Live Out All The Romance

Squeeze “Someone Else’s Bell” – Why did I ignore Squeeze for so long? I’ve always loved “Tempted,” “Cool For Cats,” and “Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)” (which as a child, I thought was “Pulling Muscles For Michelle”), but I never bothered with checking out the rest of Squeeze’s music until just recently. “Someone Else’s Bell” is a highlight from the East Side Story LP, which I’ve been listening to quite a bit over the past few days. If you’re into lyrical pop rock like Elvis Costello, Spoon, Sally Crewe, and Joe Jackson, this is music for you.

Avenue D w/ Cazwell “Sex That I Need” – If you can’t handle novelty dance records, you might want to pass this one over. These are the girls who gave us the excellent “Do I Look Like A Slut?” last year, and this time they are joined by raunchy gay rapper Cazwell. Please be advised that the rhymes in this song are of the over-the-top xxx variety, and that if you’re at work, it may not be the best idea to play this at your desk.

There’s Still Only One Of Me

The Lonesome Organist “One Of Me” – The Lonesome Organist is Jeremy Jacobsen, a one-man-band in the most literal sense of the phrase when he performs live. He plays a wide variety of instruments (often simultaneously) and covers a surpisingly diverse range of musical genres. This particular song finds Mr. Jacobsen harmonizing with himself as a one-man a cappella doo-wop group.

The Section “The National Anthem” – This is taken from the new string quartet tribute to Radiohead record by The Section, who previously recorded their own version of OK Computer in its entirety. I’m very fond of this arrangement of “The National Anthem,” particularly the approximation of the atonal horn sounds towards the end of the song.

I Like Wearing Slippers When It’s Raiiiiining

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, July 18th, Prospect Park, Brooklyn

Need Your Love (Status Quo cover)/ Jo Jo’s Jacket / Animal Midnight / Vanessa From Queens / Witch Mountain Bridge / Dark Wave / Phantasies / new song or unidentified cover / Mama/ Grab It And Gone / Us / Vague Space / Old Jerry (!!!) / Jenny & The Ess Dog // 1% Of One / (aborted cover that I didn’t quite recognize with John on vocals/guitar and SM on drums) / Take Five (Dave Brubeck Quartet cover, brief tease) / 100 Years From Now – Dance The Night Away (Byrds cover with Van Halen tag, John guitar/vocals, SM drums) / Can’t Get You Out Of My Head (Kylie Minogue cover, Mike Clark vocals/keyboards, John on drums, SM and Joanna have left the stage)

It rained very, very hard during 85% of this show. Luckily, I had an umbrella, but so did most of the people in front of me, so it was hard to see the show through all of the umbrellas. Since this was a free concert, there were entirely too many people chatting during the songs, which really grated on my nerves. There was this one group of obnoxious girls right in front of me who would not SHUT THE FUCK UP during the instrumental sections of “Witch Mountain Bridge,” and I nearly snapped on them, but I managed to move over a bit away from them, so even if they were still audible they weren’t overpowering the music so much. My big thrill of the night came when they played “Old Jerry.” The part when the song breaks down towards the end (‘the walls are jagged and expanding’) was one of those wonderful you-had-to-be-there concert moments, with the house lights shining on the crowd as the rain finally stopped. It was like a collective sigh of relief, and it just felt so right. I had been waiting a long time to see “Old Jerry” live, and it ended up being an extra special thing, so I went home soggy and happy.

Blur, July 17th, Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City

Ambulance / Beetlebum / Girls & Boys / Badhead / Gene By Gene / For Tomorrow / Sweet Song / Morroccan People’s Revolutionary Bowls Club / Tender / Caravan / Out Of Time / Crazy Beat / Brothers & Sisters / To The End / Song 2 / Trimm Trabb / Battery In Your Leg / The Universal (!!!) // Popscene / On The Way To The Club / We’ve Got A File On You / This Is A Low

Facts And Figures That Never Add Up Anyway

Today I’m going to share some songs by a few artists who I’ve already featured in recent weeks.

The Fall “Theme From Sparta FC” – I admit it, as great as “Susan Vs. Youthclub” is, I definitely picked the wrong song to post from the forthcoming Country On The Click. I owe it to you to give you this song, if just to give you better incentive to camp out in front of your local record store the day before the album is officially released.

Fountains Of Wayne “Hey Julie” – I wouldn’t say that I picked the ‘wrong’ song from Welcome Interstate Managers when I posted “Stacy’s Mom”, but I would like to take this opportunity to show a different side of the band and give you another reason to check out the album if you haven’t already. This is just a sweet little song about a guy who comes home from his awful day job to spend time with his girlfriend, and how she is the only thing getting him through the day.

Liz Phair “Jeremy Engle” – I just found this song yesterday. It’s not from Liz Phair’s new album, but from a special bonus ep which you can access from a secret site that you can enter if you’ve bought the official cd. Or, um, if you have access to a p2p system. While the Liz Phair album itself is a mostly bland and forgettable affair, this song is definitely what most people would recognize as being pretty classic old-school Liz Phair material. The song is a portrait of a guy from a Communist family living in a rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side. It is rich with nuance and details, and set to an appealing melody and arrangement that isn’t far off from the best material from White Chocolate Space Egg. Liz Phair isn’t dead, people.

All This Time With No Desire

ESG “My Love For You” – This is one of my favorite dance records. “My Love For You” is taken from the import compilation ESG – A South Bronx Story, which I assure you, is worth every penny. It probably won’t ever be available as a domestic US release because of some complicated legal mess with their original label 99 Records. It’s a real shame, since some of the best punk-funk hybrid records ever were released on the label, and it would be a great thing if those records were made cheaper and more accessable for American audiences.

Shooby Taylor “Stout Hearted Men” – A partial transcript: HAW! BAW! SCHLAW! SLAWDOOBY! RAW! SCHLAW! SCHLAW! POPPY! POPPY! POPPY! POPPY! POPPY! POPPY! POPPY! POPPY! Shooby Taylor is the weirdest, and perhaps the greatest, scat singer of all time. At very least, he is the most enthusiastic and original. If this song does not bring joy to your heart, there is no hope for you. This song is taken from Irwin Chusid’s Songs In the Key Of Z compilation.

Air Miami “Airplane Rider” – This is from Mark Robinson and Bridget Cross’s post-Unrest band, which really isn’t much different from Unrest aside from being a bit more peppy. Soon I will be an airplane rider. You can consider that “foreshadowing.” Go!

Five Hundred To The Biggest Booty In Here

Gold Chains “Rock The Parti” – Imagine this as the anthem of a grand joycore army who decimate everything in their path which refuses to succumb to the delirious ecstacy of all that is joycore. Who rocks the parti? We rock the parti. Everybody rocks at the joycore parti. This one goes out to Flyboy and the whole It Came From The Sea crew.

R. Kelly “Feelin’ On Yo Booty (Remix) – What remix is this? Tell me, what remix is this? Feelin’ on yo booty! This may be hard to imagine, but this may actually surpass “Ignition (Remix).” When R Kelly starts singing “booooo-oooo-ty, booo-ooo-ooty!” at the end, it’s sublime. But when he loses his shit and starts singing “boo-booga-booga-booga-booga-booga-booga-booga-oooty” at the 2:51 mark, the song enters this bizarre realm of idiot-savant genius which is uniquely R Kelly’s domain. So much booty!

Warning: This song is insanely catchy. It will be stuck in your head for days. Approach with caution.

“The Laws Have Changed” Video = Joycore Manifesto?

“Come and return to the world. Indulge yourself until pleasure sickens you. Then you will be near me.”

I think it very well may be my new favorite music video. On one hand, it’s this clever narrative about a St. Anthony-style ascetic being brought into an idealized sexy Western youth culture, and on the other, it’s just a bunch of cute mod people dancing.

Break The Twelve-String Acoustic To Pieces For Firewood

It’s Scott Miller day here at Fluxblog. Miller is one of the great, criminally underrated songwriters of the 80s and 90s. Miller enjoyed some minor degree of college radio success during the 80s with his first band Game Theory, but has been sinking deeper into obscurity with each passing release. He has recently retired from music and broke up his second band, the Loud Family, mainly due to frustration in finding an audience for his music. For some reason, Miller’s music is something of a hard sell because his music tends to be too strange, wordy, obtuse, and erudite for mainstream audiences; and on the other hand, his music is often too polished, glossy, and clean to appeal to many indie rock fans. Miller, in finding some kind of middle ground between intellectual artiness and a slick pop sensibility ends up becoming less accessable than far more severe music. But please do give Miller a chance – no powerpop fan should be without at least a couple of his records in their collection.

Game Theory “Nine Lives To Rigel Five” – from Distortion, 1984.

Loud Family “Inverness” – from Plants And Birds And Rocks And Things, 1993.

Loud Family “Sodium Laureth Sulfate” – from Interbabe Concern, 1996.

Loud Family “Businessmen Are Okay” – from Days For Days, 1998.

Loud Family “720 Times Happier Than The Unjust Man” – from Attractive Nuisance, 2000.

Come True – It’s Only Divine Right-ah!

The New Pornographers, July 12 2003, Bowery Ballroom, New York City:

The New Face Of Zero And One / Miss Teen Wordpower / The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism / The Electric Version / From Blown Speakers / Chump Change / All For Swinging You Around / The End Of Medicine / July Jones / Mass Romantic / Jackie / The Laws Have Changed / It’s Only Divine Right / Letter From An Occupant // encore 1: The Fake Headlines / To Wild Homes / The Body Says No // encore 2: Testament To Youth In Verse / Mystery Hours / Action // encore 3: When I Was A Baby / Centre For Holy Wars

This show is definitely going down in my personal hall of fame as one of the best shows that I’ve ever seen, not just because of the consistently energetic performance and the insane level of fun that I had at the show with my friends, but because…I wrote the setlist. And they used it.

Let me explain.

On the train ride down to Manhattan, I passed a few minutes of my time by writing up a mock setlist of what I would play that night if I were the New Pornographers. When I was at the show with Emily and Todd, we decided as a joke to put the fake setlist in front of Carl Newman’s monitor before the band hit the stage. We never thought that he’d be so amused to see that an audience member had made up a setlist for them that they’d decide to actually play it through. To be more clear, they played the main set that I had written out (everything up to “Letter From An Occupant”), and took requests for the three (!) sets of encores. “The Fake Headlines” and “Testament To Youth In Verse” were included in the encore on my fake setlist, but the rest of the encore songs were not.

The show was so damned tight, I could probably list off 80% of the show as being highlights. “July Jones” was particularly strong, and I’m very proud of how the string of three showstoppers in a row at the end of main set worked out.

If anyone out there can hook me up with a recording of this show, I will do my best to repay you somehow. I still can’t believe they actually played my fake setlist. How fucking joycore is that?

(Those of you who may be unfamiliar with The New Pornographers should check out their Matador site, where they are streaming the entire Electric Version album, and have a few mp3s available to download.)

They Don’t Speak For Us

Time Zone “World Destruction” – Here we have Afrika Bambaataa and John Lydon, rapping and sneering very prescient lyrics about world crisis in 1984 over a heavy old school beat, with atonal guitar feedback and some excellent recurring synth lines for accompaniment. Sample lyrics:

Countries are fighting in chemical warfare. Not giving a damn about the people who live. Nostradamus predicts the coming of the Antichrist. Hey, look out, the third world nations are on the rise. The Democratic-Communist Relationship, won’t stand in the way of the Islamic force. The CIA is looking for other detectives. The KGB is smarter than you think. Brainwash mentalities to control the system. Using TV and movies – religions of course. Yes, the world is heading for destruction.

Well, they tried to warn us.

Fans of the Sopranos might remember this song from the first episode of the fourth season of the series. (Special thanks to Nikon!)

Radiohead “No Surprises” (live at Electric Lady Studios for Morning Becomes Eclectic) – This is from a session that Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood recorded with Nigel Godrich in Manhattan one month ago. It’s a very beautiful rendition of the song, stripped down to its lullaby essence. I think that they should perform the song live with this arrangement more often.

I’ll Play My La-La Shit For You Anytime

Velocity Girl “Pop Loser” – It was actually sort of hard selecting a single Velocity Girl song to post here today. I came awfully close to picking one of their more shoegazer-y numbers from Copacetic, but instead chose “Pop Loser” because a) it probably represents Velocity Girl more as a band, since they ended up being more of a bubblegum indiepop group, and b) the cutesy lyrics and light tone are very indicative of a particular strain of American early 90s indie rock that I have a special fondness and nostalgia for. I am now old enough to realize that I will probably always have an inordinate level of affection for early 90s indie pop, but I’m not complaining about that – there are certainly far worse things to romanticize.

Barbara Manning “Mark E. Smith & Brix” – File under: more early 90s indie guitar pop, but a bit artier than Velocity Girl. Excellent use of repetitive guitar motif and spare percussion on this song, by the way.

April Stevens “Teach Me Tiger” – In context, April Stevens is sort of like the Lil’ Kim of the late ’50s. This single was banned for being too sexual at the time, which is pretty funny since it basically sounds like Eartha Kitt singing at a luau. I guess that was apparently way too hott for some people back then. It’s campy, it’s kitschy, and you’ve got to love it. Unless your heart is made of stone, that is. If your heart is made of stone, you may just want to put on The Album Leaf or Sepultura or something like that.

I’m Leaking Pure White Noise

The Breeders “London Song” – This is for Emily. This selection comes from last year’s very underrated Title TK album, which to me, is at least as good as any other album the band has ever produced. To me, “London Song” is the single best song that Kim Deal has ever written, if just for the bridge where she’s singing “I thought I’d know better, I thought I’d knoooooooow…” over this simple, perfect rolling bassline. This is what I wrote about this song (and the Title TK album) on this blog last year:

On the way home, I finally got around to listening to The Breeder’s Title TK in its entirety and in its intended sequence (well, actually I listened to “London Song” twice over, so maybe not). I can understand why some Breeders fans are let down by this record, but I like it. Having never been anything more than a casual fan of Kim Deal, I don’t have any great expectations for her or her bands. As of this writing, I’m fairly convinced that Title TK is the most consistent non-Pixies record she’s ever been involved in creating. Don’t get me wrong – I really like a lot of older Breeders/Amps songs, it’s just that the records have always struck me as terribly uneven. I think that it would be easy for someone to get an impression of unevenness from a casual listen to this new album (I know I did at first), but when listening to the record last night, completely exhausted, it seemed to make a lot more sense.

Every song on the record sounds like it is in a drunken/stoned stupor, some songs having a better composure than others. “London Song” is definitely my favorite song on this album, I can’t help but love how wobbly and dizzy the song feels with it’s awkward stops and starts, it’s sweet melodic refrains, and its confused, incoherant lyrics. “I’m leaking pure white noise.” “There’s something to believe.” “I thought I’d know better.” “Misery’s fun, I’m kissing everyone. I’ve got to hold my tongue.” Most of the lyrics on this album come off as quietly mumbled nonsequitors, the half-formed ideas of someone who is stumbling around after partying way too hard, Andrew WK-style. Like I said, the whole album feels this way, like it’s either sloppy-lampshade-on-head-screaming-“wooooo!” drunk (“Huffer”, “London Song”, “Little Fury” “Full On Idle”), or about to pass out (“Off You”, “Forced To Drive”, “Put On A Side”). It’s not hard to imagine that this is what it feels like to be a Deal sister given their respective biographies. All in all, it’s a good, weird little record; and certainly a lot more interesting than most people are giving it credit for being.

I Will Hire The Assassin Just To Kill The Time

It is just too fucking hot in New York. I barely want to do anything. These two songs for today were selected because they both (for reasons I can’t quite explain) evoke the feeling of air conditioning for me.

Jonathan Fire Eater “This Is My Room” – This is taken from their Wolf Songs For Lambs album, which I believe to be one of the great ‘lost classics’ of the 1990s. This album was buried by its own press/industry hype and the band broke up shortly after its release due to a combination of inter-band strife, drug abuse, and record company hassles. The hype was not unwarranted – the people who praised this album and the band back in the mid-90s were on the money in terms of the music’s quality, even if they massively overestimated their commercial appeal.

Pharrell Williams w/ Jay-Z “Frontin'” – This is from the forthcoming The Neptunes Present…Clones record. I love how crisp and clean this song sounds, it is very slick and smooth without sounding too dull or austere. I’m assuming that this song has more than a couple samples in it, because I swear I recognize some of these keyboard/bass parts, though I can’t quite place them. All told, this is pretty typical of the best Pharrell/Neptunes music.

Nobody Loaned Them An Old Caboose

To celebrate this most patriotic of days, I give you Byron MacGregor’s “Americans.” This is the work of a bored Canadian radio news anchor in 1974, who read this nagging, strident, and occasionally wildly ill-informed pro-America rant over an instrumental version of “America The Beautiful,” and somehow found himself with a number one single. I suppose we should all count our blessings that at least the people of Fox News and conservative talk radio aren’t scoring chart hits with hyper-jingoistic spoken-word harangues today. Just imagine a nightmare world in which Ann Coulter has the most popular song in the country…

Slow Motion Break Up

If you weren’t already aware, The Audio Kitchen has returned to the on-air schedule of WFMU for the summer. The Audio Kitchen is a weekly hour-long program in which The Professor plays found amateur audio. This season, The Professor has been crafting theme episodes from his immense collection of found sound. Last week it was an all-children program, next week it’s going to be a collection of music demo tapes, and this week we were treated to an entire episode of romantic audio letters and lover’s conversations documented on tape. By far, the most interesting part of the episode for me was this series of conversation snippets captured on the answering machine of a man named Frank, which seems to document the slow dissolution of his relationship with a woman named Beth. It’s mostly interesting because of Frank’s creepy behavior – he often speaks with an obnoxious affected tone of voice (“daaarling”), acts extremely bored and distant, rants about Swanson pot pies, and clearly has no regard for the feelings of this poor, clingy girl who obviously is still in love with him for some bizarre reason. I defy you to listen to this without wanting to slap Frank.

My Main Goal Is To Please Ya

Electric Six “Gay Bar (Best Show On WFMU Remix)” – This is from last night’s episode of The Best Show On WFMU. Tom Scharpling and Petey “remix” the song live on the air, with Petey playing Jandek-meets-Spacemen 3 guitar over the telephone and Tom dropping in a cappella vocals from the Electric Six song. It could very well be one of the most extreme songs ever played on WFMU.

Last night’s Best Show was probably one of the best episodes that I’ve ever heard, and I’ve listened to nearly all of them. I highly recommend checking out the archive for last night’s July 1st episode, and advancing to about the 46 minute mark for the beginning of a hilarious two part skit featuring Jon Wurster which viciously mocks audiophiles and the people with fake German accents who take advantage of them. I don’t want to give too much away, but I assure you that as broad as the comedy in this skit is, the satire of clueless audiophiles is on the money. It’s an instant Best Show classic!

Mya w/ Missy Elliot “My Love Is Like…Wo” – Wo, not whoa. I’m assuming that wo is different from whoa, and that wo indicates a knowing sort of amazement, whereas whoa signifies a Keanu-like state of being utterly dumbfounded. The production is a bit more understated than what one might normally expect from Missy Elliot, but I would say that is a good thing. It’s not quite on the level of Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love,” but it is certainly a top notch summer pop single. Also: I appreciate that when Mya sings the words “my main goal is to please ya” it sounds sort of like “my mango is to please ya.”

Speaking of “Crazy In Love,” I was just watching BET for a little bit, and they played the video for the song two times in the span of ten minutes. There was only one song between the two airings! The airwaves are totally saturated with this song at this point. I’m starting to wonder when I’m going to finally get sick of hearing it – it’s always on tv, it’s on the radio, I listen to it on the Beyonce album very frequently. Somehow, after hearing the song at least once per day for nearly two months, it still sounds fresh and exciting every time. That’s pretty amazing.

Gillian Welch “Look At Miss Ohio” – I’m not sure what to say about this song. It’s just very, very good. It’s a lot more downbeat and glum than most of the songs that I’ve been posting lately. No one would ever confuse this for Joycore, you know?

Every Child Of God’s A Brat

Guided By Voices “The Best Of Jill Hives” – The forthcoming GBV album Earthquake Glue is still slowly growing on me, but I officially love this song now. This probably won’t make sense to anyone who isn’t already a GBV fan, but this new album sounds more like a Robert Pollard solo record to my ears. In terms of production and song style, I think Earthquake Glue falls somewhere between Not In My Airforce and Kid Marine. Sometimes it is rather blatant – “I”ll Replace You With Machines” sounds like a rewritten version of “Maggie Turns To Flies.”

I’m definitely glad that I’m coming around to this album, because the first few times I heard it, I was very disappointed with it, and was wondering where all the catchy songs were. There’s certainly nothing as incredibly pop as “Back To The Lake,” “Cheyenne,” or “Universal Truths & Cycles” on Earthquake Glue; but I can see now that this record is more about subdued melodicism, and that it’s not going for the pop brass ring like the last few Guided By Voices albums. This may be a turning point for Bob Pollard, the point where the differences between the “solo” and GBV records start to really blur because he’s finally given up on having a mainstream hit.

Dizzee Rascal “I Luv U” – Now this is interesting. This song seems to be like some sort of test for me, to see how many annoying bits I can endure and still enjoy a song overall. There’s something extremely bratty about this song; it seems to be made up of exclusively of grating elements that somehow come together to be something very exciting and fun. I alternately love and hate the fact that I can’t concentrate at all when I’m listening to it.

Ladies And Gentlemen, I Give You…

…the best review of a comic book, ever.

Love And Joy And Peace And Patience

Sonic Youth “Mariah Carey And The Arthur Doyle Handcream” – As mentioned in the previous entry, this is a brand new Sonic Youth song taken from a split 7″ with Erase Errata.

The Danielson Famile “Fathom The Nine Fruits Pie” – This is one of the happiest songs that I have ever heard. You know how a lot of metal and hardcore is all about making the most intense, relentless, aggressive music possible? I wish that there were a similar genre of music much like this song, focused on creating overpowering, unstoppable cresendos of undiluted joy. We can call it Joycore! Let’s do this!

Tripping Out In The Blue Skies

Sonic Youth, Central Park Summerstage 6/26/2003

Peace Attack / The Empty Page / Rain On Tin / Plastic Sun / Eric’s Trip / Disconnection Notice / Karenology / Mariah Carey and Arthur Doyle Handcream / Catholic Block / Making The Nature Scene / Sympathy For The Strawberry // Sugar Kane

For me, the whole Murray Street album, “Rain On Tin” and “Disconnection Notice” in particular, is very closely associated with hot, muggy summer weather, and so I think that this setlist was perfectly suited to the weather and venue. I was only slightly disappointed that a few songs currently in rotation were not played, mostly because all of the songs that I had in mind except for “Expressway To Yr Skull” wouldn’t have been appropriate under the circumstances. “Peace Attack” is a new Thurston number, and it is very similar in feeling and structure as the Murray Street songs, but maybe a bit more mellow, not too far off from Experimental Jet Set Trash And No Star‘s “Sweet Shine.” It has an instantly ingratiating melody, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up being the single for the next record. “Mariah Carey…” is a new Kim song which is on a split single with Erase Errata. I hadn’t heard it before – it is a fairly typical Kim Gordon-style punk tune, pretty similar to her more rocking songs from the Goo/Dirty era. “Karenology” was a major highlight of the show, and the improvisational instrumental section was extra long and featured some very amusing guitar abuse.

Wilco were okay. I left after their main set concluded, I didn’t feel any need to stick around after they had played a majority of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. They took their sweet time getting started, and opened with three consecutive extremely boring songs before playing “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.” After a second lull following that song, they finally started to play what I like to refer to as “the good songs.” Unfortunately, it was sort of hard to fully appreciate their performance since Wilco has some of the most obnoxious fans I’ve ever encountered. I’m fairly certain that they were Wilco fans – I really doubt that the people in question were Sonic Youth fans who were sticking around. Wilco fans do not shut up. They have conversations through the songs as though the music were just a cd on in the background at a bar. They make calls on their cell phones during quiet numbers. They bring their laptops to the gig with them. They are overly fond of concession stand french fries. There was one guy singing along loudly in a droning bass monotone several octaves off key. Nevertheless, it was good to see Wilco play “Jesus, Etc,” “I’m The Man Who Loves You,” “Poor Places,” “Heavy Metal Drummer,” “Ashes Of American Flags,” “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” and “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” so it was worth waiting through the boring parts. Fun fact: Jeff Tweedy sort of looks like Jimmy Fallon from 50 yards away.

You’re Like Medicine To Me

Freddie Scott “You Got What I Need” – This is best known for being the song that begat Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend.” It’s a wonderful, upbeat r&b love song, the kind that just sounds as though the music is in love. It’s perfect for a sunny (though unbearably hot and sticky) day like today. (Thanks to Baddd Spelllah!)

Manacled To The City

I’m on another one of my obsessive Fall listening sprees, which was set in motion by the acquisition of the new Country On The Click album. I originally intended to only post “Susan Vs. Youthclub,” but then I decided to post an older song in addition to it, and indecision led to posting four old Fall numbers. If you’ve never heard The Fall before, this should be a decent introduction, but please keep in mind that The Fall discography is massive, and they have accrued at least one hundred brilliant songs in their nearly 25 years of existence. These songs were selected arbitrarily based on my own personal favorites, and are not intended to represent the band’s discography as a whole.

The Fall “Susan Vs. Youthclub” – from the forthcoming Country On The Click, which is fantastic.

The Fall “F’Oldin’ Money” – from The Marshall Suite, 1999.

The Fall “Hit The North (Part 1)” – from The Frenz Experiment, 1988.

The Fall “Living Too Late” – from Bend Sinister, 1986.

The Fall “I’m Into CB!” – from Hip Priests And Kamerads, 1985.