Month: November 2021

  • day 334: Chelsea Hotel #2

    Chelsea Hotel #2, by Leonard Cohen.

    Another dreary Leonard Cohen number? No! Another joyful Leonard Cohen celebration of life. To be honest, we started watching Hawkeye, and it made me a smidgen nostalgic for New York in winter, so I was headed for Famous Blue Raincoat when this song popped into my head instead. It seemed so salacious when I was a teenager. It seems so naturally pedestrian now.

    //

    31 DAYS LEFT!

  • day 333: April Come She Will

    April Come She Will, by Simon and Garfunkel.

    Linking to the Central Park version, because as you might expect, that’s the canonical one in my mind.

  • day 332: Minor Threat

    Minor Threat, by Minor Threat.

    This song was always my favorite off of what I still think of as “the Minor Threat tape I borrowed from at least two different way more punk rock than me people before and during high school” but really, of course, it’s from “the first two 7 inches” later compiled, etc., etc.

    If it’s not obvious from the borrowed tapes and, uh, the red plaid shirt and age, that I am at best a punk rock imposter and at worst a poser, this performance should make that clear. Then again, one take with little rehearsal, messing stuff up and continuing anyway, etc., etc. who is to say what punk rock is, anyway?

    My fondest memories of the high school parking lot involve leaving it, blasting something too loud from the portable cassette player that I kept on the bench seat next to me, because the car was too old to have a tape player, and the speakers didn’t really work for the radio, anyway. Blasting Minor Threat on the way out was a statement, a rebellion, a lie, a promise, and none of those things, but it was always thrilling.

  • day 331: Two Of Us

    Two Of Us, by the Beatles.

    This song was a highlight of some alternative universe Let It Be anthology, I think? Or does John really make an Everly Brothers reference on the original? Or was Let It Be just the Beatles record I got into last, appropriately enough, having started early in life with mom’s vinyl copies of Meet The Beatles and Rubber Soul? I spent a solid chunk of my teenage years with the back half of Abbey Road on repeat, but feel like I didn’t give Let It Be the time of day until much later in my early twenties. 😉

  • day 330: Driving on 9

    Driving on 9, by the Breeders.

    At various points in the past 30 years or so, I thought this song a) said “driving all night” which it does not and b) was a Pixies song, which it is not. But I loved Last Splash so very much, and I was the kind of “alternative” kid from the suburbs who knew the Breeders before I knew the Pixies, or maybe contemporaneously at best, because what I was ready to hear in 1991 was different from what I was ready to hear in 1989.

    //

    Last song from Mom’s house for a minute.

  • day 329: Lonely Teardrops

    Lonely Teardrops, by Jackie Wilson.

    Here’s a sloppy classic post-Thanksgiving dinner track. This song was either on the La Bamba soundtrack or the Heartbreak Hotel soundtrack, the two formative oldies soundtracks of my youth.

  • day 328: Ziggy Stardust

    Ziggy Stardust, by David Bowie.

    This song was one of the very first I tried when I made the list for this project, and maybe the third time I’ve attempted it this year. Many, many, extra props and acknowledgements to the Seu Jorge version, but also played mostly from memory from hearing this a hundred thousand times on classic rock radio growing up.

  • day 327: Fire and Rain

    Fire and Rain, by James Taylor.

    Somehow, summer camp took ownership of James Taylor songs for me sometime around age 14 or 15, wrestling it away from soft rock radio and planting this song and that other one everyone knows into my teenage psyche as songs that bring up a very particular gym in a very particular location with very particular people.

    //

    Back at Mom’s studio this week for Thanksgiving, natch.

  • day 326: Depreston

    Depreston, by Courtney Barnett.

    The first time I did a Courtney Barnett song, I think I wrote about the year (2018? 2019?) when her music was a huge part of my daily playlists; I did the dishes, I made breakfast, I cooked dinner, with “Courtney Barnett Radio” or similar in my ears and in my head for a long stretch of time, and this song was always a highlight, not just as an unironic homeowner, but also for the closing refrain, a sort of curse, a meditation, a wish, etc.

  • day 325: Alex Chilton

    Alex Chilton, by the Replacements.

    I crossed the Replacements off the list earlier this week, with two of their songs done in this project, and struggling since then to pick a favorite and do it justice, but I was listening to the Bandsplain episode about them and hearing this again, with some context, made me insist to myself that I needed this song back on the list.

    //

    These are probably… not the original chords. The version online says something about using a capo so you can stay in standard tuning, which, to me, is like, an interesting hint that there’s a rabbit hole to go down trying to figure out how they played it, but then again, I would think the volume of alcohol they consumed at their own live shows would not mix well with too many complex tunings? Or is that just me…