Episode 10 – “The floor was painted an awful shade of sin”

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, with your host Mark Bradbourne.

Episode 10. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it more than I can tell you. I hope you were enjoying it as much as I enjoy creating it. My name is Mark and I am your Gen X Captain America, leading you, my musical avengers, to songs that don’t suck. Let’s get right into it. I’ve got a couple things that I want to talk about before we get into the rest of the episode.

Remember a couple of episodes ago I was talking about the new Metallica music that was coming out. I was really impressed with the first two tracks, Lux Eterna and Screaming Suicide. Thought they were great. The third one came out, If Darkness Had a Son. I knew it was too good to last. I’m sure some people liked it. Honestly, compared to the first two songs, I thought it was weak. So we’ll see how the rest of the album goes once it comes out. I don’t know if they’re going to release any more singles, but we will keep our fingers crossed that that was just a bump in their road.

De La Soul’s first six albums are now streaming. It’s been a very, very long time coming. A lot of legal pitfalls and red tape had to be cut through with their contracts and things of that nature, but they are out. So if you haven’t heard De La Soul’s first six albums, go ahead and go stream those to your heart’s content. They are fantastic. You will not regret that.

And Kiss has set the final dates for their End of the Road tour, which is reportedly their final tour, but I will go on record and say this will be their final tour. Like Gene is in his seventies at this point. It’s just too much. Now their career will end where it started back in New York City. They will be at Madison Square Garden on December 1st and 2nd. So I am not a huge Kiss fan. I will admit that I am a greatest hits kind of guy. Like when it comes to Kiss, like I like their hits. I’ve tried to listen to some of their other stuff and I don’t know, just can’t get into it for whatever reason, but I have seen them live four times and there is no denying their live show is entertaining. So if between now and December 1st and 2nd, you have a chance to go see them if they’re coming to your city. Go see them. Honestly, put it on a bucket list. You can say that you saw Kiss. They are by far one of the best live bands that I’ve seen, even if they’re not playing completely live anymore. There are some backing tracks. Can’t lie.

All right, let’s talk top five. For the month of February, we were collecting the top five drinking songs or quite frankly, just your favorite drinking songs. We had about 90 songs submitted. So thank you for playing along and sending in your votes. Our top five and honestly, the whole playlist is really good, but the top five here it is.

At number five, we had The Drinking Song by Moxie Fruvous.

At number four, we had Alcohol by Brad Paisley.

Number three, we had One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer by George Thorogood.

And for number two and number one, they were separated by one vote. Friends in Low Place, Garth Brooks is number two and number one is Whiskey in the Jar.

Now to be completely transparent, I combined Metallica votes with Thin Lizzy votes because I don’t see a lot of difference between the covers. It’s not like Metallica like really reimagined Whiskey in the Jar. So to celebrate our top five songs, the playlist is in the show notes and here is Thin Lizzy’s Whiskey in the Jar.

For April, I want you to send me songs that mention color. So we are moving into spring, the birds are out and in the Northern States, we’re starting to see a transition from lots of white stuff to more green stuff. So let’s celebrate this time of year with a playlist of songs that mention color. And for inspiration, here is a rainbow of songs that you can think about as you’re searching for your favorite songs that mention a color. Red House by Jimi Hendrix, Orange Juice by Noah Kahn, Yellow by Coldplay, Green Onions by Booker T, Now My Favorite Color is Blue by Robert DeLonge, Indigo by Dirty Heads, and Violet by Hole. There’s your whole Roy G. Biv represented, but don’t limit it to Roy G. Biv if you’ve got a song that you’re like, hey, this works, send it on in. As always, you can do that through the website. There’s a form where you can send up to five songs or respond to any social media post when I’m doing a call for the songs. And let me know, I will collect those and add those to the list as well. Thank you in advance for submitting. This is a lot of fun. I hope you’re having fun with that too.

All right, let’s get into a little new music, shall we? So better week than last week for sure. But if this is your first time listening, here’s the rundown. This is how I discover new music and how ultimately you find new music. Each week I dig into a bunch of new music playlists on Spotify. It used to be just like New Music Friday, New Noise, New Rock. It’s expanded quite a bit. I used to like, it guesstimate it was three to 500 songs. It is much closer to 500 songs now as I’ve found other playlists that are exposing me to more music. I listen to each song for about 30 seconds. If something catches my ear, I add it to a playlist for later review. The best of those find their way here to the podcast for the ones that are good, but don’t make it to the podcast. I end up sharing those on social media.

So here’s some things that I’ve noticed about myself in the review process. I find myself hoping that a song is bad, so I don’t have to pronounce artists’ names that are unpronounceable. Like if it’s spelled weird or like it’s just something just overly bizarre, there’s part of me that’s like, God, I hope this sucks. So far I’ve been fairly lucky, although I will say that I’ve probably mangled a couple of names so far. You will very rarely find a song in the podcast that is not in English. For me personally, I have to connect to a lyric, and sadly English is the only language that I speak fluently, and if you’ve listened to the podcast, that even might be in question. But if I can’t understand what is being sung, I can’t connect with it. And lastly, I swear like a sailor, but if the lyrics contain unnecessary swearing, honestly, it just turns me off. I’ve tried. I really have, but at well-placed swear word, I’m there for it.

All right, so kicking us off this week, we’ve got Lady of the Lake by Crown Lands.

That was Lady of the Lake by Crown Lands. They are from Canada. It’s a duo, a singer, drummer, and then a guitarist keyboardist, place bass as well. And there’s obviously a comparison to be made here. I’m not going to surprise anybody when I say it sounds a lot like Led Zeppelin. Very much kind of on the epic song side, at least this track. And as I was doing the research for the show, they’re like, yeah, and we toured with Greta von Fleet. And I was like, well, that makes total sense, because between this band and Greta von Fleet, you’ve got the entire Led Zeppelin catalog. With that said, I like the song. Obviously, there’s a strong Led Zeppelin influence there, but I just wish there was a little bit more kind of originality to it. I mean, it’s very J. R. R. Tolkien fantasy lyrics, stairway to heaven, cashmere kind of stuff. It’s kind of hard to get past it if you’re like me, who is a Led Zeppelin fan. That’s why I can kind of listen to Greta von Fleet and, you know, it’s okay. But there’s no replacing Led Zeppelin. So but anyway, I hope you liked that one. Maybe it turned you on to something. Maybe it didn’t. I don’t know. But again, that was Crown Lands with Lady of the Lake.

I am excited to announce the winner of the Sharing is Caring giveaway. I want to thank everybody who played along, who shared the podcast. Saw a pretty decent bump in listenership. So again, thank you very, very much for playing along. Now the winner is going to get a three month Spotify premium gift card, as well as one of our new songs that don’t suck stickers. The winner drawn at random is Luigi C. Luigi, I will be reaching out to you. Thank you so much for supporting the show. I am excited for you to get the three month premium gift card. To everyone else that entered, if you would like a new show sticker as well, please email me at mark at songsthatdon’tsuck. net, and I will drop one in the mail as a thank you for sharing the show as well.

The second song this week comes from Jax, and this is her song Cinderella Snapped.

That was Jax with Cinderella Snapped. Now as far as pop goes, very rarely will I really dig into a pop song. This is the second song from her that I’ve really dug. The first one, you might have caught her viral hit, Victoria’s Secret. Second song that really shined a light on body image and what organizations like Victoria Secret put out and how it affects young girls. Really just appreciated the song obviously as a parent of teenage daughters. This is something that has to be in the forefront of my mind, and it’s in the forefront of theirs because they’re exposed to it. I really like that she has picked up that banner of being a supportive voice where there aren’t a whole lot at times, at least it seems, especially in music. I don’t know if she writes alone or not. I kind of like to think that she does because at least on her newest things, it’s definitely got a very similar kind of feel to it, and it’s got a bit of an Avril Lavigne angsty kind of emotion around it, but unlike a lot of the other pop stuff that comes out, which I feel is shallow and vapid, she’s got some depth. I love the lyrics in the new song in Cinderella Snapped, just, I don’t know. I just like the whole female empowerment. We don’t need princes to rescue you, and she just turns it on his head and is like, look, let’s just be who we are and live our lives to the fullest. I’ve listened to some of her really early stuff, and I feel like they were trying to mold her into something that she’s not. These last two songs that she’s put out, I feel like she’s kind of shining her own star, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else she puts out.

If you are a Spotify premium user, you may have noticed a new feature on the app, which is DJ, and I saw an article, which is how I learned about it. It’s in beta right now, and basically what DJ is, it’s a AI DJ. It will look at your listening history, and for me, for Spotify, I’ve been a Spotify user for a long, long time, so it’s been really interesting because it will go through your musical history, things you’ve listened to, it will pull out things that you haven’t listened to in a while, and it will recommend things that are kind of in the same vein as things that you’ve listened to. It’s been really interesting, and I have to be in the right mood for it, to be honest. If I don’t know what I want to listen to, DJ is not going to work for me because what it does is it’ll pull five songs, what they call a set, and then the DJ will come back on. His name is Xavier, by the way. It’s an AI voice, and obviously, the things behind it that are pulling the songs out, but the voice will come on and say, hey, let’s change it up. This is songs that you listened to back in 2016, and it did that to me today, and I was like, oh, yeah, I remember this song. What was I thinking about back then, and the whole music memory attachment thing happens. There are times where it goes off the rail a little bit, and if you’re not digging it, there’s a button you can push that will call the DJ back on, he’ll pick up some new songs and off you go. So if you’re in the right kind of mood, maybe you’re not focused on the music so much, you just need something in the background and you want it to change up every now and then, the DJ feature is pretty cool. Now I will say that I’ve been fairly adamant around AI when it comes to music generation, lyrical writing, things of that nature. Usages like this, I feel can be really entertaining, and I’m curious to see where this actually goes to see if it becomes more of a larger feature, how they’ll enhance it. If you can train the model to see, you know, can you tip it to say show me more new music or show me less new music, things of that nature, be pretty cool.

The next song this week that I want to share with you, it’s called Devil’s in Nola from Drayton Farley.

That was Drayton Farley with Devils in Nola. Now if you’ve listened to any of the past episodes, you’ll know that I’m very particular when it comes to country music. I was a big country music fan in the mid-90s when I think country was probably at its peak as far as genre listening goes, although I have a feeling like the bro country genre is big, but I cannot stand it. Country music with 808 program drums just feels wrong. So obviously, I’ve attached myself to this song, Devil’s in Nola. I love the instrumentation, it is all right in my ears. I love his voice, like I want to go see him live and just have his voice kind of fill the room because I just, I feel like it’s going to be one of those experiences where you’re just kind of sitting and it’s almost like, like church, like he’s got that kind of voice. It’s got a bit of gravel to it, but it’s really, really good. He like his songwriting honestly, great storytelling, and you can picture in your head, if you close your eyes as you listen, you can picture the scenes that he is painting with his lyrics. So really, really liked his stuff. He has a few releases prior to this one. I have not checked them out yet, but I am going to. I’m sure this good boy from Alabama has done some great things, and I will be checking his stuff out more deeply.

All right, some quick housekeeping, you know the drill. So this is your weekly reminder to like, to follow, to share, to review the podcast. Mondays you get the full version, Wednesdays it comes out with the Cliff Notes version. Social media, I’m everywhere, but honestly, I’m focused a lot on Twitter. Facebook and Instagram, they get content, and it’s honestly more for search engine optimization than anything else. So if you can follow me on Twitter, that would be fantastic.

All right, the fourth song this week comes from Webbed Wing, and it is called Medication.

That was Webbed Wing with Medication. Now those boys are from Philadelphia, and this is one of those tracks that I can’t really put my finger on. What appealed to me about it? It’s mixing a few different genres, I feel. One of the artist’s influence that I feel like I’m hearing is the Lemonheads, like Evan Dando and that crew, but I don’t know, this is one of those songs, like the more that I’ve listened to it, the more that I have liked it and enjoyed it. So it’s probably gonna be one of those that falls into my regular rotation. I didn’t go down the rabbit hole with them yet, as far as looking at their earlier releases but as far as like what I’m gonna consider a label release, this is the first, I think the other ones look like they were more demo early indie releases, but we’ll see, I’m gonna check them out and see what I can find. One of the most interesting things I found with this track was the fact that when I finished listening to it, I felt like he had said everything that he needed to say in this song, and then when I looked at the track length, it was like two minutes and 20 seconds, which by today’s standards is short, usually everything is tracking to that three minute mark. You get some epics that go much longer, but for a two minute, 20 second song, usually you’re looking in the punk genre for that kind of stuff. So told the complete story of the song in a very short amount of time, so good stuff. I enjoyed it.

This conversation continually pops up online in different forums, whether it’s Twitter or Reddit, or just music forums that I sometimes pop onto, or I’ll see YouTubers talking about this. And the question is, will songs today be considered classics 20 years from now? And my take on this is no. I don’t think any music that is being created today right now that I have heard is going to be considered a classic at any point in the future. All of the music that I hear today, I will call fairly disposable and replaceable. It is probably endemic of how the music industry has evolved to really try and get as much profit as possible out of the virility of different songs. Because songs that were viral a month ago, you don’t hear anymore because the next best thing has come out. It’s just very, like, thank you next to quote Ariana Grande. When I think about classics, stuff from the 50s through kind of the 90s, which I think is the last time that I can really put my finger on a moment where there was a seismic shift in music, those moments were generational in the definition of the way the music changed.

If you think about the Beatles when they arrived in the United States, you think about Elvis before that, even like the punk movement that was kind of in response to disco, the glam metal scene in the Sunset Strip, the Seattle sound in the 90s, and then even up through kind of the new metal corn, limp, biscuit type thing, like, I don’t know if those are going to be classic, but you still hear those on occasion. Now the one thing that I find interesting when I think about those generations versus what’s happening today is in younger generations before we had streaming, you would get your music from your parents or your friends, and they would like hand you records or tapes or CDs. And when I think about it now, kids get their own streaming account, their own Spotify account.

So they’re going to be listening to whatever they might have heard on the radio, and they’re going to put it on their Spotify account, or if their friends are listening to something or they picked something up on social media, and they’re not getting that music passed down, they’re just basically getting whatever is new. So I think there’s an aspect missing that was prior, you know, prior to streaming. And I think I talked about this a little bit on an earlier episode about how the social sharing of music has kind of died, and I think that contributes to some of the lack of what I would call a classic. Now I will say, all the music that I find for these episodes, to me it’s good, and I recognize that I am biased and I have my own tastes, but I find it good, I find it listenable, but nothing that I play on this podcast.

Do I see having any staying power as far as longevity when I think about bands like Led Zeppelin and The Doors, The Beach Boys and things like that? Because no one is currently creating music that’s pushing boundaries. They’re not trying to be overly creative, they’re trying to be different enough to get noticed, and that’s where it ends, at least that’s what I’m hearing. Now I have a buddy who I’m going to get on the podcast soon, who’s got a strong take on this, I think it’s going to be a fantastic conversation, so that should come up probably before summer, but we’ll see what the timing is on that. But if you sit down and think about it, when was the last time you heard a band, and you were just in awe listening to it, and your jaw was on the ground because it was something you’d never heard before and you were blown away by it. Today it just feels recycled.

With that said, the fifth and featured track this week comes from a band that I first heard 30 years ago. This is Extreme with Rise.

That was Rise from Extreme. Now you might remember Extreme from their gigantic hits back in the 90s, Wholehearted, More Than Words, and that album that those two songs came off of was called Porno Graffiti, and it was by far one of the albums that I played the most when I was in high school. And to end that album is fantastic. Nuno Bentencourt, who is a guitar player for Extreme, is a virtuoso, I would probably put him in the top five of living guitarists who just shred. If you weren’t listening on headphones, go back and listen to that song again and enjoy the guitar solo for the glory that it is, because it reminded me just how flippin’ good he is. Gary Chiron is a fantastic vocalist. His time with Van Halen, I try to forget that it happened, but their first album, the second one, Porno Graffiti, the third one, which was three sides to every story. There’s a lot of good music that these guys put out, and I was excited when this track popped up on the new music playlist this week, and I really enjoyed this track, and I hope you did too.

Alright, that is it for this week. When I get them, thank you for listening. Remind you that top five, it’s songs that mention color, so even something like Raspberry Beret would work, because you get the picture of what the color of Raspberry is, so bend that creative muscle and send in those songs, and until next time, thanks for listening, and until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.