Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Tuesday Tuneage
Mick Jagger with Dave Grohl - “Eazy Sleazy”
2021


“Deep dive” is one of those phrases thrown around a lot the past few years, and I can safely say that such excursions aren’t working for me when it comes to certain current events, even though these days I have all kinds of time. Even counting time washing masks, streaming shows, applying for PPP loans, coming up with excuses not to attend the inevitable post-pandemic parties, cataloging my grievances against my newly-adopted cat (who is doing the same), and avoiding neighbors in the hallway ... I have time. In fact, I have too much time on my hands but yet I don’t want deep dives. I only want shallow dives. Wait, with such a dive you could injure your head and neck in shallow water. No, I only want shallow swims these days. Subjects that aren’t deep, like: Figuring out which University of North Dakota football players have scored points in Super Bowls, Cheap Trick’s eighties output, Everybody Loves Raymond reruns, those three great songs from Badfinger, digging up the rules of board games I played as a kid, and this Jagger/Grohl song. It’s garage-dance rock, dumb as hell, and a lot of fun.

And after a couple of spins and an afternoon dance party is contemplated, soon some time has been killed and it’s time for more coffee. A caffeine-plus-jitters diet is keeping the weight off, saves me from taking a deep dive into how to stay healthy when shut inside month after month. Coffee, water, and then daydream about beer. Friends are taking deep dives into craft beers, having all kinds of sixers and twelvers and growlers delivered to their homes. I shallowly swim in cheap macro lagers — Pabst, LaBatt, Grain Belt. Saves money and I can drink more of ‘em because they’re not hoppy. It’s fun tossing the cans into the recycling container, the kind of shallow activity that might take up my evening. Shallow swims, I’m in.

Tuesday, April 06, 2021


Tuesday Tuneage
Wilson Picket - “Fire and Water”
1971


In my efforts to listen to more Wilson Pickett, I assembled a playlist of him covering others’ hits. What a fun, exhilarating experience. Pickett would take on anything. There was hard rock: “Born to Be Wild*,” “Fire and Water,” and “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (taking on the Vanilla Fudge version of the Supremes’ classic.) There was bubblegum: “Sugar Sugar” and “Run Joey Run.” There was the greatest British band with “Hey Jude,” the greatest American band with “Proud Mary,” and a criminally underrated American band with “Groovin’.” There was an ancient folk song in “Stagger Lee,” and a folk song of relatively recent invention in “Hey Joe.” Plus Roger Miller’s “Engine Engine Number 9” and another pretty good songwriter thrown in with Randy Newman’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come.”

Perhaps my favorite is his take on Free’s “Fire and Water.” Where Free’s version was all tension until Paul Kossoff’s brilliant guitar solo freed (ahem) things up, Pickett’s soars with horns and his irrepressible vocal. The weather is warming up and it’s time to maybe smile. Me, I’m going to listen to sunny music with the windows open. Wilson Picket demands a listen. What else are you going to do: Listen to The Kinks sleepwalk their way through “Long Tall Sally”?

*Better than Steve Martin’s version even.