Arts and Entertainment
Song of the Day 2/22: Bay City Rollers, “Saturday Night”
This pop earworm hit No. 1 in America late in 1975, earning the band, which marketed the Edinburgh quintet as tartan-clad teen idols despite the band having been around for a decade by then. Even if you hated the tune, written by the veteran British songwriting team of Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, the hooks […]
Song of the Day 2/21: Steely Dan, “Kings”
Was this tune from Steely Dan’s debut LP, “Can’t Buy a Thrill,” about Richard the Lionhearted or Richard Nixon? The album cover claimed the song contained “no political significance.” The record came out just months before Nixon’s 49-state wipeout of George McGovern, and Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are the most unreliable of unreliable narrators, […]
Song of the Day 2/20: The Hooters, “Fightin’ on the Same Side”
No, I didn’t watch the “debate.” Open up your eyes, folks — we’re fighting on the same side. In their early days gigging around Philadelphia, years before they signed a major-label record deal, the Hooters played a ska-influenced blend of pop and rock, sounding a bit like the Police. Their catchiest tune was this one, […]
Song of the Day 2/19: Bad Company, “Bad Company”
Yesterday Trump pardoned every white-collar criminal he’s seen on TV, from Michael Milken and Eddie DeBartolo to Rod Blagojevich and Bernard Kerik and, I’m pretty sure, Doctor Loveless from “The Wild, Wild West.” All that’s left is for this rogue’s gallery to go into business together as private detectives on a reality TV show with […]
Song of the Day 2/18: Chicago, “25 or 6 to 4”
In the late ’60s and into the ’70s, Mt. Pleasant High School would annually book a national-level band for a concert. Fifty years ago tonight the school played host to Chicago, back when the group was still a rock band with horns. The band’s second album, the first to use its truncated name (the real […]
Song of the Day 2/17: The Presidents of the United States of America, “Volcano”
Hey, it’s Presidents Day, so who better to play at the party? PUSA, like virtually all ’90s alt-rock bands, made a splash with its debut in 1995, then quickly faded from view. The songs on their second album, released the next year, were more structured than their earlier shambolic singles (“Peaches,” “Lump”), and by the […]
Song of the Day 2/16: Strawbs, “Benedictus”
The lyrics make this sound like a religious song, and in a way it is, but it didn’t spring from any Christian tradition. Strawbs got together in England in 1964 as the Strawberry Hill Boys, playing bluegrass music. The group’s music and personnel evolved over the years, with singer/guitarist Dave Cousins the constant presence, and […]
Song of the Day 2/15: The Proclaimers, “Cap in Hand”
Brexit has revived talk of Scottish independence, a topic that always reminds me of this song in which Scottish twins Charlie and Craig Reid proclaimed their support for cutting ties with England. They wrote this more than 30 years ago and still perform it today. I saw the band on its first American tour in […]
Song of the Day 2/14: David Peel and the Lower East Side, “Up Against the Wall”
Today’s tune is in honor of Mike Bloomberg’s policing policy which, considering this song was recorded in 1968, shows that mini-Mike wasn’t an innovator but a reactionary. Of course, Bloomberg’s retro policy was hardly shocking to its victims. When David Peel (born David Rosario) returned to New York City after two years in the Army, […]
Song of the Day 2/13: Ray Stevens, “Mr. Businessman”
Ray Stevens is best known for his prodigious output of comic songs, a few of which were actually worth a chuckle. He also had a big hit with “Everything Is Beautiful,” which is as treacly as it sounds, and to ensure his place in the pantheon of uncool, he built his own theater in Bronson, […]
Song of the Day 2/12: The Guess Who, “Share the Land”
Not even Bernie Sanders goes so far as to call for redistribution of land — it took a bunch of Canadian hayseeds from the plains of Manitoba to do that. Burton Cummings, grossly underappreciated as both a singer and a songwriter, wrote this around the time Randy Bachman left the band in 1970. Its communal, […]
Song of the Day 2/11: Alive and Kicking, “Tighter, Tighter”
I have no idea why this song popped into my head the other day, because I don’t think I’ve heard it in years. Obscure even for a one-hit wonder, Alive and Kicking, later stylized to Alive N Kickin’, was a Brooklyn six-piece band signed to Roulette Records, the mob front label that was also home […]
Song of the Day 1/20: John Prine, “Sweet Revenge”
I hate to repurpose one of my favorite songwriters, but this should be the theme song for the rest of Donald Trump’s first, and with luck only, term as president. I guess it’s true that all of his friends are not dead or in jail — some are still awaiting sentencing. Lyrically, the first verse […]
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