The quintessential Gut-Twister

G.W. McLennan, 1958-2006

To lose a great songwriter at the relatively young age of 48 is simply not fair. J helpfully points to this tribute post at Moistworks by Franklin Bruno, and there's this piece by Steve Kilbey from the Church, who, with McLennan, made up the larkish Superduo Jack Frost. I don't have much to add except that a Go-Betweens soundtrack makes marking this unfortunate news even sadder.

The Go-Betweens - Cattle and Cane
Buy it.
Watch it.

The Go-Betweens - Streets of Your Town
Buy it.
Watch it.

G.W. McLennan - Lighting Fires
Buy it.

Jack Frost - Ramble
Buy it.

Oh man

I've got a lot to catch up on. Not to mention that I only today discovered that Grant McLennan died earlier this month. A McLennan/Go-Betweens post soon.

Seven Times The Same Song: Spinto Band

Recognizing that there may be a possibility out there that someone, somewhere, still may not have heard Delaware-based sextet Spinto Band's transcendent pop masterpiece "Oh Mandy," we've plumbed the murk over at YouTube and turned up seven video clips of the band doing what it does best, synths wailing, bass guitar flailing, hair flipping and all. Here's Spinto Band totally killing at the 9:30 Club with the hit. And again. And again, somewhere. And again at yet a different club about a week ago. And here in Montreal in March. And again here, acoustic with minimal accompaniment in a booth in a cafe in Paris. And finally, on TV in Holland sometime this year, kinda looking like Echo And The Bunnymen.

Gut Twisters #2

More slow, deep cuts in the deep, deep guts. These three all from the high school years, and representing as wide a cross-section as you mighta got on one of my old mix tapes, which is to say, quite a narrow cross-section.

Specific is the balm for the wounded or aspirationally wounded high school heart...

The Replacements - Achin' to Be
Buy it!
Though there are no strings in it, per se, I tend to hear a lotta viola. Certainly not their best record, but this song is way up at the top of my Westerberg list.

Ian McCulloch - Start Again
Buy it!
This song starts off with the line "woke up sad," which made it easy to take literally as a teen, though McCulloch suffered considerably without his Bunnymen.

The Cure - One More Time
Buy it!
The Cure became, at a certain point, so adept at penning Gut Twisters that one might say it was a flaw. This song is ridiculous, and it comes even before Disintegration, which for my money is more of an extended gut-flaying.

A-Sides on YouTube. Commence Rockage.

Well, would you look at that -- exceptional Philly quintet The A-Sides have a live-ish video for their awesome track "Sidewalk Chalk." Thanks YouTube! The sound quality gets pretty dicey, but the clip is clever and the song was in our top five for last year. So much rock. So much.