Deep Album Cuts Vol. 375: The Jam

Friday, February 21, 2025


 













Rick Buckler, drummer for The Jam, passed away on Monday, so I thought I'd take a look back at their brief but prolific run. 

The Jam deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. All Mod Cons
2. Here Comes The Weekend
3. Ghosts
4. Set The House Ablaze
5. Away From The Numbers
6. Thick As Thieves
7. Running On The Spot
8. English Rose
9. The In Crowd
10. Boy About Town
11. I've Changed My Address
12. Life From A Window
13. Carnation
14. But I'm Different Now
15. I Got By In Time
16. Smithers-Jones
17. Don't Tell Them You're Sane
18. Mr. Clean
19. Private Hell
20. London Traffic
21. Art School
22. To Be Someone (Didn't We Have A Nice Time)
23. Pretty Green
24. The Gift
25. Burning Sky
26. Man In The Corner Shop

Tracks 5, 11, 15, and 21 from In The City (1977)
Tracks 2, 12, 17, and 20 from This Is The Modern World (1977)
Tracks 1, 8, 9, 18, and 22 from All Mod Cons (1978)
Tracks 6, 16, 19, and 25 from Setting Sons (1979)
Tracks 4, 10, 14, 23, and 26 from Sound Affects (1980)
Tracks 3, 7, 13, and 24 from The Gift (1982)

I grew up listening to a lot of the British punk and new wave bands of the late '70s and early '80s, so The Jam were a band I always read about and heard about, but never actually heard much. Even their most famous song, "Town Called Malice," I feel like I only encounter once in a blue moon. "Ghosts" was the first Jam song I got really into, I checked out the original after enjoying Ted Leo's cover, it kind of surprised me that was never a single because that's a great song. And when I heard "Away From The Numbers," it was very clear to me within seconds that it was the primary inspiration for one of my favorite Ted Leo deep cuts, "Some Beginner's Mind." 

On paper, The Jam's career in the UK resembles that of The Police: 6 albums, each one more commercially successful than the last, a long string of Top 40 hits that included four #1 singles. Of course, in America, they didn't have much of a pop profile at all -- they never made the Hot 100, and only their last three albums charted modestly in the U.S. And like The Police, I think The Jam probably broke up at the right time, The Gift has some great songs but it feels like the band was starting to turn into something else and Paul Weller was ready to move on. If I had to pick a favorite Jam album, it'd probably be Sound Affects (which Weller also called their best) or All Mod Cons, but In The City has some really strong songs too. Buckler was a pretty excellent drummer who gave a lot of their best songs a charge of energy, some of my favorite performances of his on this playlist are "All Mod Cons," "Running On The Spot," "Carnation," and "But I'm Different Now." 

"English Rose," an acoustic track the band never played live, is easily the band's most popular non-single on Spotify, that and "Ghosts" are the only deep cuts that have as many streams as some of their hits. I really like how "English Rose" and "The In Crowd" go together on All Mod Cons so I kept that sequence intact on the playlist. "Private Hell," "Pretty Green," "To Be Someone (Didn't We Have A Nice Time)," "Boy About Town," "Mr. Clean," and "Ghosts" were among the deep cuts the band played live the most. 

9:39 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 374: Billy Idol

Wednesday, February 19, 2025




 























Billy Idol is one of 2025's nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Bad Company, the Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, Maná, Oasis, Outkast, Phish, Soundgarden, and the White Stripes. 

Billy Idol deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Too Personal (with Generation X)
2. Love Like Fire (with Generation X)
3. Heavens Inside (with Generation X)
4. Baby Talk
5. Dead On Arrival
6. Hole In The Wall
7. Come On, Come On
8. Nobody's Business
9. (Do Not) Stand In The Shadows
10. Blue Highway
11. The Dead Next Door
12. Crank Call
13. Daytime Drama
14. Love Calling (Rub A Dub Dub Mix)
15. Man For All Seasons
16. Fatal Charm
17. Pumping On Steel
18. 311 Man
19. Neuromancer
20. Then The Night Comes

Track 1 from Generation X's Generation X (1978)
Track 2 from Generation X's Valley of the Dolls (1979)
Track 3 from Generation X's Kiss Me Deadly (1981)
Track 4 from the Don't Stop EP (1981)
Tracks 5, 6, 7 and 8 from Billy Idol (1982)
Tracks 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 from Rebel Yell (1983)
Track 14 from Vital Idol (1985)
Tracks 15 and 16 from Whiplash Smile (1986)
Tracks 17 and 18 from Charmed Life (1990)
Tracks 19 and 20 from Cyberpunk (1993)

Billy Idol was part of the British punk movement from practically day one, as part of a crew that would go to every Sex Pistols show. His band Generation X started gigging in 1976, and while they were never really revered as one of the very best punk bands in London, they had a pretty good run, recording three albums, until Billy Idol left, using a remix of Generation X's "Dancing With Myself" to launch his solo career. The Clash's original drummer Terry Chimes eventually joined Generation X, playing on the band's third album and co-writing "Oh Mother," and later played in Idol's touring band. 

Billy Idol's main collaborator, Steve Stevens, played guitar on pretty much all his solo stuff except the two '90s albums, and co-wrote a lot of his songs as well. For a long time, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was stingy about inducting sidemen and collaborators alongside solo artists -- Bruce Springsteen was inducted alone, while the E Street Band were inducted separately years later in the Sidemen category (that category has since been renamed the Award for Musical Excellence and has become kind of the sneaky way for the Hall to push in artists who've been nominated many times but never inducted, like the MC5 and Dionne Warwick). Three years ago, Pat Benatar was inducted alongside her husband and primary guitarist/songwriter Neil Giraldo, and in light of that precedent, I'd say Steve Stevens deserves to be inducted with Billy Idol, the same way I'd want Jim Steinman inducted with Meat Loaf.

If I had a ballot (I don't), I'm not sure whether Billy Idol would be on it, although there's definitely a chance I'd throw him on there. I had a band in the early 2000s that covered "Rebel Yell," that's a really fun song to play. I was born in 1982, so I was kinda too young to experience Idol's commercial prime, "Cradle of Love" was the only big hit I remember hearing when it was current, and I was just a kid so the video made me vaguely uncomfortable. I do also remember the release of Cyberpunk, and while I think Idol deserves some credit for being a little ahead of the curve, releasing a whole album referencing William Gibson a few years before Hollywood went all in on the cyberpunk aesthetic, that album hasn't aged super well. It may the first time I was very conscious that an established artist was in their flop era. 

"Hot in the City," "To Be A Lover," "Sweet Sixteen," and "Don't Need A Gun" were all Top 40 hits, but I have no memory of encountering those songs in the wild like "Rebel Yell" or "White Wedding." Even "Flesh For Fantasy" I'd never heard until the video popped up on MTV2 one day in the late '90s, I was like "what the hell is this?" Something that I didn't know existed until this week: "Speed," Billy Idol's title song for the Keanu Reeves film Speed, which isn't on streaming services at all now. 

"Blue Highway" is the only album track that Billy Idol performs as much as his hits, and also featured in his "VH1 Storytellers" episode. I think there's quite a few excellent songs on here, though, particularly "Nobody's Business," and "The Dead Next Door" transfers his aesthetic to a slow, spacey song better than I thought was possible. Billy Idol may be kind of one dimensional, but he's consistent, his album tracks are often as good as his singles. The stuff he's made since the '90s is pretty decent too, but I wanted to focus on the really commercially relevant part of his career, so I didn't make an effort to include any post-Wedding Singer music. 

5:00 AM

Saturday, February 15, 2025

 




I ranked every Rush album and every Hüsker Dü album for Spin. 

11:55 AM

TV Diary

Friday, February 14, 2025

 





a) "Clean Slate" 
George Wallace is one of the funniest comedians in the world who I feel like never gets his due. And this sitcom he co-created with Laverne Cox is such a good vehicle for both of them, with the late great Norman Lear as an executive producer (and I'm really glad this is maybe the last new project with Lear's name on it instead of that terrible animated "Good Times" reboot Netflix put out last year). Desiree (Cox) goes back to her hometown in Alabama and her father Harry (Wallace) is surprised to learn that his son is now a woman, and I'm glad that they don't make Harry a full-on Archie Bunker-type bigot but still find the humor in the situation. 

b) "Apple Cider Vinegar"
Kaitlyn Dever got her first Golden Globe and Emmy noms for two true crime miniseries, so it's no surprise that she did another one. But she played a downtrodden and sympathetic victim in "Unbelievable" and "Dopesick," while she's also very good at playing a bad guy for I think the first time in her career, a wellness influencer scammer, in "Apple Cider Vinegar." It's kind of funny to watch a show about a horrible Australian person named Belle Gibson, I don't think they ever comment on her name rhyming with Mel Gibson. 

c) "Paradise"
Dan Fogelman excels at folksy, big-hearted dramedy, so it's interesting to see him try his hand at a conspiracy thriller. Sterling K. Brown and Julianne Nicholson are great leads, and it's nice to see James Marsden in a substantial role where he isn't acting opposite any talking CGI animals. I thought the first episode was by far the most entertaining one, though, I'm still waiting for the rest of the series to live up to that one. 

Apparently this show is not filmed in the Netherlands and has zero commitment to cultural accuracy and Dutch wiki editors are furious about it, which cracks me up. Denis Leary is kind of a tiresome one-note lead, but I like the rest of the cast, which includes Taylor Misiak from "Dave" and the great Danny Pudi. 

Danny Pudi is also still on "Mythic Quest" so I'm really enjoying having two shows to watch every week that he's in right now. "Mythic Quest" was also co-created by a "Community" writer, Megan Ganz, and the longer the show goes on, the more I feel like they're getting to stretch their legs and do "Community"-style conceptual episodes, I really enjoyed this week's murder mystery episode. 

f) "Animal Control"
Another "Community" alum, Joel McHale, is in a more formulaic network sitcom, but I have to say this show has surpassed my expectations, I generally look forward to new episodes and everybody has good comedic chemistry. 

g) "Mo"
It's a bummer that the only show on American television created by and starring a Palestinian-American is ending after only two seasons, especially because "Mo" is pretty hilarious and doesn't shy away from Mo Amer's cultural identity but isn't entirely about it. I like the episodes that are more about Mo's day-to-day life in Houston than the whole storyline of him winding up in Mexico that took up a lot of the end of the first season and the beginning of the second season, but even that stretch of episodes had a few really funny bits. 

h) "School Spirits"
I liked the first season of "School Spirits" a lot, and I'm not sure if the second season is boring or taking itself too seriously or if the novelty has worn off. 

i) "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man"
I don't really like the animation style of this show. In theory, doing a rotoscope (or rotoscope-ish?) version of a classic comic book aesthetic sounds cool, but something about the way it moves just looks janky and almost cheap. 

j) "Kite Man: Hell Yeah!"
I think "Harley Quinn" is one of the funniest shows on TV, and while watching recent episodes I realized that Max ran a spinoff last summer that I had heard nothing about, so I'm catching up on it now. Kite Man was a hilariously minor DC Comics character to turn into a significant part of "Harley Quinn." So I love that they doubled down on the joke by giving him his own show where he buys a bar, especially because they brought along one of the funniest "Harley Quinn" characters, Bane. 

k) "Invincible" 
The second season of "Invincible" was a lot less entertaining or memorable than the first, I understand from a story standpoint why Omni-Man wasn't in those episodes much, but it just felt like the show suffered for it. So far, though, the third season feels like a course correction. 

l) "You Would Do It Too"
"Sky Rojo" is one of my favorite foreign language shows on Netflix, and creator David Victori's recent Apple TV+ series "You Would Do It Too" hasn't quite hooked me as much but has some of the same pulpy action thrills. 

Apparently people in Mexico rely on ambulances run by private businesses, and this Apple TV+ show is about a med student who works on a Mexico City ambulance by night, pretty good show. 

A lot of the Korean shows I see on Netflix have these very contrived premises that remind me of the kind of concepts that went out of fashion on American TV after the '80s, I almost kind of like it sometimes, but not in this instance. 

I am not familiar with the Canadian comedian Carolyn Taylor, but apparently her most popular standup bit is about her hearing Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing" on the radio and feeling consumed with the ambition to choreograph a figure skating routine to the song. And then she made a 6-episode reality show about actually turning that dream into a reality, in a very self-aware and ridiculous and charming way. I always enjoyed "I Have Nothing," it's prob a dark horse top 5 Whitney single for me, but it feels kind of obscure now, which makes me like the show even more. 

Really talented roller skaters are so entertaining to watch, I haven't watched a lot of this Max reality show but when I have I've enjoyed it. 

Travis Kelce's palpable thirst for fame feels a little embarrassing to me. If he's hosting game shows now, just imagine what kind of crap he'll be doing for attention someday when he's no longer playing in Super Bowls and dating the biggest pop star in the world. He's not a bad game show host, though. One fun thing they do on this show sometimes is bring back people who were the kids on the original "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" to compete on this show as adults. 

It took me way too long to realize that the title of this show refers to Bear Grylls and not an actual bear. It also took me way too long to realize that I've never heard of any of the celebrities in this show (except Scary Spice) because they're all British celebrities. 

The Stauffers became famous outside family vlogger circles a few years ago because they'd adopted a young boy with special needs, put him all over their YouTube channel, and then decided to give the kid up and act like he never existed. Understandably, these people didn't want to participate in the HBO docuseries about how they're terrible people, but a lot of it is told through the eyes of other YouTube parenting influencer types and I don't think that was necessarily the right lens for the story.  

A docuseries about a woman trying to find out the truth about her brother who died as a baby, really harrowing, heartbreaking stuff. 

It's weird to watch a show about a federal agent taking down a White supremacist group at a moment when some White supremacist fucks are taking over the government and kneecapping federal agencies, it's almost nostalgic for a bygone era really. 

It feels a little self-congratulatory to make a show like this, but I'm glad that this is what Prince William is doing with his time, more people with power and influence should be putting out the message that poor people not having homes should not be considered acceptable in a modern society. 

I like Lucy Worsley's shows on PBS, she's a charming lady, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how much there is to say about Arthur Conan Doyle's life and work for a whole miniseries. 

This Netflix series is not the best UFO doc I've ever seen, but a lot better than some of the crap the History Channel puts on the air. 

There are already multiple documentaries about Sean Combs and I'm definitely not going to watch most of them, but this one's pretty well done, it's probably the one to guy with if you want to watch one. 

I love nature documentaries, I wouldn't put this in the top tier with the "Planet Earth" stuff but this one's worth a look, I'm impressed by how many different locations and species they cram into 10 episodes, apparently they filmed in 24 countries. 

11:42 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 373: Sly and the Family Stone

Thursday, February 13, 2025


 





















Questlove's new documentary Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) is out on Hulu today, and I'm watching it right now, it's really good, I recommend you check it out. 

Sly and the Family Stone deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Trip To Your Heart
2. Advice
3. Turn Me Loose
4. Higher
5. Are You Ready
6. Color Me True
7. Into My Own Thing
8. Love City
9. Fun
10. Don't Call Me N*****, Whitey
11. You Can Make It If You Try
12. Somebody's Watching You
13. Just Like A Baby
14. Luv N' Haight
15. Poet
16. In Time
17. Babies Makin' Babies
18. Mother Beautiful
19. Wishful Thinkin'
20. Who Do You Love?
21. Blessing In Disguise
22. It Takes All Kinds
23. Ha Ha, Hee Hee

Tracks 1, 2 and 3 from A Whole New Thing (1967)
Tracks 4, 5 and 6 from Dance to the Music (1968)
Tracks 7, 8 and 9 from Life (1968)
Tracks 10, 11 and 12 from Stand! (1969)
Tracks 13, 14 and 15 from There's a Riot Goin' On (1971)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Fresh (1973)
Tracks 18 and 19 from Small Talk (1974)
Track 20 from High on You by Sly Stone (1975)
Track 21 from Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back (1976)
Track 22 from Back on the Right Track (1979)
Track 23 from Ain't but the One Way (1982)

A Whole New Thing did pretty much nothing commercially, and nothing from it was even included in the band's best-selling release, Greatest Hits. But the band's debut really impressed me. One of their best known vocalists, Sly's sister Rose Stone, hadn't joined the band yet, but their sound is pretty fully formed on there already, and they were just so far ahead of just about everyone else. "Fun" is the only non-single that appeared on Greatest Hits, which was released when Sly kept missing deadlines for the album that would eventually be known as There's A Riot Goin' On, his masterpiece. "Higher," "You Can Make It If You Try," and "Love City" were all part of the band's most famous performance, at Woodstock. And quite a few of these songs are featured prominently in the new documentary. 

I always knew that a lot of artists had sampled Sly and the Family Stone, but I was a little amazed at how many Sly deep cuts were sampled on hit singles and well known songs from classic albums, sometimes my jaw would drop when I put on a track and made the connection. LL Cool J sampled "Trip To Your Heart" on "Mama Said Knock You Out." Fatboy Slim sampled "Into My Own Thing" on "Weapon of Choice." A Tribe Called Quest sampled "Fun" on "Can I Kick It?" and also sampled "Advice" on "Skypager." Public Enemy sampled both "Turn Me Loose" and another Sly song, "Let's Be Together," on "Power to the People." Ice Cube sampled "You Can Make It If You Try" on "Wicked" and also sampled "Don't Call Me N*****, Whitey" on "Horny Lil' Devil." Kendrick Lamar sampled "Wishful Thinkin'" on "Momma." The Beastie Boys sampled "Are You Ready" on "Finger Lickin' Good." Missy Elliott sampled "In Time" on "X-tasy." Beck sampled "Love City" on "Sissyneck." John Legend sampled "Just Like A Baby" on "She Don't Have To Know." De La Soul sampled "Poet" on "Description." Scarface sampled "Babies Makin' Babies" on "The Diary." 

You often hear about Sly Stone as a reclusive enigma, and it's true that his public appearances have been rare and unpredictable over the last 40 years. But I was surprised to realize that he made a real effort at staying in the spotlight before that -- after Fresh, his last really successful record, he made 5 albums in the following decade, sometimes with sort of needy titles like Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back and Back on the Right Track. The Family Stone essentially disbanded in 1975, but Sly kept on using the group name with mostly different people after his one official solo album, High On You, was unsuccessful. Those later records are all pretty good, though, even if they're not masterpieces like There's A Riot Goin' On, they're worth checking out. 

10:14 AM

Monthly Report: February 2025 Singles

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

























1. Wizkid f/ Brent Faiyaz - "Piece of My Heart"
"Essence" made Tems a star in America but it feels like Wizkid, who was obviously pretty well established internationally before that song, hasn't had the same kind of ubiquity in the last few years. I like "Piece of My Heart," though, it's almost like 2 separate songs but Wizkid and Brent Faiyaz's voices sound good together on both of them. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist I'm adding songs to throughout the year. 

2. Tyla - "Push 2 Start"
Tyla is another African star whose profile has soared in America, and her album was well received with a string of moderately successful hits, but nothing was really more than a fraction as popular as "Water" so it was still like she just had one big song. "Push 2 Star" from the deluxe edition of the album recently became her second Hot 100 hit, though, so she's finally regaining some momentum to really forge a career beyond "Water" now.  

3. Tyler, The Creator f/ GloRilla, Sexyy Red and Lil Wayne - "Sticky"
Tyler has gotten about as big as a rapper can get without much help from radio, but it's been interesting to watch radio slowly come around to him and him seemingly warming to the idea of making hit singles. It's been this gradual process from "Earfquake" to "WusYaName" to "Dogtooth" and now to "Sticky," which feels like it may wind up being his best known song for a long time. It kind of reminds me of how Chance the Rapper got pretty big with only one radio record, which was also a posse cut with some southern rappers including Lil Wayne. I wish the guests on "Sticky" got more than 4 bars each, but the whole thing hangs together really well, I love the beat switch to the random sample of Young Buck's great semi-forgotten 2007 single "Get Buck" and those piano chords at the end.  

4. Lola Young - "Messy" 
London singer Lola Young released an album on Island Records last summer that didn't make much of a splash at the time, although Tyler was ahead of the curve and featured her on Chromakopia. But a few weeks ago "Messy" blew up on TikTok and hit #3 in the UK and is starting to climb the Hot 100 as well, feels a little similar to how Chappell Roan's album took off 6 months after it was released. 

5. Kendrick Lamar - "Squabble Up"
One thing that irritates me about the streaming era is that the songs that hit #1 on the Hot 100 feel increasingly arbitrary and disconnected from what ends up being the most popular song from a given album. "Please Please Please" does not feel bigger than "Espresso," "Slime You Out" does not feel bigger than "Rich Baby Daddy," and "Squabble Up" does not feel bigger than "Luther" or "TV Off." That being said, all three of the hits from GNX are good and have hung in there on radio playlists together for quite a while without one drowning out the others, and I love that Debbie Deb sample on "Squabble Up." 

6. Doechii - "Denial Is A River"
It's a little unexpected that the biggest song from Alligator Bites Never Heal is a high concept track that doesn't really have a chorus. But Doechii has been on a tear with a string of amazing live performances, on Tiny Desk and Colbert and the Grammys, all of which prominently featured "Denial Is A River." And I heard "Denial" on the radio for the first time yesterday, and it works pretty well in that context. 

7. NLE Choppa f/ 41 - "Or What"
NLE Choppa's "Slut Me Out 2" was a viral hit last year, but a song he did with the Brooklyn trio 41 that samples it, "Or What," has become a bigger radio hit, kind of has the vibe of the stuff that is regrettably known as 'sexy drill.' I don't even know which song I like better, both are pretty entertaining. 

8. Carly Pearce - "Truck On Fire"
I feel like you can't really write a country song about fucking up an ex's truck without bringing "Before He Cheats" to mind, but this song's good, I'm glad there's finally another song from Hummingbird getting some radio play. 

9. Brad Paisley - "Truck Still Works"
I kinda feel bad for Brad Paisley, it wasn't that long ago that he was one of the biggest stars in country music, but he's just been lobbing singles into an indifferent marketplace in the 8 years since he last released an album. I feel like the quality of his music hasn't changed at all, though, "Truck Still Works" is catchy, although he does play on nostalgia for his earlier work with a call back to one of his biggest hits, "Mud on the Tires," in the bridge. 

10. Damiano David - "Born With A Broken Heart"
I have not liked Maneskin's stuff much, but their lead singer's debut solo single feels like a pleasantly earnest attempt to make something like "As It Was" by Harry Styles. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Jonah Marais f/ Ryan Lewis - "Slow Motion" 
I feel like people generally agreed that Ryan Lewis was pretty talented and a big part of why those Macklemore songs got big, and I'm surprised Lewis hasn't had more success as a producer outside of one Kesha single. I really dislike the song he did with a former member of the 2010s also-ran boy band Why Don't We, though. 

9:28 AM

Movie Diary

Friday, February 07, 2025

 




a) Kinds of Kindness
After Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone's last 2 collaborations were nominated for Best Picture, Kinds of Kindness got a relatively quiet release with no awards season hooplah, which made me very curious to see it. And while even Poor Things was relatively out there, Kinds of Kindness definitely feels more pointedly uncommercial in a way where I suspect they spent their blank check on this one with the studio saving the promo budget for their next project. Part of that is because Kinds of Kindness is an anthology movie, with the same handful of actors playing different characters in 3 different stories, which is just not a recipe for a hit. And part of that is because each of those stories is a weird, morbid parable sort of in the vein of Killing of a Sacred Deer, except I kind of hated that movie and mostly enjoyed this one, although I almost don't want to think about it too much or try to really figure out what it was all about, I have no idea if it would hold up to any scrutiny. 

b) A Different Man
In A Different Man, Sebastian Stan plays a man with neurofibromatosis. thanks to some Oscar-nominated makeup and prosthetics, and so does Adam Pearson, who actually has neurofibromatosis in real life. And both of their characters are actors in a play, making the whole thing kind of a metacommentary on acting and show business's attitudes toward disabilities and deformities. Pearson's great and it's the first time I've seen a Stan performance that I thought was better than mediocre, and it's a good, thought-provoking movie. The story ultimately felt really contrived, though, like the entire movie, much like Emilia Perez, only existed to turn the main character's identity into a clever plot device, so I don't know, I have mixed feelings about it. 

My son got all three of Peter Brown's The Wild Robot books for Christmas, and we've really enjoyed reading them together as his bedtime story lately. So after we finished the first book, we watched the recent movie adaptation, which took a few liberties with the story and characters (most significantly in greatly expanding the role of the fox, voiced here by Pedro Pascal), but mostly got the spirit of the book down well and added some endearing comedic moments. Chris Sanders also directed Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, both of which get a lot of repeat viewings in our house, and I think The Wild Robot probably will in the future as well. 

If you watch a favorite show every week and they do something big and different like a musical episode one week, it's really exciting to get something unexpected like that. Trying to serve up a surprise in a sequel to a blockbuster film is a lot harder, though, especially when Joker: Folie a Deux was preceded by two and a half years of news trickling out about Lady Gaga being cast in the movie and it being a musical. Conceptually, I think it could've been something special with the right execution, but it just felt all wrong, and personally I can't really stomach Gaga singing standards unless she's got Tony Bennett there to ground her a little. 

e) Kinda Pregnant
I think Amy Schumer's first big film vehicle Trainwreck holds up pretty well, but her latest movie for Netflix, a Happy Madison production directed by Adam Sandler's nephew, feels like a big step down. It has some laughs, Urzila Carlson really steals a few scenes, Damon Wayans Jr. gets a couple really funny moments, for the most part it falls short even just by the standards of a comedy with a silly premise. 

f) Carry-On
Netflix's most popular feature film of 2024 is this kind of stupid thriller about attempted airline terrorism. For a comedy guy, Jason Bateman definitely has a certain amount of range and pull off stuff like "Ozark," but I dunno, he felt miscast here, what a weird role for him, I have to wonder if the movie would've actually been compelling with the right person playing that part. 

g) The Six Triple Eight
Tyler Perry's latest will mostly go down in history as one of those otherwise ignored movies that became part of Dianne Warren's annual parade of Best Original Song nominations. But doing a World War II epic with a $70 million budget really proves he can do pretty well as a conventional director when he wants to. I never thought Dean Norris was a particularly good actor, though, and he's terrible in this, he makes every scene he's in worse with his goofy Foghorn Leghorn accent. 

h) Awake
This came out on Netflix in 2021 and got panned (24% on Rotten Tomatoes!) but my wife and I watched it the other night and thought it was pretty solid. Suddenly every person on the planet is incapable of sleeping, and Genesis Rodriguez tries to figure out why her daughter is one of the only people who can still sleep. So, y'know, another high concept apocalypse movie that just didn't capture the zeitgeist like Bird Box or whatever, but I thought it was well paced and compelling. And Mark Raso, who previously directed the amiable dramedy Kodachrome, really stepped up as an action director for this, some really impressive sequences done in one continuous take. 

i) The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
One of those low budget films full of recognizable TV actors that I always seem to end up watching on cable or Netflix, about a small town bookseller who adopts a 2-year-old. It turned out to be a lot more sentimental than I expected and kind of touching, but also a little boring. 

j) Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music
I've enjoyed a lot of the things that NBC has put together for the 50th anniversary of "Saturday Night Live." And this Questlove-directed documentary is probably the best of the bunch, a long and thorough look back at some of the best and most memorable music performance. The segments about the more infamous performances (Fear and Elvis Costello and Sinead O'Connor) were the best parts, and the sort of montage/mashup sequences were amazingly well done, some of the best editing I've ever seen of something like that. I wish they got into one of my personal pet topics, all the as-yet-unreleased songs artists have debuted on "SNL," but it's a great doc. 

k) Bjork: Cornucopia
Without even planning it that way, Bjork's new concert film was released on Apple TV+ days after I ranked all of her albums, so I had just spent a lot of time with her catalog and was really primed for it. I was kind of annoyed that it was just kind of unceremoniously thrown into their ongoing 'Apple Music Live' performance series instead of being treated as a distinct feature film, though, since Bjork has talked about how she spent 10 years planning out and conceptualizing this tour and the film of it. Visually it's pretty amazing, although I'm partial to her more earlier stuff, so I was a little let down that there is only one '90s song in the entire film. But at least it's one I love, "Isobel." 

l) Elton John: Never Too Late
This Disney+ doc is framed around Elton John's final U.S. show at Dodger Stadium in 2022, and his first stadium show at the same venue in 1975, with John and an interviewer poring over his career as the guiding voiceover. It's pretty good, I thought they got to the root of John and Bernie Taupin's creative dynamic really well, and there's just tons of cool archival footage, stuff like him playing "Tiny Dancer" for a camera crew just after it'd been written, or tracking the vocal for the original "Candle in the Wind." 

m) Beatles '64
Obviously the Beatles' initial international explosion in 1964 is one of the most familiar and storied chapters of the band's history, but it's fun to see it zeroed in on as the topic of a whole feature. A lot of the footage is previously unseen and amazing. But what I like even more than the candid moments with the band are the interviews with the fans, that turn the usual faceless screaming hordes of Beatlemania into these brief individual profiles with these really sweet and passionate young music fans. David Lynch, who was at the Beatles' first U.S. concert, is one of the talking heads, in a great little segment that I guess is one of his last film appearances. I also love Ronald Isley and Smokey Robinson talking about being covered by the Beatles and the band's relationship with Black music. 

9:37 AM

Thursday, February 06, 2025

 





Last week, the brilliant pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn passed away. I wrote a piece for the Baltimore Banner looking back on her life and her music, including lots of previously unpublished quotes from my Rantipole interview with Susan. 

9:28 AM

Monthly Report: January 2025 Albums

Wednesday, February 05, 2025























1. Rose Gray - Louder, Please
I heard London singer Rose Gray's single "Switch" last year and liked it, but pretty much forgot about it until she released her debut album a couple weeks ago. And man, this album really hits the spot, just kind of a good old-fashioned dance pop record with heavy Kylie Minogue vibes. I particularly like the anthemic tracks like "Tectonic" and "Free," but I also like the stuff like "Hackney Wick" and "Everything Changes (But I Won't)" that lets the energy dip a little while still having some danceable forward motion. Here's the 2025 albums Spotify playlist that I'll fill with every new album I listen to throughout the year. 

2. FKA Twigs - Eusexua
I'm still confused about why FKA Twigs called her last album Caprisongs a "mixtape," especially since she took 3 years to release her next album and it all sounds like the same kind of stuff at the same level of quality to me. In any case, Eusexua is pretty good, "Girl Feels Good" is probably one of my favorite songs she's ever done. I find it a little creepy that this extremely horny album features a collaboration with Kanye West's 11-year-old daughter, though, like I sincerely hope she isn't allowed to listen to the entire album. 

3. Sun & Rain - Waterfall
15 years ago, I interviewed Adam Hopkins after he started the Out Of Your Head Collective, a Baltimore-based group putting on experimental improv shows at places like the Windup Space. Hopkins later moved to New York and in 2018 launched Out Of Your Head Records, and it's slowly grown into a pretty formidable jazz/experimental label and I usually try to check out their new releases. OOYH's first release of 2025 is by Sun & Rain, quartet featuring Travis Laplante, Nathaniel Morgan, Andrew Smiley, and Jason Nazary. Their first album together has a really great natural chemistry, two saxophones, guitar and drums weaving together these dynamic arrangements that sometimes have very striking melodies. 

4. Mac Miller - Balloonerism
I'll freely admit, I didn't really appreciate Mac Miller while he was alive, but I recognize now that he was a unique talent and that there's a lot of joy and wit in the music he made. Miller's other posthumous album, Circles, was completed after he died, so I kind of assumed that was the case with Balloonerism, but it's actually a project he made back in 2014 between Faces and GO:OD AM that he'd had cover art made for and had talked about releasing. And it's pretty good, probably only sat unreleased at the time because it's not very commercial, but I like his hazy philosophical stoner mode, it sounds really good and there's a couple of SZA features. 

5. Ethel Cain - Perverts
Ethel Cain's 2022 album Preacher's Daughter was something of a sleeper hit that made me wonder whether she could be a big alt-pop star like Lana Del Rey. And Cain was cautious not to call Perverts an "album" and clarify that a proper follow-up to Preacher's Daughter is forthcoming, but when people have been waiting 2-3 years for your next move and you realize something that's 90 minutes long, they're gonna treat it as a follow-up, and Perverts is a much darker, more experimental record that a lot of her fans didn't take to at all. I think it's a lot more interesting though, Cain has a beautiful voice so maybe I'd prefer more singing, but I'd rather hear someone go off the deep end of some weird creepy soundscapes than try to be the next Lana Del Rey. 

6. Ky$hia - Student of the Game 2
Ky$hia is one of the most promising female rappers to come out of Baltimore in the last few years. She's got songs with some of the biggest guys in the scene (YG Teck, OTR Chaz), but she really holds her own on the solo tracks, my favorites on here are "Whatcha Gon Do?" and "Best Behavior." 

7. Ringo Starr - Look Up
A whole lot of artists in different genres have released their first country album in the first year or so, and some people tend to look at this through a weary, cynical lens, I personally think it's a lot of fun and has resulted in more good music than bad. And I think a particularly welcome guest at this party is Ringo Starr, whose first solo songwriting credit with the Beatles all those decades ago was a pretty good country tune, "Don't Pass Me By." In recent y ears Ringo has made a lot of EPs of varying quality and not a very strong musical identity, but getting into the studio with T-Bone Burnett (who did most of the songwriting) and some capable guests (Billy Strings, Alison Krauss, Larkin Poe) has resulted in some of the best stuff he's done in a long time. 

8. Bad Bunny - Debi Tirar Mas Fotos
Not knowing any languages besides English, especially Spanish, really makes me feel like I'm missing out on a lot of music. Sometimes I'll look at translations of lyrics when listening to artists like Bad Bunny, though, and I really appreciate how much he's celebrating Puerto Rico on this album and how varied the music is. 

9. Central Cee - Can't Rush Greatness
There's always been a lot of resistance to British rap in America and I understand it, it's a very different sound and a different culture. It's felt a little like Central Cee was being really aggressively marketed to America lately, especially when his song with Lil Baby just kinda floated into heavy rotation on rap radio with anybody seeming to care about it. But I was surprised by how much people talked about and seemed to genuinely like Can't Rush Greatness the weekend it dropped, and I'll give him credit, he's really spitting on this record and he does have the right accent and enunciation that most American listeners can follow what he's saying pretty well, could be a really genuine crossover moment. I think "5 Star" is my favorite so far. 

10. Lil Baby - WHAM
Lil Baby is one of those artists where I think public opinion on him has fluctuated hugely with fairly little difference in the quality of his music. When he dropped My Turn, people were making comparisons to Lil Wayne that he couldn't possibly live up to, and then turned on him hard when the last couple albums really weren't very different at all. WHAM has plenty of good songs, my favorites so far are "Due 4A Win" and "Free Promo," but there are some duds. I think it's hilarious that everyone hates "Say Twin" so much that it's the least streamed song on the album (not counting songs recently added for the deluxe version.  

The Worst Album of the Month: Lanco - We're Gonna Make It
My favorite producer in contemporary country music, Jay Joyce, discovered the Nashville band Lanco, helped them get signed to a major label, and produced their decent 2018 debut album and its #1 radio hit "Greatest Love Story." But it feels like they completely lost any momentum they had and are just now finally resurfacing 7 years later with an indie label sophomore album without Joyce on production, and it's just really flat and charmless, I only enjoyed maybe one song on here. They're not gonna make it. 

9:27 AM

Tuesday, February 04, 2025

 





My latest pieces for Spin: I did a deep dive on this year's Grammys, and ranked the catalogs of Björk and Run-DMC. 

9:26 AM

My Top 100 Singles of 1971

Monday, February 03, 2025

 







Here's the Spotify playlist:

1. Al Green - "Tired Of Being Alone"
2. T. Rex - "Get It On (Bang A Gong)"
3. Elton John - "Your Song"
4. Jethro Tull – “Aqualung”
5. Curtis Mayfield - "Move On Up"
6. The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"
7. Isaac Hayes - "Theme From Shaft"
8. Yes – “I’ve Seen All Good People”/"Your Move"
9. Marvin Gaye - "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)"
10. David Bowie - "Changes"
11. Johnny Cash - "Man In Black"
12. Bill Withers - "Ain't No Sunshine"
13. The Allman Brothers Band - "Whipping Post (live)"
14. Ike & Tina Turner - "Proud Mary"
15. The Doors - "L.A. Woman"
16. Rod Stewart - "Maggie May"
17. Elton John - "Levon"
18. Badfinger – “Day After Day”
19. Led Zeppelin - "Black Dog"
20. Carole King - "I Feel The Earth Move"
21. The Rolling Stones - "Brown Sugar"
22. Stevie Wonder - "If You Really Love Me"
23. Marvin Gaye - "What's Going On"
24. Black Sabbath - "Iron Man"
25. Van Morrison - "Domino"
26. Brewer & Shipley - "One Toke Over The Line"
27. The Doors - "Riders On The Storm"
28. The Carpenters - "Superstar"
29. John Denver - "Take Me Home, Country Roads"
30. Ringo Starr - "It Don't Come Easy"
31. David Bowie - "Life On Mars?" 
32. The Temptations - "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)"
33. Carole King - "It's Too Late"
34. Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Have You Ever Seen The Rain?"
35. Stevie Wonder - "Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer"
36. Van Morrison – “Wild Night”
37. Jethro Tull – “Locomotive Breath”
38. Bee Gees - "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart"
39. Led Zeppelin - "Stairway To Heaven"
40. Rod Stewart – “Reason To Believe”
41. Melanie - "Brand New Key"
42. James Gang – “Walk Away”
43. The Dramatics - "Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get"
44. Al Green - "I Can't Get Next To You"
45. The Chi-Lites - "Have You Seen Her"
46. Harry Nilsson - "Without You”
47. Derek And the Dominoes - "Bell Bottom Blues"
48. George Harrison - "My Sweet Lord"
49. Dolly Parton – “Coat Of Many Colors”
50. Bill Withers - "Grandma's Hands"
51. Jean Knight - "Mr. Big Stuff"
52. Led Zeppelin - "When The Levee Breaks"
53. The Rolling Stones - "Can't You Hear Me Knocking"
54. Freda Payne – “Bring The Boys Home”
55. Delaney & Bonnie & Friends – “Only You Know And I Know”
56. Aretha Franklin - "Rock Steady"
57. The Kinks – “20th Century Man”
58. Santana - "Oye Como Va"
59. John Lennon - "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"
60. The Who - "Bargain"
61. Charley Pride – “Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’”
62. Three Dog Night - "Joy To The World"
63. Marvin Gaye - "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)"
64. Funkadelic - "Can You Get To That"
65. Sammi Smith – “Help Me Make It Through The Night”
66. Dolly Parton – “Joshua”
67. Stevie Wonder - "We Can Work It Out"
68. Led Zeppelin - "Rock and Roll"
69. King Floyd - "Groove Me"
70. The Doors - "Love Her Madly"
71. Tom Jones - "She's A Lady"
72. The Who - "Behind Blue Eyes"
73. Lee Michaels – “Do You Know What I Mean?”
74. The Band – “The Shape I’m In”
75. James Taylor - "You've Got A Friend"
76. The 5th Dimension – “Never My Love”
77. Joni Mitchell - "California"
78. The Free Movement – “I’ve Found Someone of My Own”
79. Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Hey Tonight"
80. Michael Jackson – “Got To Be There”
81. The Rolling Stones - "Wild Horses"
82. Chicago – “Beginnings”
83. Santana – “Everybody’s Everything”
84. Carly Simon – “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be”
85. Janis Joplin - "Me And Bobby McGee"
86. The Kinks – “God’s Children”
87. Bread – “If”
88. Cat Stevens – “Moonshadow”
89. Badfinger – “Baby Blue”
90. Leonard Cohen – “Avalanche”
91. George Harrison - "What Is Life"
92. The Who – “Going Mobile”
93. Tommy James – “Draggin’ The Line”
94. John Lennon - "Imagine"
95. The Band – “Life Is A Carnival”
96. T. Rex - "Hot Love"
97. Elvis Presley – “I’m Leavin’”
98. Led Zeppelin - "Misty Mountain Hop"
99. Delaney & Bonnie & Friends – “Never Ending Song of Love”
100. Cher – “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves”

I try to be more or less proper with songs that were singles and/or charted. but this is the peak AOR era. So there's a lot of enormously ubiquitous classic rock songs that weren't really charting hits at the time, especially from Led Zeppelin IV, Who's Next, and Sticky Fingers that I felt I needed to represent, even if they may not have become radio stapes until some time after 1971. 

9:25 AM