“Come to my house/I got whisky and chairs”

16 Horsepower – “Horse Head” from Hoarse [2001]
Whenever I speak with fellow aficionados of 16 Horsepower, we can all agree on the importance of the crazed, drunken preacher with hellfire in his eyes coming out of frontman David Eugene Edwards, just as we can agree that this band has rekindled the fear of the Lord [...]

So long to the Old Pueblo

Calexico – “Hair Like Spanish Moss” from Tool Box [tour release] (2007)
After three years of desert living, my wife and I are leaving Tucson to begin anew in Washington, DC.
I will miss this place, its landscape, and its people.  Southern Arizona is truly a wonderful part of the world.
My posts may be sporadic at best [...]

Worst Song Ever: Part Four

(To be cross-filed under the possibly new Department of the Unforgivable.)
Red House Painters – “Trailways” from Songs for a Blue Guitar [1996]
Red House Painters – “I Feel The Rain Fall” from Songs for a Blue Guitar [1996]
To truly understand the abject horror of “I Feel The Rain Fall,” you should first listen to “Trailways,” the [...]

“She’s a victim of her senses”

Neil Young – “I’ve Loved Her So Long” from Neil Young (1969)
Neil Young’s eponymous first album receives and deserves much criticism for being a bit bloated and overwrought.  Young himself has said that he and producer/genius/madman Jack Nitzsche got a bit carried away in the studio.
Nevertheless, there are many shining moments on this album, “I’ve [...]

Worst Song Ever: Part Three

The Kinks – “Phenomenal Cat” from The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society [1968]
The Kinks truly deserve the high praise that they have recieved on this blog.  They are a really great band.  And Village Green… is a stellar album.  Except for this song, which is just awful.  Seriously, what is this  “Fum fum [...]

“Don’t you know about the bird?”

Ramones – “Surfin’ Bird” & “Rockaway Beach” from Rocket To Russia (1977)
Some of us here at SWR adore the Ramones. Some (ahem, Jordy) somehow lost a few of the chromosomes responsible for deriving pleasure from rock ‘n’ roll, and probably don’t even like the beach, where I’ll be spending the next week.
Take a shot of [...]

Let them try and follow

Dirty Three – Sister Let Them Try and Follow from She Has No Strings, Apollo [2003]
I was on the speech team in High School, okay? People consider me articulate, and I can write in sentences that make sense. But my truest thoughts aren’t words at all. I think best in colored shapes that move together [...]

Worst Song Ever: Part Two

Sonic Youth – “Creme Brulee” from Dirty (1992)
And you thought it was impossible to screw up this delectable dessert.
Sonic Youth has recorded their share of terrible songs (indeed, at least one terrible album), but this SY stinker takes the, err, cake. “Creme Brulee” closes out what is a mostly dreck-free album with an pathetic attempt [...]

Worst Song Ever: Part One

There are a handful of albums in my music collection of which I am outright embarrassed (Styx Greatest HIts, Symphonic Pink Floyd to name only a couple).  However, there are other albums that I love but that contain infuriatingly bad songs.  This is the kind of music that will form the grist for SWR’s latest [...]

Rock & Roll is dead and this proves it

The unthinkable has happened.
The New York Times reported this weekend that a Rock and Roll theme park has recently opened in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  The 55-acre park, designed “in about two hours at a Kinko’s in Hollywood, California,” boasts a “Pinball Wizard” arcade, an “Alice’s Restaurant” Restaurant, a Magic Mushroom Garden (featuring “a charming [...]

“His body hit the street with such a beautiful thud…”

Bruce Springsteen – “Lost in the Flood” from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)
The Boss’ first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., has been compared to Van Morrison’s seminal Astral Weeks (1968), and with good reason.  Both albums came early in their respective composer’s careers, both contain extraordinarily dense, poetic lyrics dealing with similar themes [...]

“We carried you in our arms”

Bob Dylan and the Band – “Tears of Rage – Take 1,” “Tears of Rage – Take 2” and “Tears of Rage – Take 3” from A Tree with Roots [Basement Tapes sessions, 1967]
The Band – “Tears of Rage” from Greatest Hits comp [2000], orig. on Music from Big Pink [1968]
Happy Independence Day from your [...]

“Don’t give it a name”

Califone – “Michigan Girls” from Quicksand/Cradlesnakes [2003]
Pardon my late absence. I’ve been up in MI where the Summers can be, at turns, mightily thundery and thickly humid.
But what of Michigan’s girls? How are they? Are they still stowed safely in the Midwest or are they being pushed and pulled by the other [...]

“I live sweat, but I dream light years”

The Minutemen – “Boiling” from The Punch Line (1981) and “The Glory of Man” from Double Nickels on the Dime (1984)
It’s been said plenty of times before (including here), but the Minutemen were really, really great. One of the smartest punk bands, the ‘Men were almost completely bullshit-free and had an innate sense of what [...]