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Certain Songs

Certain Songs #128: The Breeders – “Cannonball”

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Album: Last Splash.

Year: 1993.

With a tunefulness and cheerfulness barely hinted at on its predecessor Pod – and epitomizing the difference between side project and main project – Last Splash was a joyful shot of beautiful weirdness. And for much of the world, “Cannonball” is the epitome of that joy.

“Cannonball” is definitely one of the defining songs of what historians will no doubt characterize as “The Popular Indie Albums Era (That We All Knew Never Could Last And Pretty Much Tore Us Apart Anyways.)”

But what an instant up was and is to hear that fuzzed out and blissed up “check, check, check, ahoooo-oooh” announcing the song. Followed by those drum clicks, the stop-start bassline, feline guitar lead and feedbacky distorto guitar.  I can remember at least one time when “Cannonball” came on while we were doing the pre-open duties at Video Zone and we would just stop and sing that bassline and guitar parts.

And of course:

Spitting in a wishing well
Blown to hell, crash
I’m the last splash!

There wasn’t a moment of “Cannonball” where it didn’t feel like that if you stuck your foot out, the whole song would trip and spill all over your speakers like a dropped bag of groceries. None of it should have worked, but when Jim MacPherson’s drum roll hook kickstarted the megaphone chorus it was impossible not to shout along:

I want you, you cuckoo, you cannonball! 
(Hey now) Hear me shake, hear me shake 
(Hey now) Hear me shake, hear me shake 

 And with the combining and recombining of all of these elements in a near-random – almost dub-like – fashion while everybody is shouting and laughing in the background (my favorite is clearly articulated “HEY!” near the end), “Cannonball” just got weirder and catchier with every subsequent listen.

If aliens came down and demanded that I explain indie rock of the early 90s to them, I’m guessing that I would start with “Cannonball.”

Official video for “Cannonball”

“Cannonball” performed live in 1993

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #127: Bram Tchaikovsky – “Girl of My Dreams”

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Album: Strange Man, Changed Man.

Year: 1979.

For a brief, shining moment in 1979 seemed like maybe power pop would emerge from the wreckage of punk as the next big thing. In the wake of monster hit singles like “Cruel to Be Kind” and “My Sharona,” the rock radio stations that had resisted straight-up punk were playing things like “Tomorrow Night,” “Starry Eyes,” “Yellow Pills” and of course Bram Tchaikovsky’s stratospheric one-shot, “Girl of My Dreams.”

Full of chugging guitars, epic building and rolling drums and massively overdubbed harmonies, what set “Girl of My Dreams” apart from nearly everything else on the radio was the anthemic, blockbuster riff that powered it.

Ka-chung! 
Chung! 
Chung! 
Chung! 
Chung! Chi-chung! 

The rest of it was pretty good – well, not the words, but whatever – but it really didn’t matter, as all that anybody cared about was when he got to the title hook, and – of course – one of the most memorable codas into the fade.

She’s the girl of my dreams 
Chung! 
Chung!
Chung! 
Chung! 
Chung!Chi-chung! 

 She’s the girl of my dreams
Cchung!
Chung!
Chung!
Chung!
Chung! Chi-chung!

She’s the girl of my dreams
Cchung!
Chung!
Chung!
Chung!
Chung! Chi-chung! 

She’s the girl of my dreams
Cchung!
Chung!
Chung!
Chung!
Chung! Chi-chung!  

ONE SONG WONDER ALERT: Except for the title track, I always thought the rest of Strange Man, Changed Man was kinda boring. As were the follow-up albums. And The Motors records prior to it . He got it exactly right one time.

Oh, and that power pop moment? Woefully short, and in retrospect, not much of a moment except to those of us who even noticed these songs in the first place. Probably the most power pop song to be an actual monster hit single was “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts a whole lifetime later, but there were extenuating circumstances surrounding that one …

Fan-made video for “Girl of My Dreams”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #126: The Brains – “Heart in the Street”

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Album: Electronic Eden.
Year: 1981.

If there was any damn justice in the world, “Heart in the Street” would be widely remembered as a beloved early 80s New Wave classic  instead of a song that is so obscure you can’t even find the fucking lyrics – much less the song itself – on the internet.

But of course, there isn’t, which is a shame, because this has been among my all-time all-times since it came out.

Starting of with a slowly picked guitar, “Heart in the Street” starts of with Tom Gray lost in a dream:

I lay dreaming, in electronic Eden
Plugged in the groove, not a thought in my head

but as the verse goes on, he gets more and more desparing and as the song builds and builds, things go south:

Well now I stand, on my own two feet
My face hits the dirt, that’s my heart in the street

And then, the kicker: as the song builds to an explosion of crashing guitars and slowly thundering drums, Gray uncorks a chorus for the ages: 

Jesus Christ! 
Can’t we do anything right?
What’s the matter with you? 
What’s the matter with me? 
Heart in the street. 

By the end of the song, he’s become so pained that his frustration utterly leaps from the speakers. 

 In 1981, a year after graduating from high school, a year before KFSR went on the air, my parents well on their way to getting divorced, the first band I was in throwing me out, the frustration in these words and performance went directly to my soul, as did the utterly gorgeous melody line.

Of course, “Heart in the Street” exists nowhere on as a stream on the internet, so I uploaded it to Soundcloud.

“Heart in the Street” on Soundcloud

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #125: The Brains – “Money Changes Everything”

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Album:  The Brains.

Year: 1980.

There is absolutely no reason for the first album by The Brains to be out of print. It’s a great record, and as one of Steve Lillywhite’s earliest production, has a certain cultural cachet. In addition, because of Lillywhite’s sound and the fact that best Brain Tom Gray played the keyboards, it’s got a really unique sound with Gray’s organ and synths battling future Georgia Satellite Rick Price’s big, crunchy guitars.

And it has my favorite version of “Money Changes Everything.” This is a personal preference, and probably the least popular opinion. The vast majority of people have only ever heard Cyndi Lauper’s excellent version – which I assume provided Tom Gray enough songwriting royalties to last for the rest of his life – and of course the coolest of the cool who have heard The Brains probably prefer the original 7", which is unsullied by Lillywhite’s machinations. 

Also: there is LITERALLY NO PLACE ON THE INTERNET YOU CAN FIND A DECENT-SOUNDING DIGITAL VERSION OF THIS RECORD. My original vinyl is long long gone, and the mp3s I found over a decade ago via blogspot sound like shit, and this video is OK, but it really only hits at how huge-sounding this record felt to me back in 1980.

Oh, and definitely check out Greil Marcus’ chapter on it in his History of Rock and Roll in 10 Songs book – I’m pretty sure I originally heard of this song in one of his Real Life Rock columns in New West magazine, and that led me to check out the album.  If you ever find a decent-sounding copy, let me know.

Fan-made video for “Money Changes Everything”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #124: Bow Wow Wow – “Do You Wanna Hold Me?”

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Album: When The Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Going

Year: 1983.

Because they were created by the evil but brilliant Malcolm McLaren and their music sounded to me like a bunch of cool drum parts and crass lyrics waiting for tunes, I was never really down with Bow Wow Wow’s early music. Even their fluke minor hit cover of “I Want Candy” was more of an annoyance to me than a pleasure.

But then this:

BA DA BA BA DA DA!! 
Whoa-oooh-oh!
BA DA BA BA DA DA!! 

And I was gone. Nothing like a big joyful singalong hook to get me. And suddenly – for 3:13 anyways – Bow Wow Wow transcended their cynical origins, transcended the exploitative teen-age pin-up marketing of Annabella Lwin, transcended just about every other single that came out in 1983.

Let’s sing it again:

BA DA BA BA DA DA!!
Whoa-oooh-oh!
BA DA BA BA DA DA!!

Sure, there’s a pretty decent chorus, and there’s a extra long (and pretty terrible) guitar solo, but – literally – none of that matters against the extra awesome singalong power of:

BA DA BA BA DA DA!!
Whoa-oooh-oh!
BA DA BA BA DA DA!!

The kinda silly official video for “Do You Wanna Hold Me?”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #123: Boogie Down Productions – “My Philosophy”

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Album: By All Means Necessary.

Year: 1988.

They don’t seem to get mentioned very much these days, but back during the late-80s / early 90s, Boogie Down Productions were pretty huge. So much so that when KRS-One showed up on R.E.M.’s “Radio Song,” it felt more like a way to give some aging rock dudes some juice as opposed to the coolest band in the world giving some rapper a break.

And during a time when hip-hop was heading in the direction of more elaborate production, KRS-One’s commitment to nothing more than a big beat, a skeletal sample and his often very political lyrics made him have more in common with an early ‘60s folksinger than many of his peers, who were either going with bigger productions, or eschewing politics completely.

“My Philosophy,” naturally epitomizes that approach: it’s nothing more than a beat, a sax sample, and KRS-One’s own considerable gifts for making and spitting rhymes. 

Who gets weaker? The king or the teacher
It’s not about a salary it’s all about reality
Teachers teach and do the world good
Kings just rule and most are never understood
If you were to rule or govern a certain industry
All inside this room right now would be in misery
No one would get along nor sing a song
‘Cause everyone’d be singing for the king, am I wrong?

How considerable? Lyrically so that verse circles back upon itself beautifully. Musically considerable that he uses a half-dozen different voices and inflections within just that verse. So considerable that within a year, both the Beastie Boys (“Right up to your face and dis you!”) and N.W.A. (“It’s not about a salary, it’s all about reality!”) were sampling this song in pretty major songs of their own.

Official video for “My Philosophy”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #122: The Boomtown Rats – “I Don’t Like Mondays”

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Album: The Fine Art of Surfacing.

Year: 1979.

Because I really enjoyed the Boomtown Rats U.S. debut A Tonic For The Troops, which punk rock energy, Springsteenian pomp and Ray Davies words (without really combining those things into something transcendent), the sound of “I Don’t Like Mondays” struck me as weird at first. It felt, I dunno, wimpy. I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of their previous work, instead of just singer Bob Geldolf, pianist Johnny Fingers and a massive orchestra.

But then again, there was this amazing opening:

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload.
And nobody’s gonna go to school today,
She’s going to make them stay at home.
And daddy doesn’t understand it,
He always said she was as good as gold.
And he can see no reason
‘Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown?

A huge huge hit in the U.K. that ran aground here in the Colonies, “I Don’t Like Mondays” was a pioneering case of totally punk rock lyrics set entirely to a nearly-orchestral score. Based upon a true story of a school shooting in San Diego, “I Don’t Like Mondays” was engineered to shock you while you were singing along with its impossibly catchy melody. 

It’s also their best song by such a substantial margin that it’s almost suspicious. One of my running jokes for decades now is when a baseball player has a year that is such an incredibly large outlier to the rest of his career that I call it his “steroid year.” Like Brady Anderson’s 1996, when he hit 50 home runs, nearly a quarter of all of the home runs he ever hit in his 15-year major league career.

Now I would never in a million years accuse Brady Anderson of taking steroids, just as I would never accuse Bob Geldolf of whatever the songwriting equivalent would be, but MAN “I Don’t Like Mondays” is clearly a statistical anomaly in Geldolf’s career.

Official Video for “I Don’t Like Mondays”

Bob Geldolf & Johnny Fingers performing “I Don’t Like Mondays” at the Secret Policeman’s Other Ball, 1981.

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #121: Boston – “Hitch a Ride”

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Album: Boston.

Year: 1976.

I had so many questions about this album cover. How did they get those cities onto those spaceships anyway? I mean, did the build they spaceships around the city, and then have those domes ready to go at a moment’s notice? Or did they somehow excavate the cities and place them on top of the spaceships? Did they take the existing infrastructures for water, power, sewage, etc or did they create brand-new spaceship infrastructures for all of the cities?

And what are the other cities? New York City, I assume, since it’s mentioned in this song, but what about San Francisco? Or London? Or Fresno? Actually, I was pretty sure that Fresno didn’t make the cut. Though it would be awesome to have seen, like, one of those tiny spaceships just escaping the explosion having “FRESNO” written on it.

And how big were those signs that labeled each city? Why have them in the first place? I mean, if you’re going to spend the quadrillions of dollars to put entire cities inside of giant guitar-shaped spaceships, why would you then stretch the budget to then put gigantic labels on each spaceship. Wouldn’t it be obvious which one was Boston or New York City or San Francisco?

Anyways, these are the things what would pop into my mind while I listened to the exquisite guitar break that dominates the last half of “Hitch a Ride.” This was a guitar break I loved so much that I’m pretty sure lead off the cassette tape that I made that was nothing but guitar solos. Because of course I made a cassette tape that was nothing but guitar solos. I think it was called “Great Guitar Solos.”

After a couple of minutes of a fairly inconsequential song with a cool organ solo and a short, ringing, feedbacky guitar break, the “Hitch a Ride” coda starts slowly after one final inconsequential chorus, just a single electric against an acoustic, But then, powered by handclaps (!), guitar after guitar comes in — all of them sounding slightly different and all of them playing off each other. The guitars aren’t just duetting, but trietting, quadetting and quintetting. At least.

Decades later, I could imagine Billy Corgan tracking all of the guitars over and over on Siamese Dream, trying desperately to accomplish on that entire album what Tom Scholz does in the last two minutes of “Hitch a Ride.”

Of course, I assume that it was Tom Scholz who played every single one of these guitars, almost like a demo of all of the cool tones you could get with the Rockman. 

“Hey guitarists, do you want to sound like this?" (deedly deedly deedly deedly) 
"How about this?" (ahhhwoooooowoung!) 
"Maybe this?” (Buh doodle la doodle la doodla)
“For a limited time only, you can!  It’s the most amazing device ever!! Act now, and we’ll throw in a pre-recording of handclaps to fool the punters who think those are real too!”

But with every single note exactly where it was supposed to be, the sheer gorgeousness of the whole thing just transfixed me.

Fan-made video for “Hitch a Ride”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #120: Boston – “More Than a Feeling”

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Album: Boston.

Year: 1976.

With its circling in from eternity chiming acoustic guitar intro, inverted  "Louie Louie" chorus and sustainy guitar sound of Tom Scholz’s Rockman, I realize that this song and this album are probably responsible for a whole host of evil things. At the very least it’s responsible for spawning a whole strain of rock music that dominated FM enough to keep punk from breaking like it should have.

But I don’t care. 

That first Boston album was a huge catalyst for me: prior to it, I bought a ton of singles and very few albums, but afterwards, I started riding my bike to Tower Records every time I had a few bucks – I got my first paying job in the summer of 1977 – and bought album after album.

There were other factors involved: turning 14 and starting a new high school where I literally didn’t know anybody and that I didn’t want to go to in the first place probably contributed, as well, and I think that all of these things meant that I needed to fully abandon the eclectic pleasures of early-70s Top 40 for a steady diet of 1970s hard rock music.

So while various older dudes on my street had already clued me into Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones, I started following up on my own: from Boston, it was into Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Foghat and Yes and The Who and Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and all of the other ususal suspects of 70s hard rock. 

But I kept coming back to this first Boston album:  I have a vivid memory of listening to this song over and over at full blast with my stereo speakers literally inches away from my ears, thinking “who cares if I can’t hear anything when I get older, this is awesome!!! Why doesn’t more music sound like this?!”

Definitely a case of “be careful of what you wish for,” and while I hated Foreigner and Journey and Toto and Loverboy, I never could come around to hating Boston, even if their second album was a let down and their third album took so long to come out it spawned the same jokes people later made about Guns n’ Roses, My Bloody Valentine and that Wrens album that supposedly due out any time now.

40 years later, “More Than A Feeling”  – which invokes The Handclap Rule on that impossible-to-sing-along-with-even-you’re-singling-along-with-it right-now chorus – sounds fucking amazing.

Fan-made video for “More Than a Feeling”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #119: Bobby Sutliff – “Stupid Idea”

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Album: Only Ghosts Remain.

Year: 1987.

It’s weird the things that you remember. For example, I remember that one of my favorite cassettes of the weird-ass autumn of 1987 had The Connells’ Boylan Heights on one side and Bobby Sutliff’s long-lost power pop classic Only Ghosts Remain on the other. Jingle jangle jingle.

Recorded at Mitch Easter’s Drive-In Studio, Only Ghosts Remain was filled with big-sounding jangly guitar songs, none bigger than “Stupid Idea.”  A remake of a song he’d done with his previous band, The Windbreakers, “Stupid Idea” starts off by mixing a variation of Bram Tchaikovsky’s “Girl of My Dreams” riff over the “Be My Baby” drumbeat and only gets better from there.

With that riff opening up space for a bass hook that probably made Mike Mills quiver with anger and culminating in 12-string guitar solo sent directly from Roger McGuinn’s personal heaven, “Stupid Idea” was one of those songs that demanded I turn the volume up and sing along.

Fan-made video for “Stupid Idea”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever