Archives for August 2021

Certain Songs #2175: Sebadoh – “Skull”

August 31, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bakesale
Year: 1994

. . .

Eventually — and around the same time, honestly — Lou Barlow figured it out just like Robert Pollard (sorta) did: you can still make a weird-sounding lo-fi album be consistently great by focusing on the songs, not the the goofarounds.

And so, Bakesale was by far the most consistent album Sebadoh had ever done, and that was probably because co-founder Eric Gaffney had left and bassist Eric Lowenstein’s songs were more in line with Barlow’s than Gaffney’s ever were. Barlow was never going to fully lockdown the songwriting, because that was at least part of why he left Dinosaur Jr in the first place (and to be sure, he’s had a pair of songs on all five of their great 21st century reunion albums), but his songs were still the reason to put on Bakesale. Or at least my reason.

Certain Songs #2174: Sebadoh – “Brand New Love”

August 30, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock
Year: 1992

. . .

To be honest, I’ve always had a hard time making heads or tails out of anything that Sebadoh did prior to 1994’s Bakesale. In theory, I approve of the prolific, lo-fi approach that Lou Barlow and his partners in crime took towards recording and releasing their music. But like the earliest Guided by Voices records, the chaff-to-wheat ratio was way too high.

Therefore, when I declare that “Brand New Love” is my favorite song from that early period, then please know that I’ve not come close to hearing all of the dozens of songs Lou Barlow released in that period. Especially since I came to it second-hand: I first heard “Brand New Love” via the cover which closed out Superchunk’s utterly dynamite early singles compilation, Tossing Seeds (which has at least three future Certain songs: the glorious “Garlic,” the hilarious “Slack Motherfucker” and their cover of the ubiquitous “Train From Kansas City.”

Certain Songs #2173: Seatbelts – “Tank!”

August 29, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Cowboy Bebop
Year: 1998

. . .

It was the early 2000s, just after we moved to Los Angeles for good in the early 2000s, and Kassia started telling us about this great anime series that she loved, called Cowboy Bebop.

Cowboy Bebop was the story of some misfit bounty hunters trying to eek out a living, and maybe even a life, in the year 2071, 50 years after the Earth was rendered basically uninhabitable by ~~climate change~~, a big space disaster — yet another piece of Sci-Fi that thought space travel would be ubiquitous by 2021. Of course here in the real 2021, space travel is only ubiquitous for billionaires, and the rest of us shouldn’t even be leaving our houses thanks to the anti-vax assholes.

Certain Songs #2172: The Screaming Tribesmen – “Igloo”

August 28, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bones & Flowers
Year: 1987

. . .

The Screaming Tribesmen were a 1980s Australian band — which should be good enough to have some of you right there — who basically consisted of a singer-lead guitarist named Mick Medew and whomever he had playing with him at the time.

So far as I can tell — and honestly, all of this is so far as I can tell — they only ever released a single record in the States, 1987’s Bones and Flowers (released here in 1988, of course), and it even had a halfway big single called “I’ve Got A Feeling,” that was played on MTV, huge on KROQ and even made #8 on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart.

Certain Songs #2171: Screaming Trees – “Sworn and Broken”

August 27, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Dust
Year: 1996

. . .

But after putting out six albums and six EPs between 1986-1992, it took four long years for Screaming Trees to return with another album, 1996’s Dust. And by 1996, the situation was totally different for grunge-identified bands, most of whom had either become massive stars; massive drug addicts, and in a lot of cases, both.

Had Dust came out in 1993, perhaps Screaming Trees could have capitalized on the momentum from “Nearly Lost You” and the post-cinema coattales of Singles. But it came out in 1996, and nobody gave a shit, though it did chart slightly higher — 134 to 141 — than Sweet Oblivion, it’s been consigned to the same pre-and-post Oblivion oblivion that the rest of their catalog has.

Certain Songs #2170: Screaming Trees – “Nearly Lost You”

August 26, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sweet Oblivion
Year: 1992

. . .

Like many of the bands that got signed to a major label during the great grunge gold rush of the early 1990s, Seattle’s Screaming Trees had already put out four full-length albums — mostly on SST — prior to issuing their major label debut, 1991’s Uncle Anesthesia. I do know that at least one or two of those 1980s records made it to KFSR, and despite the fact that they were more psychedelic than grunge, I also recall not being all that impressed, though I’m pretty sure I saw and enjoyed them at the Blue during that time.

All 96 Rolling Stones Certain Songs, Ranked

August 25, 2021 by Jim Connelly

. . .

So, earlier this year, I wrote 96 Certain Songs posts about the Rolling Stones. I am now going to rank all of those songs by how much I love them, as opposed to how important or objectively great they are. Please wish me luck. And oh, don’t take this too seriously: I spent about an hour on it.

A Few Thoughts About Charlie Watts

August 24, 2021 by Jim Connelly

The biggest thing I stole from Charlie Watts was the hi-hat lift.

I think I first noticed it in the video for “Start Me Up:” that thing he did where he never hit the snare and the hi-hat at the same time. Watch any video of the Stones and you’ll see it: instead of “tick-tick-tick-twhack-tick-tick-tick-twhack,” his sound is “tick-tick-tick-WHACK-tick-tick-tick-WHACK.” It was a little thing that was also a big thing. There was a lot of that in Charlie Watts drumming — a whole series of little things that were actually big things.

And while the hi-hat lift might have made him look less fluid than peers like Keith Moon or Ringo Starr — all of that lifting of the right hand — when I started playing a few years later, I decided to use that technique because I liked how it made the snare even louder. And I loved — love! — teeth-rattling snare.

Certain Songs #2169: Scissor Sisters – “Take Your Mama”

August 23, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Scissor Sisters
Year: 2004

. . .

Here’s another band that had a song that I really loved, but until I started doing my patented Half-Assed Research for these posts, I had no idea of the extent of their career and popularity.

It turns out that Scissor Sisters was an American band that was much much bigger in the rest of the world than they were here. To the point where their biggest single, 2006’s “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” was a top 5 smash all around the world, topping the charts in a bunch of places, but it didn’t even chart here at all, though they did have a few big dance singles here.

Certain Songs #2168: School of Fish – “Three Strange Days”

August 19, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: School of Fish
Year: 1991

. . .

I wonder why I never bought this album. I bought so many other albums because I happened to like the song on the radio, but so far as I can tell, I never got this one. It might be because that particular moment in 1991 it came out was a bit chaotic, and because 1991 was such an amazing year for music (even before Nevermind), I was already overloaded with amazing shit.

So I don’t really know all that much about School of Fish, outside of what I can find on the internet, which is this: they were one of those bands where the songwriting was by their lead singer & lead guitar player, and kind of shows.