Song Stuck In My Head

We lost one of the greats today. Shane MacGowan, one of the great Irish poets alongside the likes of Joyce and Yeats, best known as the frontman for the Pogues which defined the Celtic-rock and folk-punk genres, is gone at 65. I chose this song because it's just a nice tune that highlights his oft-overlooked vocal range. Two others I'll link to are "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" which shows off the more Celtic punk side, and "Fairy Tale of New York" which is on the short list of greatest Christmas songs of the rock n roll era (it's between that and "Father Christmas" by the Kinks). In '95-96, with my brother Ed and cousin Paul, I went to see Shane with his band The Popes at Metro Chicago, a great club in our neighborhood (like the Showbox, Paradise, 9:30 Club, et al). Cool show, though Shane was really wasted, drinking (presumably) whisky from a tin or pewter cup all night. No judgment, as the three of us were drinking whisky ...

There's no story behind why I chose this song from Stevie Nicks' first solo album in '81. I just love it, that's all. Waddy Wachtel (guitar) always seems REALLY psyched to be playing. That's the E Street Band's Roy Bittain on piano.

Written by an 18 year-old Jakob Dylan in 1987 (the first song he ever wrote), this song was intended to be on the Wallflowers' first album in '92, but the record company wouldn't allow it. It eventually got onto the 1996 album Bringing Down the Horse . It was the band's first hit, reaching #33 on the Billboard Hot 100, but was overshadowed by the follow-up single "One Headlight" which held for 5 weeks at #2 and spent 70 weeks on the chart. That's Mike Campbell from the Heartbeakers on the slide guitar solo and Adam Duritz from Counting Crows on backing vocals.

During the Covid shutdown, my oldest best friends from back home would have a weekly Zoom call to keep up with how everyone was doing. On one of those calls, I posed the question, "Which is the best Toto song? ( Toto IV was huge when we were in 5th-6th grade). There were cases to be made for a few different songs, and this is hands-down my choice. Also, my ex-wife had a co-worker who was a real "ladies man" and his go-to pickup line was when a woman asked him what he did for a living, he'd say he was the bass player for Toto. I told him that was kind of sleazy and he said, "No, it's kind of genius. I mean, who the hell knows what the bass player in Toto looks like? They never know I'm lying!" In related news, he was in sales. What a guy.

We had this album at home when I was a kid and I listened to it a lot. This is widely known as one of the most popular and best-selling "one-hit wonders" of all time. A fellow Masshole, Greenbaum was born in Malden, MA and spent a couple years at Boston University before dropping out and going to L.A. to pursue a career in music. An observant Jew, he admittedly wrote this as a folk song but paired up with a producer who was pretty extravagant with the synths, gospel backup singers, and doubling Greenbaum's vocal, he wanted something to kick it up a notch, and by his own admission, "I had to use something, so I used Christianity." In 1967, as a member of Dr. Wests's Medicine Show and Junk Band, he wrote, performed on, and had a novelty hit with a song called "The Eggpant That Ate Chicago" which was later re-released on Dr. Demento Presents: The Greatest Novelty Records of All Time, Volume III: The 1960s in 1985.

Probably my favorite Dylan song and what my old boss Ulrike always said was the only one she liked because it was "the one he actually sings on." It tells the story of Rubin Carter, a middleweight contender who did 14 years for a crime he didn't commit. Denzel would later play Rubin in the biopic Hurricane.

Happy Thanksgiving to all

The word epic gets overused to describe things that just aren't or can't be. No cup of coffee, no matter how great, can ever be "epic." This song, however... epic.

I wonder if, when this song came out, were midgets picketing and protesting at the Randy Newman shows, thowing eggs at him and so forth?

The great saxophone innovator Mars Williams passed away today. You've heard his stuff as he was in the Psychedelic Furs, the Waitresses, and Billy Idol's band. In '93 he formed Liquid Soul which pioneered and ushered in the acid jazz movement, but they did it with a distinctively unique blend of hip hop and r&b. I used to go see these guys every Sunday at the Double Door in Chicago, where I met my first wife. This song is the lead-off track from their 2000 Grammy-nominated album Here's the Deal which also features my friends Brian Quarles (MC - he sketched out the lyrics in his head on the drive to the studio and freestyled it in one take) and Ajax (turntables), as well as the great Ron Haynes (trumpet), Tommy Sanchez (guitar), Newt Cole (percussion), and Hambone on keys. RIP Mars, truly one of the Great Ones.

Such a great Chicago power pop band, the International Pop Overthrow festival which happens annually in multiple cities is named after the album this song is on. A career sadly cut short by the 1996 suicide of singer Jim Ellison. In the last couple years, Liz Phair has managed to get the surviving members out to play some shows with her, a project they initially called Material Reissue. Their awesome Christmas song "Merry Christmas Will Do" is one of my favorite holiday songs with the immortal chorus, "You don't have to say you love me, I know that it's not true; Merry Christmas... Merry Christmas will do."

I've always liked T. Rex and for years was partial to "Jeepster," probably because the great morning drive guy Lin Brehmer (RIP) played it fairly often on WXRT Chicago. Then I saw the Replacements cover it a couple times in 2014 and this became my forever favorite T. Rex song. As Uncle Eddy would say, "it passes the car test." If you know, you know.

Nothing to see here, just some delightfully filthy, greasy Minneapolis funk by one of the greatest bands of all time. In 2010, after 8 days of hiking into and up & down the Grand Canyon, rowing 124 miles down the Colorado River, and sleeping in the sand, I booked a few nights at the Las Vegas Hilton to decompress. Coming out of the hotel elevator I saw a show poster for these guys playing the theater inside the hotel. I freaked out and rushedly told my future ex-wife who'd flown in to spend the long weekend together in Vegas, "Oh my god, I gotta find out when this show is and we are coming back for it!" I was too excited to notice what she told me while chuckling, "the show is tonight, dear." I ran to the concierge to inquire and she sold me a pair of tickets, front row in the balcony, dead center, virtually hovering over the stage. The full original band including Jesse and Jerome. Besides the first dance (John Hiatt's "Have a Little Faith In Me...

Pursuant to yesterday's song, last night I was talking to my wrestling coach who was none too happy about us choosing to come out to "White Rabbit." Coach reminded me that he made us pick a different song, which he recalls was this one. It sparked the memory of my co-captains and I having a laugh over being told we couldn't use a song about psychedelic drugs, but this one about a whore house in New Orleans was ok! It's a traditional folk song whose origin goes back to the Louis XIV era and later brought to America by French migrants in 1905, played and recorded under various titles and lyrics by many folk and blues artists including Appalachian artists, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez. This version by the Animals came out in 1964, is widely considered to be the first folk-rock or "classic rock" hit and the song that inspired Dylan to go electric.

In high school, as one of the captains of the wrestling team, the three of us got to choose which song our team would come out and warm up to. All the other teams used aggressive heavy metal stuff like AC/DC, Metallica and the like. I and my fellow captains John and Danny were fairly weird and quirky dudes. As a psych-out, we unanimously chose "White Rabbit" just to get into the other teams' heads and make them wonder what was wrong with us, maybe throw them off the trail of our decidedly physical, aggressive styles of wrestling. While every other team was coming out to loud metal, we came out to this hippy trippy song about psychedelics. We even psyched out our National Wrestling Hall of Fame coach, who hated it ("Was that that drug song from the '60s? What's wrong with you guys?"). Our assistant coaches Andy and Tony defended our choice and the reasons for it. I'm proud of us.

The Hollies had a bunch of hits in the '60s and '70s. They influenced all the garage rock bands to follow. In high school and college when I used to go to Tower Records all the time to browse and for the in-store shows, I'd always scour the Blues & Jazz room and the bargain bin. Got this tape of Billboard's "Top Ten Songs of 1972" and among other great songs for 2-3 bucks, this song is on it. "Papa Was a Rollimg Stone" by the Temptations was aso on that tape. It's a good tape.

When the Stray Cats broke up, drummer Slim Jim Phantom and bassist Lee Rocker enlisted session guitarist Earl Slick to form this band which released 2 albums. Slick is best known as the guy who replaced Mick Ronson in David Bowie's band, playing on the Young Americans and David Live! albums and on the Diamond Dogs and Serious Moonlight tours. He also played on John Lennon's Double Fantasy . This fun rocker reached #7 on the Billboard Rock Chart, but otherwise the band didn't have great success. I don't think they even toured to promote either album. Then the Stray Cats got back together, Slick started doing movie soundtracks, Phantom and Rocker went on to solo careers and collaborations (Jim had a band with with Lemmy from Motorhead, Lee with Carl Perkins of "Blue Suede Shoes" fame), and that was that.

No idea why, but this whole album has been in my head all day. The Police are one of the great bands I never got to see live. They haven't toured much since the early '80s. Maybe because the guys in the band famously hate each other. Maybe they could do a package tour with the Kinks and Oasis and each show could end in a WWF-style steel cage battle royale lumberjack Texas death match.

I hate the term "one-hit wonder" because it's one more than 99.9% of all bands ever had, not to mention the industry BS and heavy bread that artists have to navigate through to even have a career. I recall this song being on the then-great Triple-A format 93.1 WXRT radio Chicago - commercial station that operated as left of the dial, like the Mountain did for my Seattle friends. I saw Luce supporting the Goo Goo Dolls on New Year's Eve '02 at the House of Blues Chicago. The great folksinger-turned pop artist Alice Peacock opened. No idea whatever happened to Luce or Alice. Great show. It's a typically rainy and overcast November in Seattle, but this is a sunny tune and maybe that helps!

Among my earliest rock n roll memories, age 9. There was a product you could get at the local convenient store, pre- Store 24 or 7-11, same place you'd get the 3-D glasses once a year when a UHF channel was showing "Creature From the Black Lagoon." A wallet-sized fold-out thing that could fit into your pocket with the album artwork on front, the lyrics in the fold-out along with a record-shaped piece of pink gum inside. No music or links, this was way pre-internet or even cable TV. I got this Pat Benatar thing and luckily started hearing her stuff on the radio, became a fan. Her catalog is amazing and totally worth diving into. This is the song that I got in that thing and caught me at age 9.

Best Prince song most people don't know.

One of my favorite artists, Mr. Withers' is the truly inspiring story of a veteran who was working as a janitor in West Virginia when a friend suggested he try his hand at singing. He retired years before he could have, bypassing the lucrative circuit for artists of his ilk and era, in favor of working as an advocate, ally, and supporter of people (like him) with a stutter. I chose this version because I think Live at Carnegie Hall is one of and on the short list for the greatest live albums of all time. If you can find it, the documentary Still Bill is really great.

Since I used an Uncle Tupelo song yesterday... funny story about the album from which this song comes: Following the Uncle Tupelo break-up, Wilco was on Reprise Records, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. who refused to release this album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot because they "didn't hear a radio hit." The band bought the record back from Reprise for $50,000 and signed with Nonseuch Records, ironically also a subsidiary of Warner Bros. After streaming it for free on their website for a couple months in 2001, they released the album which enjoyed near-universal critical raves, went Gold, reached #13 on Billboard, and 21 years later its 2022 reissue reached #4.

This Belleville, Illinois band is credited with creating what became known as the alternative country or insurgent country genre, a blend of hardcore punk and classic country. They put out 4 albums between 1991 and '94 before breaking up when principal singers/songwriters Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy just couldn't get along anymore and were frequently engaging in shouting matches after shows. Farrar quit and formed Son Volt. and Tweedy took the rest of the band and formed Wilco.

I loved this band as a kid. This song was originally released before all the big hits they're better known for. Even before this, they were more of a blues-rock band, but the people have spoken and the power ballads made them superstars.

This song was big when we were kids, all over MTV. My brother used to sing his version: "We gonna walk down to electric barbecue, and cook without a fire."

One of of my favorite artists, Patti is probably best known for "Because the Night" which Bruce gave her during a management dispute in '77 when he couldn't release anything. Her stuff is so great, and her show at the Showbox Seattle years ago is one of the best I've ever seen. She was touring on a covers album but here I'm sharing a much older cover she did because it's an uncommon example of the cover being better than the original.

A childhood friend reminded me the other day that one year (probably 4th or 5th grade) I went out for Halloween dressed as Eddie, the mascot for Iron Maiden, the character featured on most of their albums' cover art, including this one, so I have Maiden on the brain. When I used to DJ at Key Arena (not called Climate Pledge Arena) for the Seattle Roller Derby back in 2011-2012, while I liked to mix up the playlist a lot, this was one of the few songs I played at almost every monthly bout. Good times.