Favorite Songs of All Time: Celebrated Summer by Hüsker Dü

From New Day Rising (1985), comes this incredible song by the fabled Minneapolis trio Hüsker Dü:



Love and hate was in the air, like pollen from a flower
Somewhere in April time, they add another hour

I guess I'd better think up a way to spend my time
Just when I'm ready to sit inside, it's summer time
Should I go fishing or get a friend to hang around
It's back to summer, back to basics, hang around

Getting drunk out on the beach, or playing in a band
And getting out of school meant getting out of hand

Was this your celebrated summer? Was that your celebrated summer?

Then the sun disintegrates between a wall of clouds
I summer where I winter at, and no one is allowed there

Do you remember when the first snowfall fell
When summer barely had a snowball's chance in Hell

Favorite Songs Of All Time: Night Of Chill Blue by The Chills

As previously stated on this shabby blog, the music of Dunedin, New Zealand's Flying Nun Records has been a very big part of my life for virtually all of my adult life. The Chills were my gateway drug so-to-speak into the wonderfully unique, chiming pop from the island nation.

A great description of The Chills is from Trouser Press (which, in print form, was another great musical influence for me):

Perhaps the most widely known and beloved combo of New Zealand's '80s indie-pop boom, Dunedin's Chills — led by singer/writer/guitarist Martin Phillipps — made clean, understated, catchy music whose consistent taste and subtlety conspired to keep the band from having real commercial success in this country. At its best, the Chills' work boasted an undercurrent of dark uneasiness that clearly marked it as a vehicle for personal expression rather than mere genre exercise. Guitars may twinkle like harps and jangle over angelically whispery vocals, but the love songs are never gooey. Gooey bands do not write lines like "Oh god this white ward stinks, sterilized stench of sticky death, sniveling relatives at the feet of another moist corpse, but that corpse is Jayne and Jayne can't die" (from Brave Words' "16 Heart-throbs"). Soppy sentimentalists aren't honest enough to admit "I'd like to say how I love you but it's all been said in other songs" as Phillipps does on the same album's "Night of Chill Blue."

One of the high points in the Flying Nun canon is "Night Of Chill Blue" by aforementioned The Chills from their production flawed-but-still-great 1987 "Brave Words" LP.



Some of the tracks from Brave Words have been remastered, with the muddy production cleaned up. Hopefully Martin can get around to taking care of the rest of the tracks, including "Night Of Chill Blue" one of these years.

Favorite Songs of All Time: "A Shot In The Arm" by Wilco

From Wilco's dense and intricately-arranged 1999 record "Summerteeth" comes the single A Shot In The Arm.

(just the audio track, there is no official video for the song)

I've played Summerteeth literally hundreds of times in the past decade. And while it's not arecord that I've dialed up to play to in it's entirety anytime within the last few years, A Shot In The Arm still stands up to repeated listens for me when it comes up on the iPod. Dark and bleak with the repeated line of "what you once were isn't what you want to be anymore" as the music song fades. Perfect.

Favorite Songs of All Time: "Halleljuah" by Jeff Buckley

The late Jeff Buckley's haunting version of Leonard Cohen's magnificent "Hallelujah" (1994), it's one of the rare exceptions where the cover version is vastly superior to the original. Which is saying a lot, as I love Leonard's original version as well, but Jeff transformed this song.

The studio version is by far my favorite, bittersweet and brooding. Just his angelic voice and a melancholic electric guitar. Listen here:


And one more, live in studio. Great to watch him perform, but it's not quite up to the same level as the album version posted above.


"Hallelujah" has been covered many times by many musicians since and will be covered again, but I don't see how anyone could top Jeff's perfect version. And if you don't have his album Grace, buy it now.

Favorite Songs of All Time: "Alison" by Slowdive

Since I've been feeling wholly uninspired as of late and have started posting a few links to various music videos, I figured it'd make for a new series for the blog*. At least there's a rich vein of content that I can mine. And it's one more thing I can struggle to write about as I peck out borderline gibberish.

Music has always meant so very much to me. If I could only consume one type of artwork, I'd happily give up films, TV, photography and reading as long as I could still surround my life with great music.

Today's song, "Alison", comes from England's Slowdive, arguably one of the most notable bands from the early-90's "shoegaze" indie rock movement. Along with the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Lush, Swervedriver, Pale Saints and Verve, the band created atmospheric guitar sounds that enveloped the listener with a warm fuzz - in Slowdive's case, courtesy of their alluring Rickenbacker guitars and more melancholic demeanor. Lyrics are not the song's high point, mainly speaking to one who is apparently pretty strung-out, but the feel and mood of the music took priority to meaning for most of the shoegazers. Overall, 1993's Souvlaki is my second favorite album in the genre, right after My Bloody Valentine's 1991 masterpiece Loveless. Side note to MBV's Kevin Shields: please remaster and reissue Loveless soon. The version of "Sometimes" from 2004's Lost In Translation soundtrack sounds so much better than the album version.

These days Souvlaki is most listened to during trans-continental flights. With some melatonin and red wine in my system, it becomes a perfect album to drift in and out of sleep and lucid dreams to. And thanks to the iPod's repeat function, there are times when it will play four to five times in a row as I waste the hours away, grasping for some shut eye while sitting in an uncomfortable and blown-out Boeing seat.

Obviously a low-budget video (as they all should be), likely shot by a friend of the band, it's rather dated. Even though the song is seventeen years old, I had never viewed it until today.



Slowdive likely saw the writing on the wall that the shoegaze scene would eventually play out, so the band morphed into almost-as-great Mojave 3. Singer/songwriter Neil Halstead has also released a few intimate and pastoral records on his own over the past few years. All good stuff.

*I've gone back to the two previous videos posted as of late (linked in the first sentence) and re-titled and tagged them as "favorite songs of all time".

And note that I spelled the song title correctly, the uploader of the video added an additional "l".

Folk Song Of The Day (Favorite Songs of All Time)

A Heart Needs A Home, an achingly-beautiful song by Richard and Linda Thompson and one of my all-time favorites.



While I was all of four years old when this was recordedand way more in to my 45 RPM singles of Winnie The Pooh and Tigger songs than British Folk, I'm grateful that the music of Richard Thompson has been a big part of my life for the past twenty years.

Kiwi Song Of The Day (Favorite Songs of All TIme)

"Block Of Wood" by The Bats, from 1987's indie pop masterpiece Daddy's Highway.



God I love this song. When can I go to New Zealand?