SATURDAY SHUFFLE

A lovely summer night -- crickets chirping, night breezes whispering -- time to blast it all open with some rock 'n' roll!

1. This Is Where I Belong / Ron Sexsmith
From This Is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies (2006)
Probably the best collection of Kinks covers I know, with dynamite tributes from Fountains of Wayne, Fastball, Minus 5, Yo La Tengo; best of all, this was the album that first introduced me to the work of Bill Lloyd and of Ron Sexsmith, both of whom have since landed several albums in heavy rotation on my music players. Ron delivers this early Kinks tune with such earnestness, I just had to hear more. And that's how it all started...

2. Next To You / Tim Easton
From Ammunition (2006) 
Here's another bit of serendipity -- I discovered Tim Easton through this track on a New West Records sampler, that I picked up who knows where.  Just goes to show you should always listen to those samplers.  I love his slightly scratchy voice, the harmonica, the loping rhythm of this track; sometimes the simplest expressions of love ("Just let me be next to you / I want to understand . . . ") are the best.

3. Look a Little on the Sunny Side  / The Kinks
From Everybody's In Show Biz (1972)
One of my first Kinks albums, Show-Biz holds a special place in my heart; to me, every track is a winner.  Here we get campy Ray mincing about this bouncy little tap dance (that old music hall influence), innocently (HA!) describing the vagaries of the music business. And I do mean vagaries: "Sing 'em the blues and then they ask for a happy tune / And when you start to smile, they say / 'Gimme the rhythm and blues,' and when you  / Give 'em the rhythm and blues, they simply smile and say / 'We didn't want to hear you play, we didn't like you anyway.'"  Well, that's the Kinks' career in a nutshell, no?

4. Keep This Party Going  / The B-52s 
From Funplex (2008) 
I was really sorry that this recent B-52s CD didn't live up to those great 80s albums.  I can't quite figure out why -- this is a fun number (I bet it's a hoot live), but it lacks that extra wackiness that made them the quirky dance queens of New Wave.  All the elements are here -- Cindy and Kate's almost offkey harmonies, Fred's lounge-lizard rapping, over an insistent dance-party rhythm track -- but it just doesn't measure up. Thank god we've still got The B-52s, Whammy!, and Cosmic Thing...

5. I'll Follow the Sun  /  The Beatles
From Beatles 65 (1965)
Okay, I know this now appears on a CD called Beatles for Sale, the British version knocked out in a hurry for the Christmas 1964 sales season.  But the American album I grew up with was Beatles 65, and I played that baby so much, the album cover is now only held together with masses of stiff masking tape. And this little folker is one of my top tracks from this album, a standard-issue kiss-off song sung with that special tender Paul McCartney charm.  "One day / You'll look / And see I've gone / But tomorrow may rain so / I'll follow the sun."  Those odd climbing intervals, that alternation of short lines with a long fluid phrase, and then he reverses it:  "And now the time has come / When so my love / I must go / And though I lose a friend / In the end you will know / Oh oh-oh oh.."  Sheer instinctive genius.

6. Road Trippin'  / Red Hot Chili Peppers
From Californication (1999)
Proving that even a psych-punk-funk bunch of skateheads from California could turn out yearningly beautiful folk-rock -- with strings, even! -- so wistful it'll break your heart.  I like most everything of RHCP I've heard, but to me this album stands head and shoulders above the rest.  One of my favorite albums of the 1990s. Granted, the 1990s, but still...

7. Love Is an Outlaw / Tom Gallagher
From Age of the Wheel (unreleased)
The early and untimely death of my dear friend Tom Gallagher prevented him from ever getting the audience he deserved.  His unreleased album is full of superb tracks like this, with its lazy, loungy beat, plangent guitar riffs, winsome melody, and sage lyrics.  I'm happy to email this track to anybody who's curious: it's how we keep his memory alive.

8. Big Boys / Elvis Costello 
From Armed Forces (1978)
Another Iconic Album for me.  And this song has so many great lyrics, from that opening "I am starting to function / In the usual way"  through " to "Worrying about your physical fitness / Tell me how you got the sickness" and "I was down upon one knee / Stroking her vanity."  So what if it's more clever-sounding than truly wise?  He's drunk on allusive word play, and to me that tempers the Angry Young Man cynicism with his giddy enthusiasm.  I love the thrusting bass and drums giving him his marching orders, and those Steve Nieve organ riffs? Perfection.

9. On a Promise / Fine Young Cannibals 
From Fine Young Cannibals (1985)
The hoarse soulful voice of Roland Gift, matched with the English Beat's David Steele and Andy Cox -- well, Fine Young Cannibals had all the right elements lined up, that canny mix of R&B and ska and New Wave smartness. "She Drives Me Crazy" is IMO one of the best songs of the 1980s, but it was a pretty solid debut album all around, as this brooding track attests....


10. If I Said  / Colin Blunstone
From Echo Bridge (1996)
So what was Colin Blunstone doing all those years between being in the Zombies and being in the Zombies again?  Lots of things, but this solo album is perplexingly lovely -- it should have been a big hit.  This guy has one of these greatest voices in pop music; it's just heartbreakingly beautiful (yes, and sexy as hell).  Sure, he loads it up with reverb and romantic production values, all strings and maracas and a sax solo in the middle eight. It should sound cheesy, but it doesn't, because Colin Blunstone can sell wistful yearning like nobody else in the biz.

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Sweltering hot here in New York City the past few days -- how has it been where you are? Too hot to do anything else but switch on my shuffle!

1. "Hey Scenesters!" / The Cribs
From The New Fellas (2005)
Snappy guitar riffs, crisp drums, and the Jarman brothers shouting "Hey scenesters! Hey, hey scenesters!" over and over. It's like a BritPop version of the Tremeloes' goofy, genial "Even the Bad Times Are Good," right down to the lo-fi production qualities -- except for a certain tunelessness (think the Strokes on a lager high) that betrays it as a 21st century track. Infectious energy -- you've just got to giggle.

2. "Back on the Corner" / John Hiatt
From Master of Disaster (2005)
Hard to believe this was released the same year as The Cribs' -- it's a little vintage soft shoe, sung in John's creaky old-guy voice, with banjo and slide guitar to give it that O Brother Where Art Thou? style. It almost sounds like a throwaway track, but hell, nothing Hiatt writes is ever a throwaway -- listen carefully and you'll pick up nuggets of survivor wisdom.

3. "If You've Got to Make A Fool of Somebody" / Jackie DeShannon
From For You (1967)
Ah, mid-60s pop. Strings, back-up choirs, even a bloopy trombone here and there -- pour on the lush studio effects! Still, you have to hand it to Jackie -- who else was going to move the girl group sound into the hippie era?

4. "I Want to Say a Prayer" / Colin Blunstone
From Echo Bridge (1995)
I don't care who knows it -- I have a fangirl crush on Colin Blunstone, or at least on his dreamy, creamy voice. His soft-rock solo albums are nothing compared to his work with the Zombies, but sometimes this romantic mush is just what I need. (Picture big-haired Colin with his jacket slung over his shoulder and shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest.) Anyway, it's appropriate to hear this today, as today -- July 7 -- is the birthday of the wonderful Jim Rodford, who's played with Argent, the Kinks, the Animals, and nowadays with Colin in the modern-day Zombies. (Also Ringo Starr's 70th birthday, but who's counting?)

5. "She's Got You" / Loretta Lynn
From I Remember Patsy (1977)
Very few singers can cover a Patsy Cline song and hold their own -- but there's a reason why Loretta is the queen of country music. Her take on this Hank Cochran number is just a shade lighter and more kittenish than Patsy's, and in a way it works even better -- while Patsy's original was underlaid with steel, Loretta actually sounds just like a moony high-school girl, carrying a torch for her ex-steady guy.

6. "Garden Party" / Rick Nelson
From Garden Party (1972)
Oh, man, Ricky Nelson goes country. I remember being amazed by this amiable, lilting late hit -- like "American Pie," which had come out a year earlier, it's a riddling string of coded references to other musicians. But it's also Ricky's declaration of independence, casting aside the teen idol and coming into his own as country-rocker Rick. "You can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself," he tells us with a wink and nod. Life lesson.

7. "Funny Face" / The Kinks
From Something Else (1967)
A Dave song! I love Dave's voice, and this is a charming, quirky little love song, with a bit of music hall bounce. But when you're always being compared against a talent like his brother Ray . . . .

8. "How Kind of You" / Paul McCartney
From Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)
And now here's Ringo's ex-bandmate. No surprise -- I've got A LOT of this guy's stuff on my iPod, and (ahem) not all of it good. I do wish Paul McCartney would pay somebody -- somebody like me, perhaps -- to warn him off of gooping up simple little songs. That muddy harmonium, or whatever, tries to build this into an anthem, a status this slight song can't carry. I'd have rewritten a lyric here or there, kept the track acoustic, and cut the whole thing off at three minutes. Then we'd have had a beauty!

9. "Seesaw" / Don Covay
From Seesaw (1966)
Classic R & B, with a sassy horn section, handclap rhythms, and an innuendo streak a mile wide. "Your love is like a seesaw / Up, down, and all around..." I wonder who that is doing the crazy talking alongside Covay's honey-sweet vocals. Covay's one of those guys whose fingerprints are all over 1960s R&B; he started out in The Rainbows with young Marvin Gaye, but he's best known as a songwriter ("Chain of Fools," "Mercy Mercy," and many others). He wrote this one with resident Stax genius Steve Cropper, which may account for the perky Booker-T-style beat. Deee-lish.

10. "Oklahoma USA" / The Kinks
From Muswell Hillbillies (1971)
Now this is how it's done. That harmonium is so light, just a sigh here and there, against a tinkling upright piano; and Ray's breathy, yearning vocals. I think of this as an early version of "Come Dancing," soaked with nostalgia for the American culture that fed North London teens in those lean postwar years. It makes me cry every time. "All life we work, but work is a bore / If life's for living, what's living for?" Words to live by.