Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

It's been some time since I posted a "Track This," so I figured that discussing one of my favorite rockabilly songs by an underappreciated great, Gene Vincent, who does not get as much coverage as he should, would be an excellent return to form. Most of his career, he attempted to recapture his former rock and roll glory, and never completely turned country like his contemporaries Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. Elsewhere on this blog, I discuss his self-titled Kama Sutra album, which should also receive more accolades. In a perfect world, Gene Vincent's "Race With The Devil" would have been a bigger hit, but it never managed to capture the public attention like his first hit, "Be-Bop-A-Lula." I first heard The Stray Cats cover "Race With The Devil" on their underrated fourth studio album, 1986's Rock Therapy , and needed to track the original down as soon as I could. The countrified rhythms and frantic pace of the song leave the li...

From the opening notes of Propagandhi's anthem of resilience, "At Peace," the title track on their eighth album, listeners will realize that the band has learned how to reflect and grow, despite the anger they continue to feel from years of governmental malfeasance. The band's flirtations with metal are becoming more hardened with each release, and this track is heavy. metaphorically and musically. The feeling of doom is underscored by menacing metallic guitar arpeggios before Chris Hannah's weary, world worn vocals break the heaviness. The verses and choruses reach a riffy consensus as he hits a breathy, hypnotic, drawn-out mantra, "I am at peace," The band, including bassist Todd Kowalski, guitarist Sulynn Hago, and drummer, Jord Samolesky find their groove in a sludgy, trudging heaviness that martially moves along with the lyrics.  Hannah sings a plea that resonates heavily with many of us who have been trying to understand how we have gotten to this ...

Joan Baez's interpretation of "Don't Think Twice, It''s All Right" is my favorite because her vocals add soulful clarity to Bob Dylan's thorny narrative. Track This  is a recurring feature of Snobbin' that turns the music appreciation dial up and rips it off of your stereo. It introduces a new track, allows readers to rediscover an underappreciated one, and serves as a forum to discuss a song that falls into the ear candy category and should be listened to unabashedly for years to come.

Jets to Brazil always makes me think of fall, changing seasons, and remembrance. I started listening to them at a pivotal moment when I was figuring out my identity and becoming an adult. I had long been a fan of Jawbreaker, and when Black Schwarzenbach started JTB, I went to one of their first national tours in 1998 for Orange Rhyming Dictionary in Milwaukee. They played with Fugazi, Compound Red, and the band I saw play most Milwaukee shows at that time, Promise Ring. It was an amazing show for the most part, and I met Blake before the show. For many Jawbreaker fans, Jets to Brazil took some getting used to, mainly because they toned down the former band's punk tendencies for more indie rock and pop influences. While 1995's  Dear You , Jawbreaker's final record, was moving in this direction, JTB added keyboards and sometimes resembled 1980s bands like The Psychedelic Furs or 1990s indie bands like Wilco more than the punk stylings of many of the Jawbreaker releases, Howev...

Starting with Steve Shelley's basic drum fills before the brightly ringing guitars begin,  matching the drum beats, "Schizophrenia" from Sonic Youth's 1987 album Sister . builds in an orderly fashion that feels loose over Thurston Moore's vocals, slightly recalling the track "Bull in the Heather" from 1994's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star.  Chiming guitars answer the drums and bass throughout the song's nearly five-minute running time. Sonic Youth became the masters of this droning guitar dialectic with their different guitar tunings (in this case, F#F#GGAA for Thurston and DDDAA for Lee Renaldo) that they used to build a style and sound that was nearly unique in the early 1980s but meshed well with similar guitar interplay by contemporary indie bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Built to Spill.  After the first vocal part, the song becomes more schizophrenic with squealing, harmonic guitar interplay and minimal cymbals. This continues through ...

Jonathan Goes Country is undoubtedly my favorite Jonathan Richman record as I return to it much more than the others, despite such classics as I, Jonathan and Back in Your Life,  having many amazing tracks. Of course, The Modern Lovers records are also filled with incendiary classics. Something about Jonathan Goes Country resonates more with me than most on a song-by-song album level. Almost all the tracks have a place in showing that Richman can make country records with the best of them. The album's composition adds to its cohesion: five covers that honor the country canon while adding Richman's inimitable spin and seven originals that fit right in. He reworks three ("The Neighbors," "You're the One for Me," and "Corner Store") from his earlier albums, although you would never know he didn't write them for the album.  The record has few lows and many highs, cohesively fitting Richman's sound and style into the country idiom while reta...

 X songs are always up to the challenge of combining various genres in surprising ways. Ostensibly a pop song, "Burning House of Love" channels much of what makes X great at creating songs in different genres that still sound like no one but X. Another love/breakup song that is building on the difficulties of Exene and John Doe's relationship with a propulsive hook and great guitar work from Billy Zoom. The band is road tested, and Doe's vocals transport the listener to the scene, while Exene's backups almost bring a gospel feel to the track. Gospel, rock and roll, and punk combine for the usual stew of excellence with meaningful lyrics.  Track This  is a recurring feature of Snobbin' that turns the music appreciation dial up and rips it off your stereo. It introduces a new track, allows readers to rediscover an underappreciated track, or just serves as a forum to discuss a track that falls into the ear candy category and should be listened to unabashedly for ...

While listening to Green Day's recent BBC Sessions  recordings, I rediscovered several of Warning's best tracks, including the profound "Church on Sunday," a song that feels like a panacea after Insomnia and much of Nimrod . Many people focus on the negativity and anger of Green Day's music, but even in the most negative songs, Billie Joe's lyrics engage through humor and hopefulness. At first, musically, the song feels like just another three-chord Green Day anthem of defeat and broken relationships. The version on the BBC Sessions includes a plaintive saxophone line that underscores, yet rebuts the challenge in Billie Joe's voice and breaks into full euphoric swing during later choruses. The call-and-response aptly resembles the tug and pull of aging relationships.   "Church on Sunday" maintains its analysis of enduring relationships that grow despite stress and change. Compromise is key to success in most life connections, and Billie Joe apt...

This theme is a dream was my first thought when I started writing about the Phenomena theme because Goblin's style (Simonetti is the keyboardist and one of the primary composers) has become intricately connected to Dario Argento's mise-en-scene. This connection is especially concrete in  Phenomena stemming   from the film's narrative arc to how Argento utilizes music. In this case, the film does not use the complete Goblin score but instead opts for distracting metal songs by Iron Maiden and Motorhead, which I hated the first few times I watched it. They seem out of place, but on subsequent watchings, I started realizing that they add to the film's disorienting effect. In fact, there can never be enough Goblin/Claudio Simonetti tracks because they bolster the narrative so effectively.  Simonetti's theme for Dario Argento's Phenomena includes everything great about Goblin's music. It starts with repeating keyboard patterns that sound like they could also fit ...

This lesser-known Wilson Pickett song is a eulogy to lost friends and fellow entertainers that influenced him. The 1970 song is the b-side to a fun, yet lightweight cover of the Archies's "Sugar, Sugar. "Cole, Cooke, & Redding" has a slower southern soul vibe than many of his big hits and is fairly reminiscent of Redding's sound. The thoughtful lyrics and music riff on Dion's "Abraham, Martin, and John,"a tribute to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy that Dion recorded in 1968 in a more upbeat manner. Dick Holler wrote the original song in reaction to the deaths of King and Robert Kennedy and is given song-writing credit for this one.  Pickett transforms the song in his inimitable style to remember these lost musical greats, referencing their lyrics and songs. In remembrance, he mentions the last thing they told him in song; for example, Sam Cooke tells him "that a change was gonna come," then...

Kathleen Edwards's new album Total Freedom (Dualtone) is her first album in eight years, but she has not missed a beat. Her songwriting is still warm, evocative, and thoughtful. Wry observations about relationships, character studies, and songs about death and aging set a familiar tone for an album that is realistic yet positive despite the darker subject matter. Not as complex as Voyageur , my favorite record of 2012, it is still a strong contender for my best record list of 2020.  The first single "Options Open" is one of her best both lyrically and musically and capturing doubts similar to those that led her to stop making music and open up her coffee shop, Quitters. The song is both optimistic and realistic and could be as much about career changes as relationships. She sings, "There were some things behind me / An open door I did not close when I was lonely / But I swore I wouldn't go near you with a ten-foot pole / It's not my fault that I wasn't...

Before Mark Oliver Everett started the Eels, he released two albums under his moniker E on Polydor records: 1992's  A Man Called E and 1993's  Broken Toy Shop . Both are long out of print, and this is a shame because they both reach the level of excellence of his later work in the Eels.  Both albums are chock full of E's wry sense of humor and penchant for self-deprecation. They also look ahead to his love of peculiar instrumentation and experimentation with programming. One quick takeaway is that E loves glockenspiel, melodica, and accordion. He plays many of the instruments on these records himself, building an atmosphere of longing and regret amidst a foundation of catchy melodies. However, the records do feel more traditional and warmer than most of the Eels catalog.  A Man Called E quickly prepares the listener for E's worldview with a pair of songs that privilege his outsider status ("Hello Cruel World," "Fitting in with the Misfits") while ack...

"If you're not mad at the world, you don't have what it takes. The world lacks for warriors. You have to prepare yourself accordingly." - Sun Ra Sun Ra's 1982 song "Nuclear War" is an epic seven-minute meditation on the state of violence in our world. I first heard Yo La Tengo's first version on WFMU's Beware of the Blog . It was an interesting choice for the New Jersey trio, even with their penchant for strange covers, in a particularly languid arrangement, but Sun Ra's original blew me away once I tracked it down and let it simmer for a while. Sun Ra's bold anti-nuclear war sentiment coupled with swearing and funkiness that would do Funkadelic justice make this one of the strangest pleas for peace. The track adds to the Sun Ra legend because apparently he thought it could be a successful single. In an Allmusic review of the Nuclear War album, Al Campbell writes that Sun Ra was" so sure the funky dance track was a hit, he immed...

When I first heard SNFU's "Reality is a Ride on the Bus" (1993) on Epitaph Record's first Punk-O-Rama compilation, it shook me a little bit. Mr. Chi-Pig chronicles a nightmarish scenario on a city bus that could be masquerading as social conscience or punk-rock bravado. While dealing with a similar situation to Bad Religion's "Struck A Nerve" from the same year, which chronicles poor people on a bus and questions why their lives are so terrible, SNFU provides zero solutions. Instead, the narrator imagines the disfigured people that await him with little consideration for them. Does he feel sorry for those he will meet? No, he just hides behind a book. Part Ramones-Part D.O.A., this song blusters about social anxieties.  "My face is buried inside a book Everybody's wearing a haggard look The sirens scream, a baby cries Every day on this bus I ride." "Reality is a Ride on the Bus" - SNFU (1993) Track This  is a recurri...

Sandinista! often gets short shrift in discussions of The Clash's output. Critics and fans discuss it in dismissive tones, often viewing it as a failed experiment that should have been released as a single LP, not a triple. To be fair, there are quite a few people that view it as an underrated masterpiece that shows how effective the band was at disparate musical styles and gives more credence to the growth of their songwriting. The conventional approach in the punk rock community these days is to entirely dismiss the Clash and treat them as a punchline, except for their first record, which will always remain the classic for punk fans because it includes straightforward angry, punk numbers. However, these are not often punk enough.  London Calling remains their acclaimed classic rock masterpiece, while Combat Rock is their breakthrough. Fortuitously, the only radio track off London Calling is continuously played on classic rock radio alongside Combat Rock's "Rock th...

Every time I listen to the Mr. T Experience, or MTX for short, I marvel at how Dr. Frank takes a clever turn of phrase and uses it to ever greater effect in each song. For a band that writes "Songs About Girls" with tongues planted firmly in their collective cheeks, the group has gone through many permutations, but Frank has been the one constant in their long career. The band has written many great songs in different periods, whether one is a fan of the more punk and rock 'n' roll period with Jon Von turning in the occasional raucous, garagey anthem like "Kill The Ramones" or "I'm In Love With Paula Pierce" or the power pop records in the early 90s with tracks such as "Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend. Of course, the Joel Reader era produced pop-punk classics like Love is Dead , which morphed into a brief indie rock period before the band's dissolution. The other day I was listening to 1989's Making Things With Light , an album t...

While digging through my record collection, I found this gem, "Men Without Shame" b/w "Time is on Our Hands" -- a rock and roll record featuring Jim Phantom and Lee Rocker of the Stray Cats. Dig those threads. This 45 is the first single from their self-titled first album recorded on hiatus from their more famous band. With the addition of co-founding guitarist, Earl Slick, the band created hard rocking music that exchanged the rockabilly of their former project for an 80s rock approach that includes everything from ballads to mainstream rockers. While Brian Setzer was refashioning himself as a heartland rock-inspired solo artist, Phantom and Slick opted for rocking out. "Men Without Shame" is a 6 1/2 minute song that never outwears its welcome with Slick's impressive guitar chops front and center. The solo alone separates the song from the group's former projects. Slick's session work holds him in good stead as drummer Phantom and ba...

 This is the second part of a summer series of Track This entries that will focus on lesser-known power pop songs. Oklahoma's The Dwight Twilley Band's debut album Sincerely is an undersung power-pop classic that borrows heavily from the Beatles early 70s modus operandi with sweet melodies and understated guitar. The deceptively simple title track follows that pattern as Twilley harmonizes over lead guitar that would not feel out of place on The White Album , although there is a slight southern feeling in its bittersweet revelations, but it never kicks into full gear. He sings "sincerely, I got what you need" as the guitar meanders in and out. The lyrics are metaphysical and lovelorn with Twilley's voice wavering about the death of love and how a "starcold soldier feels." The simple song repeats a basic pattern of understated instrumentation that leads to a call and response between Twilley's vocals and the meandering guitar. Nothing is resolved ...

This is the first part of a summer series of Track This entries that will focus on lesser-known power pop songs. I first discovered Ultimate Fakebook in the cheap bin at one of my favorite record stores, Radio Kaos, and I am not exactly sure why I picked it up. Looking at the album cover for their major label debut, the repackaged This Will Be Laughing Week , now, I do not see how it attracted me. I'm assuming that I had heard the name in reference to shows they played with The Get Up Kids or other Kansas area emo bands that I was heavily into at the time. However, when I played the CD, I realized that Ultimate Fakebook was not an emo band but a power pop band that loved hooks. When I played them for friends, I always compared them favorably to Weezer's early albums. Recently, I listened to an interview with them on the 90s music podcast, Dig Me Out , and they explained that now they tell people they sounded like Weezer. Apparently, at the time they were more interested i...

The Greenberry Woods is a power pop band that I almost missed because I disliked them when I heard them on a Huh compilation in the 90s. Years later, I returned to them once I realized how much I loved their album Big Money Item . The band writes catchy songs and follows familiar formulas, yet their songs have surprising staying power. "I Knew You Would" is a lost gem, capturing what they do best. Raspberries-esque guitar passages and sweet, harmony vocals capture a timeless era in pop music. Check it out. https://play.spotify.com/track/7vJtcm8Y7PEhDhw0WaqcHT?play=true&utm_source=open&utm_medium=signup-test&utm_campaign=link