It’s the Arcade’s penultimate Music Monday for 2014! The following are this year’s especially overplayed tracks for yours truly. If you were to compile such a list what would it look like? Relax, enjoy and let us know.
1. Rolling Stones – Doom and Gloom (2012)
Taken from the 50th anniversary compilation album GRRR!, Doom and Gloom is a recent discovery for me. Two years late, perhaps typically, I’ve been playing it on a loop. The above is a lyrics video. However the promo is also worth a look, featuring Noomi Rapace, who all but upstages Sir Mick himself.
2. Johnny Cash – Get Rhythm (1959)
The video for this next song also features lyrics, for those that want to sing along (as many are want to do, no doubt). Get Rhythm is an odd fish in Cash’s discography. Plenty of his songs are up tempo, but this tune is one of only a few that may be described as upbeat. (Cocaine Blues has moments of dark humor, but that’s not quite the same thing). Upon listening it’s difficult not to find oneself quite so chipper as the song’s own shoeshine-boy, irrespective of how bad one’s day may have been.
3. Flanders and Swann – Transport of Delight
Wordplay a plenty, Flanders and Swann are sorely underrated, if not unknown, to most persons my age. Still, it’s not entirely unexpected. If you listen to the accents and intonations, these two men conform to all the stereotypes of the quintessential Englishman. These prejudices while benign are no less irritating. Still, if you can get beyond the anachronism, enjoying this duo’s well-arranged words comes easily enough.
4. Stevie Wonder – Superstition (1972)
Possibly one of the funkiest tracks known to man, Superstition is that makes me, and I suspect everyone else, about 50% cooler. Every element pulls its weight. Much more needn’t be said. Its just reassuring to know that some tunes exist. This is one of them.
5. Ian Dury & the Blockheads – Spasticus Autisticus (1981)
I mentioned Ian Dury in passing some Music Mondays ago. I can’t not do something direct now. When first released Spasticus Autisticus was met with hostility and misunderstanding. The song is an anthem of the disabled and the underestimated. The pluck and the bite to the song is immediately endearing. In particular the the phrase “lucky looks” conveys the well-meaning condescension towards disabled individuals. Dury devastates these mannerisms, and the attitudes underpinning them, with an enduring battle cry ‘I’m Spasticus!’.
6. Daft Punk – Robot Rock (2005)
I may have mentioned Dury before on the Arcade, but Daft Punk are in danger of becoming a motif on my Music Mondays! Robot Rock, like all Daft punk tunes, is a song that demands dancing. There is no telling that the dancing is good, naturally you just got to get up and move the shoulders, make the inner robot the outer robot, and don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.
7. B.B. King – Please Set a Date
A blues standard, Please Set a Date classic and recorded here by the great B.B. King. The most striking thing about any and all songs of this genre is their directness. The music is primitive in the best sense. Raw and unfussy, understanding requires very little cultural literacy, concerned with sex, love, and death. Of course you’d be a fool to confuse this with simplicity. If so, I’d be curious to see if you can match the sound that comes off Lucille (B.B.’s famous guitar).
What songs have define the year for you? Let us know in the comments below.
