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Certain Songs #1998: Rod Stewart – “My Way of Giving”

January 7, 2021 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Gasoline Alley
Year: 1970

. . .

And so Rod Stewart spent the first half of the 1970s alternating between releasing solo albums and being the front man for the Faces. And so the debut album by the Faces, First Step, came out in March of 1970, followed three months later by Rod’s second solo album, Gasoline Alley.

And while the folk, blues and soul orientations of the solo albums were sonically different from the bash-em-out rock n roll songs that Faces specialized in, he started giving them at least one song on solo album, because why not? I mean, they’re the fucking Faces.

Certain Songs #1997: Rod Stewart – “I Wouldn’t Ever Change a Thing”

January 5, 2021 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: The Rod Stewart Album
Year: 1969

. . .

My favorite song on The Rod Stewart Album is a multi-part keyboard-drenched epic that features one of the most human moments I’ve ever heard on any record. Never a prolific writer, Rod snaked around that by being an ace interpreter, especially of his own songs, where he brought out their soul-baring aspects without ever getting maudlin.

“I Woudn’t Ever Change a Thing” is a prime example of this, an insanely wise look back from a guy who was way too young to be this wise.

Certain Songs #1996: Rod Stewart – “Handbags and Gladrags”

January 4, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Rod Stewart Album
Year: 1969

. . .

Alright, let’s see if we can set the scene. It’s late 1969, and a few months prior The Jeff Beck Group had released their second album, Beck-Ola, and just after touring that record, Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood left Beck and replaced Steve Marriott in the Small Faces, soon to lose the “Small” because neither Stewart nor Wood were as diminutive as the other guys.

But before they record it, Stewart has a solo album to do, having signed a contract with Mercury records in late 1968 for what Stewart says in his highly entertaining autobiography was the price of sports car.

Certain Songs #1995: Rockpile – “Heart”

December 31, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Seconds of Pleasure
Year: 1980

. . .

It’s hard to convey the kind of anticipation there was in certain rock ‘n’ roll circles for Rockpile’s 1980 debut, Seconds of Pleasure. After all, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner and Terry William had been playing together in various configurations going back to Edmunds 1976 Get It album (which was just missing Bremner), and in 1979 recorded two all-time classics back-to-back: Nick Lowe’s Labour of Lust and Dave Edmunds’ Repeat When Necessary.

Certain Songs #1994: Rockford – “Many Things”

December 30, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Experiments in Electricity & Light
Year: 2017

. . .

It was September, 2018, and we were in a backyard in Eagle Rock, CA, getting ready to see a benefit show featuring Steve Wynn. Can you even imagine such a thing right now? We’d gone to a couple of other shows in this space, but we were hardly regulars.

In any event, Tim had gone to get a beer or something, and when he came back to our seats, he told me that he’d met a guy who knew me. Apparently Tim was wearing a Tower District Records T-shirt, and they got into a conversation about Fresno.

Certain Songs #1993: The Rockets – “Oh Well”

December 29, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rockets
Year: 1979

. . .

Here’s my guess: most of you know “Oh Well” as a song from the earliest incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, a weird conglomeration of acoustic guitars, blues solos and the airtight playing of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, who navigate the song’s everchanging groove.

And that’s all incredibly true, even if the second half is a stone bore — Green sabotaging his own work by pretending he’s the guy who found the acoustic guitar in “2112,” — it’s weird and great in all the right ways.

Certain Songs #1992: Rocket From The Crypt – “On a Rope”

December 28, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Scream, Dracula, Scream!
Year: 1995

. . .

In the 1990s, the San Diego band Rocket From The Crypt made a small alt-rock splash by asking a relatively simple question: what if Punk Rock, but with a horn section?

Obviously, it wasn’t a new question: there were horns all over London Calling and the later Jam singles, but usually those horns weren’t sitting on top of their garage-punk ravers. Before Rocket From The Crypt broke up — to the extent that anybody breaks up these days — they made a few albums in this vein, though I only ever came across 1995’s Scream, Dracula, Scream! and 1998’s RFTC.

Certain Songs #1991: Robyn Hitchcock – “Time Coast”

December 23, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Robyn Hitchcock
Year: 2017

. . .

The fourth (or sixth, if you count the Tower Records in-store and the song from Big Star’s Third) time I saw Robyn Hitchcock in concert was on May 3, 2017 at the Troubadour in Los Angeles.

Starting off with five acoustic songs and then bringing out his touring band, The L.A. Squires, his set covered his entire career, featuring as many songs (four) from Underwater Moonlight as it did from Robyn Hitchcock.

Certain Songs #1990: Robyn Hitchcock – “Raymond and The Wires”

December 22, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Robyn Hitchcock
Year: 2017

. . .

Robyn Hitchcock’s father, Raymond, was a screenwriter, cartoonist and novelist who nearly had his leg amputated following the invasion of Normandy. Other than siring one of my all-time favorite musicians, his first novel, Percy, was the catalyst for one of the Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, British Invasion Divison, “All God’s Children” by The Kinks.

However, Raymond himself was the catalyst for one of the Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Robyn Hitchcock Division — and a top 5 Robyn Hitchcock song — “Raymond and The Wires.”

Certain Songs #1989: Robyn Hitchcock – “1970 In Aspic”

December 21, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Robyn Hitchcock
Year: 2017

. . .

Robyn Hitchcock was recorded in Nashville, where Robyn Hitchcock had moved with his partner, Emma Swift, in 2015. And it showed: not so much with the country, though “I Pray When I’m Drunk” is definitely the most country thing he had since since “Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus” way back in 1984, but because the pedal steel guitar, as played by Russ Pahl, was a pretty big part of the sound.

And nowhere was it a bigger part of the sound than “1970 In Aspic,” where it rings and comments from the start.