songs:365

Month: October 2021

  • day 294: If It Be Your Will

    If It Be Your Will, by Leonard Cohen.

    Another one from the Pump Up The Volume soundtrack — I warned y’all it was formative — they don’t get through more than a verse of this song in the movie, and it stuck in my head so firmly that I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what it was, where to find it, which album it was on, etc., because although it’s in the movie, as noted by the Concrete Blonde version of Everybody Knows, the Leonard Cohen songs were not on the soundtrack that was released, I think? At least not the cassette I must’ve bought in 1992 or whatever. Reading up on it, Side B of Various Positions starts with Hallelujah and ends with this, and you can definitely hear some obvious bookending in the biblical-ish references.

    //

    Still have a cough, so I sought out something deep.

    Tags:

  • day 293: Semi Suite

    Semi Suite, by Tom Waits.

    I usually call this song “Truck Drivin’ Man” in my head, and had to stop and think pretty hard when I saw “Semi Suite” on the track listing for this album, which I realize is one of several I have threatened to cover in its entirety. When one has a cold, might as well throw oneself at something gravelly.

    Tags:

  • day 292: Hallelujah

    Hallelujah, by Jeff Buckley.

    This song was a Jeff Buckley song for me before it was a Leonard Cohen song, or a John Cale song, for that matter, but I love them all, so this is a cover of Jeff Buckley’s version, but thanks to my cold, the first verse and chorus is in Leonard mode.

    This is literally always in, like, the top 2 songs on the website I go to for guitar chords, and I have more questions than answers about that, but I know I’ve read before stories about all the versions of this thing, and how Shrek drove it into the stratosphere, and that movie’s alright, but I don’t want to give it too much credit. I am old enough to have heard the Jeff Buckley version when it was contemporary, and I was working in record stores the summer after freshman year of college, I guess?

    It’s Wonderwall-level played out, but I couldn’t play 365 songs and leave this one out.

    Kinda fun to read up on the places this guy played in New York that I would underage-drink in not too long after.

    Tags: ,

  • day 291: Corrina, Corrina

    Corrina, Corrina, by Bob Dylan.

    Doing Bob Dylan songs with a cold is a little on the nose, but at least I managed to get into a weird open D (DADF#AD) tuning for this one to mess around with something new. This song doesn’t do much, but it does it real pretty.

    Tags:

  • day 290: All Gone, All Gone

    All Gone, All Gone, by Palace Songs.

    Another one of my most precious bits of indie rock, a band and record that I only discovered via that Amy Sohn column in New York Press before other friendly indie rockers more twee than me validated my love for all things Palace, be they Songs or Brothers or Music.

    This song (Bandcamp link!) has some killer lines, and part of the chorus has the same chords as part of the chorus of the only “song” I ever really “wrote” as a teenage guitar student, which I just realized.

    //

    I’m a little under the weather, hence the Bill Callahan baritone for as long as I could stand it. Props to the phone microphone for not making it terrible.

    Tags:

  • day 289: Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?

    Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?, by Peter Sarstedt.

    This song is on the Darjeeling Limited soundtrack. (Maybe it actually plays during the Hotel Chevalier short before it? I forget, but it’s the first song on the soundtrack to our favorite Wes Anderson movie, truly.) Last weekend when I was playing Half A World Away, my wife asked if I was playing this song; all she can really hear from upstairs is the rhythm of the chords, unless it’s something very very recognizable, so that tracks.

    //

    Had to add the little hook with the accordion or whatever, but of course with a weird synth instead, and it works pretty well!

    Tags:

  • day 288: Minnie the Moocher

    Minnie the Moocher, by Cab Calloway.

    The first time I sang this song at karaoke was in Louisville at IRE NICAR, at a sort of “oh I guess we’re doing this” informal karaoke night, and there were… a number of people there? A good number. I don’t think I had ever sung the whole thing before, but I was most likely the only person in the room that once saw Cab Calloway sing this song live and in person which was a treat I probably appreciated for the singalongness of it.

    Also, the Blues Brothers.

    //

    A horn section! I made some minor efforts to break it up when it should be broken up with different parts.

    Tags:

  • day 287: Candle in the Wind

    Candle in the Wind, by Elton John.

    Not sure you can tell in the video, but I am back from a work trip and I’m completely exhausted, just absolutely wrecked and can’t wait to go to sleep. I messed around with the faceted search on the guitar chords site, like “give me something in D with a capo from the 1970s” and this worked out pretty well! (I guess it’s actually in E with the capo, which tells you something about data quality and how they’re indexing that sort of thing.)

    This song is apparently from the 1970s? I know, that was surprising to me, too. Why did it become a hit again in the late ’80s or whenever that was? I don’t mean the Princess Diana remix, either. Maybe there was a movie or something? Anyway, I’m a sucker for this one. Hmm, did I forget to do the real emotional chorus toward the end? Heckit.

    Tags:

  • day 286: Love Will Tear Us Apart

    Love Will Tear Us Apart, by Joy Division.

    I might’ve heard this song before a teenage mixtape someone else made for me, but I’m not sure. We did listen to enough New Order in the first record store I worked at — I think some compilation came out around then which gave us an easy excuse — but I always feel this in my guts.

    //

    Last pre-recorded track, if you’re watching this it should be Wednesday, and I’ll be back in the studio basement tomorrow.

    Also, I apparently accidentally recorded the video in slow motion and had to wrestle with it to get it back to normal after a lot of weird face-making at the 10-minute 1GB video transfer over Airdrop.

    Tags:

  • day 285: The Chain

    The Chain, by Fleetwood Mac.

    Another pre-recorded number while I’m out of the office. 😉

    I’ve been wanting to do this song all year, and my renewed love of it goes back to a Song Exploder (or the NPR version, I forget) podcast with Lindsey Buckingham, I think, where he unpacked the tracks and, uhhhhmmmm relationships. And some of the drugs involved, I think. There were a lot of all three.

    //

    Never satisfied with what I pass off as the idea of harmonies, but parts of this are listenable.

    Tags: