Belong, by REM.
Did I once fall in love to this song on a mixtape? Maybe. Had I ever paid much attention to the lyrics, other than something about the barricades and the sea, and the word “belong?” Maybe not. Did playing these two (barely more than one) chords for 3.5 minutes hurt my wrist? Yes.
Either Way, by Wilco.
This song leads off Sky Blue Sky, and wishing I could play every song on that album is part of what led me to buy an electric guitar again a few years back, along with various Pavement-and-Wilco compatible bits of gear, like the little Orange amp over my shoulder. I can’t play the Side With The Seeds solo yet, but at least I could handle a somewhat simplified version of this one.
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, by U2.
This song was not on my list, but it fell into my lap tonight, and so here you have it. I spent an hour or so on something else that involved electric guitars and multiple tracks, and I’m tired, and the dog needs to chill out, so I’m not ready for all that feedback at the moment.
Alternatively, at some point, I’m just going to commit to a large run of Christmas songs. At some point. Very soon.
In My Time Of Dyin’, by Bob Dylan.
This song was super fun to play, another one of these Dylan blues translations in an open tuning, with a capo, and an optional slide (rehearsed with it a little but didn’t use it when I recorded.)
So it’s a traditional, maybe attributable to Blind Willie Johnson, but if you don’t know the Dylan version, you might know the Zeppelin version, and just mayyyyyyybe you know it from its appearance/interpolation in one of the Spacemen 3 songs I did earlier in this project.
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Did I have to open the door to try and let the barking dog know where I was, and that I was the source of the offensive noise she was barking at? Yes. Yes, I did.
Rockin’ Chair, by The Band.
Felt like The Band today, and this song is one of my standard “I’ve created a family tradition that I’m supposed to sing a song about the state when we cross the state line and enter it” numbers for our home state of Virginia, so I almost feel obliged?
Inspired to hack away at this after a high school orchestra and band concert tonight. If they can do it, why not me?
Hunger Strike, by Temple of the Dog.
Supergroup. The word gets tossed around a lot. The Wikipedia page is a joke. The definition is slippery. Is Temple of the Dog a supergroup? A Soundgarden-Pearl Jam mashup in tribute to the deceased Andrew Wood, singer of Mother Love Bone, who, legend has it, might’ve been the best songwriter and the biggest star to come out of the Seattle Grunge movement, if he had survived long enough to see it break.
Seems pretty super to me.
And it sure seemed super when I was a teenage fan of all those things. Plus, there’s the video for this song. Honestly, revisiting it now, this whole album is amazing? This might be my favorite Chris Cornell work, plus Seasons, the solo acoustic thing from the Singles soundtrack. Say Hello 2 Heaven? Banger. Pushin’ Forward Back? Pearl Jam calling the shots, tbqh. Call Me A Dog? Classic. All Night Thing? Grunge ballad that swings. And TIL, this was all recorded before Ten and Badmotorfinger, and predates lots of things; I only heard it when it was released again after both bands had made it big, albeit in Nirvana’s wake.
Anyway, the year is winding down.
Your Wildest Dreams, by the Moody Blues.
Did I get into the Moody Blues via this song, somehow, and play their 1980s comeback (?) cassette until it fell apart? Maybe.
Was one of my first few concerts a Moody Blues show from this tour at Gulfstream Race Track as part of the Broward County Fair lineup? Mayyyyyybe.
Did I think this song was about me and the trail of 1-3 day “relationships” I had with girls as a 4th-to-5th grader? Yes, of course I did.
Do I remember singing this song looking at the lake behind the house, in a romantic way? For sure.
Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie, by Johnny Cash.
This song is not really karaoke-appropriate, but it’s one I love to sing/speak-sing along to in the car/train/boxcar/etc.
I was playing a lot of the songs off the early American Recordings albums when I met my wife, so they tend to place me on a motel front porch in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico, strumming a guitar with a Tecate very close at hand, among other things.
It is, of course, as with anything from those albums, more or less, a #cover-of-a-cover, being itself a cowboy traditional cover of a sailor’s lament. And then a Lomax recorded it, and then a Rogers made it famous, and somewhere in the distance beyond that, a Cash did the thing.
Black Hole Sun, by Soundgarden.
I’m not sure I ever owned a Soundgarden record, but I saw them live at least once, at Lollapalooza 1992, and… maybe? I saw them? Open for Guns ‘n’ Roses? The year before? [Wow, I did.] This song came long after that in grunge years, and I didn’t think about it for a couple decades until a colleague suggested it in a jam room at a meetup (I… can explain, but also, won’t) and it was fun to play!
Liquid Swords, by GZA.
This song works on so many levels. Maybe, like me, you heard Liquid Swords, Joe Biden’s favorite Wu-Tang Clan album, when it came out, in situ, an unexpected masterwork from GZA, The Genius, RZA’s cousin, a future collaborator of Vangelis, the head of the Voltron, according to Method Man.
Or, maybe you came to it later. Or maybe you saw his late-before-times NPR Tiny Desk concert, where he does this track live, and it slays.
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No guitar today, so I cleared another MIDI-keyboard-and-Garage-Band-loops hip-hop track off the list.
My delivery is what it is.