SotD: Nulla In Mundo Pax · The full title is Nulla In Mundo Pax Sincera, which will leave many blank. A better way to put it is “Emma Kirkby singing Vivaldi”, a combination that will bring a smile to the faces of many who listen to any classical music at all ...
SotD: All Blues · Obviously there’s nothing obscure about Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, probably the best-selling (and one of the most-praised) jazz albums ever. But All Blues is a little more subdued than the rest of the songs and it’s got a spine-chilling little highlight that I’ve never noticed anyone else pointing out. With that, and with some notes from Miles’s autobiography, I might have something new even for long-time Miles fans ...
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SotD: Just Like This · Once again a Song of the Day that’s a song from today, more or less; there is actual musical life out there on the pop charts. And Something Just Like This isn’t just pop, it’s particularly poppy pop featuring teen sentiment and minimal structure; but hey, it’s a pretty tune and it’s got a beat, you could dance to it. It’s a collaboration between Coldplay and The Chainsmokers, and I don’t know the first thing about either of them ...
SotD: Elizabeth Reed · The full title is In Memory of Elizabeth Reed; it was written by Dickey Betts of The Allman Brothers Band and is a highlight on their live album At Fillmore East, a collection of songs that is very special to a lot of people, including me. It’d be pretty obviously jazz if it weren’t for all the brilliant rock-guitar improv ...
SotD: Moustaki · After all that hardass rock the last couple of days, I feel the need of something softer. Alors, profitons d’une très douce chanson française de Georges Moustaki… oh wait. I’m talking about Georges Moustaki, a francophone singer-songwriter of generally Mediterranean extraction who was hot stuff when I was in high school a hundred years back. This is seriously sweet sonorous stuff ...
SotD: Hoochie Koo · Yesterday I veered gleefully off the road of High Culture into the musical gutter. So, let’s hang out down here one more day. For your pleasure I offer “Rock & Roll, Hoochie Koo”. It was written in 1970 by Rick Derringer, who is OK by me, originally for Johnny Winter. Rick’s laid down some ace recordings both on his own and with one or more Winters ...
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SotD: Sharp Dressed Man · This series has been getting kind of refined and intellectual in recent days, so we’re going to fix that right now. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a ZZ Top song I didn’t like, and Billy Gibbons’ guitar sound is unequaled in its grit and its steel-spined groove. You also have to love the performances; the guys clearly don’t take themselves too seriously (I once described their moves as “a back-beat pavane”). Sharp Dressed Man is pure fun ...
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SotD: Mishima · This isn’t a song, it’s a movie soundtrack, I hope that’s OK. It’s by Philip Glass, and the movie is Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters from 1985. The name refers to Yukio Mishima, a Japanese novelist who went crazy and tried to lead a restore-the-sacred-Empire putsch against the Japanese government in 1970 and, when it predictably failed, committed seppuku ...
SotD: Misa Criolla · Written in 1964 by Argentinian Ariel Ramírez, Misa Criolla is the Mass in Spanish set to music with a sound and structure that combines several indigenous styles. You know those buskers that set up in public markets everywhere in colorful South-American outfits with giant Pan-pipes and guitars both huge and tiny? That style of music. Misa Criolla is great stuff, sold a zillion copies back there, and I can’t imagine anyone not liking it ...
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SotD: La Isla Bonita · This is a beautiful and simple little Spanish-inflected melody, written by Madonna, Patrick Leonard, and Bruce Gaitsch. It sold a lot of records for her and is a staple of her live shows ...
SotD: Hurt · No, not Trent Reznor singing the moany overwrought Nine Inch Nails version; I mean Johnny Cash’s take on American IV: The Man Comes Around, his last studio album. It’s grainy and sad and generally awesome. To his credit, Trent Reznor said “that song isn’t mine anymore.” ...
SotD: Roads to Moscow · Even on the oldies stations, you never hear Al Stewart any more. In my youth he was a pretty big deal though, and had mega-hits with Year of the Cat and Time Passages. Roads to Moscow wasn’t a big hit but it was always my fave among his songs. I listened to it again the other night for the first time in years, and I was moved again by its story, and by its melodic grace ...
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SotD: Doin’ Summertime · I’ve always liked Doin’ Time by Sublime which is (gasp!) approaching twenty years old. But I have a secret reason, because the breathy backing track is off a record approaching sixty years old by Herbie Mann that my Dad bought when I was still in short pants, and I still have the original, and love it. Well, and also because it’s based on Summertime; I’ve been in a musically-literate room where someone called it the greatest song ever written and while somebody else said “What about Good Vibrations?” a few heads were nodding. Let’s take a trip through the times ...
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SotD: White Room · Let me tell you a story. In 1968 when I was 13, my then-43-year-old Dad, a Professor of Agriculture, had a business trip to London, which was a white-hot center of the whole Sixties thing. He walked into a record store and asked them to sell him a couple of records for his son, whatever was hot. He came home with two Cream singles: White Room backed with Those Were the Days, and Badge b/w What a Bringdown. Was your Dad ever that cool? Anyhow, that means I’ve loved White Room for fifty years ...
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SotD: Allegri’s Miserere · The work’s title is really just Miserere (“have mercy on us”), but since so many composers have asked for mercy, and since Gregorio Allegri was sort of a one-hit wonder, everybody says it like in the title above. I think that we can each use all the divine mercy we can get, but maybe your need is less than mine. The (Latin, of course) text is Psalm 51. It’s a little over twelve minutes of simple soaring melody, built of a short choral fragment repeated five times, with a variation last time around. It’s got a colorful history ...
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SotD: Middle of the Road · In case nobody noticed, I have a thing for loud-voiced women singing in front of heavy electric-guitar noise. Any list of those has to have Chrissie Hynde near the top. She wrote and sings this, provides some of the guitar noise herself, and throws in a triumphant harmonica break ...
SotD: The Boys of Summer · This was released by Don Henley of the Eagles in 1984, his words to music by Mike Campbell. It’s only a minor member of the California-rock canon but it’s special to me, and I still love to hear it ...
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SotD: Feel It Still · Another contemporary — well, a year old — Song of the Day. What happened was, I liked Feel It Still on the radio, and liked that it quoted from Please Mr. Postman, and when I went looking for video to see what Portugal. The Man were like live, the first I found featured a stage surrounded by projected words reading “NO COMPUTERS UP HERE, JUST LIVE INSTRUMENTS”. So I was hooked ...
SotD: Plutonian Nights · The Nubians of Plutonia was recorded by Sun Ra and his Arkestra before 1960 and released in 1966, but it’s not really music of either period, it’s of the distant future. Or at least that’s what Sun Ra claimed; mind you, he also claimed he was born on Saturn and that aliens were going to be arriving any minute. Having said that, Plutonian Nights is one of the coolest jazz tracks ever recorded in any galaxy; I’m glad it was this one ...
SotD: Crazy on You · Back in the Seventies when dinosaurs walked the earth, Heart was a pretty big one, and unique among hard (occasionally) rock bands in being woman-fronted, by sisters Anne and Nancy Wilson. Crazy on You was their debut single and for my money their best song ever, and one of the better arguments why Rock & Roll at its peak reaches above all other forms of music ...
