I notice that the music blog Mainstream Isn't So Bad has posted a copy of my favorite song as last week's bit of "Sunday Soul." I really do mean favorite song, too; I've drafted plenty of Top Ten lists, all radically different, but all listing "Want Ads" by Honey Cone at the very top. Check it out.
The rest of the top five, for interested souls: "Spazz" by the Elastik Band; "Little Sister" by Ry Cooder; "Darling Commit Me" by Steve Earle; and "Can You Get to That?" by Funkadelic. For the record, I can't remember liking anything else Steve Earle's ever done (I once tore down a concert poster of his on Franklin Street, in Raleigh, out of sheer contempt), but I fell in love with the line "You'll miss me, but there's no need to grieve—you'll get reports and the baskets I weave."
Saturday, February 7, 2009
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3 comments:
Bah. Steve Earle is fantastic, and not just for this:
"Townes van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."
Miss RIttelmeyer,
I'm no fan or Steve Earle's politics, and he sets my teeth on edge with his stupid grand statements every time he speaks at a protest rally. But many people who are stupid when they talk are brilliant when they sing.
Check "Devil's Right Hand", and "Johnny Come Lately" (both on Copperhead Road...for that matter you might like the eponymous song, maybe the best 3 minute version of Jim Webb's book Born Fighting). Also his "Dixieland" is brilliant (it's about the 20th Maine at Gettysburg).
Lastly, he did a cover of Johnny Cash's song "Hardin Wouldn't Run" that is maybe the best arrangement of a country tune I ever heard, as well as being dark, tragic, obsessed with manliness, and other things you would like. You can find it on a compilation disc of Cash covers, called, maybe Kindred Spirits, I think.
Love your blog, keep it up.
I miss Honey Cone. They put out some first-class stuff under the direction of Holland/Dozier/Holland, of which "Want Ads" is merely the greatest. I also loved "Stick Up" ("Highway robbery, it's a felony, heartbreak in the first degree") and "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show." Extended metaphors notwithstanding, these are dynamite tracks.
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