Sam & Dave, “Said I Wasn’t Going To Tell Nobody”

Seems like it’s been a long time since we’ve had any Stax stuff up in here. So, it’s a delight to get some Sam & Dave, which I just tried to write Save & Dam. Which is a solid name, and is officially my Sam & Dave cover band.

The Reigning Sound, “Wait and See”

I remember buying this record, and I can remember repeatedly sorting it into the correct place in the old CD collection, and I can even recall pulling it out on multiple occasions and listening to it. And I have no recollection of what it sounds like. My stupid brain keeps thinking that it’s like The Hold Steady, and it’s not really.

Conor Oberst, “Get - Well - Cards”

Conor Oberst is known primarily as the guy fronting Bright Eyes, a band that I never got into. Like, I don’t even have one of their albums in the collections. No real reason, mind you. Hell, they might even be a band I’d like. So, how did I end up with one of his solo records? Excellent question! Uh, well, I’m VERY stupid, and incredibly impressionable. So, I’m sure at some point I read a positive review and thought to myself “maybe it’s time to try out some of this guy’s music”! What do I think? I honestly had forgotten I owned it.

Zeal and Ardor, “Fire Of Motion”

We just had Zeal and Ardor in here recently. This is always a challenge: I have so little interesting to say about anything, that if we have a band show up twice too quickly, y’all will notice that I’m hopeless. Notice more that I’m hopeless.

I love the echoing guitar part that opens this track, this whole thing actually reads more industrial than black metal in a lot of ways, which kind of makes me nostalgic for 1990.

Led Zeppelin, “Since I’ve Been Loving You”

I dunno, I’ve just got a feeling, I’m not sure this band is really gonna ever make it big.

James Brown, “There It Is”

Awwww hell yes, if we’re going back, let’s get the Godfather of Soul! I always wonder a little bit with Brown, if his music sounds so fresh because so much of it was refreshed by hip hop making use of it. I don’t think so, but it’s also impossible for me to listen to this stuff totally clean.

Polyrhythmics, “The Mendo Mulcher”

I sometimes wonder if I’m going to look back on all the instrumental funk and soul that I listen to these days and think how a lot of it has aged poorly, in the same way that so much of the third wave of ska has aged poorly. But then I remember, none of this shit got popular, so it’s all good! And it allows me to get my horn fix without feeling like a dope! (I still love ska, though.)

Soundgarden, “Outshined”

Badmotorfinger was the big leap forward for Soundgarden, where they married the murky hard rock homage of their early stuff to clean enough productions and songs to really appeal to a broader audience. And, carried forward by the contemporaneous releases of Nevermind and Ten, that broader audience found them. Soundgarden had always had potential to be a big band, as the core of that Sabbath/Zeppelin sound had a built-in appeal to a bunch of folks, and they would be one of the breakout acts of the grunge scene.

Stephen Malkmus, “Discretion Grove”

Do you detect a little echo of “Wounded Kite” there in the aborted first bit of song on this track? No? Just me?

The Suicide Machines, “Our Time”

No, we’re leaving the “Days Since Last Listless, Anonymous Third Wave Song” sign alone on this one. There’s nothing listless about this! The Suicide Machines are very much a chip off the Operation Ivy block, and the energy here carries them plenty far.

Nation of Ulysses, “The Sound of Young America”

I need more art punk in my life. Nation of Ulysses was unafraid to just go for it, with their over-the-top political polemics, the atonal honking of the trumpet, the odd song structures, or whatever other pretensions they were willing to put on. They also carried it off with straight faces, which just helped carry things. As I get older, I’m happier with bands that staked out their own territory. Nobody really sounds like the Nation of Ulysses, and that’s really valuable.

De La Soul, “Church”

After the lackluster Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump and the uneven AOI: Bionix, I was wondering if De La Soul were done. The answer was answered definitively by the next album, The Grind Date: no, they were not done. At least part of that was the production they got on the record, with good work from folks like J Dilla, Mad Lib, and 9th Wonder (who is on this track). It’s not groundbreaking in the way their early work was, but it’s a just a solid record all the way through.

Flying Lotus, “Eyes Above”

You’re Dead!, the incredible 2014 album by Flying Lotus, is a shimmering mass of fantastic ideas, with constant shifting across tracks, well-chosen guest artists, and lots of surprises across the length of the album. However, it’s one of those records that really works best as an album, and not as isolated cuts, as you miss the overall context of each song if you just listen to a piece.