THE FRIDAY SHUFFLE

Back to school time -- got my clean notebooks and sharpened pencils and new plaid skirt all ready to go.  Summer's distractions have been put behind me, and I'm ready to get back down to bizness. 


Only problem is, my Amazon widget -- the one that let me post links to mp3s so you could listen to the songs with me -- isn't working today.  My apologies -- I'll be sure to come back and add those links when it's been fixed. 

1. I've Got It All (Most) / Modest Mouse
From Good News for People Who Love Bad News (2004)
Well, now here's a song that speaks to my current mood.  "I've got it al......most / I've got it all, almost all figured out / But when I get there / Always when I get there, / The pieces, they just fall apart."  If Cubists made rock and roll,  this is what it would sound like: neurotic vocals and lurching offbeat rhythms, sewn together with swoops of melody and a funky underpinning.  As my son remarked, listening to Modest Mouse's contribution to the Rave On Buddy Holly tribute: "If I heard this song blind, I wouldn't know it was Buddy Holly, but I'd definitely know it was Modest Mouse. You can't mistake that sound."  

2. Take the Long Way Around / Teenage Fanclub
From Songs From Northern Britain (1997) 
Don't these guys do great hooks?   Somehow their songs always slide past without me really listening to the lyrics, I guess because the lyrics are beside the point.  But they've got all the pop energy their name promises, refreshingly s l o w e d  down just enough to let it swing. And those rich vocal harmonies make me think for some reason of the Jayhawks -- anybody else?

3. Find Another Girl / The Hives
From Veni Vidi Vicious (2000)
Speaking of re-invented covers -- these snappy Swedes have utterly transformed this Curtis Mayfield-Jerry Butler Philly soul classic, turning it into -- ta-da~  a Hives song!  What else, when you've got Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's tuneless vocals and that scruffy skate-punk wall of sound? Still, I dunno -- that note of existential despair works oddly well for this song.  Who'd a guessed that?

4. So It Goes / Nick Lowe
From  Jesus of Cool (1976)
Well, this has been quite a week for St. Nick, freshly canonized in the mainstream press in honor of his new country crooner album The Old Magic.  (Yeah, yeah, I've got it, I'll be reviewing it soon -- that one deserves a full weekend's listen, preferably with a good bottle of Scotch.)  But it's a nice change-up to get an invigorating shot of Old Nick. It's easy to get caught up in the boppy beat and those overlapping "so it goes"-es, but Nick's surrealistic lyrics were always better than they needed to be for Pure Pop. Best verse: "In the air there's aftershave lotion / In the wake of a snaky Persian / On his arm is a skin-tight vision / Wonder why she ain't mine, she's his."  There's a whole novel there, my friends, or at least a Cameron Crowe movie.    

5.  Lost and Found / The Kinks
From Think Visual (1986)
Mmmm....Ray's hurricane song.  This has been quite a week for Ray as well, as tickets have been selling like hot cakes to his November U.S. tour dates.  (Hours battling Ticketmaster finally snagged me a 4th row way on the side for the New York City date -- hmmph. I hate scalpers.).  

6. One for My Baby / Rosemary Clooney
From 70 -- A 70th Birthday Celebration (1998)
I'll take Rosemary Clooney over Peggy Lee any day -- nearly as sultry, but with a voice as clear as a mountain stream, even on this late recording.  Sinatra's original of this Arlen/Mercer classic is pretty hard to top, but damn if Rosie doesn't pull it off, with masterly phrasing and a seen-it-all shrug in her voice. Set 'em up, Joe!

7. All In Good Time / Ron Sexsmith
From Time Being (2006)
Nick Lowe keeps telling interviewers lately that Ron Sexsmith is one of his favorite songwriters. Another thing I have in common with Nick Lowe!  Ron's our great Canadian folk-pop philosopher, reflecting on the nature of love and loss with a gently lilting acoustic twang.  This song pretty well sums up this album's earnest meditations on mortality -- the catchiest sermons you'll ever love.


8. The Lasting Kind  / Greg Trooper
From Floating (2003)
Another Greg Trooper album you ought to own, the first one that hooked me on this guy's genius. A little country wheeze adds plangency to this yearning-for-love song that should have covered by mega-artists and made Troop the fortune he deserves. (Calling Curtis Stigers!)  Dig how those brooding verses swell into the heartfelt chorus: "There's love that sees and love that's blind / Love that pays no mind / Leaving and the left behind / I'm looking for the lasting kind."  Aren't we all?

9. Long Gone Lonesome Blues / Sheryl Crow
From Timeless: Hank Williams (1998)

Wow, this is really Covers Night, isn't it?  Sheryl's cover doesn't take the crown away from Hank's original, but it ticks along nicely, and her yodeling is way better than you'd expect. (Disclaimer:  I still haven't forgiven Sheryl for Lance Armstrong.)  I got this track on a mix-tape my friend Jim sent me (yes, people do still send each other mix-tapes, children) and every time this track comes up, I grudgingly admit, "you know, I really ought to listen to more Sheryl Crow." So I'm open to suggestions....

10. I've Just Seen A Face  /  The Beatles
From Help!  (1965)
Talk about going country -- here's Paul trying on some rockabilly shoes, back in 1965 when these guys absolutely could not fail. (Come to think of it, their entire career was like that.)  A delicious dose of rockabilly syncopation: "Fallin', yes I am fallin' / And she keeps callin' / Me back again" -- oh, if only.

"The World'll Be Okay" /
Teenage Fanclub

Finally I get it.

I've had these guys on my iTunes for a couple years, but somehow I never really listened to them. They never come up in my shuffle, which I guess isn't surprising -- I only have 10 of their songs on there, compared to the complete works of Nick Lowe (if someone made a bootleg of Nick gargling in the morning I'd probably put it on my iTunes); it's no contest who surfaces more often on the shuffle. If they do cycle up, I probably think it's Big Star and pay no attention. I was mystified, to tell you the truth. How could Nick Hornby have steered me wrong?

So I made a concerted effort to listen to Teenage Fanclub, on the advice of a couple fansters whose taste I totally trust, but I couldn't get past the power-pop surface (at least The Romantics and the Knack have irresistible hooks to pull you in). It might have helped if I'd listened to Teenage Fanclub when I was in college -- there's something indelible about the music you loved in college. (No other explanation for my ABBA fanship.) But they weren't around when I was in college; this album, Songs From Northern Britain, came out in 1997, though it feels a lot more vintage than that.

But I recently organized my iPod into loads of fresh playlists (new dog, lots of walking in the park -- the iPod is my new best friend) and I put "The World'll Be Okay" on a playlist of songs with the words "all right" or "okay" in the titles. I know, it sounds hokey, but it happens to work as a playlist. And now every time that song comes up I'm grooving totally.

What I've finally figured out is that Teenage Fanclub isn't about hooks (except for "What You Do To Me" -- now that one is pure homage to Big Star). They're about texture, and that's a whole 'nuther thing. The guitar line weaves a psychedelic spell that gradually mesmerizes you, but ONLY if you're not "listening." Do I imagine a trace of the Byrds in there, like "Eight Miles High"?

This song is drenched with angst over a long-distance relationship -- "I talk to you by satellite / I hope before they reach you, space will make the words sound right" -- and that's a song topic that always hits home for me. It's more wistful than Franz Ferdinand's "Eleanor Get Your Boots On" but more disoriented than Simon and Garfunkel's "Kathy's Song" . . . hmmm, I feel a new playlist coming on.

But the perspective definitely gets trippy, like when the singer (Raymond McGinness on this one) says, "I don't know where to draw the line / The flat horizon stretches out between your world and mine / And where I go will follow no design." That insistently repeated refrain, "you know the world'll be okay," has a melancholy ring that deepens the more he repeats it. Because this guy doesn't believe the world will be okay; he's lonely, and he needs that girl -- he needs her to be with him right now.

Eventually the lyrics get pretentious: "I waste my time with magazines / The pages live life for you when your needs don't match your means / But your cares will suppress my selfish genes." Sorry guys, but after Robyn Hitchcock my standards for vague nonsense are set pretty darn high, and that softly earnest vocal leaves no room for irony. But I'll forgive them, just because of those lush harmonies, like a big pillow you can sink into.

Well, I'm relieved, that's all I can say. And now I have hope -- maybe someday I'll even figure out what the big deal is about Joy Division.

The World'll Be Okay sample