Certain Songs

Certain Songs #2704: They Might Be Giants – “Don’t Let’s Start”

October 8, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: They Might Be Giants
Year: 1986

. . .

While Johns Linnell and Flansburgh started writing songs in high school in Lincoln, Massachusetts the late 1970s, they didn’t form They Might Be Giants until they both moved to Brooklyn in the early 1980s, formally adopting the name under which they’re still recording in 2023.

Prior to actually getting a record contract, they gained their earliest notoriety by recording their songs onto an answering machine — a mechanical device that hooked up into your phone line and allowed you to ask people to leave you a message instead of texting you, Zoomers — and placing an ad for their “Dial-a-Song” service, which, along with a demo, led to their self-titled 1986 debut, which immediately established their take on pop music: every possible style of music, sometimes all at once, with funny-sad lyrics, sung with exuberance and chock-full of hooks galore.

Certain Songs #2703: Them – “Here Comes The Night”

October 6, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Them
Year: 1965

. . .

I was this many years old when I learned that “Here Comes The Night,” the other great song by Them, was written by producer Bert Berns and not Morrison himself. I’d just always assumed that it was. My bad.

“Here Comes The Night” has two really cool counterintuitive things going for it. First off, it leads with the chorus, featuring a stately guitar hook — supposedly played by ace session guitarist Jimmy Page — and a full blown chorus of people who may or may not be the actual members of Them singing the title a couple of times.

Certain Songs #2702: Them – “Gloria”

October 5, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Angry Young Them
Year: 1964

. . .

The first thing you should probably know about one of the greatest singalongs in music history is that it was originally a b-side.

Despite being one of Van Morrison’s — about whom a whole lot more when we get there — earliest compositions, the record company (or somebody) decided that this primal piece of rock awesomeness would be better as the b-side of their cover of “Baby Please Don’t Go.” Not that it was surprising: the earliest Stones and Kinks singles — the best comps for Them — were also covers.

Certain Songs #2701: Thelonious Monster – “Bus With No Driver”

October 4, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Beautiful Mess
Year: 1992

. . .

While Thelonious Monster put out three albums in three-year period of 1986-1989, it took three more years before they put out their fourth album, 1992’s it-is-what-it-says-it-is Beautiful Mess, as the drink and drugs and every other damn thing were beginning to catch up with head Monster Bob Forrest.

Certain Songs #2700: Thelonious Monster – “Sammy Hagar Weekend”

October 3, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stormy Weather
Year: 1989

. . .

On July 27, 1980, Craig from across the street and I hopped into his blue Volkswagen Beetle — the “Cannonball” — and drove up to the Alameda County Coliseum Stadium in Oakland to see on of Bill Graham Presents “Day on the Green” concerts, which was a thing that happened a few times a year back then.

On that day, we saw Shakin Street, Molly Hatchet, Cheap Trick, and Black Sabbath (with Ronnie James Dio), and then got back in his Beetle and headed back home before the headliner could take the stage. That headliner, Journey, of course, whom we both despised. It was only the second time I’d been out of Fresno for a concert — the first time being The Who just a month before — so all of it was new to me, and I don’t even think I had a drink, much less weed or anything else.

Certain Songs #2699: Thelonious Monster – “If I”

October 2, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Boldness of Style EP
Year: 1987

I neither loved nor hated Thelonious Monster’s first two albums, 1986’s Baby … You’re Bumming My Life Out in A Supreme Fashion and 1987’s Next Saturday Afternoon. That’s because I couldn’t make heads nor tails of them. I listened to them, and I no idea what ringleader Bob Forrest was trying to do.

This remains weird to me, because I liked his voice, and knew that it he was — for lack of a better phrase — on our side, and he worked in various idioms that I loved, and yet, and yet, none of it stuck, not even the ones where they were actually trying. Looking back, the only thing I can imagine is that they wanted to try to turn a Replacements disintegration show into a studio album.

Certain Songs #2698: That Petrol Emotion – “Sensitize”

September 26, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Chemicrazy
Year: 1990

. . .

After recording That Petrol Emotion’s third album, 1988’s End of the Millennium Psychosis Blues — about which the best thing was the title — founding member (and former Undertone) John O’Neill left the band, which you might think would have signaled the end of the project. Wrong!

While John O’Neill had been the principal songwriter, he wasn’t their only songwriter, and not only did bassist Damian O’Neill go to guitar — he was the lead guitarist in the Undertones, after all — he wrote a few more songs than normal, as did guitarist Raymond O’Gorman and drummer Ciaran McLaughlin, and with the help of producer Scott Litt, their fourth album, 1990’s Chemicrazy has my favorite of their songs, “Sensitize.”

Certain Songs #2697: That Petrol Emotion – “Big Decision”

September 25, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Babble
Year: 1987

. . .

After The Undertones — on whom we will definitely spend some time next year — split up, founding guitarist John O’Neill formed That Petrol Emotion with his brother Damian, who switched from lead guitar to bass in order to make sure that the new band sounded different from their former band.

Which they certainly did: on That Petrol Emotion’s first two albums, 1986’s Manic Pop Thrill and 1988’s Babble, the best songs featured John O’Neill continually wrapping his guitar around the guitar of Raymond Gorman and the funky drums of Ciaran McLaughlin, my favorite example being the lead single from Babble, 1987’s “Big Decision.”

Certain Songs #2696: that dog. – “hawthorne”

September 22, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: retreat from the sun
Year: 1997

. . .

One of the things I’m not sure of is why retreat from the sun’s three greatest songs are all named after places — which makes the lower case stylization of the song titles even artier or weirder or funnier or something — but here we are, as “hawthorne” followed hard upon the heels of “long island,” and “minneapolis,” and was somehow more powerful and melancholic than either one.

Which, as you know, is utter catnip for your humble scribe.

Certain Songs #2695: that dog. – “long island”

September 21, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: retreat from the sun
year: 1997

. . .

Brad Wood was the producer of retreat from the sun. If you look at his Wikipedia page, you’ll see that he produced a whole bunch of records, including two more of my all-time favorites, Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville and Pete Yorn’s Musicforthmorningafer, both of which were everything-but-the-kitchen sink debut records.