Yes, the number 1,000 is impressive, but so is 1,001, which has the added merit of being a numerical palindrome. How could I pass up the opportunity for a milestone Shuffle?
A Brave New World Shuffle
1. "Tango Till They're Sore" / Tom Waits
From Rain Dogs (1985)
My favorite Tom Waits album ever. Yes, all those songs from Down By Law; but Waits wrote it about NYC, an ode to the dispossessed. That sloppy late-night bar piano, the boozy horns, and the lyrics are just poetry -- "Fall out of the window with confetti in my hair / Deal out jacks or better on a blanket by the stairs / Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past / Send me off to bed forever more." Amen.
2. "Walking on the Moon" / The Police
From Regatta de Blanc (1979)
Though this track lost a smackdown with Smashmouth a few years ago, I still find it haunting. Anyone else feel that the past couple of weeks have been like an out-of-body experience?
3. "Lua" / Connor Oberst and Gillian Welch
From Dark Was the Night: A Red Hot Compilation (2009)
The loping folky sound of this slacker anthem is oh-so-deceptive. Each verse comes back to the same dichotomy: "What's so easy in the evening, in the morning is such a drag." (Or variations thereof.) Earnest Connor Oberst (a.k.a. Bright Eyes) wrote this song for his 2004 LP I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning; for this charity effort for HIV and AIDS, he teamed up with alt-folk goddess Gillian Welch. It's a winner.
4. "Razor Blade Alley" / Madness
From One Step Beyond (1979)
Madness's debut album jumped on the ska bandwagon in a big way, and as a Specials fan, I was an early adapter. Another track about the dispossessed, it goes way beyond gentle alienation with a jittery beat and paranoid lyrics -- "this pain of pissing razors is cutting in" -- ouch! Madness's front man Suggs is an avowed Ray Davies acolyte, so let's assume that the social satire is firmly in place.
5. "Bay City Rollers We Love You" / Nick Lowe and the Tartan Horde
Single 1975
Desperate to get fired from a UA record contract, Nick Lowe stuck it to his label by issuing this crappy pop single, a blatantly fake paean to the Bay City Rollers. Surprise! It became a massive hit in Japan. Just to show how playing the media can backfire.
6. "It's Lonely at the Top" / Randy Newman
From Sail Away (1972)
This seems to be the Week of Randy. Strap on your irony detectors. A roadhouse ballad about the burden of stardom -- coming from Randy Newman, who in 1972 was anything but a household name -- eerily predicts the Nixonian and Trumpian existential condition.
7. "Good Bait" / Dizzy Gillespie All Stars
From Bebop Spoken Here: Disorder at the Border (2000)
A palate cleanser, if you will -- some proper jazz for a change. (Bill Malley, where are you?) Though given today's breaking news, disorder at the border may be more relevant than we'd like it to be.
8. "The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)" / They Might Be Giants
From Apollo 18 (1992)
You can never go wrong with The Johns. This snazzy repurposing of the 1961 Tokens hit (actually a Zulu song from 1939), updates the trope: "Hush my darling, be still my darling, the lion's on the phone." And -- zap! -- we're in the 21st century, with a silver spaceship and a whole lotta re-shaking going on.
9. "They Can't Take That Away From Me" / Elvis Costello & Tony Bennett
From MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett (1994)
Love these two. Giving that Gershwin classic a classy spin, and Elvis -- the son of a big band singer, after all -- more than holds his own with Sir Tony Bennett. Well, I've got some things they can't take away from me, either -- including the rights to jump genres all I damn well please.
10. "If I Didn't Love You" / Squeeze
From Argybargy (1980)
Ah, vintage Difford and Tillbrook. Conflicted as all get-out (dig that almost stuttering refrain, "If I, if I, if I, if I...") it digs into the yin and yang of love. "If I didn't love you I'd hate you" -- yep, that's about where it stands.
Oh, my brothers and sisters, let us gird our loins.
