Month: October 2021

  • day 304: I Turned Into A Martian

    I Turned Into A Martian, by The Misfits.

    Happy Halloween.

  • day 303: I Put A Spell On You

    I Put A Spell On You, by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

    This song… is spoopy? I mean, not really. Kinda? A little. I think I somewhat unintentionally simplified it by cutting out a whole verse — there are only two, frankly, or one verse and chorus, depending on how you slice it.

  • day 302: Dreadful Wind and Rain

    Dreadful Wind and Rain, by Jerry Garcia & David Grisman.

    This song of course was gifted to me on one Garcia/Grisman record or another by my Deadhead-adjacent college roommate, though I think this burnt CD crossed hands years later. What’s better than a creepy murder ballad on a cold and windy rainy day? Lots of things. Lots of things are better, but this mission this weekend is spoopy songs. So this is what you get.

    It is predictably a #cover-of-a-cover, though really, more of a traditional with foggy origins.

  • day 301: People Are Strange

    People Are Strange, by The Doors.

    This song is not in my top 20 Doors songs, but it’s creepy, and reminds me of The Lost Boys, possibly my favorite movie just before I really got into movies.

    Halloween weekend, let’s get spoopy?

  • day 300: (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone

    (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone, by The Monkees.

    I literally can’t even. This is popped into my head — well — I was in the mood to angrily mash out some punk anthem, looked at Sex Pistols options, saw this song, got confused because I remembered them doing it but also remembered Minor Threat did it, came to understand they both did it, and learned the original (well, actually, no, but the 1960s hit version, at least) was by The Monkees, who, no, are not punk rock.

    Further disambiguation: Hendrix plays a completely different song called Stepping Stone.

    300. Three. Hundred.

  • day 299: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

    Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), by Arcade Fire.

    We’ve established that my family are big Arcade Fire fans, yes? Yes. This song is one Regine sings, mostly, which makes it even more of a favorite, especially when we’ve seen them live.

    “Dead shopping malls” is such a specific and visceral image for anyone my age, but “mountains beyond mountains” always takes me back to the dawn of our neighborhood shopping mall, and the fake (?) Spanish-adjacent tile-adjacent roof of the Macy’s towering over our old grocery store and library, and their parking lots which were previously the center of the errand universe. That mall lives, of course, because Miami, but others from just a few years earlier died in its wake, long before Amazon and everything else that would come.

    //

    I think this qualifies as some sort of emo acoustic cover, so I put on the hat.

  • day 298: Hot Dreams

    Hot Dreams, by Timber Timbre.

    I have no idea where I first heard this song, or what else this group has ever done, but it is loungey and hot and I’m glad it was in a good key for me, I think?

    //

    Feeling a little emboldened by the electric + microphone and nothing else approach.

  • day 297: Total Football

    Total Football, by Parquet Courts.

    This song takes a soccer tactical approach — Total Football — popularized by the Dutch in the 1970s, though it’s used elsewhere before and after — and applies it as a metaphor to the basic tenets of socialism, which, yes, I am the target market.

    //

    Maybe for the first time in this whole project, this is just the electric guitar, me and the microphone placed in a useful place for picking up my vocals, while the guitar is kinda impossible to miss. Seems appropriately lo-fi, and I’m glad I don’t have time today to try and drop a multi-track opus for this one.

  • day 296: Country Heroes

    Country Heroes, by Hank Williams III.

    If you’re not familiar with the musical stylings of the grandson of Hank Williams, this song is a fine place to start, but it’s just a taste of the bitterness and celebration and light-heartedness, and heavy tones that await you. I highly recommend digging up one of the live shows on YouTube where it’s a sloppy, lovable mix of his band playing some of the classics note for note, some of Hank III’s hillbilly originals — and then late in the game sometimes Hank straps on an electric and things get downright punk.

    //

    Recorded completely sober but exhausted. 😉

  • day 295: You Don’t Know How It Feels

    You Don’t Know How It Feels, by Tom Petty.

    Feeling angry tonight, but this song was the angriest thing I could rustle up on short notice. It’s late Tom Petty, definitely from a when-I-worked-at-record-stores teenage ’90s year of some sort, and I kinda remember the other single from this album better because of the video, but it fit for tonight.