Archives for September 2020

Certain Songs #1915: Ric Ocasek – “Jimmy Jimmy”

September 16, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Beatitude
Year: 1982

. . .

Ric Ocasek was always a bit of a mystery, but one of the things that we forget was that he was nearing his mid-30s when The Cars came out of nowhere and changed everything. Or at least changed everything for me, as I’m only half-joking when I say that side two of The Cars remains the ultimate achievement of Western Civilization.

And because he maintained that air of mystery over the next few decades — those sunglasses did a lot of heavy lifting — it seemed like he died way too young, when in reality he older than Neil Young. It’s a weird world.

Certain Songs #1914: Rhett Miller – “I Used to Write in Notebooks”

September 15, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Messenger
Year: 2018

. . .

And so it went, Rhett Miller continue to intersperse solo albums — both 2012’s The Dreamer and 2015’s The Traveler are recommended, though if you’re reading this, you probably know that — in between Old 97’s albums, his songwriting craft absolutely undeterred by the age that refused to show on his face.

His most recent one, 2018’s The Messenger, had an absolutely stunning song dealing with that aging. Over a low-key bass-and-piano lope that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Wilco album, he details all of the ways that technology has changed his life. And my life. And maybe even yours.

Certain Songs #1913: Rhett Miller – “Happy Birthday Don’t Die”

September 14, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rhett Miller
Year: 2009

For whatever reason, after calling his first two solo albums The Instigator and The Believer, Rhett Miller decided to self-title his third one, released in 2009. This is and of itself wouldn’t be anything, except he almost immediately started titling his next solo albums things like The Interpreter and The Messenger, making Rhett Miller really stick out in his solo discography.

So it’s possible that he conceived of Rhett Miller as being different from all of his other solo albums or maybe he decided he liked the previous naming convention, or something else entirely.

Certain Songs #1912: Rhett Miller – “The Believer”

September 12, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Believer
Year: 2006

. . .

Rhett Miller’s second solo album of the 21st century, 2006’s The Believer, was a record that I think I underrated at the time. And I think that was because the two best songs on it were songs that he’d already done with the Old 97s, the loping “Singular Girl” and the heartfelt “Question.”

One thing I know for sure: I totally missed the title track, which was inspired by Elliott Smith, who had recently killed himself.

Certain Songs #1911: Rhett Miller – “Things That Disappear”

September 11, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Instigator
Year: 2002

. . .

Since the turn of the century, Stuart Ransom Miller has been supplementing his main gig of being the front-person of the still-mighty Old 97’s with a series of solo albums that — with one exception — are entitled “The ________.”

For the most part, these albums let Miller explore song styles — quieter or poppier — that wouldn’t quite fit with the more meat-and-potatoes rock that the Old 97’s specialize in. And because Miller is such a great songwriter in any vernacular, twenty years into the 2000’s, Miller has produced one of the greatest and most rewarding discographies in the century.

Certain Songs #1910: The Reverbs – “Trusted Woods”

September 10, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Happy Forest EP
Year: 1984

. . .

I know I mentioned this when I wrote about R.E.M., but there was definitely a swath of indie rockers in 1984 who heard Murmur and Reckoning and thought not just “we could do that” but rather “we should do that.”

And so, from coast to coast, scruffy college kids untucked their thrift store shirts, plugged in their guitars, and learned to jingle-jangle-jingle. None of it came out as good as R.E.M., of course, but none of anything that pretty much anybody else did in 1984 came out as good as R.E.M., so there was no shame in that.

Certain Songs #1909: Restorations – “Misprint”

September 9, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: LP3
Year: 2014
. . .

Though Philadelphia’s Restorations have been releasing albums since 2011, I didn’t discover them until their third album, 2014’s helpfully entitled LP3, which established them as a post-millennial player of what Mike Scott of The Waterboys would call “The Big Music.”

Certain Songs #1908: The Residents – “The Secret Seed”

September 8, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Tunes of Two Cities
Year: 1982

. . .

Look, if you don’t know about The Residents, I’m not the person to explain them to you. For the most part, I respected their deeply weird, deeply subversive music and videos more than I actually enjoyed them. Especially the videos, which I assume are out there on YouTube.

And yet, the Residents have one song that is weirdly important to me, but more for utilitarian reasons than emotional reasons. That song is called “The Secret Seed,” and it served a very specific purpose in my life: it was the theme song for my radio show on KFSR.

Certain Songs #1907: The Replacements – “I’m Not Sayin’

September 3, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Songs For Slim EP
Year: 2013

Since there wasn’t really ever any danger of the Replacements touring off of the back of the career-spanning greatest hits album that came out in 2006, most Replacements fans probably thought that was pretty much it. And in fact, at the end of 2007, I wrote a piece for Medialoper called “Why The Replacements Saved My Life,” which was spurred by a Rolling Stone anniversary issue that featured a thing called “The Indie Rock Universe: An Illustrated Guide” that had no mention whatsoever of The Replacements.

That set me off at the time on a “no respect” rant, but what I didn’t realize was that the next dozen years of The Replacements as going to be possibly even better — in terms of popularity and respect — than even their first dozen years. This was spurred by two things.

Certain Songs #1906: The Replacements – “Message to The Boys”

September 2, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Don’t You Know Who I Think I Was?
Year: 2006

. . .

Oh god, I miss her voice

And so it was that The Replacements broke up after their July 4, 1991 show in Chicago’s Grant Park. And that probably should have been that. It’s the oldest story in the book: a band makes a few critically-lauded records, but never really catches on with the general public and finally breaks up, eventually to reside in the “Where Are They Now?” file.