Certain Songs

Certain Songs #2158: Sam & Dave – “Soul Man”

August 4, 2021 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Soul Men
Year: 1967

. . .

This is probably a generational thing, but, as it turns out I was first introduced to this song by The Blues Brothers, because of course I was. And I had kind of a complicated relationship with the Blues Brothers. As a 1970s teenager, I watched Saturday Night Live from its inception, and always enjoyed the appearances of The Blues Brothers on the show.

And a couple of years later, The Blues Brothers (1980) started its run of my all-time favorite film that I objectively recognize as bad. But in between those was Briefcase Full of Blues, and I absolutely hated that record. Sure, it was cool that John Belushi & Dan Ackroyd (and let’s face it, Paul Shaffer) were able to get Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and Matt “Guitar” Murphy to play on their record, and Steve Jordan is as good of a simulacrum of Al Jackson, Jr as you could image, but let’s face facts: John Belushi was not a r&b singer.

Certain Songs #2157: Sam & Dave – “Hold On, I’m Comin'”

August 3, 2021 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Hold On, I’m Comin’
Year: 1966

. . .

While Sam Moore & Dave Prater had been releasing singles since 1962, it wasn’t until 1966 when they tasted any significant chart success, having hooked up with the Stax machine to produce the utterly dynamite “Hold On, I’m Comin’.”

Co-written by Dave Porter & Isaac Hayes, “Hold On, I’m Comin'” was anchored by a massive and thrilling horn hook by Mar-Keys Don Nix, Wayne Jackson and Charles “Packy” Axton, which dug instantly into your mind and dominated the song so much that you might not even notice just how deep of a groove that Al Jackson, Jr was digging. But good lord, man, just listen to that snare: it drives so deep, hard and insistent that it’s even dirtier than the double entendre of the title.

Certain Songs #2156: The Saints – “(I’m) Stranded”

August 2, 2021 by Jim Connelly 1 Comment

Album: (I’m) Stranded
Year: 1976

. . .

“(I’m) Stranded,” the debut single from Australia’s The Saints, is one of the key early documents of punk rock, as it came out in that period where the U.K. punk bands had begun to form, but before they’d actually released anything. And, of course, it was basically like the Saints had heard Ramones and decided — rightly, of course — hey, we can do this!

Which might not strictly be true: in one of those James Burke things, the Saints were apparently coming up with their short, noisy and fast aesthetic at the same time the Ramones were. Either way, when copies of “(I’m) Stranded” washed up on the U.K. in late 1976, it definitely struck a few chords for people who only knew a few chords.

Certain Songs #2155: Ryan Adams – “Chains of Love”

July 30, 2021 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Ashes & Fire
Year: 2011

. . .

And so Ryan Adams continued to release music at an insane — though not Pollardesque — throughout the 2000s. Most of it was with a band, The Cardinals, and most of it was good and occasionally great. The exception was 29, his third album of 2005, which was neither with the Cardinals nor any good.

And while I enjoyed all of them just fine, none of the individual songs really ever broke through. Not until he dumped the band and made a classic singer-songwriter album with big name studio musicians and an even bigger name producer, one Glyn Johns. Which looking back on it, is weird: I usually prefer albums that singer songwriters record with their regular band, so I’m not sure what the issue was.

Certain Songs #2154: Ryan Adams – “Don’t Even Know Her Name”

July 29, 2021 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Morrocan Role EP
Year: 2004

. . .

Because of his ridiculous ability to write and record songs, Ryan Adams started augmenting his regular full-length albums with singles & EPs, some of which were physical and some of which were digital-only. I’m not sure of the digital-only Morrocan Role EP was the first of these, but it contains one of his greatest songs, “Don’t Even Know Her Name.”

Certain Songs #2153: Ryan Adams – “English Girls Approximately”

July 28, 2021 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Love is Hell
Year: 2003

. . .

Anyways, here’s the album with “Wonderwall.”

So remember yesterday when I traced how Ryan Adams’s Love is Hell album was initially rejected by his record company, and so he wrote, recorded and released Rock N Roll instead? Here’s the rest of the story.

Certain Songs #2152: Ryan Adams – “1974”

July 27, 2021 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Rock N’ Roll
Year: 2003

. . .

Perhaps Ryan Adams could have capitalized on the relative success of 2001’s Gold if he wasn’t continually feuding with his record company.

First, there was 2002’s Demolition, which was a compromise compilation from the three albums he’d recorded after Gold, and while that kind of distillation could have resulted in something special, it didn’t quite cohere, though “Nuclear” and “Starting to Hurt” are both good songs.

Certain Songs #2151: Ryan Adams – “The Rescue Blues”

July 20, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Gold
Year: 2001

. . .

After the relative focus of Heartbreaker, Ryan Adams’ next album was intended to be his breakthrough, which it both was and wasn’t, a big sprawling double-album that would show off all of his many moods and gifts. That album, of course, was called Gold, and it remains his best-selling record, two decades on.

Gold had the bad luck to come out in two weeks of the 9/11 terror attacks, when people were still trying to figure out if they should be paying attention to pop culture, and it had the good luck to have as its opening song and lead single a song called “New York, New York,” which featured a video shot just a few days prior to the attacks, and featured a lot of footage of Ryan performing with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the background. This, of course, wasn’t through any sense of prescience, but it was kinda just what you did.

Certain Songs #2150: Ryan Adams – “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)”

July 19, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Heartbreaker
Year: 2000

. . .

So while I’d originally figured that when I got to Ryan Adams I would spend a lot of time discussing how in the past two decades he never topped Strangers Almanac and Pneumonia, the final two Whiskeytown albums, while still writing and recording a bunch of songs that I well and truly loved.

Instead, I want to start by acknowledging all of the various stories that have come about Ryan controlling, emotionally abusing and creeping on various women over the years, and say that I believe each and every single one. To the point where I thought about just skipping writing about him altogether.

Certain Songs #2149: The Rutles – Ouch!

July 16, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Rutles
Year: 1978

. . .

I’m not sure why 1978 produced not one but two definitive parodies of the career arc of The Beatles.

Maybe because it was long enough from the breakup that people could have enough perspective, but before John Lennon’s murder, after which these kind of things might have felt in bad taste.