John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

Weekend playlist: Squeeze to play

I've spent another week hooked on blip.fm, which is kind of like the Twitter of online radio. You can find me here; send me a note if you have an account and tell me where to find you. Here are some of the songs I've been blaring out of my laptop this weekend. For each song, I've linked to the "blip" so you can listen for yourself; the links are all current as of now, but as Blip.fm listeners, come to know quickly, links for streaming audio are anything but consistent.

Squeeze: Black Coffee in Bed. I was a teenager when Squeeze were at their prime, so I was a bit too young to personally connect with their songs - witty, sour, forlorn, sometimes all that and more, at once - but loved them all the same. They got more applause than sales at the time, but at least their material holds up so well. Stream it here.

Tinted Windows: New Cassette. Deliberately retro in tone and title - a paean to the cassette? Really? - this is a song by what's been called a supergroup, which I guess is plausible. There's a Cheap Trick, a Smashing Pumpkin, a Fountain of Wayne and ... a Hanson. Hmmm. It's a power-pop sound, for sure, but I'm not inclined to shell out any money for it. Listen to it here.

Swing Out Sister: Breakout (live). I didn't actually much care for Swing Out Sister, an act that got caught up in the jazzy scenester trend that came out of the U.K. 20-odd years ago. (Cocktails, turtlenecks, shades ... you know the drill.) However, this live recording of Breakout, their biggest hit, caught me in the right mood today. If nothing else, it shows they were no studio act. Stream it here.

Kai Winding: Dirty Dog. There aren't many jazz trombonists; Winding sometimes recorded with one of the few others, J.J. Johnson, but here is solo, with a sound that is perfectly placed for 1966. You can just imagine hep cats doing the Watusi ... or Batman and Catwoman doing the Batusi, for that matter. Stream it here.

David Bowie: DJ. From Lodger, Bowie's song about disc jockeys is evergreen, even though the whole business of being a radio jock has changed completely, and most kids today think of "DJ" as a verb as much as a noun, and even then, the radio is not really part of the equation. On Blip.fm, the users are all called DJs ... a symbol of the democratizing, amateur ethic that makes the web work these days. Oh, and the Bowie song is still great. Listen here.

Weekend playlist (blipped)

I've been having a lot of fun lately with Blip, which combines a social network approach with streaming audio. I'm still missing Pandora, whose service was yanked from Canadian ears a while back. Blip is coming close to filling the void that Pandora offered, of letting you personalize an ongoing audio feed based on your requests.

Here are some of the songs I've posted (that's blipped, as is the custom) lately to my own Blip account. The linked parts will take you to the audio, so you can play it yourself.

Billy Stewart: Sitting in the Park. A soul chestnut that I've been playing a lot this year. Readers across the Atlantic may know Georgie Fame's pretty decent cover, but the original is a slice of Sixties excellence.

Richie Havens: Here Comes the Sun. One of the songs I played this morning, to match the sunny skies in St. John's. One of my favourite Beatles covers, to boot.

Robert Palmer: Looking for Clues. Well before the models-with-guitars thing, Palmer was a few good years ahead of the curve; 1980's album Clues remains a favourite, with edgy synths, humour and a funky feel. Looking for Clues still gets singalong treatment in the car.

 

The Fratellis: Chelsea Dagger. Speaking of singalongs ... Of the bands appearing in Britain over the last few years, I like the Fratellis a lot. I bet Chelsea Dagger goes over well live.

Pat Metheny: Above the Treetops. The opening track of Metheny's great 1992 album Secret Story, this is built around a Cambodian choir. I'm used to hearing the segue with the next track (the more propulsive Facing West) come immediately afterward, so I added that too!

Weekend playlist (finger-snappin' edition)

It's a beautiful day in St. John's, after a pretty uneasy week; I'm heading out soon, and here a few of the tunes pushed to the top of the iPod.

The Champs: Tequila. Four seconds of this, and I can't help but snap or tap my fingers.

Al Hirt: Bourbon Street Parade. Another chestnut - kinda corny, but hard to resist the pep.



Allen Toussaint: The Bright Mississippi. Fresh off the KCRW podcast wagon, a sparkling song for spring ... from a very different climate than what we in St. John's have to endure for weeks to come!

Talking Heads: Walk It Down. From Little Creatures, one of the singalong David Byrne songs.

Tuck & Patti: I Wish. Actually, no Patti here, just Tuck Andress, running through the Stevie Wonder song on an acoustic guitar ... and sounding like a full band.

Weekend playlist

It's been a pretty domestic weekend: Nick always has the seam-busting social schedule, and while Saturday was chockful with activity, we laid low today and puttered about the house. Some recently acquired music fit the mood right on the nose.

Van Morrison: Madame George. Morrison's brand-new Astral Weeks: Live At The Hollywood Bowl completes what apparently has been a long-time dream of his, to perform his classic 1968 album with a full string section and the complex orchestration that he had intended all along, but couldn't afford at the time. Not sure yet how well it works out. Glad to have the record, but maybe it's because the original songs are so well known, the new versions certainly feel far from definitive. (And does the world need yet one more live Van album?) Nonetheless, I can see this growing on me over time. [Photo from Anna_T's stream on Flickr.]

Neko Case: People Gotta Lotta Nerve. One of my favourite songs so far this year, from Case's new Middle Cyclone album. It arrived in the middle of February from KEXP's song of the day podcast. She played the tune for Jay Leno earlier this week; click below to see that. 

Bruce Springsteen: Outlaw Pete. The opening track from Working on a Dream is an eight-minute tall tale about a criminal who "at six months old [had] done three months in jail." I love this album, so I've been hearing Outlaw Pete a fair bit as I crank it up. (The opening track seems a bit threatened, in this iPod-friendly age.)

Junior Walker and the All-Stars: Tune Up. From a Mojo compilation called Motown Nuggets, which largely has album tracks and singles that get overshadowed in the Motown-Tamla canon. This is a fine instrumental; sounds like a theme song to a Sixties show that never existed.

Eurythmics:  Love Is a Stranger (Coldcut Remix). It might seem I'm on a Dave-and-Annie jag, given another Eurythmics tune made the last list I did, although it's really coincidence. I went looking, actually, for the Martha Wainwright cover of Love is a Stranger on iTunes (been holding off on getting her new record, which, I know, I shouldn't) and found this instead. The remix has a much bigger sound than the original, although it dates back to 1991, when the duo Coldcut laced it with a house vibe that was everywhere at the time.

Weekend playlist (with a horn section)

I noticed something earlier this weekend when I was playing random tunes: I was far more likely to let the tunes with horn sections play through, and skip the others. Hmmm. My 10-cent theory? Horns - preferably a combination of trumpets and sax - liven up everything, particularly when it's too cold or nasty to do much outside.

Here are five of the songs I played this weekend.

Ray Charles: Shake Your Tailfeather. Organ opens the song, the bass hooks you, the vocals make everyone want to sing along ... but the horns make you want to obey what Ray tells you to do. (You know, bend over, shake your tailfeather, twist it, etc etc. The ideal song for making dinner, I might add!)

The Beatles: Savoy Truffle. Never had the opportunity to sample any of the confections in this White Album tune, but I've always enjoyed the horn chart. Six players teamed up for the sax parts.

Van Morrison: See Me Through/ Soldier Of Fortune/ Thank You Faletinme Be Mice Elf. Van Morrison has always understood what horn sections can do to a song. If I recall, Morrison writes his own horn charts himself. This is a 10-minute medley from the Night in San Francisco double-CD set, which I've lent out plenty of times and bought a few times too, considering it one of the best live albums I've ever bought. For this tour, Morrison's band included Candy Dulfer on sax (who does a ripping solo here) and Kate St. John on oboe.

Eurythmics: It's Alright (Baby's Coming Back). From Be Yourself Tonight, which (sorta) introduced a little soul flavour into the austere synths and such of Eurythmics. 

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas: Nowhere to Run. A song so potent Gerri Hirshey picked it for the title of her very fine book on the history of soul. One of my favourite Motown tracks of them all. Have a look for yourself; I believe that's Dusty Springfield setting up the performance on Ready Steady Go, the UK hit program: 

Weekend playlist: snowstorm edition

Some of the songs I've been playing lately, including today, a very snowy but wonderfully quiet day in St. John's.

Megapuss: Theme from Hollywood. Devandra Banhart's side project, with Greg Rogrove, sounds pretty loose, to judge this tune which shipped out this week from KCRW's top tune podcast. Apparently they write the title, and then the song to match. A lot of fun.



Andrew Bird: Fitz and the Dizzyspells. Another podcast pickup this week, in this case from KEXP. A bright tune, with whistling that doesn't make you cringe.



Erma Franklin: Piece Of My Heart. An impulse buy a few weeks ago was the Something to Believe In set that Starbucks issued, I assume to tie into the Obama inauguration. It collects 15 songs from black American milestone performers. I knew Piece of My Heart from Janis Joplin's version. According to the album notes, Joplin got the idea to record the song after hearing Erma Franklin sing it.

Paul Weller: Uh Huh Oh Yeh. As I noted here last week, I've been feasting on the four-CD set of Paul Weller at the BBC, which has all manner of recordings: bare acoustic recordings, one-offs, studio performances wrapped around interviews, live gigs in concert halls. This one is a 1993 performance of Weller's first key solo single, from a show at Royal Albert Hall.

Todd Rundgren: I Saw The Light. From Something/Anything, which came out too early for me to appreciate at the time (1972), but which I picked up as a university student, in the mid-80s. It knocked me out, if only because Rundgren did pretty much all of it himself.

Weekend playlist

It's been too cold to do much of anything outdoors, which has made for a good weekend to get some stuff done around the house. (Too bad not too much got done, but that's another story!)

Some of the songs playing around the house this weekend:

 

Chris Difford: Up the Junction. One of Squeeze's mainstays covers his own tracks, as it were, with a tune picked up from a recent Q insert disc. Less wonderful than the original, but great to hear the voice. 

The Killers: Spaceman. From the new Day & Age, the Killers move again into dancefloor territory, which is fine by me. Spaceman seems like it was made to be played for people driving home at night. (It's hard not to tap your hands on the wheel.)

Coldplay Feat. Jay-Z: Lost+ . The plus sign tacked on to the title of Lost is significant; this is an alternate version of the Vida da Loca songs included on Prospekt's March, an EP of odds and sods released before Christmas. There are multiple versions already around, each with a different bit of punctuation. No matter: it's a cool tune, this time with Jay-Z, in the unlikely collaborator dep't, guesting.

Laura Veirs: Don't Lose Yourself. She has a thin kind of voice, but Laura Veirs has grown on me.

Hot Chocolate: Every 1's a Winner. This must have been subsconscious work pushing itself to the surface. For an unknown reason, I tapped Hot Chocolate's name into the iTunes on my computer - presumably, I thought, to listen to this full-bore slice of late-disco funk and power chords. Actually, it then occurred to me, what I wanted was not so much Hot Chocolate but the real thing. I'm on my way now to heat up some, to get through a cold winter's night.

End-o'-holiday-weekend playlist

Our last festive dinner - an early feed for Ukrainian Christmas, honouring that part of my wife's heritage - will begin in a few hours. Otherwise, we're savouring the winding down of the Christmas holidays. (We're very much a 12-Days family, incidentally.) Here are some of the non-holiday tunes I've been playing lately.

Lindsey Buckingham: Underground. I'll put Gift of Screws up as my pick for an album of the year. Even though I bought in late in 2008, I've been playing it over and again, and it sounds like I've had it for years.

Primal Scream: Beautiful Future. Primal Scream albums for me are kind of hit-or-miss. Beautiful Future is a hit. (I probably subconsciously picked this next, as the album includes an unlikely but terrific cover of Over and Over by Fleetwood Mac - see above. It features folkie goddess Linda Thompson.)

Fleet Foxes: He Doesn't Know Why. I'm late getting to Fleet Foxes. Is this what all the young gents around town with shaggy beards are listening to? Just curious. (It seems peculiar to see guys born in, say, 1986 dressing like it's 1976.)

Kate Bush: Why Should I Love You?  An odd Kate Bush tune, which is saying something; it was a collaboration with Prince that apparently didn't go too well. It was released on 1993's Red Shoes album, after Prince changed his name, although the credit went not to that weird glyph but to plain old Prince. Contractual language, I guess. You can listen to what is claimed to be the original pre-Prince version here. It also lacks Lenny Henry speaking a section of the lyrics, which can be good or bad depending on your take of things.

The Rolling Stones: Tumbling Dice. One of my favourite Stones songs; I could listen to the last 1:14 or so repeatedly.

Weekend playlist

A couple of new singles get this week's playlist going. Click on the link below to see other playlists posted to this category.

Chris Isaak: Graduation Day. We're going to see Chris Isaak play downtown in a couple of hours; Sarah Slean is opening for him. We have pretty good seats, so I'm looking forward to the show. Among the songs I'd like to hear is this gem from 1995's Forever Blue.

Keane: Spiralling. Hmmm. The single from Keane's forthcoming album sounds like a throwback to Eighties synth-pop, a la Howard Jones; disappointing to these ears, especially since Keane were getting pretty adventurous on their last album.

Lucid Dreams: Franz Ferdinand. More satisfying. Franz Ferdinand are expected to release their third album by January. There have been suggestions of a more percussive sound with African musicians, but this single, which was released on iTunes a few weeks ago, is a rack-'em-up rock tune in line with what they've done before. That's not a bad thing!

Sade: Paradise. A bass line for the ages, and the song sounds sinuous and fine 20 years later.

Zach Gill: Beautiful Reason. Picked up a couple of weeks ago from KCRW's podcast. Gill is a Jack Johnson collaborator, which isn't surprising; this song, as a sampler, has a laid-back groove. I've hit replay a few times with this one.

(Long) weekend playlist

We hit the road for 10 or 11 days on vacation. Keeping us sane alone the highway was my iPod, which I stuffed with some favourites, new picks and overlooked tracks. Here are some of the songs that shuffled up a few times.

Joe Jackson: Another World. From Night and Day, a peppery blend of percussion, piano and bass, and a singalong chorus that works for even the most off-key voice. (I should know.) The B-side to Stepping Out, incidentally. (Hey, parents of young children! Ask your kid what a B-side is!)

Fleetwood Mac: The Ledge. Have I mentioned recently how good Tusk is? Yep, the Rumours followup was megahyped at the time, and disappointed a great many, but I still play a lot of the songs, especially Lindsey Buckingham workouts like this two-minute tune that sounds like it could have been knocked out by an indie band this year.

Sarah Harmer: Around This Corner. I could listen to Sarah Harmer sing the phone book, but it's even better with her own material, including the kind-of-loopy bit with the clarinet a couple of minutes in.

Lizband: Belly Painting. Liz Pickard (or Solo, I guess) and co. at their best. This turns out to be a great driving song, especially along stretches of highway lined with pines.

Bonnie Raitt: Feeling of Falling. For one reason or another, the supposedly random nature of the shuffle option on my iPod served up this track from Longing in their Hearts frequently. No complaints here. I always like the bluesy, funky vibe on this song, which suits the summer really well.

Click on the Weekend Playlists tag below to see other lists posted here.