Record of the Year
Hosts Chris & Steve use Spotify streaming data, Billboard charts and 2 damn fine sets of ears to determine a year's biggest, best and most beloved music.
Record of the Year
ROTY 1991 | Chrissy's Time Capsule
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Today on the program Chris reveals his 1991 Time Capsule - an hour of music from the year that he just couldn't live without.
Listen to Chrissy's 1991 Playlist here:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4eU3s6M74wDoH54bGa0vGo?si=b197c4a392fd405e
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Hello and welcome everyone to Record of the Year 2.0, the show where we use Spotify streaming data, billboard charts, critical consensus, and two sets of damn fine ears to determine the year's biggest, best, and most beloved music.
SPEAKER_01This is volume six of nineteen ninety-one. Where today Chrissy will be sharing his time capsule, an hour-ish of music from the year that he just couldn't live without.
SPEAKER_00And that's right. Get ready for a whole lot of sad bastard masterworks coming your way. And if you miss Stevie's time capsule, be sure to check out our previous episode to hear his hour of music from 91 that he couldn't live without. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01So, Chris, outside of sad and incredibly slow. How did you go about selecting your songs for your time capsule?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So as I've alluded to on some previous episodes, um this year, 1991, is far from my favorite year of music. Obviously it was influential upon me at a formative time in my life, but very little of it still resonates deeply with me today. Is that true of you too? Less true of you, perhaps. Well, less true, but in retrospect true nonetheless. Yeah, yeah. As I've gone deeper into the year, it occurred to me that more than anything, I think 1991 is lacking most in artists that I love. Like in my informal mental list of my top 25 to 50 bands of all time, say there are just so few of them represented in this year. And those that did put out records this year are far from my favorites, like Rush, roll the bones, as we talked about on your time capsule. Like a totally fine record, but when I think of Rush, that's far from what I think about first, you know? You know, some other bands I could qualify for my top 25 or 50 bands of all time that are in 1991, REM, U2, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, I guess. Uh they would really be nowhere near my top 10 artists ever. They're on the big list, but nowhere near the elite of that list. Even Pearl Jam? Pearl Jam is the h probably the highest among those Pearl Jam or REM. Okay. But even they don't have quite enough music I love. They have a lot of music I love and they influence me hugely, but uh th they're not quite in that top tier. Uh conversely, if we look at the previous two years we've covered on the show, 1970 and 2001, we'd find literally dozens of my favorite musicians releasing some of their greatest music ever. Um, 1970 has compelling albums from The Beatles, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, King Crimson, while O1 includes Radiohead, Sparkle Horse, Elbow, Deathcab, Spiritualized, Dismember Implant, Bob Dylan. The list goes on and on. All of those artists would be definitely in my top 50 of all time in some of those particular releases, like After the Gold Rush by Neil Young, for instance. Literally some of my 20 favorite albums of all time. As much as I've enjoyed evaluating so many significant and enduring albums on this season of the show, right? Because that's been the name of the game here. Oh, yeah. Is these big albums that people still listen to today in huge numbers. And it's been cool to kind of intellectualize, analyze, evaluate them for what they are, and also evaluate how I feel about them here, 35 years removed. I I still find myself, you know, kind of consistently longing for albums I actually love listening to, music I actually love listening to. Um, but I can say that the hour of music I did come up with 100% music that I love listening to, even if it's not from all my favorite artists of all time. Okay. But it wasn't as easy to choose as my previous two time capsules, but for different reasons. I had trouble narrowing down my list for those time capsules. And this year, I didn't have trouble coming up with an hour, but it was much easier to kind of say, okay, here's kind of where we landed, and I didn't really hesitate. Okay. Uh actually, and at the end of this episode, because we forgot to do this on your episode, I want to talk about any honorable mentions. What were the near misses from your list? We forgot to do that when we discussed your time capsule last week, and I have a little list myself. Because there are some that, like, yeah, if I had an hour and a half, these would be on the list. Um, there was only really one song that it pained me to leave off, and I'll explain more about that later. But I guess let's just get into the list. Uh, as per usual, I arranged my time capsule in alphabetical order because frankly, it took long enough for me to figure out what would be on it to begin with, you know? And uh so we're gonna start off with a B song. Not by a B, but it is a B.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that kind of B.
SPEAKER_00It may be about a B. It could be about a B. It depends how why they broke up. It's about a color that starts with B. That's right, exactly. And this is, of course, black by Pearl Jam. So we've talked about this song a lot already on the show. It was in our top twenty-five. We talked about Pearl Jam 10. We both love it. We both gave it a 10 out of 10, a rare consensus pick for a masterpiece. Um, this was written by Stone Gossard, uh, the guitarist of Pearl Jam. Uh it was originally called E Ballad. And uh I just, you know, maybe we'll find some new stuff to say about it here with a little bit of remove from our initial conversations about it. But I'll start here. Like, I just love essentially everything about this one. The chord progression that elegantly shifts between major and minor, the band's collective dynamics, and first and foremost, the emotional honesty of Eddie Vedder's lyrics and vocals, right? There's a reason why Vedder is one of the most influential singers of his generation, and Black might just be the pinnacle of his career, which is insane to think, right? Because this was literally the fourth song he ever wrote for Pearl Jam. He wrote insane. Right? He wrote it on the plane from San Diego up to Seattle, uh, where he was going to meet his bandmates for the first time in the band that would become Pearl Jam.
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_00And this may be his peak moment, which is just wild to think about. Um, just as with Steve's time capsule selection from the album Jeremy, uh, there isn't a single true rhyme in black. Did you notice that? I did not, but good for you. But isn't that amazing that we don't notice that?
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because if it was a different kind of song, it'd stand out to us. I think there's barely even like a slant rhyme in this song. And it's this song is nearly six minutes long, and there's barely a rhyme at all. He even rhymes everything with everything on multiple occasions. And we still gave this a 10 out of 10, sure. Which shows how good the core emotionality is, how good the imagery is, and how good the performance and delivery is. Right?
SPEAKER_01Never once noticed that, and that's gotta come down to free vocal phrasing, really, when you take it, because if you phrase vocals correctly, Eddie Vedder just proves you don't even need rhymes.
SPEAKER_00No, absolutely, because he has a certain intentionality with his language, right? Like in the second verse, when he sings, I take a walk outside, I'm surrounded by some kids at play. I can feel their laughter, so why do I sear? So two things stand out to me there. Not I can hear their laughter, I can feel their laughter. You know what I mean? There's a certain amount of empathy. Like I remember laughing, yeah. Versus like, oh, that sound of laughing. He's like, I remember the feeling of laughing, but so why do I sear? Why do I burn? What an amaz like that line alone is like so next level, especially in this generation of music.
SPEAKER_01And that line I I admittedly never knew. I always thought it was stay, which rhymes with play. Yeah. Which would make sense. But it's seer, so it's not. Exactly. But it it doesn't need to.
SPEAKER_00Um obviously, you know, because we've talked about this a lot, I'm kind of like looking for different things to discuss. Um as I talk on and on about Eddie Veterans' mastery of performance and lyricism yet again. But um one thing that stood out to me uh the last couple weeks, living with this song even more, is Jeff Ament's bass work. Oh, I'm glad you're gonna talk about this. Yeah. On the fretless bass. I have a guitar in my hand. I don't have a bass in my hand, and my guitar does unfortunately have frets. Um Rip them off. One second, I'm gonna sand these down real quick. Um, but I will say, like, Ament, uh, and we've talked about a little bit in our pro gym discussions, but I think such an undervalued member of the band, a member of the band that frankly I always thought was kind of cringe when I was younger because of the hats and the shorts and the tank tops and the whole thing. And uh now I'm like he's arguably, or maybe inarguably, my favorite instrumentalist in the band. And the bass line that he plays on this song, while not complex, is basically what basically what Paul McCartney would have done on this song. Yes. Paul McCartney ain't touching no fretless bass. Paul McCartney would have done it on his little Hoffner and it would have sounded great, but like, so the core chords of this song are E to A in the verses, E major to A major. Doesn't sound like that when they play it, but that's all it is at its core. The bass is going. And alone, that's a fine enough line. Like you'd be like, oh, sweet bass line. The way it plays off Eddie's vocal is really what makes it work, and maybe we'll hear it in context, but let's hear that sear line, maybe let's hear that second first.
SPEAKER_01Oh, he's so tasteful and he is kind of that call and answer role, even with some of the guitar lines in the chorus. He kind of just throws in these nice, nice little runs that kind of answer what the guitar is doing, but in a subtle yet very tasteful way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would never compare this in terms of craft to some of the other songs on my list, but there's an intuitive interplay between the three guitarists, right? Oh, yeah. Mike McCready, Stone Gosser, Jeffy Ment on bass, that is just like so central to this band's sound. There's even there's a great guitar line that I notice this time around. It's one I've always noticed, but I never thought to like learn it uh because it's so subtle. But it stood out to me. It's probably played by Mike McCready, and it stood out to me because it's an unintuitive guitar line. So much of what we hear from McCready throughout Pearl Jam's career, but especially here in these early days when he was just like really drawing from the Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, you know, toolkit. Uh he does this line, the band lands on an E minor chord, and he does this line where he goes, which I'll just say what that was. That's B to C on the A string, and then he skips a string and goes up to the G string and goes and then jumps down an octave to this G before getting back to E. Now that's a bluesy line, but that's not the blue scale. A blue scale would have been which I would not be surprised at all to hear from, and I wouldn't even be talking about. But he does something which is just so imaginative and was not necessarily a guitar choice. It feels like a musical choice.
SPEAKER_01Well, because also, you know, the the chords to the chorus are C to D to or D to C to E minor. Yeah, exactly. So he's kind of like playing into that tonality that the chorus has already established.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And we hear, you know, two of those notes again in the main vocal riff slash guitar riff that we hear, the you know, and we hear how that kind of uh motif plays against all three of those chords. E minor, the D, where it becomes like a six, and then the C where it becomes a major seven. And you can hear a relationship between that little throwaway lick that he puts in the choruses and the whole outro of this song. So cool. This song also utilizes uh structural compression, which I like in that the second verse is half as long as the first verse, gets us back to the chorus. You could argue they kind of squander that momentum that they build by then basically playing the same thing for the remaining two and a half minutes of the song. This is, by the way, a theme of my list, and a theme perhaps of the year is just a lot of really long outros throughout the choices on my time capsule. Uh these outros are not necessarily the reason I chose these songs, but it is a weird through line that I noticed. Did you notice that as well?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. Your songs are very long.
SPEAKER_00My songs are long.
SPEAKER_01And and they all have that kind of drawn out thing, whether it be a repeated verse or a extended outro.
SPEAKER_00How many songs did you have on your list? I think I had 13. Okay, and I had 12, and and they both came in just over an hour. I can't remember how much over, but just over. But yeah, my songs feel long. So sorry.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00No, but there that is a thing though, for sure, where it's like if it was a song I didn't like inherently, I'd probably be like, what's going on here?
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And obviously, we don't mind long songs. We talk about all the time. We love prog rock, we love jam music, we love jazz. We don't mind length. It just needs to be justified. And I would say black justifies its length because Eddie Vetter's delivery is so compelling, the band is so dynamic, but I could see the argument made that shave 45 seconds off, it's a better song.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But obviously, this is a Pearl Jam classic all the same. I mean, it's the 17th most streamed song in 1991, and it was never a single. The record label wanted it to be a single, they refused. And Eddie Vetter said, No, it's too personal. I don't want to commercialize it. He would personally call radio stations to say, please stop playing the song. If he, you know, if they were in town for tour on tour and heard it, he'd be like, That's not a single, do not play that.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00And it made it special. And even I saw a video of them playing this in '92 recently. It just came across my feed on Instagram a few weeks ago. And even then, like a year into Pearl Jam's existence, Eddie's like, here's a song we don't play that often, but well, we're gonna do it for you guys. And it's like they're already not playing black all the time because they don't want to burn out the emotion of it. Sure. Um I will say, in 2011, Rolling Stone readers voted Black the ninth best ballad of all time. Smart. Like by anyone.
SPEAKER_15Sorry. Please.
SPEAKER_00Which is wild. I mean, ninth, but like a top ten ballad of all time. We're talking the stairways of the world, and I will always love you. And I didn't look at the rest of the list, but you gotta think those songs are on it. Dream On by uh, you know, Arismith. Uh don't want to miss a thing, of course. That's high honor. That is really high honor, considering it wasn't a single. Again, it's like one of the great, it almost reminds me of the 70s. There are songs from the 70s that we all know now that were not singles. Yes. They just garnered radio play because they were undeniably great, and people started playing them, and then people started requesting them. Yeah. And it was very organic. And this is a great example and a rare example from this period of that kind of organic growth. Uh lastly, Kerrang ranked Black the number one Pearl Jam song of all time. Do you agree with that as a Pearl Jam head? It's really tough to say. I it's definitely one of my five favorites.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh greatest, I would probably point more towards Alive.
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_00I think Alive is their greatest song. And yet I prefer Black and Jeremy to Alive, personally. And there's plenty of songs that I like more than any of those. Like Nothing Man off of Vitalogy. I love that song. I think it's beautiful. Jeff A. Ment composition. Like there are songs along the way that I just go, well, that's one of the greatest songs by anyone of the era. Um but Black is among those for sure. Do you what do you think?
SPEAKER_01I don't roll too deep with Pearl Jam, but I mean top three easily, from what I what I know.
SPEAKER_00It's like this Hail Hail, uh, Red Mosquito. Bugs. Well, but oh, sorry. I I felt like no, that's in the Pantheon. That wasn't even like among our list here. But yeah, Bugs number one, and then we'll go from there. Um, should we go on to our next song? Let's go to the next one. Okay, another artist and song we've already discussed on the program Breaking the Girl by Red Hot Chili Pepper. I had already kind of foreshadowed that this would probably be my time capsule when we first discussed it, and uh sure enough, here it is Breaking the Girl, Red Hot Chili Peppers off of Blood Sugar Sex Magic. Definitely my favorite chili pepper song of all time. Those of you who have listened to me for a long time know they are nowhere near my favorite band. I like this band with reservations, always. I will say they've grown on me more and more, especially like the Californication era stuff. Man, I've been playing Other Side, I've been playing Californication, Scar Tissue, which I don't think that's is that on that record? No, I forget. Yeah, I think it is. Maybe huge album, and I like all those songs. They're melodic, they're well written. Uh Kedis sounds good on them, you know, especially for him. And I would say that's true of Breaking the Girl as well. This is a song that just on its face, I just enjoy hearing. I think it sounds good. I think it's well performed. When you actually get inside it, there's more there than meets the eye. Sometimes there's less. Sometimes we hear one of these great songs and we go like, wow, how did that get so popular? What is it about this? What is the ineffable quality? Because what's actually there is not really much. Some of the Nirvana songs I would say suffer from that. This song, there's more there than meets the eye as you get deeper into it. Steve, did you see anything new about this song uh in your listening uh to my capsule?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I was just gonna ask you, in keeping with the theme you just established, would you say this is perhaps the chili pepper's greatest song? Because it's for me, I think it's gotta be in the running because just the melodic playing, the rhythms are very interesting, ultra personal lyrics, there's there's so much going on. And again, I'm like you, I don't love the chili peppers. I like the idea of them a lot more than I like actually sitting down and living with them. But I would have to say that this has got to be in the top three best chili pepper songs. I w do you have any data as far as how the fans have voted it?
SPEAKER_00I don't actually. The reason I wouldn't lean into it being the greatest pepper song is I think there's something in greatest where the song has to be representative of the band as a whole. And that's why I said alive and Jeremy stand out more to me as like the greatest Pearl Jam songs, where black is I won't say it's an outlier, but it kind of is, yeah. Like they have a ton of ballads, but the thing we know them for is not that. Yes. So there it would probably be a melodic Chili Pepper song that still had a little bit of funk to it. Now, I think the greatest Red Hat Chili Pepper song is probably under the bridge. So I'm basically like contradicting myself right off the bat because that doesn't sound like the peppers either. But there's still a way that those choruses groove that you don't get here. This sounds like they're doing a Led Zeppelin impression.
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_00You know, but the best kind, you know. But it's this song could be on Zeppelin 3 sonically, but it's you know, it's still the peppers in like Flea's baseline, for instance, is another like thing that stood out to me that we haven't really discussed. Like, not a particularly characteristic Flea baseline, but still a really cool one with great phrasing, right? So I'll play it here. They tune down a half step, so what you just heard is in A flat. I'm gonna play it in A, because I'm gonna do some guitar stuff as well just to talk about that. But his bass line on guitar would be Manic Depression.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00Remember, we did that matchup of Manic Depression and a whipping post?
SPEAKER_01That's probably the best thing that was ever played in the Calventry High School Auditorium.
SPEAKER_00Without question. We were not in high school when we played it for what it's worth, but we went up there and ripped shit up on an alumni concert probably 15 years ago. Um, but yeah, if y'all heard if I heard that bass line out of context, I would not know it was this song.
SPEAKER_01No, definitely not.
SPEAKER_00Maybe that's a mark in its favor or not, but the way that it plays off of Frushante's guitar part is so cool. Because what that is is a pedal.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's a pedal point. A pedal point is just when the low end of the song, be it the left hand of a piano or a bass guitar, um, holds down a certain droning root note while harmonic motion happens on top of it. Is that well described? Absolutely. So that there is a phrase unto itself that I like there. That has some of the core principles of a good melodic structure, yet it's in this like kind of amorphous pentatonic world. Yeah. But he does throw in a major six there, which is funny. It's the same thing you hear at the beginning of sold a squeeze, coincidence, on guitar. Um, and then and then just the way it phrases, it always has statement, answer, statement, different answer, statement, different answer, wrap it up. Period, at the end. And that's what I really love. Now, all of that plays over John Frushante's guitar part, which in the verse, I think it's awesome, but also it's very fingery. It's very like, I'm gonna take an A chord and move that up. And then move that up. And then finally it's supposed to have a slightly different fingering to get the next A chord up. But you put that together and it plays almost like a whole tone move or something. It's very Zeppelin-y, but it's standard tuning, two down and a half step, but still standard. A shape and literally second fret bar, fourth fret, fifth fret, seventh fret, ninth fret. Get back to A. All while Flea is.
SPEAKER_01And it's kind of cool because as we talked about, Flea really made a concerted effort to not overplay his bass part. So it's cool that this is the result because if he was maybe in a different head space, the song would be a completely different texture if he was slapping and popping his way, breaking the girl.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Oh, he popped the girl right up. You know, there's a lot of action going on in the strum, obviously in Chad Smith's drum part and all the percussion. Um, then there's counter melodies on the Melotron. We'll talk about that in a sec. But Flea chose his role beautifully here. As much as the verses just feel like, oh, I picked up a guitar and I moved my finger around. The choruses have such a level of harmonic sophistication that I just want to discuss that real quick. And the chorus would be the twisting and turning, your feelings are burning part. So have you learned this before? I've played it many times. It's been a hot minute, but I have played it. These voicings are so cool. So we're in the key of A minor, and this is really harmonically sound stuff and voiced really unintuitively on guitar, which is awesome because he's trying to create John Frischante is trying to create bass motion in his guitar part. So he's playing an A minor 7. Then he's going up to an E7 over B. Then he's going to A minor over C. Then he goes to a G over D. Before finally getting from D up to E7. Which, if you speed that up. I mean, that's the chili peppers. Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_08It's wild.
SPEAKER_00And then the second time through, he does to an F major seven. So statement A, statement B, and then statement B comes back around and then hits to get us back to the verse.
SPEAKER_08Super cool.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that is really brilliant stuff. And it's not the stuff that intuitively falls into your fingers on guitar. You have to look for it. Now, are those the exact voicings he's doing? I think so. Like I definitely learned it a long time ago. That looks very familiar. I could play that all day.
SPEAKER_01It's just so satisfying. And then once you reach that E7 chord, the bass continues the walking motion, but kind of walks down. I think he walks down, which is such a cool compliment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, counter melody. Very Jeff Ament of him. So amenti. So amenti. So a menti. A menti fresh. While we're talking about the three instrumentalists and their contributions, I gotta say, Anthony Keatis really makes some cool decisions melodically in this song. There are two key moments when he lands his vocal melody on the seventh of the target chord. And that is just not something you would expect a singer of Keatis's inarguably limited capacity. It's funny, sometimes I'm reading when I'm doing this show. Like, and maybe you all can tell. I try to disguise it, but sometimes right now I'm not reading, but it sounded like as I said that I was like, it sounds like I'm reading inarguably limited capacity as a vocalist. I don't think I ever wrote that. I'm off book. But anyway, for some reason, I just want to say I'm currently not reading. I'm sure I will be in three seconds. But um, anyway, uh let's talk about that. So in the pre-chorus, because sings the E over that F major chord or F major seven. So between the chord and his voice, he's making this F major seven. The other spot is in the chorus that we just discussed when we get to the E7 chord. So twisting and turning the girl. Girl is on the D over an E7 chord. So he's creating that seventh. Whether Freshante's playing that seventh or not, I can't remember. But I know Kidas is selling that dominant seventh tonality really strong. Does he know he's doing it? No. Does it matter? No. It sounds amazing. Did that stand out to you at all?
SPEAKER_01I always just love the melody. I did not admittedly analyze it. Yeah. Hearing what you're saying, it's like, oh yeah, he is doing that. Right.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it took me 30 years to notice it, but I've sung this song a million times.
SPEAKER_01Tony Kids. Tony Kids. So I I was going to ask you too. I you know, one of the things they say about a great song is that when you strip it down to its basic elements, can you play the great song on an acoustic guitar and still have it feel like a great song? I feel like the answer to this song is unequivocally yes. And it works really well just because you said John Frusciante's trying to play the bass parts in his guitar and those walk-ups. This song functions beautifully as a solo acoustic guitar piece.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And we talked about the pedal point that that Flea's holding down with that bit with that A. You know, he's doing an active line that's functioning as a pedal point, but even within the guitar part, as Frischante moves his fingers up the neck, he's droning out the A. Yes. I think he even throws in these. Like he's throwing in those little hammer ons. They're really subtle, but they're there.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I can picture Frushante's fingers playing this and just going, like, oh, if I were his teacher, I'd say, Listen, bring that thumb down, relax a little bit. He always looks so clenched when he's playing guitar. You ever noticed that? Uh so Anthony Keatis melodically brings a lot to this song. Anthony Keatis lyrically brings an equal amount.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think he does a really great job describing the kind of generational trauma that affects our capacity to have meaningful relationships. Particularly in verse 2, right? Raised by my dad, girl of the day. That alone, right?
SPEAKER_01Powerful line.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you go like, oh right, you grew up with a man ho.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like that's what you saw. You know, he was my man, that was the way. It's just what I knew. You know what I mean? And if you grew up in a family that's stable, you know that. We're both children divorced, we know that. All of that affects your capacity to love going forward. Yeah. And I think that's a wonderful way to put that. That's a line like I just never noticed until I started singing it. And I was like, ooh, that is heavy. Um, she was a girl uh left alone. So a girl who was neglected. Feeling now I hear it as feeling no need to make me her home, but it's written as feeling the need. Every lyric sheet I've seen is feeling the need to make me her home. Meaning her generational trauma of neglect creates a need for more attention and more love and more affection and you know, abandonment issues, right? Sure. So and his is a whim to move on. So of course those things are incompatible. And the chorus is like a conversation with kind of himself, right? Twisting and turning, your feelings are burning, you're breaking the girl. He's like he's observing this within himself.
SPEAKER_09Yeah.
SPEAKER_00While the answer, the falsetto is she meant you no harm.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00It's like it's not her fault, dude. Clearly, it's the way you were raised, clearly it's where you're at emotionally or with the way in which you've been stunted for a variety of reasons. I just love that. I mean, to me, that's progressive rock. You know, that is it's theater and and the fact that it's a different voice coming back at you. It's just really intuitively smart compositional stuff. Like, I don't that's not why I loved this song. I just thought it sounded great. I liked the melody, I thought the chords were cool and the drum beat sick.
SPEAKER_01I think it all subconsciously gels together. Yeah. I think that's one of the reasons you like it. Even if you can't necessarily articulate it or even are aware of that's why you like the song, I think that's the special sauce of breaking the girl. Even because I I've played, I've been playing this song on guitar for many, many years. And it's one of those things where you hear these words and you kind of create this narrative in your head of like, oh, what's he talking about? And then as you analyze it or don't analyze it, you you can fill in the blanks with actual evidence or keep that picture in your brain going. And either way, it's super cool and it's very imaginative and it's thought provoking, right? Which is why it's endured.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, I think so. And it's still a bit of a hidden gem. It's not like it's you know in our top 50 streaming songs of 91. It's a well-streaming song, it qualified for our list, but it's it doesn't stream in meaningful numbers relative to the top tier of this year.
SPEAKER_09Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But it's on a huge record. I think people are still rediscovering it. But I think if you're a Peppers fan, it doesn't necessarily mean that you would love this song.
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_00You would maybe be like, yeah, but can we get to Funky Monks or something? You know, or Mellowship Slinky. Exactly. Oh, the one and B. Not the one in the one in F was bullshit.
SPEAKER_01That F one sucks.
SPEAKER_00Move a tritone away. Now we're talking. Uh the one lyric that I actually pointed this out on our Blue On Battle discussion about this years ago. The one lyric that doesn't quite hold up, even though it sings great and it's fun to sing and it's fun to hear, is the I don't know what, when or why. So I don't know what, when, or why. Great, sings awesome, really comes off the tongue. The Twilight of Love had arrived. Which it's one of those things, it's like complete this sentence. I don't know what. I don't know when, I don't know why. Two of those were two of them. I don't know when the twilight of love had arrived. I don't know why the twilight of love. I don't know either. I don't know what the twilight of love had arrived. You go like, I don't think that that is what you mean there. No. Uh, Tony. He should have said how. Yeah. It would still sing fun. I don't know how when away. That works fine. It's better. I mean, what's the matter with that? He just likes alliteration too much. But uh, it is wild though, just the level of sophistication throughout this song from the same guy who's saying, If I should die before I waked, allow me, Lord, to rock out naked on the same record. I mean, that's some wild shit right there. Um, last aspect of the song I want to point out, and I alluded to it earlier. Brendan O'Brien, the engineer of this record, and ironically, future Pearl Jam producer of Versus Vitalogy, no code, yield. Um, he plays the Mellotron on this song. Melotron being a 1960s era keyboard instrument with real tape inside. He's playing Mellotron flutes. The same exact sound you hear at the beginning of Strawberry Fields Forever is what we hear throughout this song, and it's a wonderful touch.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's clutch. It it is just, it makes it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. More on the Mellotron a little later, maybe sooner than later. Let's get into my third selection here. Joni Mitchell come in from the cold.
SPEAKER_05Back in 1957, we had to dance a foot apart. And they hock at us from the sidelines Holding their rulers without a fart. And so with just a touch of our fingers, I could make us her be explored. How we ever want Was just a coming from the gold, coming, coming Comin' from the gold Coming, Coming, Comin' from the pole.
SPEAKER_00So I first heard that song as part of drink if you're playing the drinking game. Chris talks about Newport Folk. But I first heard I first heard that song as part of the Joni's Return to the Stage at the Newport Folk Festival 2022. I was not aware of it before then. It was maybe the second song in the set. Hold on, I actually have the set list right here. The actual physical set list from the stage.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00It was the second song in the set. And um, it was performed by Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, uh, the singer-songwriter behind the band Dawes. And just immediately, I mean, I'm holding a camera. I'm overwhelmed. There's 50 people on stage and just a million people in the crowd, well, 10,000 people in the crowd with tears in their eyes. And I'm just like, what is this song? I got I can't wait to look at the set list after and figure out what this is because I love this song so much. And I never heard it, but it was instantly memorable. That hook that you just heard, the coming from the cold, just stayed with me. And it was uh one of the songs from the set that I did not know previously, most of the songs I knew. And I was like, that's maybe my favorite song that's been played up here, maybe outside of both sides now, which is one of my favorite songs of all time. Anyway, Joni Mitchell, obviously a legendary singer-songwriter from a legendary period of singer-songwriters, and um she's someone who I just always contend, and and and I'll offer some support for in a little bit, but I just think she's the most talented writer of her generation of singer-songwriters. I prefer Bob Dylan, I prefer Towns Van Zann, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, certainly. But at her best, I think she smokes them all, especially Neil Young.
SPEAKER_01Oh, she's certainly the most sophisticated out of all those people you just mentioned.
SPEAKER_00And the thing that always held me back from her is honestly her voice. It's her sense of melody, particularly her younger voice. I kind of like here we are, 1991, 20 plus years after her debut album, and you know, she lived pretty hard, and uh, you know, definitely loved her butts and loved her wine, and I think her voice is still quite in fine form here, but some of the edge and the shrillness that I hear on some of her best work from the early 70s is kind of mellowed out here a little bit. It's kind of smoothed over to me. Um, I don't know if you had now, I'm sure this is a song you had never heard before.
SPEAKER_01Never. And I'm so glad to hear your story because I was questioning why you chose this song because it it does scream, Chris Knott, first of all. But I I was completely unaware of this, and I know you weren't too high on the year, and we hadn't even mentioned Joni Mitchell in any of our off-mic conversations about the year.
SPEAKER_00And this is from her 1991 release, Night Ride Home. Uh, this is the most streamed song off of the album, so it is on our list. You would have come across it at some point or another, um, and probably skipped it right quick when you saw it was seven minutes and forty seconds long. Uh and um not an album that's particularly well regarded by her fan base. I went on Reddit and was looking through album rankings, and it was not in a single top 10, Night Ride Home. But when I looked at song rankings, coming from the cold would come up. It was never top tier, but it would come up. And and honestly, because it's just a masterful piece of writing and arranging. And it has a certain just air to it that I welcome, especially in this year. You know what I mean? A certain relaxed mystique to it in the production. I should say this uh album and this song was produced by Joni Mitchell's husband at the time, Larry Klein, who prior to his production work here in the 90s was a bass player. He's a guy who plays bass on Boys of Summer by Don Hley. He plays bass on Fast Car by Tracy Chapman, and he would play bass with Joni Mitchell, which is I believe how they met. And there you go, they're married and they're making records together. And I do think that as this era goes, this track sounds decent.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00There's a decent amount of ambiance to it, and it breathes a little more than we hear. There's some hallmarks of the era for sure in the percussion and some of the treatments of guitars and fretless bass, another song on my list with fretless bass. And Lord knows the playing is good on this track, given who's on it. I'm sure you were probably like having a wet dream looking down the the the uh stacked up lineup. Um Klein himself, the producer, is on bass, obviously. Vinny Calliuda on the drums.
SPEAKER_02Vinny Calliuda.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Catholic goose. Hey, she gave me VD. Hey. Oh, she gave me VC. VC. Vinny Calliuda. Oh there's some additional percussion here from Alex Acunia of Weather Report Fame.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_00And of course, Joni herself is all over the track. She plays guitar, she plays something here as well called the Bureautron. The Bureautron. I have that written down. Yeah. Which is apparently a Mellotron, effectively, but an eight-track version of the Mellotron. So instead of just being uh real-to-reel tape inside, it's eight-track tape, and it was developed by none other than Rick Wakeman of Yes. So wild. The Virtuosa keyboardist of Yes. Um I should say about Joni's guitar on this song. She tunes to it. She's famous for her open tunings.
SPEAKER_01She does not disappoint you here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and her open tuning here is open D flat. So basically, honestly, as her tunings go, not a particularly weird tuning. Open D is very common. It's basically tuning your guitar. So if you hit the strings open, it sounds like a D chord. Sounds very lush. I'm not going to retune my guitar now. But she did that and then just lowered everything a half step, give it a really lush sound. For comparison, a song like Coyote, uh from 1976, has a tuning of from low to high C G D F C E. Wow. C G D F C E. So literally one of those strings is what it normally is, and all the rest are something different and quite different.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and that's an amazing sound as well. Um I should note there is a single edit of this song that it had I known that, I maybe would have put it on the on my playlist instead, just for your sake, if nothing else. Because it still maintains some of my favorite verses from the song, but it shortens it by more than half.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So there's seven verses. Yeah. Did they have you listened to the radio edit?
SPEAKER_00I did, yeah. Okay. It left in like the first three and then got the hell out. Wow. Yeah. No, don't get me wrong. I think basically all the verses are good, but some are greater than others, and they're all there, luckily. If it had omitted some of my favorite verses, which I want to talk about basically right now, um, I would have been bummed. But I will say it plays great. It still has the atmosphere, it eases into the song in the same way, has those great choruses.
SPEAKER_15Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh what do you think of the choruses, by the way, of this song and the vocal arrangement? Because you love vocal arranging and harmonies.
SPEAKER_01And what you did, you have any thoughts about yeah, I noticed there's kind of like this call and answer thing where she's kind of having a conversation with herself. Right. I I think that's super clever. Almost very Cat Stevens-ish. Oh, it's going back to 1970, father and son there. Yeah. Um, I I generally enjoy this song. Um, it is a little long for my taste. I love Joni's vocabulary, and you were gonna start to talk about lyrics, so go for it.
SPEAKER_00Let's do it. Okay, so I do think her best verses in the song are among the best things she's ever written. I feel your leg under the table leaning into mine. I feel renewed, I feel disabled by these bonfires in my spine. I don't know who the arsonist was, which incendiary soul, but all I ever wanted was just to come in from the cold. And we should say the theme of this song is young love. From a not dissimilar perspective of the girl in breaking the girl, right? Someone who just wanted some warmth and love and affection in their lives. And she uses the metaphor, come in from the cold. And of course, she's a proud Canadian as well, is from Saskatchewan. So uh it's just such evocative language there. Which incendiary soul, who the R says, which incendiary soul, you know, and just the simplicity and commonality of I feel your leg under the table, leaning into mine. Leaning, just using the word leaning, not brushing into not touching mine, leaning into mine, which implies it's an intent.
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_00You know, another one here. I'm not some stone commission, like a statue in a park. I'm flesh and blood and vision, I'm howling in the dark. This is a woman of great passion, yeah, a woman of great intensity. And just to put it in that way, there's a million ways to convey that sentiment. And I don't think anyone would write one that well. You know what I mean? It's almost like I always say this with, you know, yes, I'm from New England, I'm a Tom Brady fan, right? And like there's been thousands of quarterbacks, thousands of people have tried to do what he did, and no one has come close to being as proficient at it.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, and it's not like it's something that other people aren't interested in. It's the most popular sport in the world, the most watched thing in America for decades. And like no one touches this one person.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's Joni here.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00She should have a monument to her. I bet she has a statue somewhere. Oh, yeah. Maybe up in uh Saskatoon.
SPEAKER_01There you go. Right next to that Bret Hart statue.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just over in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Steve, lyrics, talk to me.
SPEAKER_01I had the exact same lyrics written down as you did. Verse three. Uh, I also an example of the great vocabulary. Does your smile's covert complicity debase as it admires? Just a flu with a temperature. So beautiful and really, really cool words. I always admire uh, you know, the $10 words snuck into a song. And and she just her delivery is so smooth and so commanding that like it's easy to not even notice those. I mean, the first three times I l I I noticed new things about this song every time I hear it. And I'm sure if I went and listened to it again right now, I'd probably find something that I missed the first however many times I've already heard it.
SPEAKER_00Again, it's just a depth of writing, a depth of intent, and a depth of thoughtfulness. This year is sorely lacking in it. Yeah. And frankly, a lot of the songs I love don't always have that. They have a feeling. I don't think like like black is not some testament to structure and composition. Black is a feeling. Please don't cut that out. Black the song. Is a feeling. It's a vibe. There's another song on my list. That's a vibe. It doesn't matter how well it's written. I think it's reasonably well written, but it's a vibe. That's what I love about it. This song is a vibe and a masterful piece of writing. And that's amazing to me. I think maybe let's keep it moving and join in with another legendary singer-songwriter who, like Joni Mitchell, grew up in Canada, and also suffered polio like Joni Mitchell. My beloved Neil Young with a version of Cortez the Killer from the 1991 live album Weld.
SPEAKER_04He came dancing across the water. Mrs. Galleon's looking for the new world. This is called C'est offered making sacrifice so others could go.
SPEAKER_01So so far, CK, your first three songs on your time capsule have been very introspective lyrically. They've also been ballads. Uh-huh. And I I think this song, you know, we we continue that trend on one of those fronts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01It's slow, it's long.
SPEAKER_00That's it's melodic. It's passionate.
SPEAKER_01Also, with the exception of Joni Mitchell, so far your selections have been somewhat uncharacteristic of the artist. Yeah, that's true too. But this, I to me, when I hear Cortez the killer, I'm like, oh, here we go, baby. This is this is some crazy horse.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, indeed. That horse is crazy indeed. So I I would say weld this live album from Neil Young and Crazy Horse. For sure, one of my five most listened to albums released in 1991. It's kind of a coup. I I was like really struggling to, again, populate my time capsule with stuff that wasn't just chalk, that wasn't just from the obvious choices. And I'm scrolling down to the depths of the list because this song does not stream well, as you can imagine. Also, Neil Young wasn't on Spotify for like many years, so that doesn't help, but this song still wouldn't stream well. Um it is the most dreamed song from this album for what it's worth, but at like 1.2 million, you know, so just on a different plane than the Nirvanas of the world. Yes. And I was like, oh good, a song I love. I don't care if it was new or not. So this song, Cortez the Killer, was originally released in 1975 on the Neil Young and Crazy Horse album Zuma, produced by none other than David Briggs, aka the guy who Nirvana came very close to hiring to produce Nevermind. Until they were like, oh, he's a cranky hippie. Let's not hire him, let's get Butch Vig in here. They went from a Briggs to a Vig.
SPEAKER_01That's the Brig to the Vig.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you know Butch's favorite uh snack. Vig Nunes. Vig news. Vig Oh man, so yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's some crazy 1991 meta you just tried. Because I found some more 1991 meta around this song. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I was saving it, but please leave you guide me because it's awesome.
SPEAKER_01Matthew Sweet, who has a song from the year that we will discuss in in uh one of our future episodes, he has a live version of Cortez the Killer on the legacy edition of his album Girlfriend. This song was also covered by another band I imagine we'll discover, Slint, and they had a version being released on their 2014 reissue of their 1991 album, Spider Land.
SPEAKER_00A shockingly good rendition of Cortez the Killer. I think they kind of like lose the script a little bit in the middle, but like it sounds good, it feels true, he sings it great. I was shocked that I preferred the Slint version to the Matthew Sweet version. Wow. Um Matthew Sweet's version was just a little a little bright, it was a little fast for me. Yeah. This song needs to breathe a little bit. And I I mean Matthew Sweet's sound is so welcome in this year of music and production. Like that his stuff always pops to me, so I love it for that alone, and obviously I love the song. Um yeah, the song itself is is kind of ridiculous. Um it's one of those things that it almost uh tricks you into thinking it has a deeper meaning or or deeper emotionality than it does, because it feels like a very emotional performance, particularly in Neil's guitar playing.
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_00This performance and even going to the original recorded version from Zuma. Amazingly expressive guitar playing. But this song really comes alive, live, be it on the live Rust version from 79 or here in 1991 on Weld. What do you think of Neil's guitar tone here? Because to me, it's like the platonic ideal of a lead guitar sound.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. I mean, I I hear this and it's just to me, this song is very pink floydy. Yes. And I love the way the two guitars interplay with one another. I love the Poncho San Pedro. Good old Poncho. I love the way the guitar solo kind of goes through all these iterations. Specifically at around the six minute and forty seconds.
SPEAKER_00I have the same exact look on my list. At six minutes and forty seconds.
SPEAKER_01Fantastic. He's he starts to play this kind of cool, almost like rumba rhythm. And then the other guitar kind of does these little rhythmic things in the background. It's it's so cool, and the tone right there is just that's that's the King New Young tone. I could listen to that all day.
SPEAKER_00The tone is articulate, by which I mean, yeah, it screams when it needs to, and he does some big old bends on old black, which is his uh well, old Pearl Gem song. Or 91 meta. His old Les Paul with a big old tremolo arm, and he's he digs into that thing like nobody else. I think he runs through an old Princeton as well, with just different gain stages. Like he's just hitting the amp harder and harder. There's like three different levels of how much gain he's putting into the amp. Yes. And that's what defines his sound. But as a result, there's times when I don't think I can articulate it here on acoustic, but there's times so it's on an email. I'm not picking. He's just rubbing, he's digging his finger into the fretboard on good notes, and that tone, which doesn't sound like much here on acoustic, is profound. Yeah. It's coming through the speakers so interestingly, and with so much depth to it. And it's like, yeah, that's the missing piece from lead guitar playing, at least especially of this era, is the amps doing all the work.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so we just play at one level and the amps compressing us and we're just ripping. And there's no space, there's no dynamic headroom. Where Neil goes, No, make me super loud and I'll play as loud as I want.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I can play quiet and it's still loud. And then when I want to play loud, it's gonna blow your head off and it's gonna be sick. But it shouldn't be homogenized to the same level, compressed to the same level, no matter what I'm playing. And that's what we hear in so much lead guitar from this era on hard rock stuff, you know? And it's such a turnoff to me, and I could never really articulate why, but it's because you lose the finger articulation. Yeah, even Mike McCready, you know, I like his sound, and but but like it's all kind of one level, especially Kirk Hammett and all the metal guys, it's all one level. So it's just so refreshing to hear so much humanity in the fingers here, and there's another song on our list that has a similar amount of humanity in his fingers, and I think that person's doing very much a Neil Young impression on that song to great effect. I think you know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01I think I do, and it's interesting because I had that thought earlier. Yes. Wow. I think uh you're reminding me of Neil Young did an interview with Rick Rubin, I believe, on the Broken Record podcast years ago. Yes, that's what he talked about. Yeah, he went way in depth into how he just uses his amp and pushes his amp to get his sound. And that's super interesting hearing you talk about it now. And this is a great living example of that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Oh, this is it in full force. Um I that's the only reason I know that fact is from that Rick Rubin interview, who can be an okay interview and at times but like I was like, wow, I learned something about Neil, and I've read every Neil book. Like, I he's my guy. I I should say that too. I give a little bit of background of me with this artist. Neil is my favorite solo artist of all time.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00He has a lot of music I hate, but he has so much music I love. And what he lacks in compositional prowess and lyrical prowess, he always and vocal prowess, he always makes up for in feeling.
SPEAKER_01And I was gonna say, I, you know, the vo vocally on this song, you know, Neil is not the greatest singer. And the vocal harmonies on this song are not technically good, but they feel so incredible. Like when they come in in one of the later verses in the song, yeah, it just hits you, and it's so emotional and it's so raw, and it's great.
SPEAKER_00Let's hear one right now because I do think it's an absolute standout aspect of this song, is the live harmonies.
SPEAKER_04And I know she's living there. She loves me to this day. I still can't remember how.
SPEAKER_00You know what I mean? It's entirely possible that, you know, I know Neil spent a lot of time mixing this record. Actually, he blew out his ears mixing this record and the accompany. There's weld and then there's ARK. ARK is just guitar noise from the same tour. This was the Ragged Glory tour 1990, 1991, uh, that he called these uh performances from. And he blew out his ears that he was like, I need to make a quiet record, and he went made Harvest Moon the next year. Wow. Yep. And you know who was opening for him on portions of this tour? Sonic Youth.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness. Yeah. Like Bill.
SPEAKER_00There is so much Neil Young influence in 1991. They call him the godfather of grunge for a reason. I don't think Nirvana sounds like Neil Young, outside of they almost use David Briggs, but the look of them is very Neil Young coded. Yes. Right? The flannel, the Canadian, you know, the hair, everything. There are several more songs on this list that owe a great debt to Neil Young's aesthetic. And in a way that I didn't even realize, like even as a huge Neil Young fan, until I got into this.
SPEAKER_01So what year did Neil collaborate with Pearl Jam?
SPEAKER_0095. Okay. So it was after Vitalogy. They did Mirror Ball.
SPEAKER_08That's right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And Mercant Ball, which was yeah, exactly. The two song Pearl Jam thing where Neil's playing um organ on those songs. But yeah, they met, they did a performance at I believe it was the 93 VMAs. That sounds right. Where Pearl Jam and Neil Young played Rockin' in the Free World together. And it was just like I saw that as a kid, and I was like, who the fuck is this?
SPEAKER_01That was I I remember taking note of that as a kid too, and that was like earth shattering. Like, I can't believe these guys are working together. This is amazing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, it's it's awesome. It's awesome. And Brendan O'Brien produced those as well. Um let's just talk real quick about the lyrics because you alluded to them, and um this is one you arguably wouldn't want to cross-reference with a with a history book. You certainly wouldn't even want to cross-reference it with uh Wikipedia. Uh in a December '95 interview with Mojo, Neil admitted, quote, the song was a combination of imagination and knowledge. What Cortez represented to me is the explorer with two sides, one benevolent, the other utterly ruthless. I mean, look at Columbus. Everybody now knows he was less than great. Well, Neil was ahead of his time there, actually. You know, 95. Uh and he wasn't even, he goes, and he wasn't even there first. It always makes me question all these other so-called icons. So Neil's intent here is clearly from like an ininformed place of like, hey, let's like think about these people we lionize, because some of them weren't such great dudes. Yeah, that's great. But even still, again, I think that the cumulative effect of the lyrics, or at least I'll say the vocals, is that of great power and intensity. Do you have anything else about the lyrics here? Because I know you had looked into them as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I had written down that Neil has gone on record saying that he wrote the song while studying history in high school in Winnipeg. And according to his notes in the album Decade, the song was banned in Spain under Francisco Franco.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_01And when Zuma was released Big Cortez guy. Yes, Big Cortez. Big Cortez. Well, when Zuma was released in Spain following Franco's death, the song was listed as Cortez Cortez.
SPEAKER_00Huh.
SPEAKER_01Which is uh pretty interesting. Interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Wow. Um, let's get into another song that uh has a little bit of Neil Young influence. And in fact, Neil Young has performed live with this artist. Another song we've talked about previously. This is Country Feedback by R. E. M.
SPEAKER_03Ska so much.
SPEAKER_00But it's definitely one of, if not my favorite.
SPEAKER_01Um it's emotional. It's it's got some impact. I remember when I was listening to Out of Time, this one always stood out as, oh, that one, they're they're giving it giving it a little extra.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, because it's actually good, and most of that record is not. Um sorry, sorry. No, no, I know, I know. Um actually, there was another song on the record that that is an honorable mention for me. Shiny Happy People. Indeed. Uh so I I think the emotionality we feel here is obviously in Stipe's vocal performance, but it's also just because of the nature of how he wrote these lyrics and performed them, it keeps you right on the edge of your seat the whole time because Stipe is right on the edge of what am I gonna say next. He tracked this song without a real lyric sheet. He did like one take of it, and it was just a sheet with a bunch of lines, and he was just putting them together on the fly and stumbled upon what we just heard. Uh there's even a part in verse one where Stipe goes to sing the next line, but he's way early. So he goes, These clothes these clothes don't fit us, right? It's clear if he had done a second take that first these clothes would not have been in that. And it's like basically Michael Stipe's version of Kirk Cobain doing poly said, Oh, baggers, where it's like this unintended thing, but it's like actually kind of cool.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you feel that. I know it's something that's hard to define and quantify, but you can feel when a singer is in it. Yeah. You could feel even, especially in a concert, when it gets real for a singer. When you go like, okay, they do that every time, but sometimes you can just feel in a performance. Bruce Springsteen's amazing at this, where you just go, that was new. I've heard a lot of versions of this song. He went someplace new there. Neil Young lives on that edge. And there's some Neil Young-inspired guitar here, you know, as much as this is just a core, simple chord progression, a very Neil Young chord progression, E minor G, D to C. And then it goes G to D to C major seven. Which really adds a lot. But then there's that loud guitar track that they call it, the Peter Buck distorted track. And he's really doing a Neil Young impression. That's not the part I was alluding to earlier.
SPEAKER_01I don't think that's the one you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00But it's absolutely a Neil Young style part. And this whole song was recorded as a demo, and then they just liked it so much that they ended up using it and putting it on the record. But it was, you know, Peter Buck said, All told, it was recorded in 35 minutes, vocals included. It just came together. And I think something I like live versions of this song, and I even watched a live version with Neil Young from the Bridge School Benefit in 1998, I believe.
SPEAKER_09Oh, cool.
SPEAKER_00Um, and it's okay, it's actually not great. They like missed some chords. I'm like, you heard how many chords there are in the song. Neil knows all of those chords really. No, Neil was great. Neil played late and he was awesome. But I would have loved to hear him on a electric guitar. But uh, Bridge School Benefit, if you don't know, Neil has a school for developmentally disabled children, and so this is a fundraiser he does for that school every year at Shoreline Amphitheater outside of San Francisco. And so REM has played it, I think, multiple times. But I found a video of them playing this song together. And again, it was okay. REM kind of sucked. Neil was great. I'm not just an apologist. Um I love the pedal steel on this song. I love that part of the equation. It's performed by John Keane, who is actually the engineer and producer of this because they recorded it, the demo at his studio in Athens. John Keane worked with a lot of Athens-based artists like Vic Chestnut, Indigo Girls, and even widespread panic. Wow. So he was like a regional guy, but they just like that. I mean, it sounds good. It sounds just as good as anything for the record, but it does have that ragtag quality of a demo, which again is very welcome on that otherwise very polished record.
SPEAKER_01I also watched some live versions of this song because my biggest critique, and I first of all I do really enjoy this song. My biggest critique of this song, I always wondered what would happen if they really gave it the gas towards the end. You know, once Stipe is going up the octave and he's really, you know, I need this, I need this. I I always wish the drums just uh played a bigger role in the arrangement. And I watched a few live versions kind of crossing my fingers, all right, come on, boys, come on, give it to me. And they never which first of all, that's very admirable that they they stick to the roots of like, okay, no, this this has to be here. Right. But I always wondered what would it sound like if you kind of kicked it into full gear with with more of a band involvement than what we get.
SPEAKER_00Right. No, it's it's true. I I mean, uh there's a logistical reason why that doesn't happen on this recording, in that Bill Berry, the drummer, is playing bass on this recording. They added Shaker and Tambourine after, uh, but there's really no drum set. And even when they do it live, you're right. The version that I saw from '98, Joey Warrenker is on drums, actually, who was Beck's drummer. An amazing session drummer. He's been touring with um Roger Waters in recent years, actually. And an amazing drummer. He's the drummer for Adams for Peace as well, that side project with Tom York and Nigel Godrich. And Flea on bass. Wow, it all ties together, people. Man. Um, let's get into something else. Another um.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna give me something to talk about?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know what? A Jace. Here's a song by an artist we've never talked about on our program. Bonnie Rate, the song, not something to talk about, but I can't make you love me.
SPEAKER_11Cause I can't make you love me.
SPEAKER_01If you don't So I'm really looking forward to hearing why this song is on your time.
SPEAKER_00I I want to discuss this because we were in the studio a couple weeks ago with our friend Michael James, and you know, we were just catching up. We were there for, you know, five, six hours, and so and hadn't seen each other in a while, and so we were catching up. And uh, you're like, yeah, I really am questioning why you picked that song. And to me, I'm like, I wonder what you mean by that, because I feel like it's self evident. I think what we just heard is one of the best written, performed, and recorded songs on the entire list, maybe of the entire nineties. And as much as I don't really have a relationship with Bonnie Raitt, I knew very little about her, but she's always been in my life. But I've never liked owned a Bonnie Raid. Great record. And this is a song I've only come to know in recent years. It was never on my radar. I knew something to talk about. I knew Angel from Montgomery. This song is the most streamed song that she has, and like it only came across my radar in like the last two or three years. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Which is weird. Did you know this song? No, and I think that was my question of why you chose it, because it Bonnie Ray is not an artist that I know you to have any relationship with at all.
SPEAKER_00So it's Bonnie Vare, sure, but not Bonnie Ray.
SPEAKER_01But no, it to your point, beautifully written, beautifully recorded, very emotional. I mean, it fits perfectly with the theme of this time capsule, and it makes sense why it makes sense that you would like it. I just didn't know how you came to know it enough, to know and love it enough to put it on the time capsule.
SPEAKER_00It may have been Allison, my girlfriend Allison, who's a singer-songwriter as well. Um we learned it for uh a Valentine's show we did in 2024, where we did a set of love songs and a set of heartbreak songs. Yes. Uh some originals and kind of half originals, half covers. And this was one of the songs that we did. Allison plays beautiful piano, so she played on piano. I played league guitar, and uh I just loved it. I was aware of it before then, but I had certainly never played it or thought about it deeply. Um we should say I Can't Make You Love Me was written by songwriters Mike Reed and Alan Shamblin, who worked on it for more than six months. Shamblin said he instantly knew it was the best thing he'd ever been a part of when they wrote it. The pair initially considered offering it to Bet Midler or Linda Ronstadt before ultimately it landed with Bonnie Raitt. And boy, I'm happy that it landed with Bonnie Raid. And uh another tidbit that I mean my ears should have known this, but it wasn't until researching the song for this, because again, I I've never intellectualized Bonnie Raitt. I just go like, wow, sweet song, powerful, you know. That's the extent of my thinking about this song before a couple weeks ago. The piano you just heard Bruce Hornsby. That's wild. Of course it's Bruce Hornsby. Those voicings, everything has a second, everything has a ninth. Oh, second is a ninth. Everything he's sussing like a mug.
SPEAKER_01He's a sussy guy.
SPEAKER_00He's a little sus. And uh even without the range, maybe he's even you know, he's he's completely off the range here. Yeah, his backing band is the range. Do you remember?
SPEAKER_09Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Bruce Hornsby in the range. We've been covering actually the way it is recently. Oh, yeah. On uh, but I I figured out an arrangement on guitar, which uh translates surprisingly well. But boy, hold no appreciation for him as well.
SPEAKER_01Who's the biggest Bruce Hornsby fan you know?
SPEAKER_00I don't know if uh my dad. I don't I don't know actually. I only know one very large Bruce Hornsby Tom White, exactly. Great piano player, loves Bruce Hornsby. That's true, yeah, exactly. And actually, I remember with Tom White, who's an amazing player, uh we brought him in to maybe play with Ra, my bold band Ra, at a point. And you know, I would write out the chord progressions or teach it to him, and for on every chord he added a second or a fourth or something like that, or a sharp 11. And I was like, listen, I love that, but let's pick our spots because to me I'm more strategic with it. You know, but piano players of a certain school, Allison does this too, by the way. It's just like a second's going in there. Yep, because of this school of playing, I think, honestly. And obviously it's jazz derived too. Bruce Hornsby being a very accomplished pianist.
SPEAKER_08Sure.
SPEAKER_00But what a great chord progression, what a great feel. I mean, just such a relaxed sound. And Bonnie's vocal performance is just so evocative and so strong and rich, and uh that's her first take.
SPEAKER_01Rich. I think that's the best word to describe it because it it is so strong, and she finds a way to really carry these long notes with great strength, yet it's gentle at the same time. So Rich, I think, greatly captures that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and she captured it, man, in that first take. She tried to recapture it, just like, oh, maybe we can refine it, get a run better, or whatever. She didn't need to, by the way, it was all there. Uh she performed at the 92 Grammys with Bruce Hornsby on piano. There's a live version, and she just takes it out. It's so good. She gives it so much extra, and it is just beautiful. And I was reading about on the Wikipedia, so I was like, I gotta watch this. And at the end, you do see her kind of give a sigh of relief. Like, I pulled this off in front of all my peers, and the crowd is just transfixed. And that was 1992. Last year, 2025, she performed this song again live at the SNL Homecoming concert for the SNL 50 celebration. This was the night before the television show of SNL 50, this streamed on Peacock, and it's like, oh, I mean, an amazing collaboration, actually. Eddie Vetter plays corduroy with the roots as his backing band. Oh man. It's you know, just all kinds of like really cool things. Devo plays, but with Fred Armison on drums, like some amazing stuff. Oh, Nirvana played, but with Post Malone. Oh, they called it post Nirvana. Which by the way, they should tour. I really think before long they should.
SPEAKER_01I think they're doing something again. I hope so. I feel like I read something recently about that.
SPEAKER_00Post Malone does a great curt. So I mean, he's not Kurt, but like it the essence is there, and you could tell there's a lot of love for the music. Um anyway, Bonnie Ray gets on stage, sits on a stool, the roots are her backing band. Chris Martin from Coldplay on piano. Wow. Bruce Hornsby, he is not, for what it's worth. He had a couple clams, but still a great um effort, if nothing else. And she sings this song some 35 years later, and yeah, there was some age on her voice. She's 75 years old. I swear to God, I watched that whole thing live. That was the first moment where I was like, this is great. And it was like two hours into the show. Wow. It was the first great thing I saw that whole thing. There was cool things.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But you could feel the crowd. There's shots of the crowd. Uh the biggest stars in the world, just mouth dropped. I bet. Jaws dropped more than Anthony Keatus looking at a big book. Oh you know, like Tony. And um, and just such a moving performance. So Bonnie Rain, now it she's someone I've always had trouble placing in time. I feel like she's the female Morgan Freeman. Like, was she ever young? Because you know, the first song of hers I ever knew was something to talk about for sure. Probably from that Harry Conick Jr. movie, you know, something to talk about. And she was already like well into her middle, well into middle age at that point. She was like in her 40s, she seemed ancient because I was a kid. She had the white streak always, but red haired with the white streak. I mean, her first like Angel from Montgomery came out in 1974. Wow. Like that was a contemporary with Joni and Carol King and Carly Simon. She was one of them, but I never associate her with that time. I just thought she came on the scene already old. Yeah. You know, it's a weird thing.
SPEAKER_01And something to talk about was from her luck of the draw record from 91, correct? Which coincidentally she won the Grammy for best female rock vocal performance.
SPEAKER_00Hey, alright.
SPEAKER_01So there you go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she should have won something for this too, because this is the best vocal baby uh she's ever done. Um that record, by the way, produced by Don was uh the man behind Love Shack, the current president of Blue Note Records, the bass player of the late great Bob Weir's Wolf Brothers band. This guy gets around. Don Waz has worked with everyone. Um it also features Ben Monttench, famed Heartbreaker, Tom Penny and the Heartbreaker, on B3 Oregon. And um, though he doesn't appear on this track, I loved this. The primary drummer on that album is a guy named Ricky Fattar. And I saw that name in the personnel when I was researching the record, and I was like, Ricky Fatar from the Ruttles, and I clicked on his name and yes. The Stig O'Hara, the George Harrison character is Ricky Fattar, and he's the drummer on this record. So he's the drummer on something to talk about, which is so weird.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Um, pretty wild, but well, what's more amazing is we're gonna make another Monty Python connection later. We are exactly that's wild.
SPEAKER_00We're gonna talk about three of the four ruttles on this program, folks. Um one last thing about uh rates vocals. Uh Elisa Gardner wrote for Rolling Stone that the lyrics were, quote, delivered with a quiet resignation that's worth a hundred glissandi in emotional weight, whatever the frig that means.
SPEAKER_01I didn't know the plural of glissanda was glossandi.
SPEAKER_00Because it's Italian. Yes, indeed. Like Arpeggy.
SPEAKER_01Arpeggie and uh Ostinato, the plural is Ostinati.
SPEAKER_00Yes, indeed. And I I'm Chris Ostinati sometimes when I repeat myself a lot.
SPEAKER_01There you go. I was gonna do my King Curbs and Row. I'll save it, save it for another one. It's already been on the show, actually. You fill in the gaps.
SPEAKER_00Um Stevie J. Just the lyrics real quick here.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean a Joni Mitchell adjacent level of selling your hypothesis.
SPEAKER_01That's exactly what I have written down. Yeah. That her her mission statement is is so great for right from the from the beginning. Turn down the lights, turn down the bed, turn down these voices inside my head, lay down with me, tell me no lies, just hold me close. Don't patronize, don't patronize me. Because I can't make you love me if you don't. Yeah. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_00Yes, in a similar tonality to Joni's. Joni's intent is very similar, you know? Just give me some love. You know what I mean? Give me some warmth in this cold world. I'll close my eyes, then I won't see the love you don't feel when you're holding me. So tricking yourself into thinking, no, no, this person's into this. We've all been there. Yeah. Unrequited love, unreciprocated. I always call it asymmetrical love.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Or it's like, God, I want this so much more than you do. But you still have it. You know what I mean? You're in the relationship. So it's not like, oh, I'm longing for someone. You're there, you're with the person. But you're like, but I know they don't they won't want the same thing I do. Yep. And that's a unique kind of pain. That maybe is the worst kind of pain, maybe in a way. It regardless, it comes off like the worst kind of pain when you hear it here in this song. I mean, it just the way that it comes out of her mouth. Just every time I listen to this song, you said this about coming from the cold, which I agree with. Every time I heard this song, I heard something new. In her delivery, in Hornsby's playing in the band, just every time. And this has like a minute and 45 seconds with nothing new happening.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00This has another long outro, like a lot of these songs on my list. And I I just like living in it. I don't care. The song's already been beautifully crafted. It's like you it's all money in the bank at that point. Um, Stevie. Yeah. Another song about love. Let me see a theme. I'm so typecasted at this point. A sad song about love. You two, love is blindness.
SPEAKER_02Love is black.
SPEAKER_00So this is my favorite track from Octung Baby, one of Yu's two's, of course, most important albums ever. This song was originally written by Bono on piano during the Rattle and Hum sessions, their previous record. I originally intended to offer it to Nina Simone, which would have been interesting, but then the band played it and they're like, wait, this is great. We should probably keep this. Yeah. Which good call. Um the track ultimately came together during the Octung Baby sessions as Guitarist the Edge was going through a divorce, which really informed the core emotion of this performance. Um, you can really feel his emotional angst come through in his guitar playing, particularly the guitar solo, which is so not edge like. Bono said the edge put everything into that solo. All the feeling, all the hurt, all the angst, everything went into that solo. His whole life came out of him when he played. And when he went for a take, one string broke, and he just kept playing harder and harder. Another string broke. He has such a light touch. Ordinarily, he's so gentle, which is true. All that left him for a kind of rage, and there's not one bum note in there, at least not one unintentional bum note. Now it's not, honestly, we didn't hear the solo yet. We'll we'll play a little later, but it's not like a great solo, but the passion of that solo captures the passion of the lyrics to this song. Beautifully. There's a harmony there between the performance and I think the writing.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Was this your Neil Young-inspired guitar playing? Yes. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, let's hear a little of it now, right? So I just played like the first sensitive part there, like where there's really like three notes. I mean, there's not really much going. But do you hear the way the fingers are articulating against the fretboard, the way the pick is digging into the strings? That is right out of Cortez the Killer. That's right out of Neil Young in general. But if you listen to like Neil Young's record on the beach from 1974, the title track on the beach, which is kind of a slow minor bluesy number, not unlike Love is Blindness, very similar guitar playing there as well. And I don't know if that's an influence on the edge, I'm not sure, but that captures the same spirit, a spirit I clearly love.
SPEAKER_01Now, when I first heard this solo, especially that opening line, he kind of stops. You know, he plays some notes and then there's some space. I thought either this guy is really emotionally connecting with the guitar and he's going through some sort of catharsis. Or I thought maybe he's adjusting his his tone knobs in between as he people do that.
SPEAKER_00I mean, yeah, Trey does that all the time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I always think when I think of the edge, I'm I'm not a U2 guy for what it's worth. Uh when I think of the Edge, I think of that scene in the movie, it might get loud with Jack White and Jimmy Page, and they they show Edge in his apartment and he's he's twiddling the knobs, playing one note with a little delay, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and he turns it. Ding ding. And then they do like a time swap, and it's like eight hours later, and Edge is in the same position. Ding ding ding. He still doesn't have it quite right. And I was like, oh man, I I give him credit for being so patient, but come on, man. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um I also I don't know if I've ever seen that full movie, but I do picture the scene. I thought you were gonna bring this up, where he struggles to learn the rift to Seven Nation Army.
SPEAKER_01Oh, there's that too.
SPEAKER_00And it's like, I've taught that to 12 students in the last 10 years, and they've all done better with it than the edge. That's crazy. Uh, concerning that guitar solo tone, by the way, uh, the engineer of this record was Flood, a famed engineer of the era, same guy who worked on Downward Spiral and uh Melancholy Infinite Sadness, and he said the sound was bold, unadulterated. It's a naked guitar solo built around what was a combination of the part, the moment, a good guitar, a small amp, and a simple mic.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's all in the finger sometimes. And you know howtice how he said a small amp. The way you get that articulation is you play through a little combo amp and crank it.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00As opposed to a huge stack with a big old beefy Mesa boogie head, and crank that you don't get that level of articulation. This is a small amp, close mic'ed with a decent mic. That's how you get that sound. Hot press editor uh Neil Stokes evocatively described the Edges guitar work here as mournful and ejaculatory. Sorry. I'd also like to note that this song is in a really weird guitar key of B flat minor. Capo six? I I that's a good question. Maybe it was written on piano, so I wonder. I mean, I don't know if there's ever any guitar like chords. I didn't think really. Uh yeah, it's really strange. And it's just, you know, kind of your likely shade. To the four chord, then it back to one, B flat minor, F7. But then interesting move going to the bridge. Which literally goes up a half step and plays a major. That is not in the key. That's on paper. I have trouble convincing my mind that that works, but you all just heard it. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01I would like U2 more if they did more stuff like this. Like harmonically, this song is very interesting to me, I think, because it does not sound like U2.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Is this uh the your favorite U2 song you've ever heard?
SPEAKER_01No. What is? One that we will likely talk about on our next episode of Reconoce. You got it.
SPEAKER_00I heard that when I was going through my deep list and uh and I was like, Steve's definitely picking this up.
SPEAKER_01Probably that one or New Year's Day. I'm a big fan of New Year's Day, only because we've played it live together so many times and you slay it.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's fun to play. Yes, it is. We do it, we do a fun, we do a fun time with that. We do a fun time. That was an ESL sentence, folks. Um, I was uh fascinated to learn that Larry Mullen Jr.'s drums, Larry Mullen Sr. Son. Oh, thank you. Yep. His his drums on this song are actually a sample that's been slowed down of what he plays on. I still haven't found what I'm looking for from the Joshua Tree. Wow. Which never occurred to me that that was true, but there it is. Cool. Uh The Edge called the song a great end to the album and probably one of Bono's finest lyrics. Uh and I do agree. I think the lyrics here are among Bono's best. As we discussed on our top ten of 91 and and also just previously, uh, both of us can run a little hot and cold on Bono. You certainly several degrees colder than I. But when he's on, I just think there's very few mainstream pop writers with his skill set and with his capacity to create emotional sentiment with his words.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I've always especially admired the lyrics to the bridge. We just talked about the music of the bridge. The mu the bridge here, he describes love as a dangerous idea that almost makes sense.
SPEAKER_09Yes.
SPEAKER_00And that is just so brilliant. I talked about that on our Blue On Battle episode about this too. It just it's so my kind of line.
SPEAKER_01I cited that same line, and I found that, you know, thematically this song describes a failing romance mixing personal themes with an imagery of metaphorical acts of terrorism. Yes, exactly. Which is kind of cool. I feel like that little verse, a little death without mourning, no call and no warning, maybe a dangerous idea. Yeah. That almost makes sense. It's kind of you get both of those vibes simultaneously. Very, very cool.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. There's good lines in every verse of this song. Um, love is clockworks and cold steel, fingers too numb to feel, squeeze the handle, blow out the candle, love is blindness. By the way, a refrain.
SPEAKER_01No chorus. Five verses. The refrain of love is blindness. Pretty cool to see that live in action.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And the second to last verse, love is drowning in a deep well, all the secrets and no one to tell. Which I I love that. But then Bono kind of squanders it with the next slide, which is just the banal, take the money, honey, blindness. Which I like how he compresses the love is blindness into just simple blindness for those last couple verses. But take the money, honey. I mean, come on. This would be uh, I mean, this is a 10 for me for sure, but this would be like a 10 plus, if not for that one line. Um refrain here, refrain in coming from the cold, lots of refrains throughout our videos.
SPEAKER_01Lots of multi-versed songs.
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly. Um, I guess it's kind of my thing. Um, and also, you know, the outro vocal hook here, the you know, that is just awesome. Uh oh. It's not quite black level, it's not quite, but like I love that. It's nice. I just love that line. It's so simple, it's just going down the scale, but it's so beautiful and powerful with edges guitar going underneath. Um, let's move on. We'll probably spend the least amount of time with this song. We just talked about it very recently, and it is in fact Ozzy Osborne with Mama.
SPEAKER_06I'm coming home.
SPEAKER_00And another sensitive song here. My mom coming home. We talked a lot about this song a couple episodes back, but I've just always loved it. It's the sole reason I bought the CD, No More Tears, back in the late 90s because I just wanted to be able to hear it at will, and I didn't hear it enough in my life. I love the acoustic guitar arpeggio. I love Ozzy's lead vocals. I love the structure, which is like far more compelling than it needs to be. You know, it has more twists and turns than one would expect. I even love Zack Wilde's guitar. Solo, which is uh refreshingly light and actually absent pinch harmonics.
SPEAKER_01Yes, although he makes up for that, especially coming out of that solo in the verse. There's parts, but that's that's another strength of this song that there's all these little guitar parts that are are not uniform. They they occur at little very he varies it quite a bit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's true. And again, another song with fretless bass. Bob Daisley rocking the fretless Basley on this song.
SPEAKER_01This song is is pretty adjacent to black in in the way that it is kind of a ballad. There's these great interplay between the bass and the vocals. And then I was also reminded of Guns N' Roses a little bit. I feel like Guns N' Roses could have played this song, or I would love to hear this band play some Guns N' Roses songs.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting. Yeah, it's like his their patience or something. Yes. You know. I just love I mean that guitar line that there's nothing really to it. Anyone with one finger could play that.
SPEAKER_01Which is funny because I read that Zach transcribed that from Ozzie's piano playing.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. Yeah. Oh, that's good to know it originated on piano because uh actually Allison heard the song as I was kind of prepping this, and she was like, I really like that song. I wonder if, you know, she she's thinking about working up a piano version of it for, you know, to have a cover in her song.
SPEAKER_01I would love to hear that.
SPEAKER_00Me too. Um we mentioned how Lemmy wrote the lyrics here. You mentioned that theory that the song is about England. Yeah, Lemmy coming home to England after a long tour. Yeah. Um, and regardless of if it's a personal song or a song about nation, I just think it's very successful at achieving what it's out to achieve.
SPEAKER_01Speaking of being successful, how about after Ozzy's death, this song, My Mom Coming Home, reached number 48 on the charts in 2025. Wow. Following Ozzy's death, Crazy Train peaked at 39. Wow. Which is pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00Very cool. Yeah. Way to go. All he had to do was die, and now he's screaming like a beast. Uh oh, we love it. And and you know what? I also, yeah, I just wanted to you know pay a little bit of tribute to Ozzy. He's not, you know, he didn't play as big a role in my life as he did yours and and literally millions, hundreds of millions of other people. But hey, when he's great, he's one of the greatest figures in the history of popular rock music.
SPEAKER_01He's iconic. And personally, I was thrilled to see an Ozzy song on your list.
SPEAKER_00Uh, yes.
SPEAKER_01You know, we we both there's a few artists that we overlap with on our time capsules, and probably for me, Ozzy is one. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It was it was a no-brainer. It never was, it never even toyed with not being on my list. Same with this next one. Though I was between now, I didn't repeat any artists on my list. I probably could have in a couple cases, but just decided not to to give more variety. But this next artist, Nirvana, I was a little bit divided, and I ended up going with Polly.
SPEAKER_13Polly says it back hurts. She's just as born as me. She called me off my guard. Isn't me having seed Let me clear dirty wings, let me take a ride, cut yourself, want some help, please myself, got some love, have a promise you haven't true. Let me take a ride, cut yourself, want some help, please myself.
SPEAKER_00And that should come as no surprise. That was my soul 10 out of 10 off of Nevermind. I think it's a perfect little Kirk Cobain song. I love how it sounds, I love how it's performed. Uh I I generally love the writing. I think the story is harrowing and powerful and resonant, and I just think it's Kurt Cobain at his best. Obviously, the other song that I toyed with was Something in the Way. Because that is like a vibe that yeah, like I wouldn't want to live without that. Like the thought of like, okay, this is the time capsule 901, you actually can't hear any of the other songs again. That's the one who would pain me the most to never hear again. So I even toyed with texting you uh like this week and being like, let's make it something in the way, make it something in the way. But uh I decided to roll with Polly.
SPEAKER_01Um glad you didn't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, this is the best for my money, the best song on Nevermind.
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um, obviously not the most successful, not but just the best when you check well, I guess you check every box except you know bass and drums. But you know, otherwise, the best.
SPEAKER_01Listen, Chad Channing's drum work on this song is second to none. Oh man. Four.
SPEAKER_00Four stars, one per crash. Um I I I don't I don't think we have to belabor it. I think we should keep moving.
SPEAKER_01I well I I have really have two things I'm gonna do. I'm so sorry. I'd like to add number one, the acoustic guitar sound on Polly. You know, we just heard the acoustic guitar sound on Mama I'm Coming Home. This is l night and day to that. And we if we go a little further back into your time capsule, we heard the acoustic guitar sound on Breaking the Girl.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Are you do you think this song would benefit from a different acoustic guitar sound? Because honestly, to me, it it kind of sounds like a clean electric guitar.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Rather than an acoustic guitar, which is fine because it still maintains that nirvana ism that it is, that that is great. But I always just wonder, what would this sound like with a a higher fidelity acoustic sound? And then I think of unplugged, and I'm like, okay, I guess I kind of get my answer, but I don't know what what do you prefer, the unplugged version or this version?
SPEAKER_00The sound is in his fingers. Yeah. And this is so true of so many guitarists. It's we way overvalue gear and uh instrument. It's whatever he played, whether it was his Jag Stang, a Unifox, electric guitars, or these acoustic guitars, these crappy old acoustic guitars, or the really cool Martin that he used for um unplugged, it's just sounds like Kurt. So I've never thought twice about I'll say this too. You know a song's working when you don't even when I don't even think about the tones.
SPEAKER_01Sure, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00You know, and outside I will say the tones that bum me out the most, and you'll know this from our discussions about music from all eras, drums, lead guitar, and keyboards. Because synthesizer versus Melatron versus electric piano versus real piano versus those are the things that I harp on the most. So on a song like this that's devoid of all of those, I actually like I just think it sounds great.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And as we noted when we talked about Nevermind, this is from the original Smart Studio sessions from 1990. This is the only song not taken from the main sessions for Nevermind, which took place at Sound City in 1991. Um and I think that shows it's very i I won't call it a lo-fi recording. It's just a bare bones recording.
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_00There's lo-fi, which is like actually shitty sounding. Like we're gonna have a song later in my list here uh as we as we near the end, uh, that I would argue is arguably like a lo-fi recording in that it's not a defined sound like we hear on most of these other songs. Um let's get into another song that's uh I mean really, really well recorded for the time and uh uh and certainly well written, and there's good reason for that. I don't think we've ever talked about Elvis Costello on any of the programs, and Elvis Costello, as we'll discuss in a minute, is such a huge figure in my musical life, and it's crazy that we've never discussed him. So 1991, he released an album called Mighty Like a Rose, the song I chose So Like Candy.
SPEAKER_06The colored tablets keep it all and place And it sounded Is Elvis Costello in your top fifty of all-time artists?
SPEAKER_00Probably, uh certainly for influence, but it's funny uh reflecting back on my relationship with Elvis Costello these past few weeks uh in preparing for this discussion before Nirvana there was the Beatles and classic rock, and then there was this other strain of music that I was hearing on the radio through my mom and that my dad was spending in the house because he happened to love it. And uh Elvis Costello was played in my house as much as any other artist. And I adored him, and I still love what I love of Elvis Costello, but like as a kid, like spike from 1989 between the this the record cover and the nature of the music and the catchiness of the tunes and the sound of it and the kaleidoscopic nature of that record, I spun that thing more than any record that wasn't made by the Beatles. Wow. And it was like Elvis Costello, he was such a huge influence on me, and then I kind of just completely got away from him when I got into my angsty teen years. Um I associate him with my dad, which my dad has great taste in music, but maybe that was part of it because I was having, you know, kind of hang-ups about that after my parents' divorce. And but like when my dad, for instance, got his first ever disc man, a Kenwood disc man or a Denon disc man, I can't remember the uh company. The first thing he put on it was my aim is true, the first Elvis Costello record. Super cool. And I would look at the cover of that CD and just be like, that's the coolest person ever. It just he looked like me. I don't even know. I just like go, I can be that. Yeah, I don't know if I can be the big people that I see on MTV, but I could be this guy. So I got the black rimmed glasses, my first great guitar was a jazz master, a sunburst jazz master. Like I I just loved the whole thing. I love that he had a weird voice. Like, no one sings like Elvis Costello, and that's probably a good thing. But you know what? For Albus Costello, it's a per it's a great thing. Yeah, you know? And then this song, Soul Like Candy, was not one I heard in the house growing up, came out in '91, obviously, but not one I heard in the house. I caught a live performance of it on an SNL rerun, a Saturday Night Live rerun in the mid-90s. It was from the 1991-92 season finale, hosted by George Wendt, and Elvis Costello with dark sunglasses and a long beard and his hair tie back, not looking like the Elvis Costello I was expecting, yeah, comes out and he plays it with the SNL band. I think T-Bone Walk was on Walker was on guitar and G Smith was on lead guy, I was on bass, G Smith was on lead guitar, and I was just like, What the fuck is this song? Oh my god, and I was still a kid, like this was still peak nirvana, peak corn, all of that stuff. But I was like, holy smokes, that's great. And it wasn't until later in the 90s when I revisited the Elvis Costello thing. You know, we had a short-lived Elvis Costello cover band I roped you into because I was like, I've just listened to so much Elvis Costello, let's play some of these songs. They have great bass lines, like, let's go. And we played with a drummer. Uh, we I think we rehearsed once. Once. But uh I was just like concurrent to prog rock. A little bit of indie rock, fish, jazz, and jazz fusion. I was also like mainlining Elvis Costello.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00All at that same time, 99, 2000, 2001. There was a trip we made to a record store to Newborne Comics in North Audiboro, summer of 2000. Okay. I bought four CDs that day. Mighty Like a Rose, which is this one, Tonight's the Night by Neil Young, which I have the vinyl on my wall right there. That's how much I love that record. Wowie Zowie by Pavement, our first pavement record. And Remain and Light by the Talking Heads. Wow. So clearly, like I was on I was in Fish World, I was in singer-songwriter world, but I still loved Elvis Costello. And that was maybe one of the most formative record store trips of my adult life. Like I was eight, I was 17, I think.
SPEAKER_08Wow.
SPEAKER_00And it like that I three of those four are like among my favorite albums of all time to this day. And the fourth one is Mighty Like a Rose. Because I don't particularly like this record. I don't particularly care about it. I think some of the songs are great. I think some of the songs are trash. I think this song, Soul Like Candy, is a masterpiece. I think it's an amazing piece of writing, it's an amazing performance by a great band, a very good vocal performance. And I should say this song was co-written by Elvis Costello and none other than Paul McCartney. Sir Paul. Now, of course, I didn't know that when I saw him performing on SNL, I just said, wow, great song. But I didn't know anything about its origins. It wasn't until years later that I realized that Elvis and Paul had a kind of intense and relatively short-lived collaboration in the late 80s, which spawned songs that would go on Elvis Costello's Spike record, would go on Mighty Like a Rose, and also on Paul McCartney's 1989 release, Flowers in the Dirt. There's a couple songs from that co-wright on that as well, and then several kind of outtakes have been released in subsequent years on deluxe editions and whatnot. But for my money, I think this is the best among them. I think this is this is really a great piece of writing. And I will say, outside of the ones you already knew, this was the dark horse on my list that I was like, I think Steve will like this song.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. This song is a master class in Beatles composition. It kind of does many, many Beatles tricks from the chord permutation of like I'm not sure exactly what chord it is, but when he goes to the to the augmented, from the minor to the augmented and goes up to the to the sixth in the in the later part of the third verse.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so this is a variation in the last verse.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's so Beatles right there.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And also just the thought to do a variation in the final verse as a concept that is so Beatles slash George Martin.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And just some some relatively, you know, very sophisticated harmony throughout and and structure. And there's time breaks, and it's it's and and then the flute solo and some of the sounds. Yeah just we we kind of dip into psychedelia a little bit.
SPEAKER_00For sure. You hear Melotron, it's either Melotron or a Chamberlain, maybe it's a Buratron. I do not know. But you hear that at the end of the bridge and through the outro, it's a great sound. Flutes again. Yep. Um, played by, I believe, producer Mitchell Froome, uh, who did that. Uh, yeah, let's talk a little bit about the harmony going on here. Then we'll talk a little bit about the lyrics too, because I think they're quite strong. Um, so the song starts with this big old chord, almost like a hard day's night chord, which is an F sharp seven sus four, and then goes into what you expect to be kind of a common line cliche in B minor. B minor, B minor over A. And you would expect this to be the next chord, but it is not. You said there's a lot of Beatles tricks in this. There's a trick on a Beatles trick, and it's right here. This is an insane move that I've never really heard, but it is harmonically justified. So B minor, B minor over F. Then it goes to C sharp seven, to G seven, to F sharp seven. Three dominant chords in a row, two of which are separated by a tritone. See now this, this is not uncommon. Like sorry. But passing through the C sharp seven is the outlier.
SPEAKER_08Wild.
SPEAKER_00Because in the K B minor, that C sharp would normally be I have diminished. I almost go for a augment uh yeah, augmented thing. Um but they throw this in as kind of what's called a tritone substitute. This is a jazz move, so all that means is B minor, B minor over A. You would expect the next chord to probably be either something G sharp or G. So imagine it was a G7, like Base Memucho, but if you trade that out with the dominant chord a tritone away, you find that those chords are kind of interchangeable. And the reason is listen to these interior voices. They share the same third and seventh.
SPEAKER_01And that's why the tritone sub works.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And that will always have motion to whatever your home chord is there. And in that case, it's going to another dominant chord, which is also interesting. It's a trick on a trick. And then we hear something a little bit more standard. Which is E minor seven. Back to that F sharp. But then leading into the chorus, it goes E minor seven to A7. Which brings us into the relative major of the song. With still some traces of B minor there with the five chord. The beatles are becoming a minor four chord, the G minor, and it's used so brilliantly. And did you notice I was not, you know, it sounded like I was off there, but here it is in context. That G minor lands on beat two, which just further emphasizes the impact of that move from Land. You mentioned that alteration in the last where we get an ascending line cliche, which is just awesome. I mean, just clever, but still very tonal and catchy and memorable, I think.
SPEAKER_01And very melodic bass lines underneath all of that, which is another hallmark. That's right.
SPEAKER_00And unfortunately, it's not Paul on bass, but boy, let me talk about this band that was assembled for this record. Um on league guitar, we got Mark Rebo. Mark Rebo, I first heard him on The Dropper by Modesky Martin Wood. He's on that record. Snarly record. He plays guitar on Palo Alto on that record, and it's awesome. But he's most famous for his work with Tom Waits. That sound on like downtown train and those like early to mid-80s, Tom Waits found his voice kind of records. Frank's Wild Deer, Swordfish Trombones, Mark Rebo. And you hear that here. It's those distinct lines. Those punchy. Like they are such important hooks for this song, is his little guitar lines. On drums, we have session musician extraordinaire, Jim Keltner, who's literally played with like every songwriter from the Dylan to Petty. He's a member of the Traveling Wheelberries. He is Sideberry, they called him. And uh Steve, you had a note about you mentioned something about Jim Keltner.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so Keltner is known for his collaboration with three out of the four Beatles. You just mentioned the Traveling Wheelberries, George. Pete Best. George Harrison. He's worked with John Lennon on his solo albums, including Plasticona Band.
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_01Is that correct? No.
SPEAKER_00That was a Ringo star.
SPEAKER_01Ringo. Wait.
SPEAKER_00On Plastic Ono Band was Ringo, but.
SPEAKER_01Released both by the Plasticona Band and Yoko Ono.
SPEAKER_00Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_01Well Okay, maybe not.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, Plasticona Band was also the name of their touring band. So like and Ringo didn't play live with them. Not that they toured, but when they played shows. Maybe Keltner drummed those.
SPEAKER_01So he's worked with Lennon. He's also worked with Ringo and Ringo's All-Star Band. Naturally. But the one member of the Beatles that he notoriously did not work with was Paul McCartney. And I even read a little quip about how on a Paul McCartney solo recording, I don't recall which one, in the liner notes, Paul said, you know, write to hear and become part of the Paul McCartney fan club. And then as a retort in Ringo's band, he said, Oh, write, write to hear and become part of the Jim Keltner fan club. Um theoretically poking fun at Paul. But it's kind of cool that Keltner actually indirectly works with Paul. Yes, he kind of completes he completes the Beatles Circle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Funnily enough, too, I will say the first time I ever knew who Jim Keltner was, he was drumming for Neil Young.
SPEAKER_08Wow.
SPEAKER_00In 1999. Yep. On his friends and relatives tour. Yeah. And he's he was awesome. Playing with uh Donald Duck Dunn on bass from Hooker T and the MGs. Yeah, yeah. Um also on bass on this song, Jerry Sheff, who's known for his work with the other Elvis. He was Elvis Presley's bass player from 69 until his death.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00In the uh Taking Care of Business Band. Like that band. Amazing. Yep. Uh on Keys, I mentioned earlier, Mitchell Froome, the producer, but also a former member of the Wrecking Crew, Larry Netchell, plays Keys. It like just top to bottom, a murderer's row of performers here with crystal clear production. Not a lot of like vibe to the production, but the arrangement offers all the vibe you need, I think. Um talk about the lyrics. Costello has described so like candy as being uh quote, about the debris of a relationship. And I think he and McCartney really nail the sentiment, right?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Speaking of vibe, they they create a beautiful picture. Like this song is very visual to me. It is. And there's a lot of cool little nuances and details that go into just creating a vibe, even though maybe it's not there sonically, it uh it's there in other ways.
SPEAKER_00Elvis is such a Genius. Yeah. Like if he had a more mainstream voice, I think he'd be thought of very differently. If you ever look at Elvis on Spotify, for instance, like his songs are dead. The most streamed song of his is the song from uh The Spy Who Shagged Me. Like because he and Bert Baccarak appear in the second Boston Powers movie. So that song, uh She, I believe that's called, is his most streamed song. And then Allison, the song has like 47 million streams, which is fair, but like not remarkable. And everything else is single digits. Wow. He is just he still tours perpetually. He he's I saw him play one of the worst sets I've ever seen at any festival at Newport at Jazz Fest last year. Just a dreadful, dreadful set. I'm not saying he's bad, I'm saying it was a bad set. Yeah. And I've seen I was live several times. I think he's great. Um or I'll say I think he can be great. He just didn't happen to be that day. But here's something that I think he really understands, and it's almost the exception that proves the point that I've made several times, which is about vocal delivery and when to push vocally and when to not. And I've brought this up with regards to Gavin Rosdale in the past and Kirk Cobain most recently, where there are certain songs where they are just singing their balls off. But the lyrics don't necessitate that level of emotional intensity. So as good as it sounds, there's a disconnect between the intention of the actual words and the performance. Elvis understands the expressiveness of the voice, even though he has a worse voice than both Gavin Rosdale and Kirk Cobain, in my opinion. Maybe he can do more things with it, but his actual voice, the quality of his voice, no one would choose him over Kirk Cobain of my generation, certainly. In the last verse, when he sings this. That line warrants that delivery. And the fact that it only happens in that one spot, really, makes it all the more powerful. So it's just like a great example of like the for my money, the idealized version of expressive or extra expressive vocals is yeah, when you have a line of lyrics that really conjures a deep emotion, boy, give it the business. If you didn't, it'd be lacking something. But don't superimpose it on something that doesn't deserve it, I guess is my point.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I want to put that whole line into context because I had that verse cited. Here lies the records that she scratched, and on the sleeve, I find a note attached, and it's so like candy. My darling dear, it's such a waste. She couldn't say goodbye, but I admire your taste. And it's so like candy. Wow, unbelievable. What a picture.
SPEAKER_00So genius. And apparently that line was originally, but you have lousy taste. And Paul, Paul said, That's a little too rough there, Elvis. Well, what about good taste? You know, what about something good to leave? You know, but uh, and that shows the kind of dichotomy between Elvis' darkness and Paul's darkness. Actually, Elvis said, People think of Paul as sunshine, bubblegum guy, but he offered some of the darker lines we ever wrote together, and I really encouraged that of him. And from Paul's side, he said working with Elvis was the closest he ever came to what it felt like working with John.
SPEAKER_08Wow.
SPEAKER_00Because of his brilliance, because of his different take on the same subject matters. Um, and I loved hearing that. The only thing I don't love is that they stopped working, like they didn't they didn't work again. It's crazy because this is one of the best Elvis songs of ever.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And some of the Paul songs that he helped him write for Flowers and Dirt are awesome. And uh I would love to hear more from them. Anyway, moving on. We got just a couple songs left, mercifully.
SPEAKER_01Oh, this has been a fun ride. Oh, good. It's been great getting your insight because I mean I've I've heard the songs and now it's it's uh I'm gonna hear them differently. Oh, good. If I go back and listen again.
SPEAKER_00Well, here's one that I can't really offer much depth to outside of I dig this vibe, man. And uh, this is a song that's not even available on Spotify anymore. Uh, unfortunately, I sent you an MP3 from an old rip of a CT I own. Uh and this is Sometimes by My Bloody Valentine.
SPEAKER_01Why is this not on Spotify? Because I feel like was it on there? It was a few months ago? Yep. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Loveless was taken off. I'm not sure why. I always remember that their return album, which came out in probably 20, in the early 2010s, maybe 2011, they have an album called MBV. They had not made a record since 1991. They made a record and it was never available on Spotify, and I had to buy it. Like I bought it on iTunes because I wanted to hear it, you know. Um, so My Bloody Valentine, we've alluded to them a few times in previous discussions, and mostly in the negative sense, it's basically been me saying, I know I should have chosen Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, pitchfork's number one record of the 90s. Every hipster doof is his wet dream, but I just don't really like the record, and I stand by that. I actually don't love listening to it. I think it's brilliant and interesting, but I don't enjoy it. Except this song. I love this song sometimes, and I've loved it from the first time I heard it. It was the first My Bloody Valentine song I ever heard. It was in 2004. I saw Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation. And have you ever seen that movie?
SPEAKER_01I have. With Bill Murray.
SPEAKER_00Bill Murray and early Scarlett Johansson, like you know, maybe I think she was 17 when they filmed the movie, actually. 17 or 18, really young. She's amazing, and they're amazing. We actually rewatched the movie, Alice and I, because I was listening to the song, just like prepping for the show last week, and I was like, Oh, this is actually from a movie. Actually, you'd like this movie. We don't watch a lot of movies, especially at night, because one of us falls asleep. It's just useless. Uh, but I was like, well, let's watch it. It's relatively short. I think you could enjoy it. And she loved it. She stayed awake, which is the greatest compliment she can give a movie after nine o'clock. And uh, there's a scene after they go to karaoke. Remember, they they have a whole night out of the town. You feel it play out in real time where it's just a kind of a drunken fun night out in Tokyo with uh some of Scar Johansson's friends there, right? And then they they sing. Oh, coincidentally, that's where uh Bill Murray sings Peace, Love, and Understanding. What's so funny about Peace, Love and Understanding, the Elvis Costello's song down and walked through his wicked word. And he does basically his best leg lounge singer impression, like the old SNL bit. A lot of like connected tissue here, connective tissue. Anyway, on the ride home from that, Scar Joe's like asleep, maybe leaning on Bill Murray as they're driving through the late night, early morning Tokyo uh cityscape, and this song is playing the song you just heard. And it's the perfect song for that moment. Just the perfect song. Sophia Coppola is just a genius when it comes to song selection. If you remember, in our Awards and Superlatives from 2001, I picked another song from that soundtrack by Square Pusher, a song called Tomib. I bet you don't remember because it was so like thrown away. But um, it's from that same soundtrack. I don't remember, sorry. And the score to that movie, uh, as minimal as it is, the score to that movie was done by Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine. There's also a song by Phoenix in that movie, and she later went on to marry the singer of Phoenix. Wow. Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. Anyway, she can curate her music and her musicians. Oh well, actually Sophia Clinton. Yeah. Software, Soco. So Co's awesome. Um, let's actually pour some Soko and continue. Um, anyway, uh, this is a song I I I don't have much to intellectualize about it. I will say I never knew a single word of it until two weeks ago. But luckily, the words are not disqualifyingly bad. I think they're actually pretty good. They certainly get their emo point across. And um, I just love the walls of guitar. I love the hushed vocal over loud guitar thing. It's one of my favorite sounds uh in music, and I think it works great here. And it did occur to me that the reason why this track is so much more palatable to me than other songs on that record is that there's no drums. Wow. Yeah. I hate the drums on that record. I hate that, like, listen, this is the opening snare hits of the entire record. Even my first snare drum that could barely tune and the snares barely drawn, sounded better than that snare drum. You take the drums out of this mix and just make it guitars and a little bit of low end on the bass, and the drums aren't in the way, and then just those lush vocals and then amazing synthesizer sounds that come in at the end that really work for me here, even though they're definitely dated, but like in the lush psychedelic texture that's created, I think it sits beautifully in this mix. So take drums out. If man, if they did a drumless, loveless, we'd really be talking. Now I'd have a one for Chrissy. You'd have more love. Much more love, not less. Steve, any other thoughts with this song? Yeah, I have a lot of questions about this song. I don't know if I have answers.
SPEAKER_01So, first of all, as I researched this, I was kind of tickled to find that apparently Loveless. Oh, that was me. Oh, oh, that was you tickling me. Okay. Uh Loveless was rumored to have cost more than 250,000 pounds and it bankrupt Creation Records, which was funding it. And apparently these claims were denied by our friends Kevin Shields. Uh that by the way, this song is very guarded. He's the Shield. He's shielded. Yeah, exactly. This song is a solo Shieldzo. Yes, it is, indeed. I wanted to establish that. Show my Shieldzo. When I when I hear this song, and I had never heard, I don't think I had ever heard any My Bloody Valentine song. This might still be the only My Bloody Valentine song I've ever even heard. I I admittedly did not look up any of their other stuff that is available. This to me feels like a lot of the music that certain circles of our of our musical life play. I feel like I've played in several bands, and it occurred to me, and I you'd be most qualified to answer this. Is this band, this song, is this a template for a lot of indie music that would follow? And this is pretty early, I would say, right? Is is is this widely regarded as a big influence for a lot of that?
SPEAKER_00So this genre of late 80s, early 90s British music called shoe gaze, famously called shoe gaze, literally, you know, partly because of people just kind of losing themselves in the music, but mostly because they use so much pet so many pedals.
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_00That they're gazing down at their feet all the time, going like, where's I need my eighth distortion?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Let me get it, let me get on four different circulating delays. Um I would say it's one, it's also having a comeback. Shoe gaze has been quite popular, even like low-key shoe gaze bands that weren't particularly popular in the 90s are having moments now because of TikTok.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00This is music that really works well on reels, that really that kids for some reason resonate with. And don't get me wrong, it makes me happy because I love that this kind of texture is what's kind of cutting through and not like you know, the outfield or something. Nah, you know, but you know what I mean. Like not rock set. Yes. Yes. Um, but uh, so yes, I do think there's a whole strain, and that hence Pitchfork's number one record of the 90s. Because this is almost like the Velvet Underground in the 60s. Sure. Where it wasn't Uber popular, there weren't big hits or anything. You know, I guess people would know Sweet Jane, maybe Rock and Roll, like a couple tunes, but like they're never a singles band. Lou Reed is a figure people know, but if you say Velvet Underground songs, name 10 to the average person, they'd be like, I can name A song. Yeah. That's the equivalent of this, where like it just influenced musicians more than it actually affected the general public.
SPEAKER_08Sure.
SPEAKER_00And so, yes, I think you do hear it in some of our friends' indie rock music. There's songs of mine, uh, though I don't really play them, I don't really have an outlet for them, but um, there's a whole strain of my music that owes a lot to this. But I basically said, I want to make music that sounds like this, only not shitty. Like, meaning I love the sense of melody, I love the sense of harmony, I love the voice. I like I love this band. I just don't think they ever were represented correctly in a in a recording scenario at this time for my ear. So, and and the bands that they influenced, I mean, Smashing Pumpkins was hugely influenced by Loveless. I can see that. And think of Siamese Dream and like the tones of that record, like Loveless. And I think that record, as cool as it sounds, I think it sounds kind of like shit. It's a little bit assy, like in my opinion.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, that was produced by Butch Vic, actually. And mixed by uh Alan Mulder, who did not, I thought he mixed Loveless. He did not, but he did work with creation records bands, did a lot of Jesus and Mary Chain, by the way, they're also featured on the Lost in Translation soundtrack. Wow. Um and uh and so Smashing Pumpkins brought him over, like, we want that sound. You you know, mix our record like that, and he was like, Oh shit. Like, I'm listening to other alternative records of the time, and I'm like, I can't get that sound. And then he Simon's Dream sounds like it does. But then the next year he mixed downward spiral. Wow. Which sounds ridiculous, you know, and like way more heavy than anything else at the time. So, you know, he figured it out clearly. Anyway, so yes, more influential than it is good, perhaps.
SPEAKER_01And another trend with your time capsule in this song, four verses, no chorus.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, which is totally fine for a song like this. I would hate to be broken out of the spell. I want to be under this spell. This is the vibe song.
SPEAKER_01And I found the vibe, by the way. I I did connect with the vibe. Um, it took me a couple of listens, but where would you listen to it? Sitting still, driving, walking? This one almost exclusively sitting at my computer just because you had shared the MP3 with me and it was a little easier to access on uh at home rather than driving.
SPEAKER_00That's a great point. Uh this is like if you put this on in the world, you're walking down a city street, you're driving in traffic, talk about shifting the tempo of reality. Yeah. And I love songs that do that. And I love artists that make that their mission statement. And again, if they swam more in these waters, I dive in every time. It's just that's not what they always conjure for me. And sometimes it's almost like we talked about in 2001 with like the Destiny's Child uh song with the shitty drum program. And it's like, man, I almost hate it more because they fucked up something that could have been great.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so that's how I feel about Loveless. Is I don't think they fucked it up, but it's just I could have loved this if it sounded like Yola Tango.
SPEAKER_08Sure.
SPEAKER_00Which who by the mid-90s they were working with a really great, I'll say a really great producer for them, and they figured out how to get a lush shoe gazy sound when they wanted it. And that's the sound I'm drawn to. And in my music, that's what I'm trying to emulate. And I'm like, good, as long as it sounds thicker than Siamese Dream and Loveless, I'm good. Even though I love some of these songs, it's just like, ah, I just wish it. Anyway, one song left that I love. Should we move on? Let's do it. Okay. The last one here. People are about to say this band name and be like, this is a song I love. But frankly, I just do, so here we go. Toad the wet sprocket, walk on the ocean. Not the bog. No, no, no, the toad got out of the bog. They're headed for deeper waters. Walk on the ocean.
SPEAKER_14We spotted the ocean. The head of the trail. Where are we going? So far away. Somebody told me.
SPEAKER_01I was definitely surprised to see this one on your list. I I am familiar with this one.
SPEAKER_00I figured you would be from the radio from VH1.
SPEAKER_01I would think from the radio or MTV back in the day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I have vivid recollection of seeing this music video, probably on VH1. It doesn't feel like an MTV band from the early 90s. And I was haunted by the choruses between the lyrics and especially the vocal harmonies. There was something otherworldly about it. It felt psychedelic. It sounded like the Beatles. It sounded like stuff I was familiar with, but hearing a modern band channeling that same kind of approach vocally, oh, it just spoke to me.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That said, like uh six months ago, if you said, Hey, who does walk on the ocean? I would have been just as inclined to say Big Head Todd and the Monsters as Toad the Wet Sprocket. Wow. I because I always conflate that type of band.
SPEAKER_01I think everyone does.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, for good reason. Um, I will say, like, it's weird thinking about it now. I still love the choruses, but I actually love this song still, but for completely different reasons that we could talk about. Um first, the band name.
SPEAKER_08The band name.
SPEAKER_00Because I think we both like it never occurred to me to think why did that band choose such a stupid name? But this morning, I thought, I should look that up. It's stupid to talk about a band toad the wet sprocket and not address the elephant in the room, which is isn't that a stupid band name? Um, Steve, what did you learn?
SPEAKER_01I learned that it came directly from a Monty Python sketch called Rock Notes, in which a journalist delivers a nonsensical news report, which I have here, I can read it to you. Oh, please. The news report states Rex Stardust, lead electric triangle with Toad the Wet Sprocket, has had to have an elbow removed following their recent successful worldwide tour of Finland. Flamboyant ambidextrous Rex apparently fell off the back of a motorcycle. Fell off the back of a motorcyclist, most likely, quipped ace drummer Jumbo McClooney on hearing on hearing of the accident. Plans are already afoot for a major tour of Iceland.
SPEAKER_00Oh, major tour. Oh yeah, Reykjavik, watch out. That's awesome. You know, and the band kind of like used it as a joke name, and then the joke just stuck. Like they formed in 1986, and I mean they reformed again in the 2010s, and they're still hanging in there with the name, but they're like, Yeah, it was probably an inside joke that went on way too long, and now they're stuck with it. Hey, but it probably influenced like Hooting the Blowfish and bands like that, other idiotic band names. And Eric Idle, just to like give some context, said, We've just tried to think of a band name for that sketch that would be so silly no one would ever use it. Yeah, yeah. Hold my beer, says Glenn Phillips. Uh interesting too, that band, the uh the Python band, actually made a later appearance on Rutland weekend television with Neil Innes on keyboards. Neil Innes, Ron Nasty from The Ruttles. So the guy who wrote all the Ruttles songs and wrote a lot of the Monty Python songs. He was like the seventh Python. Uh he he he was in Toad the Wet's Brocket. And Eric Idle, of course, was Dirk McQuigley, the Paul McCartney character from The Ruttles. The Ruttles, for those who don't know, was a Lauren Michaels produced Eric Idle from Monty Python written parody of the Beatles that aired in 1978, I believe, on NBC. And it's one of my favorite things that's ever existed. Watch it on YouTube if you've never seen it. The music's great. If you're a Beatles fan, the jokes are out of this world. And uh, they just come up all the time in my life, and I love how much they've come up just in my researching this time capsule. It's hilarious. Because they were far from my mind. We were just missing an appearance by Barry Wom, the drummer. And uh oh, and the fifth member, Lepo.
SPEAKER_01Lepo, can't forget Lepo.
SPEAKER_00I did mention him earlier though. Okay, back to the song. So apparently, Walk on the Ocean was written after singer Glenn Phillips and his wife spent a day with a bunch of hippies on the San Juan Islands of Washington State. So not only did you learn the origins of the song, you also learned that there are San Juan Islands off of North Washington State, which I did not know.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00And you've been on a cruise up there not too long ago.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't remember those San Juan Islands. They didn't point those out in the tour.
SPEAKER_00They're just like, you know, southeast of uh southwest of British Columbia. They're just like way up there towards the border.
SPEAKER_01We were locked into the Puget Sound. That explains it. There you go. That explains it.
SPEAKER_00By the way, I learned Puget Sound from a Nirvana lyric from Francis Farmer, we'll have a revenge on Seattle. There you go. Uh of the lyrics, Glenn Phillips said, I wrote down literally the first thing that came across my mind, the lyric in the chorus. I have no idea what it means, unfortunately. He that was his, unfortunately, not mine. It sounded like an aside. Um, then I tried rewriting it and nothing ever really worked. I tried to make the chorus mean something, and eventually said, Well, it sounds like I know what I'm talking about, so he just left it as is. It was the least conscious, least crafted lyric.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00Which, you know, a nice bit of self awareness there. Something, however, that is quite crafted is the chordal movement of this. Did you play it?
SPEAKER_01I did, and I'm hoping you I'm hoping you can provide an analysis because I'm sort of Stuck and I actually researched what other people say, and I I guess I agree, but it's all oh, I didn't think to research what other people say.
SPEAKER_00Here's the interesting thing with this song I think it's a very catchy pop rock song.
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_00I don't think it's really anything special. I think it has a great chorus that you definitely remember. Um it's not particularly well streamed. I mean, it does okay, but it's not like, oh yeah, everyone knows Toad the Wet Sprocket. But people of a certain generation, like for instance, I'm thinking about covering it, because it's, you know, walk on the ocean. I play on an island, you know, for most of the year. Like it seems like a good song for us. But also, I'm like, but who will know it?
SPEAKER_01Well, if the streams pick up, we'll know who to blame.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. Uh that's the Rottti Bump.
SPEAKER_01The Roddy Bump. Give it that old classic Rottie Bump.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, baby. But anyway, so I went to learn the song, and I and I was noticing listening to it, I was like, damn, that thing has legs. Yeah, it does. But then I went to learn it and I was like, wow, I don't know if I'll ever actually remember the chord progression. So I'm off book right now. Let's see if I can remember it. So he starts with a melody that's based off okay, this is capo four. I'm just gonna call it the shapes. I'm not gonna call it the concert pitches. Okay, so base off an A chord.
SPEAKER_05Da da da da da.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so that's what he started on. But we don't hear that chord. So da da da G chord, C, G, A. So already we've left the key. Yes. Because there is no key that has a C major and an A major.
SPEAKER_01My ear wants to go to A. I feel like A is the home chord.
SPEAKER_00And that's because of the vocal melody.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00This is a great example of harmony being implied by the melody.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because he goes, we still So when we hear that, it actually sounds wrong because we just heard and then we hear.
SPEAKER_14And if it was that, it'd be ta-da-da-da-da! Which anyway.
SPEAKER_00So the chords. G, C, G, A, E minor, C, G, A, okay. E minor, C, G, G, A, S. Then, slightly different ending the next time. I'm just gonna play it, but then I'll tell you when the chords change. Right here. So E minor, D over F sharp, G, A, G over B, C, G, D over F sharp, A.
SPEAKER_01The bass adds a whole layer of complexity to this.
SPEAKER_00It's basically a walking bass line over focal chords, yes. Incredible. Just incre I've never heard another song of its ilk like it.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that's not even why I initially loved the song. I loved it because of Walk on the Ocean. Fish becomes one. Which is perfect basic.
SPEAKER_01So in this part, I feel like the home chord shifts to D.
SPEAKER_00Yes, we're in D there, for sure. That's E minor G. D A. Which is two, four, one, five.
SPEAKER_01With a C sharpen the bass.
SPEAKER_00Over the A.
SPEAKER_01Over the A, which wants to take us back to D.
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_01But yet when we get back to the verse, we kind of reverberate A. Then we have a C natural yet.
SPEAKER_00Yep, exactly. I love that. I love this. It just keeps going.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So the internet says the song is basically in the key of D.
SPEAKER_00I I think it's D, and C is the outlier.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_00It's a flat seven tonality. Yes. Which is not unheard of. It's very common, in fact. Even in songs like I'm not gonna change the capo, but like Free Bird. F. So we're in G's E minor, then F da da da C. It's a flat seven major chord. But it just, man, if you have a good melody that weaves through, it works. Yeah. And frankly, it's just like one of the safest non-diatonic things you can do. But just the way it's incorporated with that bass motion and all the these are inverted chords, half of them, you know? Just so you can get that ascent. And just the thought that you can write a melody over that that sounds so cohesive.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think it is a good melody. Absolutely. You know? And also lives up pretty high. That's you know, F and G flat. That's a high sound there, you know, that he's just like chilling in. So Glenn Phillips, man, got some game. So this ended up being one that had uh um whatever the well augmenting returns. I was gonna say whatever the diminishing returns, augmenting returns. It really, my appreciation for the song so expanded. It's just a song I dug, and then it became a song that I admire. Which I wasn't expecting. So you you agree, good song?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, I like this one. It's in listening to your entire time capsule, it was always like a nice little uh icing on the cake.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If you listened all the way through, because get something peppy, as you know, I don't always love the slower songs. Yeah, but that this was a nice change of pace.
SPEAKER_00Also, you know, a six-eight, a three, you know, a triple meter song, which is not common on my list here. And uh uh last thing I'll say about it is a rare instance where there's a single version of this song that's longer than the album version because they add on a last chorus.
SPEAKER_01And I wish you had chosen the single version.
SPEAKER_00I know it's it's a weird thing, uh, because I really like the lyrics of the last verse, actually. I I could read them real quick because we haven't talked much about the lyrics outside of they mean nothing, but they actually do mean something. Now, back at the homestead where the air makes you choke and people don't know you, and trust is a joke. Those are great lines. I think that's awesome. There's a logic to it, it sings nice, great. Don't even have pictures, just memories to hold. I love that. We were hanging out with hippies, who's grabbing a camera? Yeah, I don't want hippie penises all over my disposable camera. They want to develop them. Um grow sweeter each season. And then as we slowly grow old. Now, that is a much more poignant ending.
SPEAKER_01I agree.
SPEAKER_00But it's less good musically.
SPEAKER_01But I every time I heard this album version, I was so waiting for a big drum fill. Welcome. You know, that I wanted it so bad every time.
SPEAKER_00Man, it's it's it's such a great chorus. It is a shame we only hear it twice.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think if I do it live, I will do last chorus. Please please do. In fact, I was confused because I remember there being a last chorus, and I've only been listening to the album, which by the way, Toad the Wet's Brock, it's 1991 release. If you just saw the album cover and just heard the title, which is Fear, you'd think it was like a Faith No More record or something really hard, like clutch or something, like something like really heavy. And it's like Toad the Wet's Brock. It's like, have you heard the latest? Fear and by the way, this is not the most streamed song from the record. All I want is the most streamed song about that. That's right. Oh well, just maybe we'll talk about that on our pop rock category in our superlatives episode coming up next time. Before we uh wrap this one up and talk about next time, honorable mentions. Steve, you didn't talk about yours. Oh, also, what's your favorite song from my list? Tell me this. What's your favorite song that you didn't already know from my list?
SPEAKER_01Oh, so like candy. Oh, great, okay. Yeah, oh, I don't have to think hard about that. Honorable mentions for my time capsule. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't really think about it. Off the top of my head, I was really wrestling with which death song to pick. Uh there's a great song. The second track on their record is called Suicide Machine. I really like that one. Uh, it has some notable guitar kind of angular melodies that make me think of death, but ultimately I chose uh the flattening.
SPEAKER_00I love angular guitar melodies that make me think of death.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, go. Speaking of that, you know, I don't think I articulated this, but one of the reasons I chose uh Meet Hooksotomy by Cannibal Corpse, that's the opening track on that record. It might not be my favorite track, and I did consider some other tracks from from uh the Cannibal Corpse release, but I always just love the way that opening track started with all that noise and then just punched you in the face.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Other than that, plus the lyrics are just pure poetry. Pure poetry. Chris Barnes is a prophet. Uh I know one that I did consider, and I almost put it on, but at the last minute I took it off was You Could Be Mine by Guns N' Roses, because I always had a fond admiration for that particular song. And it at the end of the day, may likely because we spent so much time with Mr. War himself, Axel Rose, I kind of was burned out from Guns N' Roses and said, Yeah, I don't need this to write I don't I don't need to hear this when I go back.
SPEAKER_00You know, I had a a strange toy with my list. Yeah. Though it, you know, we have an hour of music and that's a nine-minute song, so that kind of disqualified it right there. Plus, we've already addressed it so much. But I I really do like that song a lot, and it would be one that I would be bummed to never hear again. But I mentioned something in the way. The hardest one to leave off for sure was the tie band we just talked about Rhinoceros by Smashing Pumpkins. Which was one of the first songs I thought of for my time capsule. I was like, oh good, I can get Smashing Pumpkins in here. And uh I it was between that and My Bloody Valentine, as you could well guess. Uh and I just the My Bloody Valentine song is more me. I don't know. I couldn't put it any other way. And maybe I just wanted to hang more of a lantern on it because maybe it's a less known song, but that didn't even come into my calculus, really. It was like, nah, this is just the one I like living in this space more. But Rhinoceros by Smashing Pumpkins is awesome. And man, we have a pretty stacked alternative rock, you know, category. We have a very sacked indie rock. We had to separate. We got a lot of rock cut categories for you coming up on our awards and superlative show. Um, hopefully it gets into one of those nominations because it is one of my favorite rock songs of the year. Um, it just may not have a home. So, like, we still never really get to talk about smashing pumpkins on this show. It's kind of a shame. Um Half a World Away by REM, which is uh one of the ballads on Out of Time release by Pearl Jam. Again, I didn't want to double up artists, so this is why you know uh these songs didn't make it. There's an uh album cut by Tom Petty off of Great Into the Great Wide Open, which is an a good record, but called King's Highway that I've always loved. That was on my list originally. Say Hello to Heaven, Temple of the Dog. No joke, you said Shiny Happy. I I put that on as a joke. I was gonna I was just gonna throw it in shiny happy people, obviously, and just go on. But I did actually write that down.
SPEAKER_01So earlier you were like, I wanted to tell you, uh, you know, at school I I have a couple of chorus groups, and because of my research into this music, we are actually gonna sing Shiny Happy People. That's awesome. And so far, the kids have taken very well to it. All right, they seem to like it.
SPEAKER_00I love it. That's what it's for. Yeah, you know. Um, I mentioned this on the last episode, Outshined, which was on your time capsule, was absolutely on my first big list. Um, sold to squeeze by the peppers, which I think qualifies. It's from this era.
SPEAKER_01Actually, now that you say it, I'm surprised that's not. I know you have a very fond admiration of that song.
SPEAKER_00I do like it. If not for the it's been a baby and it's very sweet. I don't know what it could, but I'm on my feet. Take me to the No, I love that part too. Um, spoiled by Sebado. Sebado, a really cool indie rock band that I've always dug, Lou Barlow, who is the bassist of Dinosaur Jr. Um, and also Folk Implosion. He's the singer of Folk Implosion as well, which is where I think I first knew him from. But Sebado was his other band. Um their producer, Bryce Goggin, who produced Wowie Zowie by Pavement, and is Trey Anastasio's producer now. He's his like in-house, he's the one who built the barn with Trey. Awesome. He produced Farmhouse and uh yeah, works on them exclusively, basically now. Um Dreamline by Rush. I mentioned that. Love the song, love Rush, just didn't quite make it. I just don't love it quite as much as it's not quite sad enough.
SPEAKER_01What about Bravado?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Bravado's good too, but just a little too.
SPEAKER_01We used to goof on Bravado.
SPEAKER_00That was mine and Casey's wedding song. Me and your little sister, I'd be like, all right, we're having our wedding, and I'd put on bravado. If we sped our wings flying too close to the sun. It's a beautiful song.
SPEAKER_01That is great.
SPEAKER_00Um, and then lastly, just a song I've always loved since I was a kid, and I'm still charmed by it to this day: American Music by Violent Femmes. I I'm sure it annoys the piss out of me.
SPEAKER_01I'm glad someone's still charmed by it.
SPEAKER_00Should I say it's American music? There's something about it that I just love. I think it's a fun performance and a and a fun song. And uh I just grew up with it. That was on my radio as much as anything in the late 80s, early 90s, obviously 1991, so I guess early 90s. Stevie, time capsule's done.
SPEAKER_01I just want to say I at the beginning of my time capsule, I I dropped a little hint that of the seven records that we have discussed in detail, yeah that six of those artists combined appear on both of our time capsules. Yes. And the one artist that's missing, I just I just mentioned a Guns N' Roses did not appear on either of our time capsules, but we had representations from Metallica, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, REM, Ozzy Osborne, and the Chili Peps. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Because it is the best music. I mean, it's a weird thing to say. But I can't wait to talk about the whole list and offer our I mean, I won't even call them nominees. I'll just say they're selections. We're gonna do the same thing we did for 2001, we where we have 14 or 15 genres that were prominent in 1991. And what's cool is like every year we do, we'll have a different collection of genres. Yeah because 2001 we had new metal, which obviously is not part of this. We had pop punk and emo, but not really a genre in 1991. So I it's gonna be fun to see how this changes as we jump around by decade, you know? Absolutely. But uh, you know, we have stuff this year that kind of necessitates again more rock categories. We're gonna have alternative, obviously. We're gonna have indie slash punk, we're gonna have uh pop rock, hard rock and metal. Yes. Because again, guns and roses is not metal, Metallica is metal, and all you know, obviously uh hammer smash face singing cannibal corpse is metal, um but um lots of different distinctions of rock for sure. And are we going international as well with that? I think we should, yeah. Yeah, because there's just so much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's there's a lot that I that I I think the listeners need to know about, you know, because there are hidden gems in in this rough pool of 1991. And uh we want to uh let you know the best ones. Yeah. Anyway, what we think are the best ones.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Or just the ones that stood out to us and seemed worth discussing. Because again, this is a music appreciation show. Yes. So we're trying to find more music to appreciate. Um, whether it's stuff we already know or stuff we haven't, obviously we're gonna favor stuff we haven't discussed yet. Yes. So it's not saying it's the best or whatever, it's just saying let's just shine a light on so much of the music from this year that we have not addressed, because it's been such a top heavy year so far, even in our time capsules. You know, we didn't really stray, as you mentioned, from the biggest stuff.
SPEAKER_01And that's a great point because I don't I don't anticipate uh discussing too much about Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Metallica in our in our next year. I'm leaving them out. Yeah, I as am I. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I I I will recognize, like, listen, obviously these whatever would be in the running, but like assuming they don't exist, let's roll with this. And again, we're not like picking winners or anything. It's just again a discussion of uh every aspect of music from this year. And again, we're discussing just the most streamed song from each album. Those are the ones that are on our big list, those are the ones we're drawing from. We're not pulling from any song from any album. It's gonna be just the songs that qualified for our list. Um and I can't wait for that. That'll probably be a two-part episode. I would think it's probably gonna be large. And then we'll wrap up that two-parter with our final awards, who won the year, our Rattist Riff, uh, laughable lyric, bands we've seen live, all the stuff that we do to wrap up a year, and then we will also announce what year we'll be covering next. Oh yeah. We need a little bit of a palette cleanser after all of this, all of these iterations of rock. But until then, this has been another record of the year.