We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Book of Dreams
Year: 1977
Unlike the other mid-1970s Steve Miller Band singles I’ve been writing about — as well as the two I didn’t write about, “Fly Like an Eagle” and “Jungle Love” — I didn’t really hear “Swingtown” a zillion times on the radio. And when I did, it felt a bit abstract and unknowable to me, like I was hearing it from another room, even if I was in the same room where it was on.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2483: The Steve Miller Band – “Swingtown”
Album: Book of Dreams
Year: 1977
. . .
So I never bought any Steve Miller Band albums, so it wasn’t until I did my usual half-ass research for this post that I realized that two out of the three singles from Book of Dreams were covers. One of those was the ebullient “Jungle Love,” and the other was “Jet Airliner,” which is second after “Take The Money and Run” for my favorite Steve Miller Band song.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2482: The Steve Miller Band – “Jet Airliner”
Album: Fly Like an Eagle
Year: 1976
. . .
One of the more interesting things about Steve Miller’s big mid-1970s singles is how sparse they are. Except for the organ on the spacey white soul prog “Fly Like an Eagle” and the synths on “Swingtown,” they’re all just guitar, bass, and drums. And most of the time, Miller doesn’t even bother overdubbing a second guitar.
That the sparsest of all, 1976’s “Rock ‘n’ Me”, was a hit at all is a bit of anomaly for the times, given that in late 1976, the lusher productions of disco were beginning to top the charts, so it was competing with the likes of Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s The Night,” Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” and The Bee Gees “You Should Be Dancing” and Elton John’s and Kiki Dees “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.” Whatever you might think of the merits of those songs, they were full-blown productions.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2481: The Steve Miller Band – “Rock ‘n Me”
Album: Fly Like an Eagle
Year: 1976
. . .
It must have driven the folks at Capitol Records absolutely insane that it took Steve Miller over two years years to put out a follow-up to The Joker the album, which had peaked at #2 on the albums chart, especially given that the single that followed-up the surprise #1 “The Joker” the song, “Your Cash Ain’t Nothing But Trash,” stiffed at #51, and a second attempt to turn FM staple “Living in the U.S.A.” into a hit single didn’t work, even if it did have the incandescent “Kow Kow” as the b-side.
It was probably even more frustrating because Miller had put out eight — eight! — albums between 1968-1973, and when just when they needed a new record was when he took his damn time. It all seemed to be a set-up for Miller to be a prototypical one-hit wonder.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2480: The Steve Miller Band – “Take The Money and Run”
Album: The Joker
Year: 1973
. . .
I mean, this fucking thing. I don’t even know where to start with it.
So let’s start with me!! And how I fucking hated this song when it was an utterly inescapable single in that 1973-1974 period when all I did was listen to 13 KYNO-AM, who played it approximately 10,886 times a day.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2479: The Steve Miller Band – “The Joker”
Album: Brave New World
Year: 1969
. . .
Before he had all of those hits in the mid-1970s, Steve Miller had already established himself as a recording artist: 1973’s The Joker was the eighth studio album from The Steve Miller Band. Eighth!! And he started in 1968! Imagine that happening today: an artist having seven albums, none of which chart higher than #22, while their highest-charting single — 1970’s spritely “Going To The Country” — topped out at #69. Which is nice and all, but his record company, Capitol, kept funding him. Maybe because he was Les Paul’s godson?
Anyways, Miller had come out of the San Francisco scene, riding a psychedelic blues-rock vibe and some minor radio hits — I remember hearing “Living in the USA” and “Space Cowboy” occasionally, but I’d never even remotely bothered to check out his early records until a couple of years ago. And for the most part they were fine, and all had some really good songs.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2478: The Steve Miller Band – “Kow Kow”
Album: The Low Highway
Year: 2013
. . .
In the past 15 years or so, Steve Earle has continued to walk his own idiosyncratic path, mixing genre exercises, song cycles and tribute albums — his mentors Towns Van Zandt, Guy Clark & Jerry Jeff Walker, and sadly, his son, Justin Townes Earle — with albums the featured his usual mix of hard rock, folk, country and blues.
So far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a bad one in the bunch, and they contain memorable songs, like “21st Century Blues,” my highlight from 2013’s The Low Highway, and one of the more biting songs Earle has ever written.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2477: Steve Earle – “21st Century Blues”
KFSR had its celebration of its 40th anniversary a couple of days ago, a night of jazz and blues. And while I’m still processing how I feel about all of that, I definitely know how I felt about it on its tenth anniversary, when I’d only been off-air for three years, and everything was fresher in my mind. I know it because I published an article in a long-gone underground Fresno paper which explained those feelings.
As published by Inside Fresno, October 22, 1992
It was raining at noon on October 30, 1982. A nasty El Nino had triggered one of the wettest seasons on record. A fall and winter of floods and fog; one last chance for the sewers to overflow before terminal drought set in. But I felt like Gene Kelly. And why not? After all, I was going to fulfill one of my childhood dreams: to be a DJ and turn people on to music. For October 30, 1982, was the day that 90.7 KFSR went on the air.
Album: Washington Square Serenade
Year: 2007
. . .
Right now, Rox and I are in the middle of our third or fourth watch of David Simon’s The Wire, which despite a problematic final season — we are going to once again have a heated discussion about whether what McNulty did was out of character or perfectly logical action by someone driven to extremes by a system that is broken — is still ranked as one of the very best TV shows ever. Right now, we’re in the third season, and very looking forward to the fourth season, which might be the single greatest season of television, full stop.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2476: Steve Earle – “Way Down in The Hole”
Album: The Revolution Starts Now
Year: 2004
. . .
A few months after Steve Earle released Transcendental Blues, the United States Supreme Court awarded George W. Bush the Presidency of the United States, signaling that we had entered the darkest timeline. A little less than a year after that, Saudi terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, totally freaking everybody up and activating the bloodthirsty wing of the U.S. politics that drove our country ever rightward and not one, but two near-endless wars. While the 1990s weren’t as bucolic as people like to think they were, they were definitely over.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2475: Steve Earle – “The Revolution Starts Now”