Not having many random thoughts these days. Just one, overarching, screechingly high-volume thought: WHEN THE HELL AM I GOING TO FIND TIME TO FINISH THIS EFFING SYLLABUS!!?!?!???
And thus far, little in the way of an answer.
Meanwhile, in comments to last week's dose of Randomness, Earl asks aloud whether the songs are from my "personal stash." Indeed they are. And for the most part they are on CD's I've purchased, dinosaur that I am. And they are chosen from the first shuffle that yields not duplicate artists in the top ten. I emphasize this because #10 this week turns out the be from the album Earl mentioned in his comment. Wild coincidence.
1. "Four Sticks," Led Zepplin
2. "Sweet Soul Dream," World Party
3. "Suddenly, Everything Has Changed," The Flaming Lips
4. "My Eyes (Keep Me in Trouble)," Muddy Waters
5. "Never to Be Found," Meat Puppets
6. "On the Way Home," Buffalo Springfield
7. "My Morning Scene," Jonah Smith
8. "Divorce Song," Liz Phair
9. "Days and Days," Concrete Blonde
10. "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
RIP, JOHN OLESKY
5 months ago
10 comments:
"Sandy...
The fireworks are hailin' over Little Eden tonight...
A truly great opening line. Rates right up there with
"Said Red Molly to James: 'That's a fine motorbike' "
Funny because Slactivist (who gets vastly more comments than I and doesn't even need to respond to them) once noted a song with a great opening and opened up comments for other great openers. My submission was:
Spanish Johnny drove in
From the underworld last night
With bruised ribs, broken rhythm and a beat up old Buick
But dressed just like dynamite.
On the other hand, when Roy Orbison died, Sprinsteen himself offered a suggestion for Greatest Song Opening:
Your baby doesn't love you anymore.
Best song opening:
Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star and everybody's in show biz doesn't matter who they are.
By the greatest band to ever come out of the UK.
The Kinks are indeed a fantastic band. My friend Tim O'Brien was one the artists who did a tribute recording a while back.
And "Thunder Road" and Roy both deserve SERIOUS consideration
But I still think that "52 Vincent Black Lightening" might be the best ballad written in the English language for the last fifty years or so. It's got it all: a compelling story, violence, death, romance, the supernatural- all of that stuff that I love. It's contemporary and yet, has elements straight out of ballads that go back four hundred years.
And Richard Thompson is certainly one of the greatest unknown musicians around.
if you're a dinosaur with your CD collection, then what am I with over 1,000 vinyl LPs?
I don't know, Earl.
Screen door slams is about the best opening line I've heard.
Nothing sets a tone quite like that line.
Of course, I'm a sucker for that song.
"Screen door slams. Mary's dress waves."
Good point.
BTW, do you that many studies have shown that a really small percentage of music fans actually pay attention to lyrics?
For me, lyrics are poetry, history and sometimes current events.
But, I'm weird.
OK, I just can't resist...
I know that some readers will ask 'Richard Thompson? Who the heck is that?"
Malcolm Jones (music editor at Newsweek) put together a piece for MSNBC captioned "The greatest artist that you don't know" which includes a few song clips. I strongly recommend it for anyone that really cares about music.
Liz Phair totally underrated.
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