More Music-Geekery; or, They Say to Write What You Know, and What Do I Know Better than My Own Peculiar, Sometimes Short-Lived, Obsessions?

I’ve mentioned here an off-and-on project of the last several years, which has been collecting the non-hit songs (or at least they weren’t hits when I collected them) I’ve loved best, burning them onto a CD, and calling the result “Maestropolis.” This last because I used an image from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis as the cover of the first one, and made a lousy play on the old-fashioned use of the word “maestro” as a musician’s honorific. But what the hell. I didn’t do this for cool points, I did this so I could listen to a bunch of songs I liked in a row without having to swap out CDs every three minutes.

I just finished burning the latest edition, a two-disc set. (It’s been a while since I last did it, and good music tends to accumulate. Also, I went out looking for stuff, and ... well, I found it.) All together, the various editions have accreted 138 songs, which it strikes me is a good number for a box set. Oh yeah. You’re in for it now.

The following is the liner notes for said imaginary boxed set. Maybe not imaginary, if I get off my ass, find some cardboard, and print out enough proper images. But for now, this is it. My favorite songs (that didn’t get a whole lot of exposure; like everyone else, I love “Hey Ya” to death) from the past, roughly, five years.

Disc One:

01. The Webb Brothers “The Liar’s Club”
Orchestral pop with fuzz-toned guitar. Notable for tackling (in a more earnest fashion) the entire message of the first Strokes album, a year early. Only they’re Chicago, not New York. And they’re the sons of “Macarthur Park” songwriter Jimmy Webb, not fashion designers and record executives. But you can still hate them as much as you hate the Strokes. From the Wea International LP Maroon, 2000.

02. Elvis Costello “Tear Off Your Own Head (It’s a Doll Revolution)”
Pop/rock with the devil in the details. Written by Mr. McManus for a hypothetical girl group, and later covered by the Bangles, who also called their attempt at a comeback CD Doll Revolution. Its zippy pseudo-feminist stylings probably kept it from getting any kind of pop airply, where misogyny is still in. From the Island LP When I Was Cruel, 2002.

03. Texas “Parisian Pierrot”
Yeah, Texas. Scottish lite-rockers replaced by Dido in the annals of British wuss music. The song by Noël Coward, from one of his earliest musicals in the late 1920s. Gertrude Lawrence both made it famous and was made famous by it. Texas leaves out a line in favor of a sample of a guy saying something in French. From the MMC various-artists charity LP Twentieth Century Blues: the Songs of Noël Coward, 1998.

04. The Strokes “Hard to Explain”
Spiky pop-post-punk, with one of the great slacker drawls on vocals. By now everyone pretty much knows where they stand on the Strokes, so I’ll just say that I loved this song when I first heard it as a crappy mp3 rip of a British radio spot, the day after the first stupid review appeared in the NME, and I love it now. The moment of silence after the first chorus is one of the defining pop moments of the 21st century. From the Rough Trade UK single This Modern World, 2001.

05. Bob Dylan “Bye and Bye”
Country waltz, with Lanois-ish touches in the production. It is a fact which completely throws everything we thought we knew about pop music into immense disarray, that Bob Dylan is still making music just as good as any he’s ever made, and — as in the present instance — so much different from anything he’s ever done that no comparison really suffices. He manages an adequate croon in his croaky Old-Bob voice, and, well, it’s just pretty perfect. From the Columbia LP Love and Theft, 2001.

06. Steve Taylor “Shortstop”
Every subgenre has its legends and heroes, its fallen and its intensely watched. Steve Taylor, back in the late 80’s, used to be called the “clown prince of Christian music,” with satirical songs taking on everything from mass-market conformity to — most infamously — anti-abortion zealots. This is his only dispatch since 1995’s live album Liver, and his only studio song since 1993’s Squint. It’s kind of a swing song, if swing concerts had mosh pits. From the Squint Entertainment various-artists LP Roaring Lambs, 2000.

07. Johnny Cash “The Mercy Seat”
This song was the means of my learning the first lesson of music-geekery: no one will thank you for making them listen to a Nick Cave song, no matter who sings it. The general public does not expect from music what they are happy to enjoy in a movie. Their loss. From the American LP American III: Solitary Man, 2002.

08. Doves “There Goes the Fear”
Not really a fan of this song anymore, but it’s still listenable. The kind of epic British mope-rock that was still fashionable before everyone remembered that they’d heard Joy Division. Hey, it’s better than Coldplay. From the Heavenly LP The Last Broadcast, 2002.

09. Mark Knopfler “What It Is”
I used to really love Dire Straits. Then I found out what else was going on in music, 1979-1984. But this is the kind of song that anyone who enjoys pop music should love; it’s got Knopfler’s trademark crisp guitar lines, some of his best imagistic songwriting, and a killer violin hook that makes me think of any movie where people ride horses towards towering walled cities. From the Warner Bros. LP Sailing to Philadelphia, 2000.

10. Robbie Williams “The Road to Mandalay”
Okay, I’ll admit to a bit of a Brit-music fascination. There are worse things. My favorite Robbie Williams music is Swing When You’re Winning, by a long shot, but this is a close second, a pretty-then-bombastic pop song that I can’t really find precedent for outside of the Waterboys. From the Capitol LP Sing When You’re Winning, 2000.

11. Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros “Johnny Appleseed”
Joe Strummer could have been one of the great folksingers, with his voice. In a way, I guess he was. (Depends on your definition of “folk,” dunnit?) This, maybe the folkiest song he ever did — it would have been called a protest song in 1967 — is turned into a pan-global party by the band he preferred over the Clash in his last five years. They introduced me to all sorts of great music; here’s to the Mescaleros. From the Epitaph LP Global a Go-Go, 2001.

12. Shakira “Objection (Tango)”
The only pop starlet who could conceivably have duetted with Strummer and held her own, Shakira remains one of pop music’s best-kept secrets, even while she storms the spotlight. The thing is; it’s not her producers that give her music the kind of world-music-in-a-blender edge that made “Toxic” listenable; it’s the lady herself. This went on to become a kind of hit about a year after I fell in love with its surf-guitar breakdowns. Imagine if Ricky Martin had had this sort of musical cleverness. From the Sony LP Laundry Service, 2001.

13. David Byrne “Neighborhood”
Oddly, I like this song more now than I did when I used to listen to it all the time. I used to think it was faintly cheesy musically, only tolerable for the “we’ve got peace, love, monkey business” lyrics. But I’ve learned to love 70’s soul, and now the flute riffs are no longer corny, but satisfying. From the Virgin LP Look into the Eyeball, 2001.

14. Dolly Parton “Shine”
Trippy covers are a kind of hobby of mine, it seems. This one has a crackerjack bluegrass band going to town on Collective Soul’s 1991 alterna-dork hit. Dolly’s voice, of course, is still pure mountain-stream cool, and she even makes the vague, waffly spiritual lyrics (years before Creed, remember) sound kind of sexy, something no one who grew up with VCRs could have done. From the Sugar Hill LP Little Sparrow, 2001.

15. Kinky “Soun Tha Primer Amor”
I once saw these guys turn a pretty boring Cinco de Mayo into a kickass party. The next day, I hunted down their CD; of course, it’s not nearly as good. However, I still love this Mexican-ghetto electronica song, because I remember hearing it live and thinking it applied to this girl who I was pretty sure was there, but I never did see her. In Spanish. From the Nettwerk LP Kinky, 2002.

16. Daniel Amos “Who’s Who Here?”
Daniel Amos is the other Christian rock act (besides Steve Taylor) that pagans can listen to without breaking out into a cold sweat. They were great in the early 80s, when they rode the New Wave bandwagon to a highly specific purpose better than anyone I’ve ever heard of, and only okay since then, when they’ve ridden the alterna-rock bandwagon to no real purpose. But this Neil-Young-with-Crazy-Horsey song still makes me laugh, if only for the superb turn of phrase, “shit-chat.” And, of course, the cowbell. From the Galaxy21 LP Mr. Buechner’s Dream, 2001.

17. The Vines “Highly Evolved”
I know, I know. I’m embarrassed too. It’s less than two minutes long, and I had some space left on the disc. Australian Nirvana-wannabes riding the garage-rock-revival wave? What was anybody thinking? From the Capitol LP Highly Evolved, 2002.

18. Radiohead “Optimistic”
Hello, my name is Jonathan Bogart, and my mind was blown by Kid A, even though Radiohead wasn’t being as experimental as the hype said. Now that this confession is out of the way, I hope we can all move on. To wit, this is still a great song, in a Krautrock-for-the-masses kind of way. From the Capitol LP Kid A, 1998.

19. Stone Temple Pilots “Atlanta”
For some reason, when the album came out, I kept reading that this song was a Doors rip-off. I can’t imagine why people must have thought so, unless they never got past Scott Weiland’s opening word, which does sound a bit like Jim Morrison. But it ends with marimbas! Marimbas! And that’s why I lik Stone Temple Pilots better than any of the grunge bands with more cred. Because they use marimbas. From the Atlantic LP No. 4, 1999.


One disc down, six to go...