Bottom Line Man, by Giant Sand

I thought it was Lou Reed on my IPod, but I realized I don't have any Lou Reed albums. Then the slightly country, subdued folksy melody wafted over my brain a little longer.
The echo-y barroom piano and the acoustic guitar, coupled with Howe Gelb's voice and poetry make this song one to stick with you.

Few good things come from Arizona these days (ahem). Gian Sand is one of 'em

Everytime I Look at You by Hall & Oates

So, I am old fashioned. I don't have an I-Pod and my car still has one of those "CD players" in it. And the CD I find myself returning to the most, depspite the fact that I have well over 200 CDs...
Daryl Hall and John Oates 1974 opus dei, "Abandoned Luncheonette."
Nix whatever you think about Hall and Oates. You are thinking , oh lame 80s band with cheesy synth riffs. Yes they were, but before that they were a soul band. And oh so good! This album is great. It has withstood the test of time and it beats anything on the airwaves today. Lame rappers who rip off Kraftwerk riffs etc. Fuck that shit!
Viva Hall and Oates!!
The last track on this album is "Everytime I Look at You." IT starts out oh so funky. A man scorned. He sings. Rock on Daryl. The riffs are funky with some pop tinges, but after a few minutes it really breaks down into hard funk...then without warning the fiddle and the banjo!!! You don't believe me. Believe me! This is so good and it works. I first heard it on old vinyl. It was instantly my fave. I still love it and I often wonder what their first album sounds like. I guess I might have to scour ebay for a copy.
Good thing I hung onto my CD player

Crosseyed & Painless- The Talking Heads

This blog was feeling neglected so I swam through the depths of my mind for something cool.

Talking Heads. 80s suits aside, they rocked. You may think "oh burning down the house" yeah right, but they were really ahead of their time rock n rollers. Get the Sand in the Vaseline set and enjoy some of the not so well known numbers like this one. The music is interesting and unique. No cookie cutter shit here. I mean, who sounds like the Talking Heads? who did they sound like? Exactly.

As we go up, we go down by GBV

Ok, I just realized that GBV is not on here enough. Thank you Troy for your post way back in the day.

For starters, Bob Pollard is the most genious song writer of our time hands down. No bones about it, no one else will match. The music is good becuase it is one take, 4 track in some guy's basement RAW. And these guys rock cuz they never sold out, never moved to NYC or LA. They did it all in Dayton, Ohio. Somebody crown the men, or whoever might be left.

This song is one of the catchier tunes of the Alien Lanes disc. All GBV discs give you a scramble of near pop hits mixed with noisy lo-fi cuts and some that you can tell they just weren't trying that hard. You can't help singing along with this one

I can't terrorize/I see terror in your eyes
As we go up, we go down
I can't socialize/I'll be institutionalized
As we go up, we go down
And see the truth
Is a lie.

It is so simple, yet so deep.

Long live GBV

* Granted, the Pollard-Sprout years were the best. Even though I appreicate GBV in all its manifestations.

Bob Andy - You Don't Know

I picked this one up on iTunes. It was one of my favorites to hear at the now-defunct Answer Bar in the Nishinakajima-Minamigata neighborhood of Osaka. I miss that place. This is a deep old reggae cut that was part of an iTunes Trojan Records essentials collection. I had always wondered how to find it again and it was mine for the amazing price of 99 cents.
I never knew what the song was called or the artist but would often hear it amongst the mix of reggae tunes over the PA at my favorite bar from 2001-2003. Often I was several glasses of Booker's away from the real world, but that one was just so beautiful it got to me wherever I was.

"Funky Oolong Cha" by Super Butter Dog

Another re-discovery.

This song was a hit for a few weeks back in the winter of ought 1. I was a young stallion in Osaka. Living large, single, had a lady friend, spent my money on food, booze and music. That was it. So simple. This song came on the radio and it was really funky. I had to wait like 2 weeks till the next batch of CDs came in. At times it reminds me of Ben Folds with some hard an heavy piano, but this track is pure funk.

The opening guitar riff is a rip-off on the hackneyed stereotypical Chinese jingle that you would find in cartoons or bad 70s kung fu movies. Imposible to explain but you know what I am talking about "Na-na-na nah nah, nah nah naaaah" And the song is entirelt an ode to Oolong Tea.
"If you are thirsty, just down it"
"If you are sweatin, just down it"

The chorus is simple, sweet Japanese English
"We are funky oolong cha"

But lest we forget, the instrumentation is flawless. Like many Japanese bands, they could probably perfectly copy any Western music. Where SBD differs is that they do show some originality, moreso in lyrical styling than actual music, and they pay homage to a forgotten genre of music, good ole funk.

Steve Wariner - Lynda

Flabbergasted I begin this entry. I had ideas about what the blog itself meant to me but it was about records that touched me in some way. So I went back to my early days growing up in the West Texas oil country and I remembered the radio which was always on in our house. I grew up well and in 1984 we had a house with an intercom system which was cool at the time but quickly lost popularity. That aside, I remember a great deal of the country music which poured through. After the Eagles' contribution to country which glitzed it up a bit, country music was looking for a direction in the early 1980s which inevitably lead to the Nashville disco which we've come to hate. Underground and alt-country acts kept the flame alive, but America had its attention diverted and "superstars" came to power in the genre.
This track is hardly blameless. I won't defend the electric drums and the other 80s studio tricks they used but I will say the strength of the composition overrides the trickery. There is something about a Steve Wariner song that is hard to explain. If you aren't Southern, I can't really expect you to understand this but it has a beauty all its own that people with a taste for such a thing can appreciate.
Next time, something beaty, funky or rocky.

Tom Waits- Bone Machine

Ok, this time I am nominating an entire album. It is all just too good to choose one song. This album beat out Nirvana Nevermind to get the Alternative Album of the Year Award in 1992. Ack, but what is alternative?
Tom Waits is just a damn good musician. He plays everything and sings everything from lounge jazz, to gospel, to blues to avant-spooky rock. His style is unique. No one can compare. And this album is one of his best. Perhaps I think that just because this is the first Tom Waits album I ever owned. But I have listened to many and this one seems to me to be the most cohesive, and it was probably the most commerically accessible release he ever made. Which is another good thing about Tom. You can choose an album (and he has made tons) depending on your mood. It's like choosing fine wines to go with dinner. Mr Waits will never let you down. And he is also a little bit of an actor. He was in Mystery Men as the junkyard owner and he starred in one (or more?) of Jim Jarmusch's films.
If you want tracks, then I recommend "Murder in the Red Barn," "Earth Died Screaming," "In the Colloseum"

ZZ Top - Rough Boy

A classic '80s tune. Beautiful in its own perverse way. A sound of the times which doesn't really stand up for its own merit but the legend of ZZ Top lives
The solo is classic Billy Gibbons pinch harmonics over brilliantly absurd synth atmospherics. It could be dismissed as an atypical ZZ Top song, but their '80s output is not so easy to cast aside. A great track. Afterburner really is a good album, kitsch factor aside.

If I Only Had a Brain by MC 900 Ft. Jesus

I rediscovered this hit in my collection. I remember the video where he tries to mail himself in a big box but gets returned for not having postage on the box. Silly, but it was good. And the track is great. Fun lyrics and a funky beat that is not too dated for being 10 yrs old. The One Step Ahead of the Spider album itself is an eclectric mix of electronica and Miles Davis style fusion jazz. Some may not like the semi spoken word stylings of the MC, but I dig him.