songs:365

  • 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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  • day 274: Type Slowly

    Type Slowly, by Pavement.

    I was in the mood for a weird tuning, and this song in DADF#AD fit the bill. The thing about Pavement songs is that so many of Malkmus’s lyrics are absolute nonsense, even if they’re fun. i.e. “and one of us is a lovely blue incandescent guillotine” or whatever. It’s just fun to belt out.

    I have no idea what’s going on in the solo-ish pieces, because I obviously did not attempt anything as ambitious as a second guitar.

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  • day 273: Can’t Find My Way Home

    Can’t Find My Way Home, by Blind Faith.

    Surely in the year 2021, we can agree that Eric Clapton is not only not God, he is not a god, and he is not really that good a person, either. But Steve Winwood? I think he still gets the benefit of the doubt.

    This song must’ve made it onto some late ’80s or early ’90s Best Of Eric Clapton CD I had back then, aside from any classic rock radio play.

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  • day 272: Up From The Skies

    Up From The Skies, by Jimi Hendrix.

    This song is so chill, it pops into my head randomly, and not only have I never known the name of it, but it’s probably been 20 years since I listened to Axis: Bold As Love. Holds up pretty well!

    I did not attempt a solo. Or an electric guitar. Or a wah-wah effect. Just wanted to sing this, and the very simple chords turned out to not be complicated jazz chords, but very simple blues chords. I can play a B9! It’s not hard. I am sure Hendrix was playing it upside-down.

    Also, Jimi was talking about climate change in like 1967.

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    Props to the very few people possibly ever reading this who know what my answering machine message sounded like in the years of, well, answering machines, and second phone lines for teenagers.

    Also, listen to the original on headphones, please.

  • day 271: Angie

    Angie, by the Rolling Stones.

    It had been a few months since my last attempt at a Rolling Stones number, and this song didn’t require open G tuning or anything else out of the ordinary, so I sang it, for some reason, with a little flavor of Billy Corgan in some parts? Probably could try this with a capo up a full step to make it a little less rangey.

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    I did a quick audio test with the webcam software using a different microphone, and I think the problem is the software not really being tuned for singing and guitar smashing. I will look into this in the future, but today, I sang/smashed into the phone.

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  • day 270: 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)

    4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy), by Bruce Springsteen.

    OK, so, something is terrible about the sound in this new setup, tbqh, and I am not going to get to the bottom of it tonight. It is possible that my mic cable is kinked. It is possible that the windscreen pop filter thingie is deeply necessary. It is possible this webcam software doesn’t really do a good job with audio. And it is possible that I really do need to get a better stand/arm thingie (the first one was remarkably worthless) to hang it in front of my mouth, still picking up some guitar, instead of on the desk in front of the guitar, screaming along when I should be breathy and all that.

    This song has been a wrong-lyric singalong for me in many cars over many years, but it was worth the wait to learn a little. Also, this would really benefit from a better approach with some little electric piano twiddles and maybe electric guitar in place of some calliope/accordion stuff.

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  • day 269: Here Comes The Night Time

    Here Comes The Night Time, by Arcade Fire.

    Spent the weekend at a soccer tournament, a zoo, a hotel room jam-packed with my immediate family, and a sun shining like 20% more brightly than expected, so now also sunburnt, which makes the idea of “night time” when anything is going to happen juuuuust mildly humorous.

    This song is one of a dozen off Reflektor that I really enjoy. It feels wrong to not play the Part 2 part here — or is the problem that I just left off the fast part entirely and that’s why the ending was confusing for me?

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    OK, so I got a new webcam, and it came with free software that lets me record with it directly, selecting the audio source I want to use and everything, and it’s just so downright civilized? I could’ve been using this for months? And months? Could improve the quality of the last 90-something days of this project, although it sounds like there are some audio foibles to this method maybe idk.

    Took two tries to record any audio at all. btw this is like six minutes long.

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  • day 268: 59th Bridge Street Song (Feelin’ Groovy)

    59th Bridge Street Song (Feelin’ Groovy), by Simon and Garfunkel.

    This song is one of the first we all fell in love with that one year at summer camp when we burned the entirety of the concert in Central Park into our souls (and that’s what I’m linking to here, as it’s the canonical version in my mind, as it is for many of the songs on this, well, on this cassette.)

    Honestly, that bridge does not make me think of this song, tbqh. That bridge makes me think of Woody Allen movies (sigh) and the view from a cousin’s apartment (really nice), and not much else. I probably had a much more engaged relationship with the Holland Tunnel, or, OK, the Manhattan Bridge (having done many jobs Down Under the [mb] Overpass as they say), and a more troubled routine with the fickle Midtown Tunnel.

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    Richmond, Virginia, from a soccer tournament, on a good day with the whole family and a zoo break.

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