I have had a bunch of half-baked column ideas lately. I can come up with what seems like a cool topic to write about — but once I start the work of putting it together, I find there’s not really enough meat on the bone for a full essay.
But rather than let all this tidbit brilliance go to waste, I decided to share a bunch of playlists based on these seedling ideas that I can’t be bothered to flesh out.
The first one came to me when I was walking my dogs. There are loads of roofers working in my neighbourhood right now. All you hear during the day lately is the intermittent hawww of compressors, the banging of hammers and competing boomboxes blasting hair metal.
There were literally two neighbouring houses behind my home where this was happening. One boombox was blasting Bad Motor Scooter by Montrose while the other was broadcasting Kickstart My Heart by Mötley Crüe. Both these bangers feature guitars imitating an accelerating engine and the shifting of gears. So, I went hunting to see how many other songs I could find which feature this — ideally right off the top. On the couple of tracks towards the bottom of the playlist, you’ll have to listen for a bit to hear the guitar get its rev on:
I did another playlist of all the great songs Glyn Johns produced for The Steve Miller Band. This came about because I’d just finished reading Glyn’s autobiography and learned the debut Miller album — Children Of The Future — was the first record he tackled as a full producer. Those first bunch of records, pre-The Joker, are my favourites of the band’s catalogue. Glynn helmed the first four, so I picked a bunch of honeys off those:
For a few weeks, I binged a Paul McCartney podcast called Take It Away, which went through his entire post-Beatles catalog album by album and critiqued every song recorded — not just the ones released on albums or singles. It gave me a fleeting new appreciation for the stuff Macca released in the 1980s. So, press play:
I was pretty excited to get my hands on a copy of Ween‘s Chocolate & Cheese for under $100. The band re-released it in August to mark the 1994 double-LP’s 30th anniversary. It includes an extra record of demos and rejects. Unfortunately, my partner dislikes Ween. I briefly considered trying to remedy this by constructing a playlist with all the brown songs filtered out. The problem with this is I really like a lot of the brown songs. I did it anyway. Still not going to force it on her, though. Maybe you’ll dig it. Here’s a Ween For Beginners playlist for to try on that special someone, next time you’re going out for a pork roll, egg and cheese:
Next, there used to be loads of pressure on bands to come up with hit singles in addition to albums. Perhaps more important than their LPs were the 7″ singles they put out between LPs. When bands find themselves in that enviable position of having a record label anxiously anticipating their next hit, it usually coincides with the period when that particular band was at its creative peak. Thus, they sometimes found themselves in an even more enviable position of having a hard time choosing what song to put out as a single. This is one major reason why bands sometimes put out double A-sides. Two songs — but neither is the flipside. Neither is the “bonus” song. Both are aimed squarely at the charts. Here’s a playlist of double-As:
Finally, sometimes musicians have songs that are even more connected than double A-sides — they’re conjoined songs. These are a pair of tracks that flow from one, right into the other. This isn’t a medley, and the first track isn’t really an intro. It’s a pair. They’re different, but belong together. As such, you almost never only hear someone play just one of them. Like Frank Sinatra sings in Love & Marriage — you can’t have one without the other. Your conjoined song roundup:
• • •
Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
