

So it’s Christmas shopping season 1983. Thriller has been out for little over a year, and spent much of that year as the #1 selling album in the country, and so, figuring that it would probably be an easy Christmas present, as Jay and I walked into Tower Records, it seemed like that entire shelf that you’d see as you’d walk into the store was overflowing with nothing but copies of Thriller. Thriller everywhere. Thriller. Thriller. Thriller.

So I walk over to the stack — maybe it went to the ceiling — grabbed a copy, shoved it at Jay and said: “Hey have you heard of this? Is it any good?”

Certain Songs #1133: Michael Jackson – “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough”

February 18, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Off The Wall
Year: 1979

In 1979, after taking some time off from his waning post-Jackson Five solo career, Michael Jackson got away from the Motown machine, hired Quincy Jones as his producer, and completely reinvented himself with a revolutionary blend of disco, pop and funk.

It was, of course, a complete failure, and like what happened with renowned session man Jimmy Page after he abandoned The Yardbirds to form his own band, Jackson was never heard from again.