songs:365

  • day 337: Ultralight Beam

    Ultralight Beam, by Kanye West (et al).

    What? It’s Kanye. What were you expecting? 🙂

    OK, first of all, appreciation, not appropriation. To say Kanye West is a “guilty pleasure” for someone like me implies a graduate-level (pun intended) thesis on (white) guilt, pleasure, hip-hop, sampling, and possibly the upper crust of the fashion business.

    Have I bumped Kanye’s Workout Plan on commutes in a Honda? Yes. Have I bumped Yeezus in a Prius on my way back from picking up the CSA? Certainly. Did I once unexpectedly get invited by a colleague with an extra ticket to an arena show on said Yeezus tour, where the big white mountain opened up and Kanye and chorus marched out to Jesus Walks? YES. That happened. Did he rant about Louis Vuitton from behind a jeweled mask from the raised stage to a building full of decidedly not white suburban dads (except the two of us, mostly)? Sure, that also was a thing that I witnessed.

    The thing about Kanye, is there are a million things about Kanye, and mine are all the least important.

    This song (and the rest of TLoP) takes me directly to Amtrak, to a year with a lot of commutes to New York from DC and those moments of early morning pause and peace as the train picked up speed and the sun rose, that’s where I listened to this album for the first time, so, yeah, it’s a little spiritual for me.

    //

    OK, so I really did tear up my hand yesterday, and despite a “just put pressure on it” session this morning watching Get Back and not touching my phone, I had to get the wound sealed with some silver nitrate and skin glue today, so guess who has one fully functional hand and can’t play guitar for a couple days? This guy.

    Apologies for how bad I butchered some bits; thankful for the parts I got right; grateful that most of y’all can’t tell the difference, or won’t mind, at least.

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  • day 336: Don’t Let Me Down

    Don’t Let Me Down, by the Beatles.

    This song was the first attractive thing I spotted on the trending list of songs on the guitar chords website, I guess because of the Get Back documentary, which I will go watch some of now while applying some pressure on my bleeding hand which I don’t think I cut playing guitar earlier, nah, couldn’t be that.

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  • day 335: Wicked Game

    Wicked Game, by Chris Isaak.

    Three chords and the truth, AMIRITE? I feel like this guy was going for Elvis, but singing this song tonight, it felt a heckuva lot more like Roy Orbison. The man can yodel. Which is fine and good, and my hair was never (and will never be) as cool as this guy’s. I think this was probably a song my mom and I might’ve heard and liked at the same time? Did we fight over the tape? Or was it hers?

    Either way, it’s a banger for sure. This is one that could probably use a slide solo, or otherwise some heavy reverb electric thing, as long as I keep it clean, but you’re getting the acoustic version for now.

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  • 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.

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    31 DAYS LEFT!

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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. 😉

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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