Seven Songs for the Week #161

It is 62 years since the first Jagger/Richards song, and two more were released yesterday. Framing the Stones as contemporaries of The Beatles does make you realise how near all of this is - imagine if we still had new Lennon/McCartney songs in 2026. There will be corners of the internet shrugging their shoulders that In The Stars is not Street Fighting Man, but that's really missing the point. With a new McCartney album at the end of the month (and a new single in two days), we really need to enjoy this experiment in longevity.

It is 31 years ago this week since Sugar last played a gig, back when Jagger/Richards had only been writing songs for 31 years. Sugar played their first two reformation shows in New York, and they'll be in my neck of the woods on May 28th. I can't wait - I saw them in 1993 at the legendary Sunstroke '93 festival in Dalymount Park, Dublin. As I recall, it was the only decent weather of the whole summer and we had a day of Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Belly, Sugar, Sonic Youth and Faith No More (replacing original headliners Red Hot Chilli Peppers, which I was cool with). The ongoing Rolling Stones experiment means that no one bats an eye at Bob Mould being 65 years old, or drummer Malcolm Travis being 73. I have avoided Sugar's reunion setlist but saw that they did 24 songs in under 90 minutes - excellent. Considering that their three albums only have 26 songs in total, it should be a fun night.

I'm a few weeks late to the "viral sensation" of Angine de Poitrine. Already they have sold out Dublin's Vicar Street later in the year (cap. 1,500). I have to admit that they induce a vaguely enjoyable nausea if you listen to them too intently. The name is French for Angina of the chest, or Angina Pectoris to give it its latin name, once again proving that foreign language names always sound better.

I am rewatching Breaking Bad, hitting the halfway point of Season Three. This appears as some incidental music.

I was listening to the Introspective album this week. Back in 1989, It's Alright seemed to me to be the first PSB single that wasn't quite as good as all the others. I think I'd revise that opinion now. Everything it mentions still stands. Maybe someone somewhere will write a thesis about how at the end of the 1980s GenX got hit with messages of environmentalism and saw the dangers/weaknesses of authoritarianism and how it all got undermined.

Went to see The Big Star Quintet this week, and what a lovely experience it was. First of all, Big Star drummer Jody Stephens was one of five, and I had never appreciated how great he is on all of those Big Star songs. I love drummers, and Jody is my favourite type, drumming to the songwriting, like Ringo or Pete Thomas. The rest of the band was Mike Mills (from REM), Jon Auer (Posies), Chris Stamey (the dB’s), and Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub), and they did the catalogue justice. Funnily I saw the reformed version of Big Star in Dublin in 2001, and the line up was Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. Was The Big Star Quintet better? Yeah, probably. I recall at the 2001 gig they closed with a cover of Todd Rundgren's Slut, which seemed odd, to say the least. Last week, the quintet closed with September Gurls, which is really how it should be.

This album is 23 years old this week. Must give it a spin. There are a lot of versions and covers of this song on streaming, but the original has the softest and nicest Damon vocal.