Weak

This is a genre-hopping week, I think. However, today's song is really one of the gems of the 90s. Skunk Anansie was considered an alternative rock band - and their biggest claim to fame was the song Weak from the album Paranoid and Sunburnt from 1995. Their lead singer, Skin, finds what for me is the perfect balance between pain and anger on this song, and what eluded me before is the incredibly warm and bluesy guitar tone on the main riff. It is interesting listening back to some of these songs with ears that have had 20 more years of listening to music. It still hits me emotionally - this was one of my favorite songs of the mid-90s - but I am also appreciating more of the work that went into the different layers of the song. If you had asked me about the guitar sound before listening back to it, I would have sworn they used heavy distortion, but for most of the song that is really light and main guitar is clean. It's funny how memory tricks you from time to time. Oh well - I keep blabbering on when all you really need is to hear this song. Weak by Skunk Anansie is that good!

Isak

I have a great little song for you today. I have had the pleasure of seeing Baroness live twice now, and the next time they roll into town, odds are I will see them again - that's how good I think they are. Baroness has quickly risen to be one of my favorite metal bands - and their debut album, simply called Red Album (they have since released Blue Record, Yellow/Green, and Purple) is a great debut album - and the song Isak just simply blew me away. And so I feel like sharing the song with you today - but not just in the original version...

I have also included a live version from Philadelphia in June 2017. The only member that has been a constant in Baroness - and who is featured on both tracks - is singer/guitarist John Dyer Baizley. The latest update saw Pete Adams (guitar) leave quietly and on very friendly terms and Gina Gleason arrive. With the second vocals on Isak being in the higher register, I was excited to hear her take on it, and while there are shakier moments with the newest member in the live version, it still rocks (and yes, that is a long tuneup in the beginning...) 

Fragile

Not many words today. I have just been thinking about this song again lately. This is from back when Sting was both interesting and relevant. The album was ...Nothing Like the Sun. The year was 1987. The song is Fragile.

Haitian Fight Song

I thought this tune would be appropriate for today, as we are about to hear from our racist in chief talk about the state of our "union". Remember, Haiti is one of the shithole countries that he does not want immigrants from, so I thought I'd pick this little Mingus tune out to represent them. Plus, I felt like playing a little Mingus anyway. The main bass riff is one of my all time favorites, and they way he played that upright... Goosebumps all the way. The man was a musical genius who suffered from ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), which is such a cruel disease, gradually robbing him of his ability to play the bass. But we do have the recordings, and Haitian Fight Song, which originally appeared on the album The Clown, recorded in 1957 and released in 1961, is one of his finest.

When talking about it, Mingus told Nat Hentoff, who wrote liner notes to the album, "I'd say this song has a contemporary folk feeling. My solo in it is a deeply concentrated one. I can't play it right unless I'm thinking about prejudice and hate and persecution, and how unfair it is. There's sadness and cries in it, but also determination. And it usually ends with my feeling: 'I told them! I hope somebody heard me." (http://aln2.albumlinernotes.com/The_Clown.html) And what a solo it is... And what a song...

Hotel St. Pauli

So today's song is the final song that plays over the end credits of Hotel St Pauli, one of the worst movies I have seen. The year was 1988, and Wam & Vennerød is a Norwegian moviemaking duo that operated similarly to the Coen brothers - albeit without the quality the Coen brothers consistently display. Svend Wam directed the movie, while he and Petter Vennerød produced it. According to the duo, the movie is about the universal themes of life, death, and love. It is a pretentious piece of crap, if I remember correctly.

But the song, the title track, is so incredibly amazing that it never left the back of my mind - and every now and then it shows up in the front of my mind as well. It has a sense of yearning, or maybe it's a sense of loss? Much like yesterday's song, I am sucked in by the mood more than anything. I keep hearing the song in my mind, and when I searched, I found this copy of it - from the end credits of the movie itself. As this clearly is digitized from an old VHS tape, the quality isn't the best, but I think the song still comes through. This is once again Anne Grethe Preuss, but this time as a solo artist, with the song Hotel St Pauli.

And... If you should want to watch the movie (I am thinking I should do it again to see if I think it is as bad as I remember it), it is available - without subtitles, unfortunately - on YouTube.

Tango

So... I have had a couple of songs on my mind lately. They are sung by the same artist - in this first one, she was in a band, while in tomorrow's song, she was a solo artist doing the soundtrack for one of the most maligned movies in the history of Norwegian cinema (and it was maligned for good reason). We are going back to the 80s right now, and there was this incredibly tall blonde Norwegian singer who just had finished with one band, Veslefrekk, and started a new one called Can Can. The singer's name was Anne Grethe Preuss, and she was (and still is) indeed an artist when it comes to music.

I have been reading up a little bit about Can Can - I knew they only released two albums (En Lek I Forhold and European Rainbow), but what I really read that made perfect sense was that they were more interested in a musical concept than writing very traditional songs. The lyrics are only there to compliment the music - and while the lyrics to today's song, Tango, are great (although you do have to understand Norwegian to see that), it truly is the mood of the music that sucked me in back in 1984 and has stayed with me ever since then. This is simply great.

Albatross

Today's song holds a special significance to me. In my own personal mythology, my dad introduced me to this song a long, long time ago, and has been a favorite of mine ever since. I was originally planning on playing this on his birthday, back on December 30, but I took an extended break, and his birthday came and went. That was 4 weeks ago today, so this could be an ok day to bring it back out again. This song is by the British blues band Fleetwood Mac, which really is a very different band than the Fleetwood Mac most Americans are familiar with. Sure, the rhythm section is the same with Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie (the Mac in the band name) on bass, but the rest of the band is very different. They started out with three guitarists who also sang: Jeremy Spencer (slide guitar), Peter Green, and Danny Kirwan, but none of those three were present for the megasuccess of the 70s. However, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that I prefer this earlier version - with strong, solid blues and rock. And then there is Albatross. This instrumental has the innate ability to soothe my soul - and today I hope it soothes yours as well. Especially my dad. Because he's a pretty special guy.

Easy Money

Another type of albums I don't include in my favorite albums are the live albums. There weren't really all that many of them that I listened to last year, but one of them was King Crimson's Live in Chicago. It was recorded June 28, 2017 and it was released October 14, not even 4 months later. And it is spectacular. Way spectacular. The band this time had 8 members - once again led by founding (and only constant) member Robert Fripp on guitar and mellotron. Original member Mel Collins was present on woodwinds and mellotron (and backing vocals), long time member Tony Levin on bass (man, I worship at this man's musical feet), Jakko Jakszyk on lead vocals and guitar, and then the four drummers: Bill Rieflin (although he now plays keyboards of just about any kind), Jeremy Stacey, long time collaborator Pat Mastellotto, and percussion hero Gavin Harrison. It is a monstrous lineup, and they play so amazingly well throughout that this is one of my absolute favorite live albums of all time. One of the classic King Crimson songs was originally released on the album Larks' Tongues In Aspic from 1973, where it opened side 2, and it has grown into one of my favorites - and this version is amazing. Easy Money.

Man Of War

Like I have said before, my favorite album of 2017 was really released in 1967 - and 2017 was really a year of great re-releases. The expanded version of Radiohead's OK Computer from 1997 (OKNOTOK) was another great release of 2017. The second album are the outtakes and b sides - and they are the stuff ordinary bands dream of releasing. The second track on the second disc of the OKNOTOK version of OK Computer is Man Of War, and one of the things that made me pick this is the wonderfully "dirty" guitar sound that is one of the things I really like about Radiohead.

Nobody's Lonely Tonight

My second runner up for favorite album of the year was Chris Stapleton's Songs From A Room Volume 2. I had insanely high expectations to the first volume, which was released in May last year, due to the greatness of the album Traveller from 2015. Volume 1 did not live up to my expectations - it was good, but not great, so when Volume 2 dropped at the beginning of December, my expectations were down a little bit. But after spending most of December listening to Christmas music (it's just a tradition I have - I load my car with Christmas songs and that's what I play), I finally started listening to it - and it's great. Really great. It has some raucous rockers, some more straightforward country - and then there is this little blues number. Not a traditional 12-bar blues, but definitely a ballad from the blues tradition. Nobody's Lonely Tonight has a bleak outlook on love and what it's all about, but if you listen to the emotion here - and the emotion in the guitar - I dare you to not get goosebumps. This is a live version from Jimmy Kimmel Live - and it showcases just how great a traditional power trio can be: Guitar, bass, and drums - and with the guitarist being a spectacularly emotional singer as well. Wow. Just wow.