Archives for February 2018

Certain Songs #1132: MGMT – “Kids”

February 17, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Oracular Spectacular
Year: 2007

So I only listen to commercial radio during for a couple of hours in the morning, mostly when I’m getting ready for and driving to work. The Kevin & Bean show on KROQ, to be exact. (Thanks to early exposure to Dean & Don’s Breakfast Club on KKDJ in the late 70s, I have a lifelong weakness for morning radio.) Given that the draw of Kevin & Bean is the comedy, they play — at the most — five, maybe six songs per hour.

And yet, while I do my best to play my own playlists while they’re on commercial breaks and/or playing what is usually the fucking Red Hot Chili Pepper, it seems like in the past decade, I’ve heard “Kids” a million times.

Certain Songs #1131: Merle Haggard – “Huntsville”

February 16, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Someday, We’ll Look Back
Year: 1971

Sure, on one hand, this yet another one of Merle Haggard’s prison songs. But on the other hand, it’s so fucking cool on every single level.

The story of the hardest of hard cases, they’ve got him bound in leg irons, because they know – and he knows they know — that the second he has even the tiniest of chances, he’s gonna make a run for his freedom.

Certain Songs #1130: Merle Haggard – “Mama Tried”

February 15, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Mama Tried
Year: 1968

Coming down squarely on the “nature” side of the nature vs. nurture debate, Merle Haggard’s timeless classic “Mama Tried” is a semi-autobiographical apology to his mother for his behavior as a young man, which culminated in a stint in San Quentin for armed robbery.

A stint that was eventually wiped away in 1972 when the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, gave him a full and unconditional pardon, pretty much for writing songs as great as “Mama Tried.”

Certain Songs #1129: Merle Haggard – “Skid Row”

February 13, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Down Every Road
Year: 1962

Merle Haggard is another one of those artists where I spent years and years figuring that I’d get around to him eventually, but it took his death a couple of years ago for me to finally dig out the Down Every Road box set and see what I’d been missing all these years.

Turns out, quite a lot, and honestly, I’m still working my way through it, but it was clear that Merle Haggard pretty much had his thing in mind from the very start.

Certain Songs #1128: Men Without Hats – “The Safety Dance”

February 12, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rhythm of Youth
Year: 1983

OK. Let’s just say that I’ve been an unabashed fan of this hookfest from the very start: I even gave the underlying album (the long-forgotten Rhythm of Youth) a good review in the very second issue of Dead Air Diary.

Sure, it all seemed vaguely silly, right down to the somewhat problematic-but-ubiquitous medieval-themed video that was played approximately five times an hour on MTV, but here’s the thing: that video — and the single it was based on — was a completely different version of the song that people who bought the album or the extended dance version of the single heard. Not just shorter, but completely different in conception — and with fewer hooks, to boot.

Certain Songs #1127: The Men – “I Saw Her Face”

February 11, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: New Moon
Year: 2013

I liked The Men’s 2013 album, New Moon, so much when it came out that I’m pretty sure I ended up having my own personal backlash against it shortly thereafter.

Cut from much the same cloth as 2012’s, Open Your Heart, what separated New Moon from its predecessor was another layer of classic rock and addition of keyboards to their whitelight whiteheat guitars and fuzzy vocals. The result was intoxicating to me.

Certain Songs #1126: The Men – “Oscillation”

February 10, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Open Your Heart
Year: 2012

Hailing from Brooklyn, The Men have the misfortune of playing a wide variety of rock styles — mostly fast, but not always punk, even though that’s the usual shorthand for how they’re described — in an era where nobody gives a shit about bands who do that.

Well, that isn’t entirely true. It’s not so much that nobody gives a shit, but rather the culture at large has gone away from straight-ahead rock and roll, so the most they’re ever going to get out of it is a few good reviews and maybe some sold-out shows.

Certain Songs #1125: The Members – “Working Girl”

February 9, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Uprhythm, Downbeat
Year: 1982

I’m pretty sure I remember reading about The Members debut album At The Chelsea Nightclub in Trouser Press or CREEM back when it came out in 1979, but of course funds were scare and I wasn’t sure I needed much more punk/reggae hybrids outside of The Clash or even The Police, so to this day, I’ve never heard it.

So fast-forward to the end of 1982, and KFSR has just gone on the air, and with it, this crazy infectious hit, which combines subtle, reggaeish verses with a full-throated chorus.

Certain Songs #1124: The Mekons – “Cocaine Lil”

February 8, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll
Year: 1989

The thing about cocaine, one of my friends once pointed out — unless it was me — is that it basically serves as an advertisement (or as The Mekons would no doubt say, “advert”) for itself. Or as another friend pointed out: it’s such a selfish drug.

The bloody-mindedness that coke inspires is at the center of “Cocaine Lil,” a deep dark cautionary tale that that somehow refrains from being preachy, regardless of the fate of the titular character.

Certain Songs #1123: The Mekons – “Memphis, Egypt”

February 7, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll
Year: 1989

“ROCK ‘N’ ROLL!!!!”

Those are the first words you hear on 1989’s perfectly-named The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll, and like the rest of the song, they’re the Schrödinger’s cat of ironic declamation: both ironic and not ironic at exactly the same time.

Before that exclamation, “Memphis, Egypt” is all promise — some unfocused feedback, a pick sliding up a guitar neck, a kick drum beating — but afterwards it utterly explodes into pure, unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll just in time for Jon Langford & Sally Timms to blow it all down: