Another Music Tag

Since the students are playing "10 Little Indians" today, and slowly slipping out the doors into the nice April day, I have no kids this period, giving me a chance to do a musical meme that some of my favorite bloggers like Dale, Lulu, Chris, and Beth have done:

List seven songs you’re into right now ... no matter what they are. BUT they must be songs you’re presently enjoying.

Border Radio- The Blasters
This is from the Blasters' self-titled debut record. It's now on Testament: The Slash Recordings, a collection of their first four records. It's the story of a single mother, "thinking about a man who's gone--" the father of her infant son. She calls "toll-free" to request a song from one of the high-power "border radio" stations-- stations that broadcast from over the Mexican border to an American audience. It's got one of the the greatest opening riffs ever, and I love Gene Taylor's honky tonk piano playing.

Gardening At Night- REM
This song, from their first record, an EP (remember those?) brings me back to 1983, and being in college, learning political science and making the friends who would turn out to be my lifelong friends. It still sounds as fresh and wonderful as the first time I heard it.

1969- The Stooges
I keep hearing this song-- it keeps coming up on my shuffle, I keep hearing it on Sirius radio's "Underground Garage" on my satellite radio, and then Iggy and the Stooges played it when I saw them Sunday night. From the "wah-wah" opening on, I never, ever get tired of this song. I always have to turn it up when it comes on.

Ain't No Way- Aretha Franklin
Double negatives aside, this song is sad and beautiful. I grew up listening to it on my father's copy of "Aretha's Gold."


Who Knows Where the Time Goes- The Fairport Convention
Sandy Denny's beautiful voice complements Richard Thompson subdued guitar work in this little gem. I wish I'd written the opening line:

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

I think of my kids and how fast they're growing up whenever I hear this one.

I've mentioned before, when this song came up on my Friday Random Ten that Sandy Denny was the woman singing with Robert Plant on Battle of Evermore, on Led Zeppelin's fourth album.

Death is a Star- The Clash
One of the Clash's lesser-known songs, it's the last track on the Combat Rock album. As much as a punk band as the Clash was, their music could at times be slow, dark and contemplative.

The song is filled with the old movie imagery that the late Joe Strummer loved so much to put in his songs.

By chance or escaping from misery
By suddeness or in answer to pain
Smoking in the dark cinema
You could see the bad go down again

I've always taken this song to be about how love is, besides all the other things it is, a way of protesting our ultimate mortality. How eerie that Joe would write and sing of that.

Stubborn Kind of Fellow- Marvin Gaye
This song was on the jukebox of Danny's, a Wicker Park tavern I hung at in the eighties, so I associate it with good times. It's a fun song, but it's also about a guy who won't give up on love.

I tag anyone who is reading this that hasn't done the meme already.