Playlist: July 2011 blog songs

Song of the Day: The Rolling Stones - I Am Waiting

As I mentioned yesterday, I spent quite a bit of money at Amoeba this weekend. Two of my purchases were Stones' reissues of Let It Bleed and Aftermath. I own both already, but I bought my copies when I first started collecting vinyl and thought that these would be hard to come by; thus, my copies are warped, dirty, and basically sound like shit.

The latter reissue is the UK version, which has a different tracklisting than the US version I own (both versions, however, have today's song of the day). I can't listen to "I Am Waiting" without thinking about The Royal Tenenbaums - while not the best track on the album (that would be "Paint It Black" or "Under My Thumb," but you know those songs), it does have one of the most memorable choruses (or is it the verses?). Hear for yourself:

Song of the Day: Guns N' Roses - Rocket Queen

Like R.E.M.'s Green, Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction was a game-changer for me. I distinctly remember hearing "Sweet Child O' Mine" at my seventh-grade dance, and pretty much half the album was on Top 40 radio.

But my fondest memory is my dad buying me a copy of the album on cassette at the flea market. When he gave it to me, it was pretty obvious, even to my 12-year-old self, that it was a bootleg copy - the cover art looked like it was copied on a cheap printer, and the tape itself had no labeling on it whatsoever. My dad still jokes about it till this day.

The other thing I remember is my parents listening to the album (without me around) and telling me they didn't approve of it. Thankfully they didn't forbid me from listening to it, but I knew why they didn't like it - what you don't hear on the radio is the cursing, the orgasm sounds...oh, and the references to heroin (no matter they are so oblique I didn't know what "Mr. Brownstone" meant until I was in college).

However, what you do hear throughout the album is one of the best bands of the '80s. The guitar interplay of rhythm and lead rivals anything from the Stones heyday, the rhythm section drives most of the songs, and of course Axl's voice could melt hearts and make parents cringe.

Without a doubt one of my favorite songs on the album is the closer "Rocket Queen." Though I could do without the orgasms, this song starts off with the aforementioned rhythm section killing it and closes with a somewhat uncharacteristically sweet Axl (starting with "I see you standing...").

Song of the Day: The Rolling Stones - Loving Cup

I should have done this on Tuesday, but to pay my respects to the re-release of my favorite album of all time, here's my favorite song off of Exile on Main St.  One reason I love this album so much is there are so many things going on, I almost always notice something new upon each listen.  Obviously the piano and drums in this song are phenomenal, but there's acoustic guitar in the left channel and electric in the right that are low in the mix, and you can barely hear Keith singing backup throughout a lot of the song.  This isn't a mind-fuck headphones record like OK Computer, but the details really reveal themselves on headphones.

Song of the Day: Faces - Stay with Me

Remember when Rod Stewart was cool?  Yeah, I don't either.  But put on any Faces album, particularly A Nod Is as Good as a Wink to a Blind Horse, and you'll realize that once upon a time, before he had to ask if you thought he was sexy, he was a badass. This is probably the best-known Faces song, and for good reason - it's one of their best songs.  You can hear the Stones (this was released during their epic Beggars-to-Exile run and includes guitar by Ron Wood, who later joined the Stones), the drunken revelry of the Replacements and a how-to manual for the Black Crowes here.  Excellent, underrated stuff, probably somewhat tarnished to many by Rod Stewart's latter day transgressions.

Stay With Me - Faces

Fallon celebrates the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street rerelease

And there is much rejoicing