Our weekly (or however often) roundup of this week’s discoveries and old faves. Usually it’s friends of mine or just music I like. Now including “liner notes” to help guide you through this journey and hopefully introduce you to some new, great music!
SMASHING PUMPKINS –BURY ME
If you ask me, I will still say the first Pumpkins’ album Gish is their coolest and best. Fight me! This one has a great groove to get us into the playlist and some fab guitar histrionics from The Great Pumpkin himself, Billy Corgan.
THIS MAD DESIRE –AMERICAN DREAM
The title track of our full-length album from 2020. This one features drums by Dan Konopka (OK Go) and lead guitar from Steve Baric, who we will hear from again in this list. Also, an old friend speaks a bit of Russian in the track. I think this was a really cool song and was about the idea of basic income. Go watch the video HERE!!
FEMEGADES –SPEECHLESS
I’ve been listening to them since the VERY DAY that their Pornsick EP first came out. Then they pulled it off streaming and later brought it back (which in my mind, restored order to the universe!). Feminist agenda in the lyrics, buzzy guitars, and 90s-alt song style.
SOPHIE CORAN –DULLER STAR
Very excited about this discovery! Sophie is a jazzy singer from Philly that incorporates a lot of orchestral sounds in her very inventive songs. I discovered her the same way I found my friend Erica Corbo: on Instagram, I follow the hashtag #phillymusic for reasons I went into in an earlier blog. Sometimes great stuff pops up! (As you can probably guess, I am now officially collecting Philly musicians!)
DAVID BOWIE –MOONAGE DAYDREAM (LIVE)
This is from my fave era of David Bowie –mid 1990s. I saw him three times around then, and his performances and songwriting were hugely influential on me and my own songwriting. On the Outside tour, I loved that he did a whole stadium tour before the album even came out so no one knew much of what he was playing as it was really heavy on new and obscure tracks. The tension in the room was unbelievable!! On the night I saw the show in Toronto, they ended with Joe the Lion, which is a great song but certainly not a famous hit. In fact, what was so revolutionary about this show is that they did the encore in the middle of the show between Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie’s set gradually changing over the band until it was just Bowie’s band playing Hurt with Trent Reznor trading vocals.
JUDAS PRIEST –ELECTRIC EYE
Moonage Daydream talks about keeping your electric eye on me, babe. THIS is the ultimate song about the Electric Eye –and really ahead of its time conceptually especially now that we live under constant video surveillance everywhere. Plus guitars!! WOW!!!
LA GUNS –GET ALONG
I have a real soft spot for LA Guns. When they first came out, I got their autographs at a record store in Garden City Shopping Centre in Winnipeg (which is just an ordinary Winnipeg mall). I was so amazed. They had a large tour bus outside and they were dressed like bikers and full-on Los Angeles sleaze rock. This tune is a bit more tuneful and some of the guitar playing reminds me of Led Zeppelin.
STEVE BARIC –STRATOMANCER
As mentioned before, I know Steve from back in the day when we lived in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Our mutual friend Gerry was in my band and Steve was one of his best friends so Gerry dragged me out to hang with Steve for coffee many, many nights during my lone year in Thunder Bay. Steve was a real metal guitar aficionado back then and he can still shred with the best. I am grateful we've been able to work together on a couple of tunes after all these years. (He also plays the incredible solo on our version of Christmas classic Deck The Halls.)
HYDESKY –XYZ
One of my Discord friends from Tianda’s Discord. He’s always got something cool happening!
THE KRAMDENS –(THIS IS WHAT WE CALL) HOME
I used to share rehearsal space with the Kramdens back when I was starting out in Guelph. At the time, they were kind of like our local Tragically Hip, but I actually met their singer Craig Norris first, I believe, when he owned a record store downtown. Guelph’s a pretty small city so you kind of get to know everyone. One of the guitarists, Mike Plater Findlay, used to play in my band and then we later played in yet another backing band for our friend Barzin touring Europe and Canada. The Kramdens still play and this is a great song. Craig is also the morning show guy from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in Kitchener-Waterloo nowadays and wrote one of the lines in our recent single Open Hearts Open Minds when I crowdsourced the second verse on Facebook.
MODERN DAY MIDAS –WHAT IT IS…
My main man Raul, AKA Taco from Austin, Texas, also from Tianda’s Discord. This is a really well-written song, very classic almost Nashville-esque writing.
LISA TRINITY –BOWL OF FRUIT
Randomly commented on my Instagram. Apparently, she’s a survivor of various heart surgeries. Like my own son!
M.I.A. –THE ONE
The most recent one from MIA. I have been a fan since she started releasing music and thought I’d toss this on just so I can keep up with her.
PIGFACE –INSECT / SUSPECT
Pigface is a band of maybe 1000 members (and all people you've heard of from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool, etc.) led by Martin Atkins, who has also been the drummer in Public Image Limited and appeared on recordings from Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Killing Joke, etc. etc. Very cool guy! Every morning he tweets, “Get the Fuck Out of Bed!!!” and really promotes the idea that doing Something is better than doing Nothing.
FAITH NO MORE –CAFFEINE
Huge fan of FNM. This song seemed to sit well in my ears after Pigface!
LARKIN POE –BAD SPELL
This is one of those Spotify suggestions. Cool tune!
FLORENCE + THE MACHINE –SEARCH AND DESTROY
Here’s an acoustic version of one of the greatest songs of all time!!
LEONARD COHEN –YOU WANT IT DARKER
One of our songs has lyrics by Leonard Cohen. Really there was no one ever cooler. I was invited to see him one time in Hamilton. One of my friends at the CBC called me last minute and they had an extra ticket for me at Will Call as someone from their team was sick or otherwise unavailable. Leonard Cohen played for around 2.5/3 hours. It was great but I remember the show was VERY quiet for an arena show. It was easy to hear anyone speaking when the music was playing.
That wraps up this week’s playlist. Hope you enjoyed it!!
If you like this playlist, please share it and follow these artists. Music is the fuel that fills our soul.
If you are an artist that would like to be included in the future, reach out anywhere and I’d love to check out your tunes!
Yours in music,
Mac