A baker's dozen of great songs
Arbitrary order and extremely haphazard selection.
If you've heard all these, you probably need help
and yes, the background image is one of the great album covers of all time...
1. Cock Sparrer -- Take 'em all. Oi/Punk, with humor. [How did I wind up as an
"American with dark glasses," given where I was born, and where I was educated?]
2. The Mekons. Fletcher Christian. The band I'd want to have for a week-lomg house party.
3. Growlin' Tiger. When I dead, bury me clothes. Calypso king
from the country where I happened to be born. The Mighty Sparrow's "Monica" came close.
4. Junior Kimbrough. You better run. Inspiration for the Black Keys.
If I could see three musicians live....
Erik Satie, Junior Kimbrough, and let me think....
Captain Beefheart might have listened to this for his first (bluesy) album "Safe as Milk"
5. Draytons Two. Drink milk. Spoog from Barbados. Don't normally love organ, but this jumps.
6. Band of Skulls. Honest. Fires in my head in the night. Small audience Boulder Theatre, April 2010.
The 22-20's wore winklepickers! ("'Ey mus be Brits," I sez to meself). "The hardst game to play is right on the inside."
7. Shantel. Disko Partizani. Perfect storm, surfeit form. Some eejit attacks him for singing in English.
If you're Czech and your dance partner is Danish, tu dois falar ingles parce que, se não, não se puede comprendre, n'est-ce pas?
Ocean horrorshow, droog. If you like Gogol Bordello, you should like this.
8. Left Lane Cruiser. Pork 'n beans. Almost makes me want to live in Ft. Wayne, Indiana
(sister city of Slough, UK?). Slide guitar and drums and enough gravel to fill in the Grand Canyon. Nice work.
I think I will fly to Ft. Wayne some weekend, just for a night of grit.
9. Stiff Little Fingers. Roots, radicals, rockers, reggae. You lose
10. KT Tunstall. Black horse & the cherry tree. Went to my high school. Precede or
follow by Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine or Ministry, to balance the yin and the yang?
11. The Tiger Lillies. Roll up. Tom Waits' "Jockey Full of Bourbon" cross-fostered in Slough.
"Well it's grim up North, but it's grimmer than that in Slough."
12. Billy Ze Kick. Mangez-moi! You were fine up to this point ... (influenced by Amadou & Mariam?)
13. Los Mirlos. Muchachita del Oriente. Cumbia surfs the Amazon; hybrid with superior fitness.
("Para Elisa" almost made it instead -- Beethoven goes Chicha in deepest Peru). Check out "The Roots of Chicha."
Okay, it's Rancid's "And Out Came the Wolves"