“Brian Wilson” – The Barenaked Ladies
from Rock Spectacle

I’m a total sucker for pop culture references. Perhaps this is because I am not only a pop culture junkie, but often make references myself in everyday conversation. I suppose when artists make similar references it makes me feel like they are one of us, or rather more pertinently, I am like them. Perhaps I could be a cool rock star, or writer pleasing fans by adding in subtle references to pop culture.

Whatever the reason for my love, when I heard the Barenaked Ladies break-out hit “One Week” I immediately adored it. The fast-paced, rat-a-tat-tat references filled me with glee. Add to that a reference to Kurasawa and I was sold.

I didn’t actually buy the album the song was on but rather an album filled with their “hits” played live. It was here I formed the opinion that they are decent songwriters with a tendency to get overly sentimental and have some of the worst rhymes in pop music. And tend to rely too heavily on jokes rather than true songwriting.

“Brian Wilson” is one of their better numbers with a sly reference to the Beach Boys’ nervous breakdown. I can even forgive the drooling joke because it references Pavlov in a way that borders on genius. Yet again when you hit the chorus the music moves into juvenile playing. It is nothing more than some adequate players speeding it up. It’s like they hit rock star mode and know nothing more than to play faster without actually having any chops.

The album is like that. There are a handful of great songs that make me laugh and feel BNL could be a great freaking band, but then they slip into full obnoxious teenage writing. Oh well, we’ll always have “If I Had a $1,000,000”

“Theme to Silverado” – Bruce Broughton
from the Original Soundtrack

I’m periodically a total sucker for rousing movie scores. Sometimes I like to pretend that I am a classical music buff, but in all honesty, though I do enjoy some of the bigger pieces, I mostly relegate that stuff to background music. Though not classical music in any sense other than the lack of singers, movie scores seem stuck in the same genre to me.

Perhaps they are more rousing, or maybe because they are attached to images and words that I adore, they seem to take up more space in my musical collection.

Silverado is a very decent movie that tried to reinvent the western genre and serves more as a winking tribute to old-style westerns. The score is mostly forgettable but the main theme has a nice bit of oomph to it that perks up my lips most of the time.

“Oh Atlanta” – Alison Krauss and Union Station
from 06/24/01

Alison Krauss has a great country/bluegrass voice. It is a perky, beautiful thing. The Union Station likewise are all superior musicians. Sadly, I tend to like very few of their songs. There are just a few that make anything memorable or enjoyable after they are heard.

“Oh Atlanta” is one of the few. Maybe it is because I love the south, or that my wife is from Georgia but I’ve never met a song about the state I didn’t love. It helps that Krauss sings it with verve and that the lyrics involve coming back to Georgia, and that is a longing I understand.

I grew up in Oklahoma but spent four years getting a college degree in Alabama and I consider myself an adopted son of the South. I don’t think I could ever explain the feeling to someone who has never loved the South, but there is just something intoxicating about the land. The people seem nicer there, the tea sweeter, and the air filled with more life.

I hope to move back there someday, and I think I’ll play this song on my way.

“Love is Strange” – Everything But the Girl
from Spin Sampler

When I was in high school I subscribed to Spin magazine which I considered to be far superior to Rolling Stone. In those days, before Guccione Jr sold the rag, it was. It had a focus on “alternative” music which of course, at the time in the early 90s was all the rage. Like that music it made me feel like I was onto something different, something only a few understood. Never mind that millions of people bought Nirvana and Pearl Jam albums, the whole scene felt like it was for the few, the cool, and I wanted to be like that.

For subscribing, I received a sampler disk filled with all the hip alterna-songs of the moment.

Though I sported the long hair and the grungy flannel and the black t-shirts with Soundgarden and Dinosaur Jr on them, I was still a closet fan of the soft, acoustic love songs.

Don’t tell anybody.

This is a cover of the Dolly Parton number. It’s played with less danceability, but there is a softness to it that I find lilting. They repeat the lyrics twice, the second verse having a little “oh-whoa” rave-up between each line.

I was always fond of the lyrics “You’re sweet loving is better than a kiss/when you leave those kisses I will miss.” This seems to say that love is more than a physical attraction, and yet physical attraction is very much a component of romance. As a geeky teenager who had never had as much as a kiss, those words spoke to me.

I still love that song. I put it on a comp for my wife and we played it during the reception of our wedding.

“Wasn’t That a Mighty Storm” – Eric Von Schmidt
Troubadours Of The Folk Era, Volume One

I first heard this song on Nanci Griffith’s album Other Voices, Too in which she plays a very upbeat version with a who’s who of country/folk musicians. It is a great version that almost makes you forget the lyrics are about an awful, destructive, deadly storm.

This is the original (?) version and here it is much more of a dirge. Von Schmidt plays the guitar with a kind of deep, dark feel like it is the sea wall approaching. His voice adds menace to the song.

I dig the folk tradition of making songs out of tragedies. Horrible things happen and we make songs to sing around the campfire to it.