Random Shuffle – March 7, 2006

The Rolling Stones
Everybody Needs Somebody to Love
From the album The Rolling Stones, Now!

I recently got my hands on a number of earlier classic Stones albums. In fact, I’ve only recently gotten into the Stones again. I’m continually amazed at their vast amount of really great music. It’s easy to listen to their “hits” collection played over and over on classic rock radio and overlook what amounts to one of the greatest masses of tunes in rock-n-roll.

This song is from their 1965 album of covers, which makes it their third album released in the US. You can still hear the early 1950s rock-n-roll influence and even some doo-wop slipping in. It’s a catchy little number, but something of a novelty throw-away in the pantheon of Rolling Stones music.

Bob Dylan
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
From the album Biograph

When I was first becoming a Dylan fan my mother bought me this boxed set. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time. It was filled with the hits and the obscure and live versions of songs like this.  This isn’t a favorite song for me, but as with many Dylan songs, even when they’re not great, their pretty stinking good.

Ryan Adams
Elizabeth You Were Born To Play That Part
From a live recording in Montreal, (05/01/05)

This comes from a five-disk compilation of live shows from 2005 called Bedhead which I assume comes from Ryan Adams generally disheveled coif. This is a quiet, beautiful piano ballad from the third of Ryan’s releases in 2005, 29. Like many of Ryan’s ballads this song is so quiet, it’s hard to actually hear what’s going on. But if you can manage to remove all distractions and really get into it, there is a song of heartbreaking proportions.

Grateful Dead – Drums
From the album Dick’s Picks, Vol.  5 (12-26-79)

The Dead always dug their drummers. So much so that they hired two of them. By 1979 Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann had created a monolithic beast of every sort of drum and percussion instrument. At 4 minutes 22 seconds this is a relatively short (and tame) version of “Drums” but still manages to create an interesting snake-chasing menagerie of rhythm.