Seven Songs for the Week #79 - 9th Oct 24

The Black Friday Record Store day list for 2024 came out last week. Why there needs to be a mini second RSD every year, I'm not too sure. One of the albums announced for a vinyl release is Down With Wilco, the rather good 2003 album from The Minus 5. From that album this is the catchiest song.

I hadn't heard of The Hard Quartet before this week. A new "supergroup" made up of Stephen Malkmus, Matt Sweeney, Jim White, and Emmett Kelly . Their debut album came out last Friday. Have only listened to one or two songs, but this one is good.

Listened to this album at the weekend, the 2CD bonus cuts version. The separation between John Martyn the man, and John Martyn the music seems vast. Grace & Danger is a lovely record and is the best thing Phil Collins ever done, the drums, the harmonies, the alcohol.

I don't recall listening to Matthew Sweet's In Reverse since it came out in 1999. Found the CD annd put it on and was struck by how much of it I rememebred. The album finishes with this nine minute, four song suite. If you have the Japanese CD, like me, you get the demos of the four separate songs. Anyways, it's a great album, unfairly overshadowed by some of MS's other records.

Samples The Stone Roses, which can only improve The Stone Roses.

Warning - NSFW! I'm a fan of Saturday Night Live, it's the closest I get to following a sport. Some weeks are winners, some are losers. Last week's episode was very, very good and then towards the end up came "An SNL Digital Short". I'm also a huge fan of The Lonely Island, who produced digital shorts for SNL between 2005-2012. It's best known member is Andy Samberg who went on to be the star of Brooklyn-99. As well as their SNL work, TLI made three albums, two (very silly/funny) movies (Hotrod, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) and some specials for Netflix. It had seemed that they had moved onto the more dignified phase of their career, producing movies and tv shows ("I Think You Should Leave"). There hadn't been a digital short in seven years, when they did a last minute sequel to Natalie's Rap on SNL. Earlier this year, The Lonely Island started a (reluctant) podcast with Seth Meyers (SNL's head writer during thier time there) going through each of the original digital shorts. For me this was a must-listen: SNL lore and an interesting insight into the angst, thought, and hard work that went into the digital shorts back in the day. Then two weeks ago, on the season premiere Samberg returned to SNL a surprise guest to play Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris' husband. His role will be a recurring one for the year. Still though, with Samberg back on the show, I wasn't expecting a digital short. Even when the title card appeared, it didn't seem like an actual Digital Short, not until Samberg and Akiva strolled in was it apparent that we were getting the return of The Lonely Island. Anyways, it's right up there with the best of their stuff. How they manage to combine the profane with a kind of earnestness is always funny. We've learned from this week's podcast that the song was in the bag already for a year, but the video shoot happened on Friday. That this was filmed on October 4th, and edited and ready for broadcast 24 hours later on SNL is a the mad magic of SNL's insane production schedule. Hopefully we'll have a few more of these for SNL's 50th Season.

Still on a Bonzos trip at the minute ahead of the Christmas boxset. This is a lovely, but unsettling, song and I first encountered it over 30 years ago on Monty Python Live At Drury Lane. Skip forward to 1994 and Oasis are debuting their new song, Whatever, on MTV. I'd like to think I was the first person to notice that it had a significant similarity to this song. Where there's a hit, there's a writ, Neil went to court and won a credit for the song. I hope he got a nice pension pot out of it. Neil's widow is about to release a biography of her late husband, Dip My Brain In Joy, and maybe it will shed light on this and other issues.