Certain Songs

Certain Songs #2141: Rush – “La Villa Strangiato”

July 6, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hemispheres
Year: 1978

. . .

In the summer of 1977, I started doing something that we called “mobiling.” I’d gotten on the CB radio and basically discovered a bunch of other weirdos on it — my first foray into social media! — and, naturally started meeting them face-to-face. It was called “mobiling” because people with CB radios in their cars as well as their houses would often be the ones making contact.

I, of course, didn’t have a car, but Craig from across the street as well as Larry (whom I met via the CB radio.) both had cars. And so we drove around northwest Fresno that srping and summer putting faces to voices. It was during one of those forays that I met my first Rush Guy, who turned me on to their double-live album, All The World’s a Stage.

Certain Songs #2140: The Runaways – “Cherry Bomb”

July 2, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Runaways
Year: 1976

. . .

There are a lot of contradictory messages inherent in the self-titled 1976 debut album by The Runaways. On one hand, they were a teenage all-girl band who wrote or co-wrote nearly all of the songs on the album. And, not only that, with the exception of bassist Jackie Fox (whose parts were played by Blondie’s Nigel Harrison), they all played on it as well.

On the other hand, it was their manager, the ever-dubious Kim Fowley, who made the decision about Fox not playing on the album, and probably also made the decision to list each of their ages on back cover on the album, which might have been so you could marvel at the fact that the hard rocking music inside was made by teenage girls, or for more prurient reasons, as the image the Runaways seemed to be going for was somewhere between tough chick and cheesecake.

Certain Songs #2139: Run The Jewels – “A Few Words For The Firing Squad (Radiation)”

July 1, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: RTJ4
Year: 2020

. . .

A while back, someone on Twitter — someone who I don’t know IRL and is a relatively recent follower to boot — messaged me and asked the following question: “Am I sort of right in thinking that you have not much listened to music made after 2000 (or earlier)?”

I was incredibly flabbergasted by that question, because, if anything, I’ve been listening to more and more music since the turn of the century as the barrier to discovering newer music has gotten lower. For example, my “1980s” & “1990s” iTunes playlists have about 12,500 songs combined, but my “2000s” and “2010s” playlists have over 14,000 songs combined.

Certain Songs #2138: Run-D.M.C. – “It’s Tricky”

June 30, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Raising Hell
Year: 1986

. . .

It was probably inevitable that Run-D.M.C. would hook up with Rick Rubin, and even without the massive success of “Walk This Way” to spur it, Raising Hell might have been their biggest album, as songs like “You Be Illin,” “My Adidas,” “Peter Piper” showed yet another leap in both song-making and execution.

My favorite — and probably my favorite Run-D.M.C. song period — was the self-referential “It’s Tricky,” which features a chorus where Joseph Simmons and Darryl McDaniels are practically singing harmonies.

Certain Songs #2137: Run-D.M.C. – “Walk This Way”

June 29, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Raising Hell
Year: 1986

. . .

Here’s a thing you should probably know before we get into this: Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic was one of the very first albums I bought with my own money, and I probably know every single note of it by heart. But I bought Toys in The Attic not because of “Walk This Way,” but despite it.

Then, now and forevermore, it’s “Sweet Emotion” that is the highlight of that album, followed narrowly by the title track. “Walk This Way” is like, my fifth or sixth favorite song on that album.

Certain Songs #2136: Run-D.M.C – “King of Rock”

June 28, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: King of Rock
Year: 1985

. . .

If “Rock Box” was basically an experiment that worked out better than anybody could have imagined, then the follow-up, 1985’s “King of Rock,” was both a refinement of that experiment and an epic troll towards the people for whom merging rock and rap was anathema.

I wasn’t one of those people: I just wished they’d used punk guitar instead of metal guitar, a distinction that seems silly all these years later, I know. And still, if I couldn’t quite initially wrap my head around the first Run-D.M.C. album — though I do have a memory of Jay dancing around the KFSR studio to “Jam-Master Jay,” — “King of Rock” blew me away from the moment Darryl McDaniels screamed:

Certain Songs #2135: Run-D.M.C. – “Rock Box”

June 25, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Run-D.M.C.
Year: 1984

. . .

As revolutionary as “It’s Like That” was, it on their third single where Run-D.M.C. created a new form of music, an unholy hybrid of metal guitar, massive beats, and of course, Run and D.M.C.’s shouted raps.

Even at the time, “Rock Box” felt as inevitable as it felt groundbreaking, and if the riffs and solos played by guitarist Eddie Martinez were maybe just the tiniest bit rote, it didn’t matter because the context was so shocking.

Certain Songs #2134: Run-D.M.C .- “It’s Like That”

June 24, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Run-D.M.C.
Year: 1983

. . .

It’s always good to come out of the box with a debut single that immediately establishes your identity. It’s even better when people are both initially dumbfounded by that identity and yet almost immediately begin to copy it. But in 1983, there was really no precedent for Run-DMC’s debut single, “It’s Like That.”

The beats were huge, and while they weren’t rock beats per se, they hit like rock beats, as did the massive bass and keyboards that occasionally smashed against them. But only occasionally, because there was a lot of space in this music, which made everything hit that much harder, especially the vocals, which was two guys yelling at each other about how fucked up the world was.

Certain Songs #2133: Royal Headache – “Carolina”

June 23, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: High
Year: 2015

. . .

It really is a damn shame that Royal Headache broke up after High, as it was clear that they were already expanding out from their initial punk-soul formula with slow ones like “Wouldn’t You Know,” songs with long intros like “Garbage,” and their greatest song, the utterly heartbreaking “Carolina,” which is one of my very very favorite songs of the 2010s.

Certain Songs #2132: Royal Headache – “Love Her If I Tried”

June 22, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: High
Year: 2015

. . .

Things were always tumultuous in the Royal Headache camp. Despite — or perhaps because of — the unexpected success of their eponymous 2011 debut album, they broke up in 2013, with the follow-up partially recorded. After being broken up for a year, they got back together to finish the record.

That record, High, was a quantum leap from Royal Headache. Not only did it sound bigger and fuller, it varied up the songs — there’s a couple of slower ones, and a couple that break the four-minute mark — and augmented the instrumentation with some occasional acoustic guitar and keyboards. Though you really couldn’t hear the keyboards all that much. Or the acoustic guitar, for that matter.