The Hump Day Shuffle: 1981

I started this weekly year-by-year shuffle thing a while back, before setting it aside, and now it's time to jump back into it. See 1979 and 1980 if you're interested, but for now, sit back and join in on a randomized journey through the great 1981:



1. Bruce Springsteen - Child Bride - Best of the Lost Masters
A Nebraska outtake that would be radically reworked into Born in the USA's "Working on the Highway," this is yet another bit of proof that the Boss isn't only one of the best American songwriters, he's also one of the most prolific. That his four-disc collection of studio outtakes a decade ago didn't begin to include every quality song he's buried away is hardly a surprise, but it's stunning nonetheless.

2. Tom Petty - A Thing About You - Hard Promises
This was the first time I've heard this song, a pure-Petty chunk of sing-along rock 'n' roll. The double whammy this summer of watching Peter Bogdanovich's Running Down a Dream documentary and seeing the band live in Golden Gate Park spurred me to dig completely into Petty's back catalog. It's hard to believe this song wasn't a single and a Greatest Hit, but like the Boss, Petty is nothing if not consistently excellent.

3. Agent Orange - Everything Turns Grey - Living In Darkness
Agent Orange is one of the punk bands I'd heard a lot about and tried getting into back in high school, but I ended up going for the 1990s stuff that was less abrasive. Not exactly a very punk rock way of going about things, but to my ears, NOFX was where it was at. These days, I'd rather be listening to punk that I dug back in the day, so I just might have missed the Agent Orange boat all together.

4. Emmylou Harris - Tennessee Waltz - Cimarron
Yet another legendary musician whose back catalog runs so deep and so great that it's intimidating to step beyond the simple hits. The other versions I have of this country classic are by Roy Acuff and Sam Cooke. Some songs truly get treated like kings.

5. Replacements - A Toe Needs A Shoe (outtake) - Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash (reissue)
A Bob Stinson-written instrumental outtake from the sessions for the Replacements' first record - I don't really know what to think of this. It ain't bad, but I 'spose there's a reason it's stuck on the end of a deluxe reissue.

6. X - When Our Love Passed Out on the Couch - Wild Gift
The first two X records are non-stop powerhouses and give the band every right to take victory lap tours to this day. John Doe and Exene sing together like no two people ever have.

7. U2 - I Threw A Brick Through a Window - October
The rawer end of the U2 catalog never seems to hold many clues of what sort of a band they'd become just a few years later. It hardly bears saying that this is a lesser song from a great band, but it's fun to hear them attempt a run through some of the rougher, moody stuff that characterized the great UK bands of the time.

8. Social Distortion - Under My Thumb - Mainliner
A live staple that later found it's way as a hidden track onto the band's 1996 White Light White Heat White Trash, "Under My Thumb" first showed up as a 1981 single, later collected under Mainliner in 1995. I've always loved Social D's version of the song and how mean Mike Ness turns it. A great example of a singer truly coming to own someone else's song.

9. Rolling Stones - Waiting For A Friend - Tattoo You
A decidedly un-rock type of song that features Sonny Rollins and a we've-been-millionaires-for-decades type of laid back beat, this song is proof that even as the Stones aged and changed, they remained great.

10. Bob Dylan - The Groom's Still Waiting At the Altar - Shot of Love
That his Christian period produced a booty-shakin' sort of gospel music like this tune (originally a b-side that was included in the CD version) isn't much of a surprise. Viewed from nearly three decades later, that whole period in Dylan's career makes quite a bit of sense, but I'd have loved to be a big-time fan in those days just to experience the shock of his many transformations.

So, this run through 1981 seems to indicate the year had either legendary musicians still plugging away (often on slightly lesser material) or punk rockers set to break the whole music world open. The thing is, it rings fairly true. Thanks, shuffle, for the history lesson.

DOWNLOAD:
Bruce Springsteen - Child Bride
Social Distortion - Under My Thumb (live)
Pearl Jam - Waiting on a Friend (live Rolling Stones cover)

Catfish, the Wedding Dee-Jay

Not every wedding features fire jugglers giving the bride and groom their first taste of peril as a married couple. But, that's the type of people I run with - the joyous, vibrant and adventurous spirits who'll not only invite vagabond jugglers to their wedding, but embrace the show.

That same happy couple brought in one Catfish Vegas as the wedding dee-jay, turning over the speakers for about 13 hours worth of music once all was said and done with the rehearsal BBQ (not much rehearsing done there, as a matter of fact), cocktail hour, dinner and one hell of a dance party.

It's the second wedding I've been asked to supply tunes for, and I gotta say that it's a wonderful way to boost the enjoyment of the night. There's nothing like the feeling of knowing and loving every song that plays throughout the evening.

Mr. and Mrs. Guy Toronto are two of the most tremendous people I know, full of humor and love and open hearts for everyone they meet. I was honored and thrilled to not only throw down the music, but to stand up front as they exchanged vows that even included a reference to the Denver Bronos ("We're a team, like the Denver Broncos, but different").

The whole week was a blur, from the moment Guy and the El Circo del Tres Gringos blew into town. Later that night we lifted Mr. Chair and his girl from the airport, hardly interrupting a fairly thorough bar tour of Downtown Tucson. We fit seven people comfortably in a Ford Grand Marquis. Felix Hurn flew into town the next night. Stu LeBlanc, the General and a host of other good souls painted the town with us. A sunset and some carne seca fell perfectly into the mix. Then there was the rehearsal and wedding and the tunage set a beautiful tone for a weekend of great friends, laughter and a sense of harmony with the entire universe.

This a somewhat vague and cryptic way of saying thanks to everyone involved for making the whole last week the most incredible time I've had in a great long while.

I'll leave y'all with two songs - the first one an Iron & Wine song the groom performed himself at the reception and the second a Magnetic Fields song the best man sang during the service.

DOWNLOAD:
Iron & Wine - Naked As We Came (live)
Mike Doughty - Book of Love (live Magnetic Fields cover)

Grace Potter / Ezra Furman at Club Congress Tuesday

Photo by James Minchin

Here's a show that really crept up on me - Grace Potter & The Nocturnals and Ezra Furman & The Harpoons, at Club Congress Tuesday.

With both bands traveling a good long way to get here (Potter from Vermont and Furman from Chicago) and both relatively new - and on huge upswings - I'd bet this is the first show in Tucson for either one.

I'd heard a lot of good things about Grace Potter surrounding the Outside Lands Festival, but I opted for Broken Social Scene while she was on another stage.

Potter's sound is great - at times like The Band, or the Stones at their most Americana, or like a Bonnie Raitt-fronted Black Crowes, belting out a rock sound that's full of soul and blues.

Potter's latest, This Is Somewhere (2007, Hollywood Records), got loads of great reviews. NPR called the record "Equal parts Tom Petty and Wilco," which is a compliment of the highest order in my mind.



I first heard about Furman roughly this time last year, on Andy Whitman's blog. This barely-20-year-old was flying completely under the radar, but made one of the best records of 2007, with a raucous folk sound, part Dylan and part Mountain Goats & Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Furman's Banging Down the Doors was a hard-charging record that grew better the more I listened to it. And from the first tracks I've heard, this year's Inside the Human Body is a more rockin' follow-up.

Furman is bursting with talent and his songs are as catchy as Potter's are soulful. Though I wouldn't necessarily expect the two bands to show up on the same bill, this ought to be a great show.

DOWNLOAD:
Grace Potter & The Nocturnals - Big White Gate (live)
Grace Potter & The Nocturnals - Apologies (live)
Get the whole Feb. 21, 2008 NYC show here.
Ezra Furman & The Harpoons - We Should Fight

A Return... and a new mix!

So the hiatus is done with over here at Catfish Vegas Presents... Thanks for your patience to those folks who stuck around these past few months.

I wanted to kick back into gear with a mix - to give the people a whole bunch o' tunes at once.

And given that us here citizens of these here United States just went ahead and picked ourselves a new president - an inspiring choice, if I do say so myself - I thought I'd kinda stick in that vein.

So here are some tunes that are vaguely political, some explicit in their celebration of America, and others that sort of capture the feel of what was at stake this year.

Some are joyous, others are defiant. There's struggle and hope, and some sarcasm and humor, and anger and pride, all tied together in a bunch. The songs of protest are a reminder of what fights have come and gone on this road. The happy songs are a reminder of what's always been at the core of America. The soul and the blues and the folk tunes are the history of this country, a history that wasn't always fit for the newspapers. These are all songs of engagement - and they're all damn good, so give the mix a spin.

Download:
Victory 2008 mix
(add the folder to your library and then "import" the xml file to create the playlist)

Vic Chesnutt at Club Congress

Vic Chesnutt - a Southern songwriter, friend of Howe Gelb's and yet another of those musicians who has plenty of love for Tucson - is back in town tonight, playing at Club Congress, alongside Elf Power.

Chesnutt & Elf Power have just released a new album together, and from what I've heard, it leans more toward rock 'n' roll than Vic usually does.

Check out the Tucson Weekly's preview.

Download: 

Vic Chesnutt & Elf Power - And How

Vic Chesnutt & Elf Power - Teddy Bear

Today, America is better

Barack Obama is the new president of the United States of America, soon to be the 44th man to hold the office, and without a doubt his election is the greatest and most positive even to occur in my lifetime.

Four years and a few months ago, after his star-making speech at the last Democractic National Convention, I wrote that I expected to cast a presidential vote for Barack Obama someday. And, way sooner than I expected, I got that privilege.

This is my president. At 29 years old, I feel more American, more an active and influential part of this tremendous country, than ever before. This is the history I will tell to my children someday, describing how this wave of enthusiasm overcame the country and surge, at the perfect moment, pushing the destructive and depressive Bush years aside in a heartbeat.

Last night at the Marriott, among some 2,500 other joyous folks, I watched as big screen projected Obama's victory speech. Amazing. My friends were the millions around the country watching with pride and a surging sense of possibility in this shared future represented by Barack Obama.


I had plenty of other stuff to do last night, and I slept in, but on my drive to work today, I heard Otis Redding's version of the Sam Cooke classic "A Change Is Gonna Come" on KXCI - and that flood of joy from the night before came back, more real in the bright light of another day than it had been the night before.

So, to celebrate this election, which I cared about and fought and worked for so much these long months, here's two more versions of that classic American song - one from some great friends and one from a legend greater than any other. And somehow this promise of the Obama presidency seems to make it all that much closer to my heart.


DOWNLOAD:
Chango Malo - A Change Is Gonna Come
Bob Dylan - A Change Is Gonna Come

The end of the 'We Can't Make It Here' era

We're just two days from watching this country take a dramatic turn back to sanity, back to the notion that everyone can and should thrive, back to the right way of doing things.

This is the Yes We Can era. And what Tuesday's election will do is slam the door shut on the Can't era, as embodied forever by the Bush Administration's self-serving demolition of the fundamental principles of this country.

Plenty of writers and artists and thinkers and activists and everyday people have described what they've witnessed, but for my money, look no further than James McMurtry for someone who captured the whole thing with an eloquence that drew on sadness, anger, and the truth.

So in the last days of this dying era, before our country pulls its latest Phoenix maneuver and begins another new life, take a few minutes to think about just how low this joke of a cowboy dragged America. And then let's celebrate the new day.


DOWNLOAD:
James McMurtry - We Can't Make It Here (live)

Wilco the Band

The intersection of two very cool things can form a whole that is significantly greater than the sum of its coolness, or something that is generally bunk.

Wilco on the Colbert Report last week is undeniably among the coolest things of all time.

Here's Colbert's interview with Jeff Tweedy:



And the debut performance of the brand new "Wilco the Song":

A Night with the Jersey Devil

Happy Halloween, from The Boss, who's taken a spooky old folk tale, turned it into a swampy blues romp, and made a short film outta the whole thing:

Giant Sand Tucson CD release show Saturday at Club Congress

Kevin at So Much Silence was kind enough today to publish a bit I wrote about Howe Gelb and his new Giant Sand record, proVISIONS.

Giant Sand has two Arizona CD release shows this weekend - Friday at Modified in Phoenix and Saturday at Club Congress in Tucson.

The new proVISIONS is definitely one of Howe's best records, so head on over to So Much Silence to give the preview a read.

Below is a couple songs from a show Giant Sand played just two weeks ago at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison.

DOWNLOAD:
Giant Sand - Desperate Kingdom of Love
Giant Sand - Increment of Love
(Get the whole show as a zip file)

Calexico & Jim Adkins: The Middle

Here's a stunning collaboration: Horns and pedal steel from Calexico giving a completely new life to Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle," with Jim Adkins joining his fellow Arizonans on stage:



Live Saturday 9/20 at Tucson's Rialto Theatre.

The Arid Madlands

A mix, to tide everybody over.
No song list on this, you'll just have to trust me. It's excellent, I promise.
As on the last couple, it's a zip file containing all the songs and an xml file. Add the songs to your library and then "Import" the xml file in iTunes and it'll pop up as a playlist.
Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD:
The Arid Madlands (zip)

Catfish on pause

We're going into a bit of a hiatus here at Catfish Vegas presents... as other obligations have crept into the picture.

If you're a regular reader, thanks for your time, and feel free to email anytime to chat about music.

Look for a possible return in time to unveil the year-end lists for the best music of ¡El Ocho!

DOWNLOAD:
Rainer Ptacek - Funny How Time Slips Away (Willie Nelson cover)
Download the entire live show (it's utterly fantastic) at archive.org.

The Hold Steady Saturday in Tucson

The tipping point of any good summer is that one night when you step out of that lazy routine and find yourself somewhere new - still partying at sunrise; or across town at some pool party with people you barely know; or out on that roadtrip that just sorta happened at the last minute; or when this, that and the other somehow fell together and you met her.

It's those nights that you feel like you should've gotten caught or busted somehow and brought back down to Earth. It's those sublime moments when the impossible rises up like some salty mist to tap your shoulder and point: that-a-way to the action.

Those nights are the fulcrum of a memorable and self-fulfilling summer, smashing apart the sort of careful balance that keeps sanity in check.

The Hold Steady's "Constructive Summer" encapsulates all of that, and more. Craig Finn has miraculously captured the universal "this is gonna be the best summer ever" mentality that runs from the early teens to as far into adulthood as people will let it. That precious gem of possibility is at the core of the song: "Let this be my annual reminder that we can all be something bigger."

It's a rush of a song, fast and loud and jumpy, with a piece of solid dynamite for the chorus: "We’re gonna build something, this summer." And Finn gives you every bit of encouragement you need to light that fuse. This is full audience participation: not only do you get to shout out loud with the band, but that summer is also yours to break wide open, just so long as you "raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer."

The subtle biblical imagery is no surprise from Finn, and it's applied as enthusiastically as ever in "Constructive Summer." I'll gladly sign the petition stating that "Our psalms are sing-along songs." And as Finn's line that "We are our only saviors" - well, I've definitely felt that simultaneous late summer night feeling of being lost, frustrated and yet absolutely certain that I was on the right track, just unnoticed by most everybody else.

Stay Positive is a fantastic record: a praise album for the spirit of rock 'n' roll, a steady and surprisingly sober meditation on how time passes in the lives of those who refuse to abandon the rock 'n' roll spirit, a continuation of the inter-woven stories and characters that Finn has sketched over the Hold Steady's existence, an energizing statement on the faith that you can draw from everyday existence - in friends, in revelry, in nostalgia and in the possibility of a great summer.

So c'mon on down to the Rialto Theatre on Saturday. Join me up front. Sing loud.

DOWNLOAD:
The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer (live, Minnesota Public Radio)
The Hold Steady - Cheyenne Sunrise (live, Minnesota Public Radio)
Get the whole in-studio interview/performance as a zip file.

The Hump Day Shuffle: 1980

1. Bob Marley & The Wailers - Redemption Song - Legend (originally on Uprising)
Hot damn we started off this week on a high note. This is without a doubt one of the greatest songs ever written.

2. The Ramones - Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio? - RamonesMania (originally on End of the Century)
The Ramones broke away just a bit from their straight-forward punk sound on this one, adding some pop elements, courtesy of Phil Spector's production. Still, it's catchy as hell and undeniably the Ramones despite any embellishments.

3. U2 - Shadows and Tall Trees - Boy
I just got this album and while it's not exactly all that good, it's fascinating to hear what U2 ditched on their way to being the biggest band in the world. For one thing, they pretty much abandoned any sort of darkness, which is the best way I can describe Boy. It doesn't have the despair of Joy Division, but there's a post-punk type of edge that overrides most of the album, with the band's future pop sensibility peaking out just occasionally.

4. Billy Joel - You May Be right - Greatest Hits (originally on Glass Houses)
This one breaks up a pretty smooth shuffle. This one hit when Billy Joel was about the biggest star in the world. I really dug into his hits my first couple years of college, so I have a bit of nostalgia for his piano-based rock songs (moreso than the ballads, which get sappy), but my Billy Joel listening is almost non-existent nowadays.

5. AC/DC - Back in Black - Back in Black
These guys are kinda the opposite of Billy Joel for me - I couldn't stand AC/DC until just a few years ago (might have something to do with that karaoke waitress who'd sing "You Shook Me All Night Long" while dancing on the bar...). Now I fully recognize and celebrate the fact that AC/DC brings the rock like nobody else.

6. U2 - Stories for Boys - Boy
This one sounds much more like the U2 that would create War, with the Edge's distinctive guitar in the forefront. Still, there's a definite Cure vibe, especially in the chorus. This one and "I Will Follow" are the only songs I'd heard from this album up until just the last month or so.

7. The Serfers - Green On Red
I don't really know where this one comes from, but I tracked it down a few years back in a search for all things Tucson music. The Serfers were fairly short-lived, but took the title of this song for their new band name - and Green On Red enjoyed a fairly acclaimed career after relocating to LA. This tune is a tense punk/new wave tune, with a menacing organ riff, sounding like a cross between Jonathan Richman and the X type of punk rockers emerging out on the coast.

8. U2 - Twilight - Boy
I think shuffle is telling me to purchase the new deluxe reissues that U2 just came out with for the band's first three records. Sheesh. I'd have preferred to drop one or two of these Springsteen and X songs that are coming up right around the corner.

9. Neil Diamond - September Morn - Greatest Hits (originally on September Morn)
Despite owning the Greatest Hits and being somewhat of a Neil Diamond defender overall, I have no memory of ever hearing this song. And it sucks. This is the type of shit that makes it hard to defend Diamond for his much greater earlier work.

10. John Mellencamp - Ain't Even Done With The Night - Words & Music: Greatest Hits (originally on Nothin' Matters And What If It Did)
I can't say much good about the early Johnny Cougar stuff either. The guy had enough good songs through the middle 80s to have earned his Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction. But this song could fit proudly and unmemorably into any John Hughes movie.

DOWNLOAD:
U2 - Redemption Song
The Serfers - Green On Red

Live: Eef Barzelay & Tracy Shedd

Untethered from the band he helmed for five records, Eef Barzelay has turned acoustic, dropping the fuller sound that swung from soul to country to chiming rock. And it's a perfect fit for someone who's lyrics demand a bit more attention than normal. Clem Snide was a strange and excellent group, turning in songs that were more often than not sad at their core, and Eef's singing was the perfect fit for such melancholy.

His first solo record (I haven't heard the second one yet, just bought it last night) starts with the title-track, the aching "Ballad of Bitter Honey." Eef sings from the point of view of a young woman who's lost just about everything. Once a background dancer in a rap video, she's dropped out of nursing school and has the bitter wisdom to go along with a life of hard knocks: "Don't hate me because I know just what the world is all about."

Playing an acoustic guitar with just a pedal steel backing him on most tracks, Eef has gone in a decidedly low-key direction. But his poignant and often witty songs (mostly solo, save "Fill Me With Your Light") don't need any more. Check out the Tucson Weekly's interview with Eef.

And for some excellent live recordings, download Eef's performance at Daytrotter.

Opener Tracy Shedd is making waves locally and is on the verge of releasing her latest record, "Cigarettes & Smoke Machines." As I wrote about her last record, Shedd "has a sharp sense of how to blend melody with distortion. She has a dreamy, languorous vocal style, which blends well with buzzing, feedback-prone guitars and the looping, urgently propelling drums."

DOWNLOAD:
Eef Barzelay - The Ballad of Bitter Honey
Tracy Shedd - If You Really Cared About Me You Would Have Kept In Touch For All These Years
Get the whole Louder Than You Can Hear album for free at TracyShedd.com

Monsoon music

We're smack in the middle of the desert's most thrilling and theatrical time of year - the monsoon. The daily threat of startlingly intense thunderstorms is both friendly and fierce. The rain will come, or it won't, any afternoon or evening. And if it comes, it comes quickly and with such a force and authority it seems as if each individual thunderstorm is trying to match the surrounding mountains for sheer grandeur.

When I was in school, I'd walk into an afternoon class with the August sun bearing down and energizing thermometers well past 100 degrees. I'd walk back out 50 minutes later to a gray dampness everywhere, temperature hovering somewhere near 72, and often never actually see a drop of rain.

I've always associated some songs with rain, or with the desert's aura following a rain. Most are quite lyrically obvious, but there's just something special about hearing somebody singing about rain while it's actually raining and I've always liked to put those matches on the stereo. Some songs below, but first, a poem:

Desert Water
By Richard Shelton

once a year
when infallible toads
begin to sing
all the spiders who left me
return and I make room for them

I am too proud
to mention their long absence

then the owls
send a message in code
from saguaro to saguaro
and the toads stop singing

a sea of warm air
rolls over quickly and relaxes
we wait for the promised rain
for the second coming
of water

each time it arrives
like the flood and I know
I have not wasted my life

spiders still come
to my house for shelter

DOWNLOAD:
James - Sometimes (live 1993-12-09 - Brixton Academy)
Neko Case - Buckets of Rain (live, Bob Dylan cover)
Rusted Root - Cruel Son (live 2007-06-16, Rochester)
Uncle Tupelo - A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall (live, Bob Dylan cover)
Counting Crows - Rain King (live, 'Thunder Road' interlude)
Roger Clyne - Nada (acoustic)

Morning came and the morning went

Some days are simple, some songs are simple, and sometimes simple is the best.

One of the easiest, loosest and most ramshackle songs that ever found its voice in a circle of guitar strummers and light-hearted singers is "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," the Dylan classic that first fell upon the Earth with the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo. It's a song that even I can play.

It's the perfect song for several singers to each take a verse and all come back in on the swelling chorus. And it's got that playful, childlike absurdity that sometimes crept out when Dylan was holed up in Woodstock.

Tons of versions of this song exist (my collection currently holds more than a dozen), but let's stick with two wonderful cover versions and one of the early Dylan bootleg versions for now.

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
Counting Crows - You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (live Bob Dylan cover)
Arlo Guthrie - You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (live Bob Dylan cover)

And a video of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova singing their version, which is also on the I'm Not There soundtrack.

Mountain Goats coming to Tucson

The Mountain Goats just announced a fall tour and are stopping by Tucson - Club Congress specifically - on Oct. 29. No Phoenix date for the tour, so count on a few extra friends in town for the night and no doubt this one will be packed.

And while Heretic Pride didn't necessarily make big waves this year as I would have expected, this is a band with extensive and excellent catalog.

DOWNLOAD:
The Mountain Goats - New Monster Avenue (from Heretic Pride)
The Mountain Goats - New Year (live, 2007-03-08, The Independent, San Francisco)
The Mountain Goats - Going to Georgia (live, 2006-08-10, 40 Watt, Athens)
Get both excellent shows at Archive.Org - The Independent, 40 Watt

The Hump Day Shuffle: 1979

For the first installment of the Catfish Vegas shuffle project: songs from the year I started raising hell:



1. The Eagles - The Sad Café - Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (originally on The Long Run)
Wow. Surely the Shuffle gods are using this song to clearly demonstrate that I'm playing this game by the rules - hands off, no cherry-picking. Like with most of the Eagles songs, it's mostly harmless. Just limit your dosage.

2. Bruce Springsteen - Roulette (original version) - Best of the Lost Masters
Ah, the bootlegs show up right away. The first I heard this song was on the Tracks boxed set, which was supposed to be a definitive statement (featuring much cleaned up sound) and make people forget about all those old bootlegs. Trouble is, this version is better, and it's precisely the rawness that makes it so.

3. The Clash - Lost in the Supermarket - London Calling
The first top-notch back-to-back of this project. This was one of the Clash songs that really confused me when I first started listening to Story of The Clash. It's so clean and catchy, so un-punk, that it just fried my expectations. Just one of millions of lessons against taking expectations into new musical discoveries, I 'spose.

4. The Jam - Butterfly Collector - The Sound of the Jam (originally B-Side to Strange Town)
The first of what I'm sure are a great many songs I'll confess to listening to for the first time during this project. No wonder these blokes are so well-regarded. This fits right in between Joy Division and Elvis Costello.

5. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Even The Losers - Greatest Hits (originally on Damn The Torpedoes)
One of rock 'n' roll's all-time greatest opening verses:
"Well, it was nearly all summer we sat on your roof
Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon
And Id show you stars you never could see
Baby, it couldn't have been that easy to forget about me"

6. Michael Jackson - Don't Stop Til You Get Enough - Off The Wall
Thankfully shuffle tossed on one of the hits I actually know. This is dance music in the waning days of the disco era, from a wunderkid who would go on to be known as one of history's strangest human beings. Did anybody see it coming that far back?

7. Allman Brothers - Crazy Love - A Decade of Hits (originally on Enlightened Rogues)
Southern guitar boogie that I never quite jumped on. I dig the more laid-back, sing-along hits from the Allmans. They were just never big enough in rural Arizona to make much of a dent in my teen years.

8. Anita Ward - Ring My Bell - Pure Disco, Vol. 2 (originally 1979 single)
Man, I only really know this disco standard from the DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince cover version on 1991's Homebase (wouldn't it be great if that showed up on shuffle too?)

9. Billy Clone and the Same - Don't Look Back - Arizona Sounds Vol. 3 KDKB
An early Bruce Connole project, I got this one from the treasure trove that is AZ Local. Proof that even punk and new wave in Arizona had a distinctly strange skew, a feature that defines bands in the arid madlands to this day. This song is slower and more countrified (right up until a saxophone solo swoops in outta nowhere) than the band's X and Y record released the same year.

10. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - You Tell Me - Damn The Torpedoes
One of dozens of reasons to break off the Greatest Hits Highway and dig into the deep catalog of an artist like Petty. This song a similar feel to "Breakdown," with more of groove than his sing-along classics.

(A note: I've done my best to tag songs on greatest hits collections properly, to reflect the year it was first released, not when the record companies money grubbing repackaging hit the shelves. In the event that songs crop up in a wrong year, I'll skip them. Those will be the only skips. And I'll note which album the shuffle delivers. For example, "Even The Losers" in this shuffle came from the Greatest Hits, even though I have Damn The Torpedoes as well.)

DOWNLOAD:
Bruce Springsteen - Roulette (original version)
Tom Petty - Even The Losers (live 1980-03-06, London)
Billy Clone and the Same - Don't Look Back