Introduction
Five Songs, 1/19/2018
Five Songs

Five Songs, 1/19/2018

Shuffle's kind of been killing it lately.

Marvin Gaye, "Your Unchanging Love"

Marvin Gaye, here on a single from 1967. It's impressive to listen to the difference between this and what he'd make a mere four years later with What's Going On.

Mephiskapheles, "Plan B"

I went to go compare the hi-hat intro here to the bit in "B-Boy Bouillabaisse" (at 8:01), and then realized the bit I was thinking of wasn't just on the hi-hat, and then I got caught up listening to that song. And then I kind of got lost for a bit.

Anyway, this song is really good in its own right. The gap between how good you'd expect a band called Mephiskapheles to be and how good they were is impressively wide.

The Housemartins, "Sitting On A Fence"

The Housemartins are on the list of bands that my sister listened to that I didn't twig to until later. It's a good list, notable for acts like the Housemartin, the Clash, Elvis Costello, others. I should get her to do a Five Songs Special!

PIG, "Volcano"

PIG is the name that Raymond Watts took when he split from KMFDM and started performing on his own. He was a long-time fixture in the industrial music scene, working with a bunch of folks at various times, including the mighty Einstürzende Neubauten. Watts made music in the industrial dance tradition, but he increasingly used orchestral elements ala Foetus, which made things a lot more interesting. He had a pretty deft touch compared to most of the other industrial dance artists, and his songwriting had more variety. There was a time in my life when I would have rated Praise The Lard as one of my very favorite albums, although I haven't listened to it in a long time.

(NB: this song doesn't seem to be findable on Youtube, and my upload got killed on copyright grounds. As a consequence, I've done a sixth song today, per my usual policy.)

Sturgill Simpson, "In Bloom"

Normally, I don't get too excited about genre shift covers. It's probably residual damage from hearing far too many lame ska-punk covers of songs, not to mention a billion sensitive white-person renditions of rap songs on acoustic guitar. However, you know, sometimes you get this cover of "In Bloom".

Kanye West, "Crack Music"

I'll continue my policy of saying nothing interesting about Kanye. I will say that, by and large, the greater polish on his second album (which this song comes from) didn't serve him as well.

Joshua Buergel
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