10-16-17

1998

That 70s Show was good and launched the career of Topher Grace (among others), but we have a question — why is Grace not more famous? Why is he off the radar for all intents and purposes? He’s a guy who tops our list of mysterious disappearances among Hollywood actors. He was fantastic in Traffic and then shortly thereafter in the outstanding and underrated In Good Company. And then his career fell off a cliff. No leading roles in good movies. At one time he was called the next Tom Hanks and we totally bought that. Big mistake, Hollywood. Which is weird because no one in Hollywood ever does anything wrong. 

(While we’re on the subject of In Good Company, we must shout it out as another great soundtrack. Phenomenal David Byrne song (Glass, Concrete and Stone), a couple of Iron & Wine tracks, some other good stuff. The movie itself has a couple of Shins songs, a Damien Rice song, and a few others, though those songs didn’t make the soundtrack. The Weitz Brothers have done a bunch of great soundtracks, including About a Boy, which is entirely written and scored by Badly Drawn Boy, and is truly outstanding. And a great movie, too.). 

Great set today. Can’t promise we’ll do one of these every day going forward, but we’ll try.

Highlight: Daysleeper/REM. I see the day with a newsprint fray, my night is colored headache gray. God, that’s a great lyric and we love this song so much. It’s beautiful and sad and outstanding. Naturally we think Up was an underrated album. Not their most cohesive work, and an attempt at a stylistic change sans Bill Berry that they didn’t totally pull off, but some really great tracks nonetheless. We’d be remiss not to put Madison, Wisconsin’s own Paranoid/Garbage in as a contender. This is where we remind everyone that seven tracks of Nevermind were recorded by Nirvana in Madison at Butch Vig’s Smart Studios. Have we mentioned this before? Probably. Will we mention it again? Of course.

Lowlight: Fly Away/Lenny Kravitz. We are not Lenny Kravitz haters. We actually kinda liked his earlier stuff and owned Let Love Rule, Mama Said and Are You Gonna Go My Way, and we even saw him live a couple of times (and a friend chatted with him for a couple of minutes at Pipefitter, the stoner store on State Street in Madison, and said he was super cool and friendly). But man, this song is terrible, and it was alllllllll over the airwaves in 98, unfortunately for us. 

Other: We’re not saying Jimmy loves John Mellencamp. We’re not saying Jimmy is obsessed with Mellencamp. Just that he likes playing 90s Mellencamp. Which is funny because Mellencamp is not who we think of when we think of the late 90s. Or the mid 90s or early 90s for that matter. We actually kind of liked Your Life Is Now in a great-song-to-play-over-a-montage-of-winter-Olympic-athletes-achieving-great-things kind of way. Sadly, the ’98 Nagano Olympics took place in February, well before the song was released. And it probably was out of the consciousness by the time Salt Lake City came around in 2002. And yes, we feel strongly that it’s a winter Olympics song, not summer. Those NBC producers missed the boat on this one. We initially scoffed at this song’s inclusion, but came around to it fairly quickly, eliciting the comment from our Office FOB that “the anachronistic choice is occasionally the correct one.”

How many Finks? (out of five)

Four Finks

   

10-3-17

1994

We thought this might end up a 10 at 10 tribute to Tom Petty, but we realized that The Peak had plenty of time on the air after learning of Petty’s sad passing, and we understand the decision to go forward with the scheduled 10 at 10. That said, just a quick note here on Petty …

Recently, we floated an idea to our Local FOB that every year we choose an artist that we’ve never seen perform live and whom we may only have a few chances left to see, and go see that artist in concert. For me, the #1 performer on my list was Tom Petty. I never owned much of his music, but if a Petty song came on the air, the radio station didn’t get changed until the song was over. Great musician with incredible crossover appeal. That’s rare, and it will be missed. RIP.

On to 1994 …

Highlight: Supersonic/Oasis. Like many Oasis songs, Supersonic contains uninterpretable lyrics that probably only Oasis can get away with, because few other bands would even try to get away with such brazen nonsense (except maybe The Doors): I know a girl called Elsa, She’s into Alka-Seltzer, She sniffs it through a cane on a supersonic train. There’s nothing metaphorical about those lyrics. They just don’t make sense and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Other great tracks from today were About a Girl/Nirvana, Fell On Black Days/Soundgarden, and Backwater/Meat Puppets. Really, really good stuff, all.

Lowlight: All I Wanna Do/Sheryl Crow. The reason this is here is because there are better songs on Crow’s debut album. That alone wouldn’t necessarily make this one a lowlight, except that the last time Jimmy did 1994 he played this song, too. There were a lot of good songs and a bunch of totally reasonable singles to play off the album. All I Wanna Do was definitely ubiquitous in 1994, but so were a couple of those other singles, including Leaving Las Vegas, which was released in the summer of ’94. Other contender was Dance Naked/Mellencamp, not feeling the ’90s Mellencamp.

Robert Plant song: Page & Plant/Gallow’s Pole. Another triumphant Plant appearance. This is a great song, one of our favorite Led Zeppelin tracks, and it this is a really good version of it.

Other: Our Local FOB was upset at the lack of a movie trailer or clip from Shawshank Redemption. We got a Pulp Fiction clip, so we can’t complain too much. Plus, 1994 was a pretty loaded year for movies (and music), so hopefully we’ll hit up Shawshank next time.

How many Finks? (out of five)

God Bless 1994

Four and a half Finks

    

10-2-17

1976

We weren’t listening all that closely today, lots of distractions, so a very quick write-up.

Highlight: The Rubberband Man/The Spinners. Also, Livin Thing/ELO.

Lowlight: The Fever/Southside Johnny. Philly FOB: “Even Springsteen fans don’t listen to his songs.”

Other: What’s with the weird enunciation in Shower the People/James Taylor? “Shower THEE people.” It seems like it would be much smoother and more traditional to say “the” without the strange biblical, prayer-style “thee.” Still, good song.

How many Finks? (out of five)

Three Finks

  

9-29-17

1999

Let’s ditch this stupid “editorial we” voice for a moment, I have to delve into some personal music history. I love that the show is venturing late into the 90s, there’s plenty to look back on going all the way up to the new millennium and beyond. However, there were significant changes happening in the music landscape at that time that would shape the entire industry going forward. P2P file sharing changed everything, the biggest upheaval the music industry ever faced. It changed radio, it changed charts, and it certainly changed the way I approached music. It was building and building, and 1999 was probably the watershed year.

As far as I was concerned, and of course there are plenty of reasonable differing opinions on this, it was at this point that commercial radio got too hard to listen to. It wasn’t playing enough good, new music. It was shifting into what we’ve dubbed “blah rock,” a lot of music that sounded derivative and inoffensive and bland and didn’t do enough for us (it was also shifting into hip hop, some of which was great, though it’s not my first choice genre; and also boy bands and country and stuff like that).

My previous sources of new music — radio, word of mouth, and Rolling Stone (which only seemed to give 4.5/5-star reviews to artists who were in their 40s and older) — just weren’t cutting it in anymore. So over the next couple years, my Philly FOB and I began exploring other ways of discovering music. Not coincidentally, there were increasing options for that type of discovery. We began checking out music message boards for our favorite bands to see what people were listening to (for me, that meant getting recommendations from anonymous people on the boards of my favorite contemporary bands up to that point, including Radiohead, REM, U2, Jane’s Addiction, Oasis and a few others); always reliable movie soundtracks; and music geek friends and colleagues.

Also, and this is true, for a while I subscribed to both NME and Q Magazine from the UK. They cost a fortune to get shipped over and were mailed to me usually right around the time the next issue was coming out, but I felt those magazines were covering the bands and the types of music I liked better than Rolling Stone, and they hyped some great bands that I otherwise might not have gotten into. They also had a sense of humor and a goofy, British tabloid approach, full of ridiculous and awesome hyperbole. I’ll never forget the weekly NME feature called “You Cock” that pitted one Gallagher brother quote from that week against the other’s.

It was also around this time that Philly FOB and I discovered a public radio station on the west coast that had just begun streaming nationally. And that station, KEXP, which we still listen to regularly today, is probably more responsible than anything else for introducing us to new artists that became our essential bands. And it still does that.

We just didn’t like what was being pushed on us, we felt something was missing after a great early to mid 90s era of music. It seems like a tired cliche to say, but the industry seemed focused on mass appeal rather than quality. There was little edge, there was no risk anymore. And yet there was so much great stuff out there, so we had to find it through other means, and we did. I won’t deny that there was some annoying pretentiousness involved. In thinking that I had become more open-minded to music, in some ways I became close-minded. But we all go through phases.

So I’ll acknowledge that I did not like this 10 at 10, at all. Truly felt that it was (mostly) a bunch of bad or plain songs that forced their way onto the radio in the late 90s. Jimmy plays what was on the charts, and these songs were on the charts, so he played them. We don’t fault him for that. In fact, based on the Alternative charts for September of 1999, it looks like Jimmy pulled a lot of songs from there, and that’s great. The problem is that clearly “Alternative” has a very loose definition. Limp Bizkit, Smashmouth, Sugar Ray, Kid Rock — those are NOT alternative acts, yet they all appear on the alternative chart. It’s a weird list.

So these were the kinds of songs that pushed us away, and it was the best thing that could’ve happened. Because we went on a music rampage, gathered lots of new stuff, saw tons of shows at great venues back in our NYC days, and felt a musical identity. It was awesome. Creed? Not awesome.

For the record, The Peak is very unusual, it plays an amazing spectrum of music, great older songs, deeper cuts and new stuff, and has great shows and features, the 10 at 10 being one of them. I’ve said this many times, but it’s about as good as a commercial radio station can be these days and pretty much the only commercial radio I ever listen to (along with maybe a couple of satellite stations).

So this is a long way of saying that music really changed in the late 90s, and even though some good 10 at 10s can be put together, it won’t be easy. There was plenty of great stuff, but a lot of the best stuff wasn’t on the charts and wasn’t on commercial radio.

Highlight: Can’t Change Me/Chris Cornell. Nice song off Cornell’s decent first solo effort. He’s an underrated songwriter. Other contenders included Scar Tissue/RHCP, just because it was all over the place in 1999 and it’s a pretty good song, Rodeo Clowns/G Love-Jack Johnson, and we’ll even put Swingin’/Tom Petty here. On pretty much any other day, none of these songs would get consideration as highlights. But the true stars of the show today are the lowlights, so let’s get this overwith.

Lowlights: American Woman/Lenny Kravitz. This is a major upset because it’s almost impossible to conceive of a song being worse than Higher/Creed, but this one did the impossible. I loathe that Lenny Kravitz cover. It was everywhere in 1999, you couldn’t escape it, and it is so awful. It’s whiny, there’s no melody, it drones, it covers a song that never needed to be covered, and it was in the terrible Austin Powers sequel. There is nothing redeeming about that song. I literally had to mute the stream when it came on. The only saving grace is that our Philly FOB started listing bands that came out with albums in 1999 and I said to him, we’re going to hear that horrific Kravitz cover, aren’t we. So I was somewhat prepared. But never TRULY prepared. It’s hard to quantify exactly how much the Creed and Kravitz songs brought down today’s rating. But it was a lot.

Other: Freaks and Geeks was a great show.

How many Finks? (out of five)

One Fink (but at least it’s a new Fink!)

9-28-17

1975

Our Office FOB, who, as we’ve pointed out before is a somewhat younger fella, described today’s 10 at 10 as a “perfect soundtrack to a dad picnic.” We thought that was a pretty good line and even though we don’t completely agree we see where he’s coming from.

Highlight: Wish You Were Here/Pink Floyd. We know that in the past, Jimmy has mentioned that he’s not always aware what version of a song The Peak is playing. We assume that was the case today when we heard a violin-infused version of WYWH. It was a little odd, but we definitely enjoyed it because it was a bit of a twist on a song we’ve hear many, many times, and it’s nice when things are interesting like that. If not for the violin, it might have lost out to Franklin’s Tower/Dead, which is one of a few Dead songs that we legitimately love.

Lowlight: Feel Like Making Love/Bad Company. Our Office FOB chimes in again: “it’s like a frat bro’s idea of a classic song.” Yep, we will fully agree this time.

Other: We asked our Philly FOB, a guy who knows a bit about the subject, to explain this line in Thunder Road/Springsteen: “And my car’s out back if you’re ready to take that long walk.” His response: “none of his lines make sense.” Well, some of them make sense, but that one really doesn’t make sense. How far out back is that car? And if it’s that far, then you can’t describe it as “out back,” which implies a certain closeness. In fact, that phrase is basically just a shortened version of “right out back.” So, either he’s misrepresenting how close to the building the car is, or he’s telling his partner, perhaps even the one who’s no beauty but merely “all right,” that he’s going to get in the car and she’s going to have to walk, in which case the guy is just a jerk. If she was a true beauty, would he give her a ride? She needs to ditch him and find someone who appreciates her for her beauty both inside and out. Let’s just end it here, this Thunder Road guy is pure jackass. 

(for the record, we checked none of the other lyrics for context)

How many Finks? (out of five)

Three Finks

  

9-27-17

1989

Remember when Vinnie from Doogie Howser, MD grew up to be a guy on the Sopranos? That seemed like his destiny. Not sure he got into any Scorsese movies, though. Disappointing. He did, however, run the Village folk music bar in Inside Llewyn Davis, though. So that’s a plus. But Doogie’s show was all about Wanda, anyway.

Highlight: Personal Jesus/Depeche Mode. We’ll just go with the one right out of the gate this morning. We never caught Depeche Mode on tour, and someone said recently that the current tour is pretty great. Bummed we missed it. We liked how Jimmy explained that the song was about being a Jesus for someone. Who knew. It’s a little known fact that the original name for the song was Jesus, All Personal-like. A couple of other great tunes from today that just barely missed the cut: Closer to Fine/Indigo Girls (a little cliche for the Indigoes, but we’ll allow it, it’s still always great to hear); I Want That Man/Deborah Harry (Deborah just doesn’t have the same ring to it); and Sowing the Seeds of Love/Tears for Fears (the Onceler should’ve co-opted this song as “Sewing the Thneeds of Love” as his corporate anthem, don’t you think?).

(Sorry about that Thneed thing, we have no excuse)

Lowlight: Figure of Eight/Paul McCartney. Hate to put Sir Paul here, but this song did very little for us. We didn’t love Steel Wheels, but we can’t put Mixed Emotions/Stones here because that album, that song and that tour were so huge. Jimmy alluded to the six nights at Shea Stadium. Lots of our friends went to see them (if we’re not mistaken, Living Colour opened up), but our parents never took us to concerts so we didn’t get to go. Sad face.

Other: Pardon me, are you Joe Cock-er, sir? The Aaron Burr of music strikes again. When the Night Comes/Joe Cocker is not a bad song. And let’s be clear that we like a number of Cocker’s songs. But we’re sticking to our guns on this one because this is another song that Cocker did not write. There are obviously many great artists who did not write their own stuff. But in our view, Cocker just isn’t quite good enough to get away with not writing any of his damn songs. 

(don’t worry, we’re aware only like one semi-loyal reader is into these Hamilton references)

How many Finks? (out of five)

Three Finks

  

9-26-17

1965

Our apologies, we were swamped today, did not listen, and did not record the setlist. Based on what we’ve heard from our FOBs, it was a pretty good mid-60s one. Maybe we’ll check it out on Sunday.

9-25-17

1983

For the record, all the people in The Big Chill had all those problems because they went to Michigan. Those adult problems don’t happen to people who don’t go to Michigan. That’s a fact. Bliss and happiness for those who don’t go to Michigan. Plan accordingly for your children.

Highlight: If Anyone Falls/Stevie Nicks. It wasn’t Stand Back (as Jimmy said in the wrap-up), but this is a great song. The fact that it wasn’t Stand Back made it even better. Overall, there were tons of contenders today, it was a really good day. So we’ll do the thing where we rank the contending songs because they were so good:

2. Major Tom/Peter Schilling
3. King of Pain/The Police
4. China Girl/Bowie
5. Suddenly Last Summer/The Motels
6. Sixty Eight Guns/The Alarm
7. One Thing Leads to Another/The Fixx

Lowlight: Karma Chameleon/Culture Club and Sexy + 17/Stray Cats. Let’s be perfectly clear — these songs are very, very 1983. In fact, we’re not sure there’s a more 1983 song than Karma Chameleon, except for maybe something by Men at Work. Both songs fit perfectly into today’s show. We just don’t exactly love either one. In fact, way back early on in elementary school, we did a scathing review of Karma Chameleon and Culture Club for the school’s “tv station.” We’re not sure Boy George ever recovered.

Robert Plant song: Big Log. Okay, this one was legit. Totally legit. We remember this song being all over the airwaves. It was everywhere, and Jimmy confirmed that by saying it was Plant’s first top 40 hit. The song itself is actually pretty good, and it belongs on this list. Full stop.

How many Finks? (out of five)

Four and a half Finks

    

 

9-22-17

1987

We never watched thirtysomething back in the day, but Mrs. HMF was a big fan. Shortly after we had our first child, she wanted to go back and revisit it to see if it held up. We were game for that, so we indulged. We thought, “hey, we’re a thirtysomething, it might be funny and enjoyable to see how it’s depicted on screen.” It was NOT funny. It was NOT enjoyable. It was so true to life that it was painful to watch. We decided that we did not care to see our actual lives depicted on television. We did not care for it, at all. So that was the end of the thirtysomething experiment. Which, we think probably means that the show was good, right? Maybe we’ll try it again someday when we’re fiftysomethings.

Highlight: Learning to Fly/Pink Floyd. We are huge fans of Momentary Lapse of Reason, and don’t really understand people who don’t like it. So what if there’s no Roger Waters? That was a good thing at that point — the world did not need another Final Cut. And the way this particular track pops right off the album after the the opening instrumental is awesome. It works for us every time. Other contenders included Satellite/Hooters (huge in Germany!), The One I Love/REM and we enjoyed Ghost On The Beach/The Insiders.

Lowlight: Let’s Work/Mick Jagger. We were cruising. We were in great shape, rolling right into a 4 1/2 rating. Everything was solid to spectacular. And then this. Record scratch. We asked ourselves, do we know anyone who has ever actually purchased a Mick Jagger solo album? Or even voluntarily played a Mick Jagger solo song in their house or in their car? We don’t know anyone who’s done that, and none of our FOBs do, either. Even our rigorous, deep-diving FOB disapproved, and that’s uncharacteristic. We went back and listened to this song again, and it wasn’t nearly as bad in isolation as it was as part of a 10 at 10 in which it felt it didn’t belong. But it still remains here.

Other: We were shocked to hear Jimmy say that Hourglass/Squeeze was the band’s biggest hit stateside. Doesn’t seem to even compare to other Squeeze songs in terms of radio play or US popularity. Surprising. Less surprising is Jimmy playing a Squeeze song, like he did yesterday. But we won’t attribute that to his loving the band, we would never presume to know what bands he loves.

Oh man, late summer of ’87 was so the summer of Def Leppard on the radio. That album got so much play, no shortage of singles there. 

How many Finks? (out of five)

Four Finks

   

9-21-17

1993

Circumstances beyond our control prevented us from listening today beyond the third or fourth song. This was devastating, because 1993 is our wheelhouse’s wheelhouse. It’s one of our favorite years of music and one of our favorite years of life. Missing it hurt, quite a bit. We didn’t get to listen at night and we didn’t take down the set list, and we forgot to ask our FOBs to do it. All we can do is briefly discuss what we DID hear, which will make for a one-section blog post.

Highlight: Heart Shaped Box/Nirvana and Cannonball/The Breeders. These are not only two of the best songs of all of 1993, they are perhaps two of the best songs of the entire 90s. We said it, we’re sticking to it.

How many Finks? (out of five)

Incomplete. But on track for 4+ territory, easily.