Seven Songs for the Week #63

I should have been all over this album, but I still haven't listened to it. To be honest, I was put off by the fact that you had to buy the vinyl version through the online store to get all the songs, as 5 tracks were syphoned off onto a stand-alone 7 inch - and they haven't appeared on streaming. So when I was looking at it in a shop at the weekend, the double vinyl was €45 and the double CD €22, and it was missing said tracks, so I put it back on the shelf. At least on streaming you can hear an Atmos mix. But I digress. I've always liked I'll Give You A Ring, a song Macca had knocking around for years before it eventually got recorded for a b-side in 1982. It could easily have been a White Album track.

I've been a Sparks fan for 30 years, which is wild because in 1994 they were seen as an old band staging a comeback, and yet 1994 is now in the first half of their career. Anyways, in spite of my decades of Sparks devotion, I only found out about this album earlier this year when it came out on Record Store Day as a 2LP release with Sparks' No.1 Song In Heaven album for the price of €145 (I did not buy it). The reason the two albums were paired up is that this is a 1979 synth pop album written and produced by Ron & Russell. And it's glorious. The album is now on streaming and out as a stand alone release. Noel remains anonymous apparently. There's a wild video for this track that Sparks have found and put on their YouTube channel directed by Micky Dolenz. I did think of just adding the single version, but it sounds like a needle drop on the reissue, so here's the full 9+ minutes.

Video: https://youtu.be/2nmn_AQ6fE0

I watched Hot Rod again this week, a 2007 dumb comedy which is the perfect movie if you are in the mood. Starring Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone, and directed by Akiva Schaffer, a trio better known as The Lonely Island, they have recently been putting out a podcast with Seth Meyers looking back at their time on SNL. As they reached discussing Hot Rod it was time to watch it again. This song features briefly in one dumb scene, so here it is. [Of note, Akiva is directing a Naked Gun reboot starring Liam Neeson, coming next year]

Heard this on the radio at the weekend, I'd be hard pushed to name another Interpol song, but this is one of those tracks that reminds me of the days of pulling a single song off LimeWire. Harmless fun. And the music business is as strong today as it's ever been. What?

Other people do playlists on Mastodon apparently. @itsmehenning@mastodon.online has a weekly 25 song playlist that he updates. I heard this song there and liked its vibe. Guess the year it's from!

The Drugdealer song made me think of this song. I'll tell you that this is from 2018 but could easily have been from Todd Rundgren post Something/Anything if he had stayed away from the drugs. Astral Drive is a pseudonym of Phil Thornally, super producer, co-writer of Turn, and ex-member of The Cure. Quite the CV.

YouTube told me to watch a Weezer Tiny Desk concert from a few years back, and they opened with this song which I did not know. It's a very early =w= song which never left demo stage. It's pretty.