We're Not Who You Think We Are
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So, earlier this year, I wrote 96 Certain Songs posts about the Rolling Stones. I am now going to rank all of those songs by how much I love them, as opposed to how important or objectively great they are. Please wish me luck. And oh, don’t take this too seriously: I spent about an hour on it.
[Read more…] about All 96 Rolling Stones Certain Songs, Ranked
The biggest thing I stole from Charlie Watts was the hi-hat lift.
I think I first noticed it in the video for “Start Me Up:” that thing he did where he never hit the snare and the hi-hat at the same time. Watch any video of the Stones and you’ll see it: instead of “tick-tick-tick-twhack-tick-tick-tick-twhack,” his sound is “tick-tick-tick-WHACK-tick-tick-tick-WHACK.” It was a little thing that was also a big thing. There was a lot of that in Charlie Watts drumming — a whole series of little things that were actually big things.
And while the hi-hat lift might have made him look less fluid than peers like Keith Moon or Ringo Starr — all of that lifting of the right hand — when I started playing a few years later, I decided to use that technique because I liked how it made the snare even louder. And I loved — love! — teeth-rattling snare.
Album: Scissor Sisters
Year: 2004
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Here’s another band that had a song that I really loved, but until I started doing my patented Half-Assed Research for these posts, I had no idea of the extent of their career and popularity.
It turns out that Scissor Sisters was an American band that was much much bigger in the rest of the world than they were here. To the point where their biggest single, 2006’s “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” was a top 5 smash all around the world, topping the charts in a bunch of places, but it didn’t even chart here at all, though they did have a few big dance singles here.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2169: Scissor Sisters – “Take Your Mama”
Album: School of Fish
Year: 1991
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I wonder why I never bought this album. I bought so many other albums because I happened to like the song on the radio, but so far as I can tell, I never got this one. It might be because that particular moment in 1991 it came out was a bit chaotic, and because 1991 was such an amazing year for music (even before Nevermind), I was already overloaded with amazing shit.
So I don’t really know all that much about School of Fish, outside of what I can find on the internet, which is this: they were one of those bands where the songwriting was by their lead singer & lead guitar player, and kind of shows.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2168: School of Fish – “Three Strange Days”
Album: Sidelong
Year: 2015
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I know I say this every time it comes up, but has been one of my key beliefs that many of the greatest songs of the 21st century come from a little-known source: women who play country music. I’m not talking about your Mirandas and Taylors and Kaceys — though they certainly count — but rather people like Nikki Lane, Lydia Loveless, Margo Price, etc etc etc.
And Sarah Shook’s “Dwight Yoakam” just might be the greatest of them all, leaping right in with here big, sad voice announcing her current situation.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2167: Sarah Shook & The Disarmers – “Dwight Yoakam”
Album: Ain’t That Good News
1964
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Despite all of his talent, looks, charm and entrepreneurial acumen, Sam Cooke was still a Black man in America. I was going to hedge that by saying “mid-century America,” but c’mon, already: while things might have gotten better, they sure as shit haven’t gotten better enough, else we wouldn’t need mass marches trying to remind the white power structure that Black lives matter.
And so, every single day of his life, Sam Cooke had to do calculations that I can’t even imagine, though whenever I read something about in Peter Guralnick’s biography, how they’d have car trouble on the road or their hotel was booked, I thought “oh my god, that must have been so much worse than had it happened to me.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2166: Sam Cooke – “A Change Is Gonna Come”
Album: Ain’t That Good News
Year: 1964
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It’s ironic that the first album of Sam Cooke’s contract with RCA — which gave him the most control he’d ever had — was also the final album recorded and released in Sam Cooke’s lifetime. And while Ain’t That Good News wasn’t nearly as focused as 1963’s Night Beat, which was recorded in the space of three nights as opposed to nearly a year, it did have a structure. The first side featured uptempo songs — nearly all written or co-written by Cooke — like the rollicking title track, the previously-released “Another Saturday Night” and “Good Times,” which was covered by the Rolling Stones on their immortal Out of Our Heads.
Side two featured soaring string-laden soul ballads, mostly covers, and peaked with the Cooke-written all-time all-time that we’ll discuss tomorrow. Of course I like the first side better, and probably my favorite song on the whole thing was the amblin’ “Meet Me At Mary’s Place.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2165: Sam Cooke – “Meet Me At Mary’s Place”
Album: Ain’t That Good News
Year: 1963
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Because he had that voice, those looks and was also charismatic as hell, Sam Cooke never lacked for female companionship, and indulged in behavior that would have gotten him cancelled — and eventually got him dead — had it surfaced at the time. And so, it’s kinda ironic that one of his greatest songs was well, total horseshit.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2164: Sam Cooke – “Another Saturday Night”
Album: Night Beat
Year: 1963
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“You Gotta Move” is an old spiritual that had been kicking around for ages, usually with lyrics about how when the Lord gets ready, you gotta get the fuck out of there. The most famous version is the Rolling Stones cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell’s take on the song, though they were presumably aware of Sam Cooke’s rendition.
On his Night Beat album, though, Sam Cooke took the apocalyptic lyrics and recast the song as an end-of-a-relationship song, not the first time he’d taken a gospel lyric and recast it as a pop lyric.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2163: Sam Cooke – “You Gotta Move”
Album: Night Beat
Year: 1963
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Recorded over three nights in February 1963, Night Beat was used a small group of musicians — including a 16-year-old Billy Preston on organ — and stands out in his discography as his quietest, most intimate album, bereft of horns, strings and complex vocal arrangements. Especially that last: the only other voices on the record are the musicians joyously shouting the title of “Shake Rattle and Roll.” But the rest of Night Beat? Just Sam Cooke singing his heart out.
And nowhere does he sing his heart out more than “Lost and Looking,” which — in my 1995 reissue called Sam Cooke’s Night Beat — opened up with just Sam singing over Clifford Hils’s bass:
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2162: Sam Cooke – “Lost and Looking”