Didn’t see one, so here’s one. Apologies in advance for crappy hosting – a bit busy this week.
A favourite song by an artist not yet enshrined in the RR hall of fame/listed in the Marconium.
Didn’t see one, so here’s one. Apologies in advance for crappy hosting – a bit busy this week.
A favourite song by an artist not yet enshrined in the RR hall of fame/listed in the Marconium.
Yay, Shoey, great topic. I was just about to try to cough one up myself, but this is better.
Unzedded, and unlikely to be listed under this incarnation.
Catchy!
Did this not make the Songs About Nicking Stuff playlist. Quite frankly I’m amazed! Belter of a tune.
I think that topic was before my time,but no, JA is still unzedded. Not for lack of my trying, mind.
I love Jane’s Addiction. Have you heard the new album? I quite like the single
No, i didn’t know they had a new one out! Can’t wait to give this one a listen when i wake up a bit more.
Ok, that new song did nothing for me. I kept waiting for Dave to rip off into some sort of a blistering solo but that never happened. They look pretty damn good for a bunch of middle aged ex-junkies, but i hope kicking the habit and a couple of prams casa Perry didn’t turn their music terminally boring.
I think it sounds like U2 which is generally a bad thing in my book, but it’s not going to be as good as proper old JA is it?
*sigh* that was me, I didn’t know Farrell had reproduced, how worrying.
Beth -
Rich James agrees with you downthread a bit, he likes the song. JA used to do slow tunes very well – ie Jane Says. But to me that new one was boring. Strays came after a long hiatus and kicked habits, but i think that one rocked.
But yes, Perry has been happily married for a decade or so and has 2 kids.
Hi Shoey, thanks for distracting me from going to bed! I’m going to plump for Flanagan and “Father Father”, though can only find it on Spotify:
http://open.spotify.com/local/Flanagan/Chosen+Few/Father%2c+Father/292
This is from the album “The Chosen Few”. Flanagan consisted of Mark Flanagan on vocals, guitar, dobro and ukelele; Kevin Willoughby on bass, vocals, electric piano and harmonium and Gary Foote on drums, percussion, sax and “occasional table”. This track features Sekou Keita on kora and bougarabou. The album came out in 2001.
Can drop it if anyone is desperate.
A ridiculously wide open goal for me. I’m in a mood for The Cravats at the moment – 80s eccentrics and purveyors of an unusual mish mash of post punk, jazz, rockabilly and general oddness
The Cravats – Rub Me Out
One of my favourite ever records.
This song is fab, I love the way it lurches. Not enough lurching in modern music if you ask me. If the RR topic was Songs That Lurch this would be a shoo-in.
I also like that it goes on for ages. Reminds me a bit of that Ozzie no-wave band from the early 80s Primitive Calculators I think they were called.
They appear about 30 sec into this clip.
Glad you like it, I think it’s fair to say that it lurches. I mate of mine reviewed a gig of theirs in his fanzine and said something like this song was completely tuneless and had no point other than irritate – not “pub rock” enough for him obviously. I like everything about this track right down to the samples which I suspect are the contribution of Penny Rimbaud who produced it.
I’ve never heard of Primitive Calculators though I like the name! They looked quite interesting in the clip. I can’t say I really know anything about Ozzie no wave.
“Old school” at it’s best.
Sounds like the Roxy on a wet Wednesday night.
That sounds almost like a dond. I first thought you said “Sounds like Roxy Music on a wet Wednesday night” which also makes a strange kind of sense as Roxy were one of their varied bag of influences. Lead singer The Shend does a podcast full of all sorts of odd stuff – a bit like dipping into John Peel 30 years ago I would guess
Challenge no 8807 already? How time flies!
Top of my list (as far as Artists are concerned – there are hundreds of songs that need to be on the Marconium but perhaps that’s a different question for another day!) is James Taylor.
It is:
a) a disgrace and
b) quite surprising given the Guardian’s demographics
that James Taylor has never made it to the A-List and I could have chosen any one of twenty or thirty songs to illustrate my point but this is probably my favourite …
dond. My favorite song by him, criminally unzedded.
Thought I’d go for a high-profile absentee rather than a personal hobby-horse. I’m not sure whether her non-appearance on the RR lists is because she’s not particularly fashionable (not sure if that would even be a correct assessment) or just because her songs slip down the cracks in between various themes (although songs about rain, about parades, about fathers, about hearing, about clear days, about women in love and, as we’ll see below, about memories would all be themes she’d have a shout with). What I would say about her is, for someone, for whom singing the type of song that would be strenuous for most of us, is an effortless task, she tends to put a lot of effort in, hence maybe why she can be a target for parody – the apotheosis of musical theatre over-dramatic story-singing. But then you get a song like this and you realise what magnificent phrasing, drama – yes – but soul there is in that voice. And she may not have troubled the RR scorers (that’d be Marco!) yet, but that she’s made an impact can be glimpsed in the video (not the one below) of a live version of this song I just had a look at – she introduces it, “And now let’s go back to 1973 -” and the audience starts cheering because they already know what it’s going to be. Palm of the hand stuff.
Barbra Streisand – The Way We Were
mark68 and I have laboured Herculeanly to get Animals That Swim zedded over the last 5 years. No joy yet, but the fact that the band themselves have commented on our efforts more than makes up for this.
There’s not much on t’Internet – though there are quite a lot of videos of animals swimming on YouTube – but some of their finest moments are there, including this:
Lovely!
Yes! At last! Thanks Shoey!
See, the thing about my favourite genre Shoegazing/Shoegaze (dependent on your geographic location in relation to the atlantic ocean), is that the songs are pretty much about NOTHING – making it exceedingly hard to get to fit ANY topic. Back when I played the RR game, I would try and try to figure out how to get Ride (et al) into the canon. Aaaaand fail.
“Leave Them All Behind” isn’t about much lyrically (colours, light, truth, just let it flow) , but its eight and a bit minutes are always sheer utter joy to my ears and have been for oooooooooooooooooooooh nearly twenty years now.
The youtube audio compression doesn’t do this justice, but hey!
Walls of Sound could make a great RR topic – you could do a surprisingly diverse playlist I reckon. Anyway, this is great of course.
great idea for a topic, I want to get Loop zedded too!
That was awesome.
love it! People seem to think Shoegazing begins and ends with MBV whereas there are many good bands, new and old in the genre, Alison’s Halo, Blind Mr Jones and Lush to name a few.
Makes me quite nostalgic. Back in the early 90s me and a mate spent one summer driving around going pretty much nowhere for no apprent reason with only a handful of songs on his car stereo and this was one of them. I think there were also Stone Roses’ Fools Gold and Beloved’s Sun Rising, but that was about it. I suspect my mate wanted to be in a road movie.
Oh, has anyone called dibs on next week’s challenge? I have a pressing topic….
Roger Waters has sort of been listed as a member of Pink Floyd, but has not been so as a solo artist.
This track is quite apt, given that Rememberance sunday has just gone and the comments on the mother ship last week about the relevance – or not – of wearing a poppy.
This is the opening track from the album “Amused to Death”. The words are those of Alf Razzel, a First World War survivor and his memories of trying to rescue his friend Bill Hubbard>/b>.
The guitar player is Jeff Beck.
Sorry, didn’t realise that this video also covered the last track as well.
At the end we find out that Bill Hubbard’s name is listed on a memorial of those missing from the war.
Little Feat are still shamefully missing from the Marconium:
Recorded at 9:30 in the morning straight off the flight from the States, apparently.
What???!! That’s an absolute disgrace! (The omission, that is.)
Could have sworn someone got Dixie Chicke and Willin zedded. Apparently not.
I got dixie chicken b-listed once but no A-listing according to the marconium
no, i had checked it and i’m as surprised as Chris.
Throwing Muses should have been in there by now. Interpretation of lyrics is the snag, I fear. But something as gorgeous (and incomprehensible) as this deserves a place: Two Step
Ok, that was lovely.
Fond of a bit of Muses ( not Muse, note) myself. Coincidentally I have just introduced my daughter to them this week.
She really likes The Real Ramona.
so i’m not the only one who isn’t a Muse fan. Are we the only two?
No, you’re definitely not on your own in the anti-Muse camp. Overblown twaddle.
The Real Ramona is my favourite TM album, I think. Although I’m very fond of Limbo, too. You is giving that girl good learning, pairubu.
I like one track by them and feel I should support them as they come from near me, but I couldn’t get through a whole album.
I have just found out that the Throwing Muses originated in Newport in my state. Which means that chances are decent that they’re a yank version of posh.
Or maybe not, it looks like they went to a public high school.
Fav muses track is ‘Fish’ – that gave a line to the ‘Lonely is an eyesore’ 4AD compilation.. I’ve tried to sneak it into many a theme – with no success.
Hunkpapa and the fat skier are my go to albums – but that’s because I was watching them live loads when they were released – so they are embedded in my soul.
My favourite Throwing Muses song, though I only have that album. Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donnelly are both zedded separately. I love Tanya, but have never quite got into Kristin’s stuff as much as I feel I should do (aside from Hips and Makers, which is wonderful).
I think I Might have waited on Alec Ounsworth this weekend. I don’t know for sure, because he didn’t pay by credit card. And he left a crappy tip, so I really hope it we some random fellow that looked like Alec Ousnworth. But I’ll go for Yellow Country Teeth
or
because they’re both motherflipping brilliant. ANd CYHSY is (I think) unzedded.
ya – much love – hope it wasn’t him.
This is tough there are so many tracks and artists that I love that are not zedded!!!
But if I can only choose one it must be YUI. (I am like TFD with Tom Petty about YUI) I do think I have not nominated this track before on RR or here so maybe it is new to you. It is an old track from the movie “taiyo no uta” which actually YUI stared in this movie. She plays a singer songwriter…duh ! ! !
It is not a great movie really just a silly teen drama about surfing and falling in love and trying to make a success as a singer songwriter, but it is a nice film.
Goodbye days is a classic brake up song. She is going to break up with a guy but still likes him as friend but not a lover, so she is conflict about it. But she knows it is the right thing to do and is going to be strong. It is a lovely song.
At the end she sings
Dekireba kanashii omoi nante shitakunai
Demo yatte kuru desho?
Sono toki egao de
Yeah hello! My friend nante sa
Ieta nara ii noni…
In Englsih this is:
I don’t want to have sad thoughts if I can help it
But they’re bound to come, right?
When they do, I’ll smile and say
Yeah hello! I hope I can call you
My friend…
The video has clips from the film.
Goodbye Days – YUI
Those are terrible waves for surfing, they’ll be lucky not to drown !
Isn’t also dangerous to snog on a railway line ? Health and Safety would ban this film in Britain.
She does have a lovely voice and a good ( if girlie) way with a tune.
I like soppy films and misty walks and rainy days and fluffy bunnies and wickle cuddly hamsters and zombie films.
Do you like kittens also???
I like cats but not ones that transmorgify into humans.
I wouldn’t want to be dealing with their litter tray !
Well, further to the Jackie Leven thread the greatest (imho) and first Doll by Doll single. Marvellous.
Too many to choose from really but I’ll go with my favourite punksters, The Queers. I suspect their name may be problematic for the more sensitive of gurus.
Here they are with a sensitive song about Ben Weasel, lead singer and dork of Screeching Weasel ( another great punk band).
Short, sharp, stupid. Just the way I like it ( aha aha).
That was great. I’m really starting to totally like he Queers.
“he Queers.”
There’s a name for girls like you !
Bad secretaries?
Here’s one you may not know…
Runaway Trains by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
I can’t believe TP&TH haven’t been zedded yet, surely it will happen soon.
Not, I think, while JonD is in charge.
Yeah, i’m thinking the only way that might happen is if there’s a wide open goal for a TP song that fits the rubric to a T and you get a million donds for it.
In addition to Jane’s Addiction that i mentioned here, there are some unzedded groups that i think are just not get listed anytime soon – Pearl Jam, Yes, Police, Moody Blues, Tull, Garbage…
Like with You Can Still Change Your Mind for Songs About Changing Your Mind week, you mean?
I was sure I’d find the band Jack mentioned by someone here already, but I do think we’ve waved a flag for them a lot, possibly to the point of irritating, so I shall not go on about Anthony Reynolds for now. It’s quite cheering going through the Marconium, to see that some of my favourite artists have been zedded, but the omission I want to point out today is the band Opeth.
They are a Swedish heavy metal band *no come back*, but my favourite songs by them are more prog than rock, the vocalist and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has a beautiful voice (when he’s not cookie monstering) and they can be very melodic, but noisy when the mood takes them.
plus, look at all the pretty hair!
I would have bet wholeheartedly – you’d go with Jack – shocker.
(good job I don’t bet)
I was tempted by Jack, arTEEsane/shane, but I reckon regular readers will have heard them and made up their own minds by now and Gurus seem very able to resist their charms, so I changed tack.
I was leaving Jack for you!
an easy one for me too, but a lot of my collection is on the more abstract side so i’ll try to pick something that should definitely be in there that I love.
I was going to say Japanther, but I was very pleased to see Steenbeck get’em B-listed a while back, nice one Claire!
I can’t believe there’s nothing from Liverpool’s finest Clinic, they have several albums of quality tunes covering a wide range of topics.
here’s my favourite:
I love Clinic!
i love clinic too.
Greetings to you all from a beautifully sunny but rather cold Berlin, last date on my current mini-lecture tour – which means, unfortunately, that the internet connection is a little erratic, and doesn’t seem to like YouTube very much.
A bit like May, I’m torn between various favourites and hobby-horses which, let’s be honest, don’t really have the faintest chance of getting chosen whoever the guru is, because they’re all lyric-less jazz and mostly at the modern Euopean end of the spectrum – my absolute favourite trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, the beautiful and delicate Marcin Wasilewski Trio, the music of Kryzstzof Komeda, the riotous Ganelin Trio, the wonderfully ramshackle East German group (my main listening at present, since they hail from Berlin) Zentrallquartet – though I did get them into the B-list once under Maddy – and so forth – and (vaguely tries to remember what happened back at the beginning of this sentence) various curious omissions of greats that seem to find it equally hard to get listed despite the fact that they have proper themes, words and that sort of thing, and lots of people used to like their records. Queen, for example; it seems astonishing that no Queen song has ever been listed (at any rate I don’t think one has ever been listed), and this omission is even more scandalous…
Maybe this week, as a shoe-horn for newspapers? Not a hope.
Yeah, Dire Straits are another astonishingly unzedded group. I couldn’t believe Queen was unzedded either. Just checked, and only Under Pressure is listed, which kind of doesn’t really count!
Nope, i’m wrong – We Will Rock You is zedded too, for Handclaps.
I guess that’s better than nothing – I must have missed that week – but it’s a shame it wasn’t one of their good songs…
Sidetrack:
I realised, as I was giving BBC3′s Him & Her another chance to make me laugh last night, that dear old magicman (aka Ralph Brown) was in it. He plays a sarcastic, self-important tosser called Nigel. Plays it rather well, as it happens. I’m sure the episode (3 of series 2) will be on the iPlayer for a while, should you be curious (and live in the UK).
Good on him, i wish i could see it (i don’t think we can get that here, i usually get “not available in your country” for that.) I loved Magicman and miss him.
I have never seen “Withnail and I”, but someone in the Graun picked that as their favorite movie so i watched a few clips of him. It must have been a blast to play that role.
I’ll toss in Gaslight Anthem, who have been nominated a few times but it will apparently take a couple more albums for people to catch on to how really really good they are. They’ve been described as Clash meets Springsteen, and you can hear why in their sound. I think perhaps that sound makes it easy to dismiss them as a good bar band – as people do with The Hold Steady – or something, Lyrically, though, they take very broad strokes, describing both the feelings and historical context of a situation. This is Great Expectations, a breakup song that covers their entire relationship, not just the bad bit at the end. Brian Fallon doesn’t have to say ”I’m hurt,” he shows you.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gaslight+anthem&oq=gaslight+anthem&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2888l7701l0l8761l23l21l3l10l8l1l275l1278l1.6.1l8l0
Lets try:
Geek point, he has a Buzzstop fitted to his Jazzmaster. I have one on my Jaguar. His guitar sound good, mine sounds like crap in a bucket.
No wonder I never made it.
You’ll have a fellow supporter in Ubuette here.
Big Gassy fan.
I thought I had this one nailed right away. I’ve spent a lot of time shouting for The Rascals’ Groovin’ over on the RR but sadly for me (& hooray for BeltwayBandit) Groovin’ was listed for Afternoons. But it’s listed under The Young Rascals which is not what was on the record label but I’ll not quibble. As people of a certain age know (Marconius comes to mind) that was their name till a lawsuit by Hollywood pukes forced them to drop the Young. Tried to think of someone I’d nommed a lot and had it narrowed down to Roger Miller or Modest Mouse when Brook popped in my head & I knew the contest was over. Here’s a voice guaranteed to stir your soul. I could have gone with Rainy Night In Georgia as it still gives me chills after hundreds & hundreds of listenings. But this does the same & is not so familiar & would be a major feather in my cap if I ever got it listed.
I didn’t know Groovin was zedded! I think i got it B-listed by Paul Mac.
Just found out myself!
So we’ve been cluelessly beating a dead horse all this time. Like i also did with Landslide, Celebrity Skin, Faith, and Bring Tha Noise, to name just a few off of the top of my head.
And here i was thinking that the gurus had no taste.
steenbeck beat me to getting Modest Mouse A listed : The Good Times Are Killing Me in Hangovers…
Shane – Hangovers -my first full week on RR – truly missed that & I thought I’d checked the Marconium too.
Two for me:
The Fluid’s ‘One Eye Out’
Medicine ‘Heads’
Both wonderful. The first – a belting rock out. The second is incredibly delicate and abstract, but really beautiful. Also, props to Beth Noir – the new Jane’s song is great.
Hi Rich James!
(i’m aka RTJ over there.)
Ok, so that’s 2 for the new Jane’s song, and me against. Hmmm.
Well, obviously it’s gonna be pure pop from me! Tempted to go for Eurythmics but I seem to recall they have at least been B-listed (“Here Comes The Rain Again” for Rain), so I’ll go for Erasure.
Don’t anyone DARE say the Wheatus version is better…
Rather distressingly, Larry “Wild Man” Fischer seems never to have been listed for any topic.
This is one of my favourites.
I suspect there’s as much chance of Larry getting on the list as there is of Wing.
Still, we live in hope.
Everybody, B-listed does not = zedded.
…but B-lists are recorded in the Marconium. Or does the Marconium proper only refer to the record of A-lists? Making the rest of the site, er, the Marcapophryca?
So much [heavy] rock, so little time . . . .
Will try to get creative whilst I have a read
Bit late in this week.
This is one of my favourite female singers, Lavern Baker. The track here was issued as a B-side to her “Hey Memphis” which was Lavern’s answer record to Elvis’ “Little Sister”so I think whoever put (1958) on the YouTube clip was mistaken.
I am currently listening to the Gilles Peterson David Rodigan Special which has influenced my choice :- if there ever was an RR topic looking for 80′s Jamaican Dancehall tunes based on old calypso, then this still probably wouldn’t get picked :
[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PqNA3_W9Qw%5D
this time with feeling …
As Little Feat did at least make it to the B-list, I thought I’d have another go at the song I most regretted not being picked for the Apologies topic.
Josh T. Pearson – Sorry With a Song
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2011/nov/17/josh-t-pearson-live-session?intcmp=239
JonD may not have liked it but a few weeks later one of his colleagues on the Guide said this:
The ex-Lift To Experience man is in acoustic mode here, but his is a uniquely trickling, irregular, melodic style, lyrics and notes spilling down his chin like burbled bourbon down the hairs of that beard. His apology is a cleverly detailed reconstruction of country and western cliches, barfights and all, but for all its cap-in-hand, shambling abjection, Sorry With A Song is brilliantly turned, postmodern yet pulsatingly sincere, pick of the week by a strange country mile.
Part of the appeal of that album for me is the playing by Midlake. That part doesn’t seem to get talked about much.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of John Grant? Warren Ellis of The Dirty Three and Bad Seeds guests on this one but not Midlake as far as I know.
Suppose should at least attempt an answer to the ridiculously broad question. Here’s some newer Nina:
It was rumored that some of her (6) Peel sessions may get a release. Hope that actually happens one of these days.
How odd! I was just thinking of her while at this evening’s gig (My Brightest Diamond) and wondering what she was doing these days. It’s been a bit quiet on the Nina front for a while.
Wolfgang Press.
If anyone’s still here, here’s one from the band and album that started it all for me. Title somehow apposite!