Introduction
Five Songs, 7/12/2017
Five Songs

Five Songs, 7/12/2017

Some serious immortals today! And, um, 17 seconds of silence.

Smokey Robinson, "Swept For You Baby"

We're visiting 1967 with this song, with quintessential Motown artist and arguably the soul behind the soul, Smokey Robinson. It would be futile to list all the tremendous songs he's been involved with, and I couldn't really do him justice. Just enjoy this song.

Einstürzende Neubauten, "Partynummer [Live]"

This track comes from Strategies Against Architecture II, a roundup of singles, live tracks, and various unreleased music primarily from the late 80s. In a lot of ways, this documents the end of the first phase of their career, as after this album came out, their music trended away from the power tools and more towards ambient pieces and electronics. It's a great collection, though, and one of the better entry points to Neubauten's catalog.

Black Flag, "I'm The One"

Pillars of the West Coast punk scene, Black Flag inspired countless punk bands with their constant touring and through the label SST (founded by Greg Ginn, leader of Black Flag). Black Flag became leading lights despite having something of an uneven discography. While Damaged is an undisputed hardcore classic, there's a fair bit of disagreement with the rest of their albums, often owing to Ginn's relentless experimentation. That experimentation often leads to different people having different favorites.

Due to a legal dispute, Black Flag had to stay on the shelf until things were settled in 1984, which led to the rapid release of three albums. This song is from the third, Loose Nut, which is probably the most conventional of the three.

TV On The Radio, "Fill"

This is 17 seconds of pure silence. Sorry about that. There's a series of empty tracks on the CD of Return to Cookie Mountain, the titles of which read: "These Funky Black Dudes One Honkey Needed Fill CD To Capacity".

In lieu of uploading seventeen seconds of silence to YouTube and linking it here, I'm just going to link to a performance of John Cage's "4'33". Just listen to seventeen seconds of it.

The Gentle Waves, "Let The Good Times Begin"

The Gentle Waves was Isobel Campbell's band, who most people would recognize as a singer and cellist with Belle & Sebastian up through their first several albums. The Gentle Waves sounds an awful lot like B&S's quiet numbers, in no small part because not only Campbell but a bunch of others from B&S played on it. Overall, what you hear here is pretty representative of what you get from the full album.

Joshua Buergel
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