I was doing an interview a few weeks back with this great, new-ish band from Melbourne called Dick Diver (I know—terrible name, but decent story behind it). During the interview, I referenced the 60’s Brit Beat band The Action as a point of comparison in sound.

The Action was one of those bands that relatively no one knew about until they were more recently “re-discovered” (akin to the phenomenon of the modern popularity of the proto-punk Detroit trio Death, whom I surprised haven’t yet graced these pages).

I remember my friend, Jacob, sharing their CD with me in 2003 and 100% believing that it was way too good to be true. I was completely convinced this was some sort of Blair-Witch-esque publicity stunt that some current indie pop outfit was pulling and, any second, all this hubbub about some amazing, undiscovered London Beat band was going to collapse and these young up-and-comers would start touring. The sound was just too of-the-time…in a retro-Brit-soul kind of way.

And I was totally wrong. The Action were, as The Guardian put it in 2012, “of all the groups to emerge during the 1960s British beat explosion…most deserving of the epithet ‘unsung’.” Which still boggles the mind listening to their music, that—despite their “legion of diehard followers” and “the envy and plaudits of their peers”—they never hit their stride in the mainstream.

As bitter a pill as that may have been for them to swallow so long ago, today at least we have their post-humous collection of recordings, Rolled Gold—a record that jumps from meticulously structured pop gems to beautifully messy, raw singles, all of which call to the soul of any lover of Brit Pop. My favorite track, “Something to Say”, is a song that would seem at home on both an aging audiophile’s turntable and in the midst of a quirky Wes Anderson film.

Beauty can be found in the most unexpected places. In the case of Jerry Jeff Walker, it was a New Orleans jail cell where he met and befriended an alcoholic tap dancer called “Mr. Bojangles.” Walker’s encounter spawned the 1968 creation of a catchy, somber tune of the same name that was later recorded by legends like Bob Dylan, Nina Simone and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (NGDB), who are credited with making the song famous.

Apparently, NGDB guitarist/vocalist Jeff Hanna first heard Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles” on the radio driving home from rehearsal and was so moved by the song that his eyes filled with tears. He ended up recording a version with NGDB and chose to include both accordion and mandolin for an added layer of emotion.

If you thought the song paid homage to popular tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson of the early 1900s, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I used to think that too. And if you’ve never heard the song, give it a good listen. You may interpret it as a touching story of a man whose battle with alcoholism gets in the way of his tap dancing, which brings him joy and hope for a better tomorrow. Or just as a cool song about a lush and his dead dog. But either way, it’s a good one.

I keep an ongoing iTunes Smart Playlist called “Singles” where I stash my favorite songs. Basically, if I am okay with hearing a song over and over again, it goes here. If I rate a track with 4 stars, iTunes automatically adds it to the playlist (five stars are reserved for another list, but we’ll leave that discussion for some other time).

I’m able to add songs while listening remotely with a single touch (just rate with 4 stars) and the playlist is synced to my phone so I know my favorite songs are always available to me no matter where I am. It’s a simple but effective system.

As is the case with many people who love a wide variety of musical genres, I tend to listen to my music on shuffle and this is the playlist I turn to more often than not.

I’ve been maintaining the list long enough now that it has grown to over 4,500 songs and so when I come across a song I like, I just assume that it’s been added to the list over the years. I’m always pleasantly surprised when I realize an old favorite isn’t in the playlist because that means I haven’t been listening to it much and I get to enjoy it all over again.

When “I Ran” by A Flock of Seagulls came up in conversation recently, I felt certain I must have it on my phone. Sadly, I did not, but I’ve since listened to the synthpop classic at least a dozen times in the last week.

What a great song. Get up, turn up the volume, and go vacuum or do your laundry or something.

4 Stars!

Also, this video, which evidently holds the record for the most number of video plays on MTV (you know, back when they actually played videos):

You know how there are some songs that take some time to sink in? You’re not all that convinced at first but perhaps you give them a chance based on encouragement from a friend or critic, and eventually they grow on you and you become a fan.

And then maybe there are a handful of songs that you HATE when you first hear them. And you still hate them the tenth time around. But then maybe the 20th time something clicks and all of a sudden it’s the best song you’ve ever heard? No?! Well that’s what happened to me with “X-French T-Shirt” by Shudder To Think.

I couldn’t stand the song until one day my friend made me a mixtape and slipped it in surreptitiously. There I was mindlessly driving around town when suddenly I found myself singing along to… what?! Yep, “X-French T-shirt” had somehow burrowed into my brain and didn’t let go for years, becoming a mainstay in mixtapes of my own.

Wikipedia describes Pony Express Record as “mixing musical styles as diverse as jazz, art-rock, glam, post-punk, noise rock and folk” but I’m pretty sure all these styles are represented on this one track alone.

You have the glammy intro, a sort-of art-rock break, a straight up rock middle, then a whispered fall into ominous territory, and all that’s just in the first minute and a half.

It’s pretty much 5-6 songs crammed into four minutes. It’s okay if you don’t like it at first, just give it a few dozen listens, it’ll happen. You’ll see.

File Under: Facts That Make Me Feel Very, Very Old:

Midway through last month, longtime indie singer-songwriter Matt Pond wrapped up a nation-wide tour marking the ten year anniversary of his very excellent album, Several Arrows Later.

Ten years.

That stings.

I’d listened to and really liked previous MPPA records, but Arrows was arguably Pond and company’s most solid start-to-finish piece of work to date and one that was chock-a-block full of indie pop gems (arguably, I’d say, set next to the previous full-length, Emblems).

Not only that, Several Arrows Later—released in 2005, not quite two years after I first moved to Brooklyn—fit in lockstep with some very formative years for me personally in New York City. To this day, many of the songs immediately conjure up memories of early aughts Park Slope and Lower East Side and a much younger, faaaaar less wise me.

Ah, youth. Insert wistful truism here.

I interviewed Pond at roughly the halfway point between what feels like ages ago and now, in 2010, for our studio journal and can count a few mutual friends between us and he’s always seemed like a genuinely nice, very creative dude.

We were also lucky enough to catch him when his Several Arrows Later tour came through Los Angeles and the band played the album, start-to-finish, at the legendary Troubadour, an always awesome venue at which to see bands. The show was far from disappointing.

Since I don’t want to throw the few rules we have to the wind, I can’t, in good faith, technically post a song from Arrows since it was released in October of 2005 and isn’t quite a solid ten years old, so, instead, I’ll cull from the aforementioned previous album, the equally awesome, maybe even better, Emblems.

It’s a tough call between album opener “KC” and the upbeat, catchy “Butcher” to name a favorite, so, instead, I’ll put forth the melancholia of “New Hampshire”, a sweetly sad little number that might border on overly dramatic or cheesy if you didn’t know the source bette. There’s something so tender and sincere about the lines and the way they’re sung—”I will hit my brother and hold my mother”. Love it to this day.

I encourage any unfamiliar reader to explore Pond’s full catalog, from his early first LP in 1998 to his coming June release, The State of Gold (the two singles I’ve heard sound great so far, especially the album opener).

Have you jumped out of a plane? I have.

It was during that period immediately after graduating college when I was meandering in stasis. Half my roommates had hopped on motorcycles and ridden off in an Easy Rider and Kerouac fueled trip across country (that would in fact end one state over). The others had moved on rather quickly to serious engagements such as grad school and jobs and teaching positions abroad.

I had stayed been left behind, unsure of my next step.

One lazy afternoon with absolutely nothing to do, my friend Rich and I looked sleepily upon each other with boredom inspired futility, as that same damn Doors CD played on repeat in the background.

How to break this monotony? So quiet on that beautiful sunny day, you could hear the birds, a distant lawn mower, the wall clock… until finally in a moment of inspiration one of us blurted, “Let’s go skydiving.”

I’m not sure either of us even acknowledged the suggestion, we just immediately started heading over to my car in a rush of adrenaline.

I wish I had the video tape still of the giddy looks on our faces as we fell to the ground at 9.8m/s². Having not planned this adventure, we hadn’t anticipated the option to have our jump recorded, let alone the ability to choose our own background music. So I handed them Acme by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as it was the most convenient CD within reach in my car.

It served as the perfect soundtrack. The first song, Calvin, pumped things up behind shots of us getting suited and heading into the plane, while the second track, Magical Colors, kicked in exactly at the moment we jumped and accelerated to earth, our fate resting in the mass of string and nylon attached to our backs.

I might not have that tape, but no matter, these songs still take me back to that carefree moment of youth when you can be bored one minute and skydiving the next.

Regardless of what the genre is called at any given moment, electronic music has always maintained a tenuous relationship with the zeitgeist. It’s either the next big thing or the uncool domain of the raver kids in the desert, but never quite a part of the mainstream. Call it Electronica, or Techno, or House, or IDM, or EDM as is the parlance of our times, the general idea remains the same in that vocals are secondary, the beat takes center stage, and DJs are the rockstars (apologies to the connoisseurs amongst the readership who will rightly scoff at such a generalization).

Growing up on an eclectic, but admittedly guitar-centric, mix of musical styles, I was loathe to accept electronic music in any form (the exception being Depeche Mode who snuck it in by wrapping the whole thing in palatable verse-chorus-verse song structure).

So it was a bit of a revelation and a backtrack when I first heard “Little Fluffy Clouds” by The Orb. I’m not sure why I responded to the song immediately. Perhaps because of the spoken-word overlay of Rickie Lee Jones recalling vivid memories of her childhood, or the stop-start stutter step of the “Little Fluffy Clouds” refrain, the song just clicked and worked for me. It helps of course that it’s just such a great track, both ethereal and approachable.

Along with Deee-Lite, The Orb helped me abandon my unfair stereotype and opened up a new world of discovery… flings and lifelong relationships with the likes of Aphex Twin, Orbital, and Massive Attack would follow soon thereafter.

And on days like this, as I stare out my window onto a perfect spring day full of fluffy little clouds, my mind invariably wanders to this celestial track.

Fluffy clouds over NYC today:

P.S., You get a brownie point if you caught the Big Lebowski reference above.

Brett Morgan‘s journal-meets-documentary on Nirvana and its frontman, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, has got the band on many people’s minds of late—mine included—so it seems the perfect time to feature them here on the pages of Forgotten Favorite.

Like most guys who grew up in America when I did, Nirvana changed my life.

It’s generally hard not cringe when writing something like that out, but the massive ripples that band created with their emersion and our reception of them triggered so many inevitably seminal sea-changes in our popular culture. Especially for those of us already existing outside of the norm.

Growing up, in high school, my place amongst the artsy, weird, almost-punk-but-too-goofy, terrible-band-forming crowd was well-established. And, like most in that crowd, I paid for it every time I was forced to leave the safe confines of my social circle. Mild taunting, a great lack of party invites, and gentle to not-so-gentle remindings of my place on the scale of popularity were the norm when dealing with…eh…the norms.

Then, suddenly, after returning from summer vacation for my senior year of high school, something significantly shifted in the gestalt of what was and wasn’t cool. Granted, at that point (fall of 1993), Nirvana’s breakthrough album, Nevermind, had a good two years under its belt, but it took that long for much of cultural shift to bleed from the strict world of music into popular culture as a whole. Also, I went to high school in southern Virginia, a known fortress cultural cautiousness/closed-mindedness, so maybe it just took a little longer to sink in there.

Once it did though, all of the things I used to do that were worthy of ridicule or at least looking-down-upon by the cool kids was suddenly cool. Jocks and cheerleaders asking me what I thought of the new Pearl Jam record and where the warehouse was that my band was playing at and how do I get my hair that color and does it wash out? Suddenly my friends and I were witty and smart and artistic and that was inexplicably cool.

To this day, I kinda feel like a phony for having enjoyed that relative popularity as a send-off from my high school years, but I did enjoy it, nonetheless.

I most definitely heard Nirvana for the first time on Dave Kendall’s 120 Minutes, though I can’t remember if I was up late watching or it was post-school Monday VHS viewing. I do know that, as with most everyone else, the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was my first exposure to the band. There was just something so bare and visceral about both the song and it’s visual interpretation…and something about seeing kids together in an uproar like that. It’s easy to think of something so powerful causing this instinctive reactive switch to flip within so many of our adolescent brains. Whether it was the band itself or just the times, looking for a mascot for change, Nirvana’s popularity signaled a change in our adolescent lives and in popular culture as a whole.

I love Nevermind, but one song not on that album that always endeared me to Nirvana was their cover of The Vaselines‘ “Molly’s Lips”, which I found on a somewhat rare Japanese import tour EP called Hormoaning. The song’s pulled from the band’s 1990 Peel Session, recorded for BBC’s Radio One. The Vaselines were a Scottish alternative band led by the duo of Eugene Kelly + Frances McKee that was largely unknown before Kurt Cobain started talking about them, calling Kelly and McKee his “favorite songwriters in the whole world”.

Listen to the upbeat track below; under that, check out a clip for Montage of Heck, which I’d highly recommend for most anyone as a nice look back into that time and—more importantly—a deeper, oddly intimate look at the life of Cobain.