Three Of My Favorite Things

Honestly, this is all coincidental. First I found the new Fender Johnny Marr guitar, then I see Johnny Marr in a skit on "Portlandia", then my brother sends me the Mario Brothers version of "This Charming Man."

And now this. The Amoeba Records "What's In My Bag" series of videos. Each video features another celebrity shopper talking about what they're about to buy at Amoeba. I stumbled upon it today when I found Johnny Marr's "What's In My Bag.". It's no secret how much I love Amoeba -- I've even done a version of my own Amoeba list right here. Marr's buying some Ennio Morricone records and a few documentaries -- including about one about Ralph Waldo Emerson he doesn't think will be any good. (Sure enough, the little clip they play of the documentary proves him right.)

And then... yet another coincidence. Johnny's buying a Wire CD. And I was just reading an article in The New Yorker about a 15-year-old girl in Vancouver who adores Wire and made a bunch of videos for Wire songs. She's even reached out -- admittedly annoyingly so -- to Colin Newman, who basically told her to f--- off. Sad, but funny.

So Johnny Marr to Amoeba to Wire... Three of my favorite things.

Forgotten Songs

There's a lot of lousy music lists out there... you know, the 100 best guitarists of all time, or the 500 best songs from the 1990s. (Really? Were there 500 good songs in the 1990s?) But I recently read a pretty creative list in a magazine published by the folks who bring us NME and Uncut of the 500 Lost Songs You Need To Hear Now.

Rather than counting down 500 songs in some contrived way, the lengthy list is broken down into sub-categories, for example "Soul" and "Punk" and "Krautrock" and so forth. But there's also subcategories encompassing specific artists -- like #191 to #182, all reserved for Blur. ("Young and Lovely" tops the Blur sub-list, and I can't disagree. You can really hear the band take a huge creative step forward with the songcraft of that tune.)

Other notables: At #340, it's Wire's "Outdoor Miner" from 1979, a song that was pretty much on the soundtrack to my live circa 1995. And somewhere between 252 and 281, The Clash make the list for "This is England", which is a phenomenal song despite being on the universally panned Cut the Crap LP.