songs:365

Month: October 2021

  • day 284: Sympathy

    Sympathy, by Vampire Weekend.

    For the first time in this project, I am not recording this on the day I publish it. Sorry. On my first work trip in like 20 months, and although it would be plausibly to drag the acoustic around on airplanes — or just the MIDI keyboard, more sensibly — I don’t need the extra stress of fitting this into a schedule I don’t have lots of control over, and, well, there will be actual human beings around, so I should spend time with them.

    This song is the first of three I’m recording ahead of time, so I put some extra effort in. Hope you like.

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    Who doesn’t love a song that provides the opportunity to explain Diego Garcia (the island) to your kids? Did I tell them I once knew an ex-Navy guy who referred to it as “Diego Gar-toilet?” Yes. Yes, I did. I’m sure it’s lovely.

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  • day 283: Half A World Away

    Half A World Away, by REM.

    More REM, from Out of Time, this time, this song, lives rent-free in my head like so many of theirs, but I definitely don’t always understand like 20% of Michael Stipe’s lyrics, and apparently I’m not alone in that, but I definitely kept a few of these in my brain for the last couple decades without hesitation.

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  • day 282: It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding

    It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding, by Bob Dylan.

    I… got more than I bargained for tonight with this song. It is definitely longer than I remembered, but the changes are fun, and I was already in Dropped D (well, I was in double dropped D) from working on one of next week’s songs.

    Working on pre-recording songs for a work trip next week is just like traveling between universes in the multiverse, so I’m losing track of whether I’ve mentioned this yet, or only in the already scheduled posts for Monday and Tuesday. Tomorrow (Sunday), I’ll finish Wednesday’s song.

    Yeah, this is going fine. On the bright side, it’s somehow been more than a month since my last Dylan song? That was a surprising metric.

    If you make it through 8+ minutes of me stumbling through this one, I am legitimately concerned about you.

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  • day 281: Laundry Room

    Laundry Room, by the Avett Brothers.

    See, I know some modern stuff.

    I fully realize I usually say the same thing about any somewhat indie-but-popular song from 2010-2015: “I first heard this song on an All Things Considered podcast in the car, driving home from work, because I did that like 1500 times or whatever, so, yeah, music is the best.”

    But, yes, it’s true.

    There are some killer lines in this one. Just add banjo.

  • day 280: Time After Time

    Time After Time, by Cyndi Lauper.

    Gotta be honest with y’all, I did not have Cyndi Lauper on my dance card, but sometimes you crack open the “1980s” page on the guitar tabs site during halftime of a USMNT World Cup Qualifier and play the first thing that moves you.

    This song reminds me of early MTV and stacks of cassette tapes. The Girls Just Wanna Have Fun video was a catalyst for so many things, including a long fanship of Captain Lou Albano. Also, it’s kinda hard to sing!

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  • day 279: Okie From Muskogee

    Okie From Muskogee, by Merle Haggard.

    “Siri, show me the complete opposite of yesterday’s song.”

    This song is a song. That much is true. As you might notice from the interjections, I am singing it ironically. I have no plans to apologize to Merle Haggard or to Muskogee, Oklahoma, but it’s a fun song, either way. Frankly, I suspect Merle might’ve been singing it a little ironically, too. Although he does sound really earnest and kind in the original, to be fair.

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  • day 278: Nothing Compares 2 U

    Nothing Compares 2 U, by Sinead O’Connor.

    OK, so this is really a #cover-of-a-cover-of-a-cover, because I looked it up and decided to do the Chris Cornell version of this song, as far as the chords and lyrics go, but I’m crediting Sinead O’Connor, because that’s the version I know best, the one I hear in my head, and the cadence, I think? Except I have no idea what’s going on with that one out of place F/sus4 thing at the end of one of the verses.

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  • day 277: New Minglewood Blues

    New Minglewood Blues, by the Grateful Dead.

    Back in 2004 and 2005, apparently, when we drove a manual Honda Civic with no A/C, but a 6-disc changer in the trunk, I made some mix CDs for road trips. These things live on in the big ol’ CD wallet I still drive around with, and lately “Driving Music 04” and “Camping Mix, vol. 2” have been in rotation. The 11-year-old has identified “Driving Music” as a favorite, for some unknown reason, even taking precedence over our “Soccer Practice” Spotify playlist that includes Herbie Hancock and Fela Kuti, but OK.

    Somewhere in the middle of the CD, this song kicks in, and quickly provides somewhat nonsensical blues lyrics, if you’re an 11yo who is in a mode lately to just absolutely question everything if it’s not perfectly rationale, which is not at all exhausting.

    How can he be raised in a lion’s den?? This song doesn’t make any sense.

    My younger spawn.

    It’s great. Today when I skipped it, because he’s annoying, he insisted that we listen to it, but that I wasn’t supposed to sing along. Reader, I sang along.

    I’m not sure which version is on the CD, of course, but I was a big fan of May ’77, and there’s one of those on Spotify, so that’s where I’m linking to above.

    Oh, and of course, this is a #cover-of-a-cover, as the original is by someone called Noah Lewis.

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  • day 276: Runaway Train

    Runaway Train, by Soul Asylum.

    This song is a perfectly fine song, that I feel like heard 14,035,120 times on MTV after enjoying it the first couple hundred times. Sometime late in high school, I went to a show at Bayfront Amphitheater (we bought tickets that time, not like the Pearl Jam show), that went Screaming Trees > Soul Asylum > Spin Doctors, and if that isn’t a story about music in the ’90s, I don’t know what is.

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    Haven’t heard it in decades, but feels like I got it right! Cowboy hat because it’s a train song, I guess?

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  • day 275: When I Get To The Border

    When I Get To The Border, by Richard and Linda Thompson.

    This song is the first on what might’ve been the first Richard and Linda Thompson album I heard, on a tape I probably mentioned last time. It deserves a second guitar track, or harmonica or something, but this is it for the night.

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    275 down?? 90 days to go, a clean quarter of the year left.

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