Archives for July 2019

Certain Songs #1587: The Plimsouls – “A Million Miles Away”

July 19, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Everywhere at Once
Year: 1982

. . .

“A Million Miles Away” is a perfect rock ‘n’ roll song.

From the opening snare drum whack to the final guitar fanfare, there is absolutely nothing about “A Million Miles Away” that isn’t utterly, totally and completely in my wheelhouse. Like its two obvious precursors, “Eight Miles High” and “I Can See For Miles,” it mixes soaring guitars, rumbling drums and glorious harmonies into a song that rewards repeated listens with new revelations.

And it was ever thus: I remember playing the original single — on Shaky City Records, prior to their Geffen deal — at a pre-on-air KFSR, and being utterly blown away from the start. (BTW, the Plimsouls wikipedia page states that it was re-recorded for Geffen, but the one version I found on YouTube the purported to be from the original single sounded basically the same; so maybe it was re-mixed. Why fuck with perfection?)

Certain Songs #1586: Playmates – “Someone to Save”

July 18, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Long Sweet Dreams
Year: 1986

. . .

In one of those weird twists that happen occasionally, this is the first of a pair of amazing power pop songs — three, I guess, if you count “Ca Plane Por Moi” (which I’m not sure I do) — but this one is as obscure as they possibly get, especially compared to tomorrow’s all-time classic, no matter how many times I played it on KFSR.

Which I guarantee I did, and hell, at some point I even found the album up at Rasputin Records in Berkeley on a road trip, though it was a couple of years later, but honestly, the story of Playmates is pretty fucking obscure, since they only produced a single album, 1986’s Long Sweet Dreams, before whatever happened to them happened.

Certain Songs #1585: Plastic Bertrand – “Ca Plane Pour Moi”

July 17, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Single, 1977

. . .

As a kid and a teenager, I was an inveterate up-and-down the radio dial guy, especially after the sun went down, when you could hear all sorts of weird shit on the radio if you just bothered to try. But while others looked for crazy gospel preachers; UFO conspiracy theorists or far-away sporting events, I looked for music that wasn’t being played on the radio in Fresno. (Because the radio in Fresno used to suck.)

And so it was one night in the late 1970s when I heard this fucking pastiche: it had the punk rock forcebeat and guitars, but the there was also a weird Beach Boys whoop and, wait a second, that guy isn’t even singing in English! French, maybe, what the hell even was this? But before I could find it, it ended, and there wasn’t even any back announcing. So while it was seared into my brain, I had no idea what it was, though I’m pretty sure I figured it out via Creem or Trouser Press at some point that the song I’d heard was probably “Ca Plane Pour Moi,” the language was French and the artist was called Plastic Bertrand. And serious punkers hated it. Or were supposed to hate it.

Certain Songs #1584: PJ Harvey – “Written on the Forehead”

July 16, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let England Shake
Year: 2011

. . .

Coming over a decade after the last PJ Harvey album I loved, 2011’s Let England Shake was exactly the reason that I always pay attention to what she’s doing, even if I’m not vibing it at the time.

Full of stolen melodies, weird beats, crazy samples and lyrical recontextualizations — the “Summertime Blues” bit in “The Words that Maketh Murder” is fucking genius — “Let England Shake” one of the strangest and most surreal protest albums ever released. Right up there with Sandinista! in terms of weirdness, except that, unlike St. Joe Strummer, it doesn’t feel like Harvey is trying to change the world with every single note.

Certain Songs #1583: PJ Harvey – “Big Exit”

July 15, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
Year: 2000

It should surprise noone who knows me that my favorite PJ Harvey album is the one that she tried hardest to make a big, bold, beautiful pop album.

Because she’s so talented, it nearly succeeded on exactly those terms, but because she’s so off-kilter, it sure as shit wasn’t really a pop album by any reckoning of “pop” that existed in the 21st century. So Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea didn’t even sell as well as To Bring You My Love, despite not nearly being as weird.

Certain Songs #1582: PJ Harvey – “Down By The Water”

July 14, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: To Bring You My Love
Year: 1995

. . .

Occasionally, two seemingly irreconcilable things can be true at the same time: I can recognize that an artist is a true and utter original, and that everything they release is worth my time, but I don’t always love everything they do.

And so it is with Polly Jean Harvey, who has released a couple records that I well and truly adore, while remaining indifferent to much of the rest of her catalog.

Certain Songs #1581: Pixies – “Distance Equals Rate Times Time”

July 12, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Trompe Le Monde
Year: 1991

. . .

This is my favorite Pixies song, encapsulating everything I absolutely love about them in a snappy 1:24, making it not just the shortest Pixies song I’m writing about, but one of the shortest of all of the Certain Songs, period.

But that’s OK: “Distance Equals Rate Times Time” knows that song length is relative and crams more into its short running length than most songs would in quadruple the time.

Certain Songs #1580: Pixies – “Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons”

July 11, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Trompe Le Monde
Year: 1991

. . .

So I started 1991 by buying my first Pixies album — Bossanova, remember? — in January, and by the end of the year had digested their entire catalog. So really, the only thing left was to see them in concert.

Which I did, at the Warfield in San Francisco, just a few days before Christmas, 1991, and it goes to where my head was at that point in my life that I have almost no memory of how I got tickets or even who I went with. I seem to recall that it was a last-second thing, but that’s about it. Even my journal was no help; at the time I noted only that I went and that I was a bit underwhelmed.

Certain Songs #1579: Pixies – “Trompe Le Monde”

July 10, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Trompe Le Monde
Year: 1991

Strange as it may seem, Trompe Le Monde is the only Pixies album I purchased right after it came out, as it showed up during that insane last third of 1991 where so many of my favorite records came out, but after being bowled over by Bossanova and then Doolittle, I listened to Trompe Le Monde as much as any of them, sitting out on the porch of my Tower District apartment sipping a pre-drinking drink.

And why not? At this point, the Pixies were just cruising. Like its two immediate predecessors, nearly every single song on Trompe Le Monde rewarded repeated listening with hidden depths, starting with the opening title track, the third straight fastball to open a Pixies record.

Certain Songs #1578: Pixies – “The Happening”

July 9, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bossanova
Year: 1990

. . .

As some of you know, perhaps our favorite category here at Certain Songs are songs about SPACE!!

And while — technically — the happening described in “The Happening” happens on Earth, it is about spacepeople, so close enough for me!

One of my favorite drives is along Highway 15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, because the Mojave Desert is huge, weird and ever-changing. And while over the years some of the weirdness has been lost — good-bye Rock-a-Hula Water Park; hello outlet malls in Barstow — there’s still plenty of strangeness about it.

And, of course, aliens!!