Music Diary, Vol. -82

For the rationale behind this mad effort, explanations here. The full series of Music Diary posts are here. The full playlist is above, also here.

Week of June 6-12, 2022

LYRICS: White Stripes, "Little Room"

SONG: Next to the Buoys' "Timothy" and Sondheim's "A Little Priest," this brisk jam by the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy is undoubtedly my favorite song about cannibalism.

LYRICS: Leonard Cohen, "First We Take Manhattan"

SONG: Played this underrated Robbie Robertson/U2 tune on Pentecost Sunday at Greenpoint Reformed Church.

LYRICS: Johnny Cash, "Tennessee Flat-Top Box"

SONG: Elvis Costello’s Nashville covers album Almost Blue mostly sounds like country cosplay, but its closer, by Gram Parsons, is something else altogether, showing EC’s uncanny knack for making other people’s songs sound like his own.

LYRICS: Lauren Bacall (Carmichael/Mercer), "How Little We Know"

SONG: A perfectly poised blend of heavy and light, sad and smiling, dancing and brooding, this classic cut by Ljova sounds a bit like what Piazzolla might have written had he been Russian.

LYRICS: Groucho Marx (Arlen/Harburg), "Lydia the Tattooed Lady"

SONG: I first heard this roiling Mystikal classic when a Tom Waits tape jammed in my car stereo and the radio came on, and I swear for a few seconds I thought it was a Waits deep cut I had somehow missed.

LYRICS: The Replacements, "Androgynous"

SONG: There was no single Joni Mitchell gateway for me, but the sheer headlong joy of this track from her first album, the only one with a bass on it and a gorgeous, almost yodel-y two-vocal round with herself, definitely made me sit up and listen.

LYRICS: Rubén Blades (w/ Lou Reed), "Letters to the Vatican" 

SONG: By most accounts Judee Sill had a troubled life, and she certainly never had the success she deserved. But anyone who could write a song this transcendently beautiful at the very least touched something divine. If William Blake met Laura Nyro.