My fellow future victims: As some of you may recall, many moons in the past, as long ago as a teenage lifetime, I used to write a column called Pop Life for the OC Register. This was back in those halcyon days before I tried transitioning away from strictly being a critic so I could instead play editor to a roster of colleagues and freelancers, an shift that only half-succeeded. I started filling my predecessor’s keystrokes in spring ’97, filing weekly blather and bemusements, but by the time of overhyped Y2K madness I was already getting bored with the format — yet still had gobs of space to fill in each Friday’s edition.
Thus “10 Songs” was born. I’d still write a(n) (im)proper column first: sometimes mere musings, sometimes revelations within a musical context, other times just another interview squished into a first-person retelling of it. But at the end of each Pop Life appeared “10 Songs,” which was exactly as described: a list of 10 songs, new and old, each pertinent in some regard, whether personal or political, attention-grabbing or absurd. All of them were annotated, briefly. Well, mostly briefly. Occasionally the damn thing threatened to take over the entire column.
If some show was about to happen and I didn’t have time or space to devote deserved publicity to it, I’d slip a pick into “10 Songs” and remind people it was coming up. If President Dubya did something stupid — oh, how I long to have a commander-in-chief as basic as him once again — I could sneak in snarky remarks via titles and hardly have to comment, knowing a few of my 17 faithful readers would get what I was telegraphing. Ditto family and friends and people foolish enough to marry me, who often found me working through selfish issues selection by selection.
That process, coupled with a desperate need to emerge from the Great 9/11 Entertainment Hangover of 2001 (when it took a while to smile again), eventually spawned a yearly box set, Poor Millicent’s Annual, which I gave as Christmastime gifts for a few years. The goal: to intertwine an overview of a given year’s music scene with songs that reflected my own cluttered state of mind — or were just lifelong favorites. Whatever the choices, they all had to date from a disc released within that calendar year, no cheating, and to my way of thinking they also needed to Say Something. What, exactly, I’m still not sure. Didn’t stop me from trying to express it anyway.
Which brings us to our current crazed times, and this unprecedented lockdown-of-sorts out of an abundance of caution. The moment this contagion hit our shores I was suddenly motivated to deep-dive into dusty catalogs and dredge up all manner of tunes that could vocalize the range of emotions I (and I daresay we) have all been feeling: frustration, confusion, anger, worry, just to get a list started. Songs to express the fear of illness. Tunes to help me laugh at the helplessness of it all. Tracks to touch on the infuriating madness of our government’s lack of urgency and President Apprentice & Co.’s idiotically slapdash approach to mitigating the crisis.
Music as soundtrack to a never-ending catharsis — which is what music always is. For me anyway.
So I thought I’d share. Not so intentionally out of narcissism (“hey, kids, look at all the songs I know!”) but as a means of getting us ALL sharing. Perhaps it can be another potentially amusing distraction to help pass the time while playing cards (a regular feature at Chez Bessica) or fill the void when our collective binge-watching reaches unforeseen levels of streaming fatigue.
In so doing, I have devised a challenge. I’ve dubbed it LCKDWN20.
Naturally, I rapidly amassed more material in one giant playlist than I’d ever inflict upon anyone’s ears beyond my son’s and now-wife’s. Parameters became necessary. They are as follows:
- Devise an LP, a new one each week, that reflects where your head has been the past seven days.
- Do not surpass double-LP length, which I define as no more than 20 tracks, theoretically five per side of vinyl, or roughly 80 minutes. Obviously some playlist sequencing would fail to divide evenly across two (or four) sides. Let’s assume it would fit great anyway.
- Your playlist also needn’t be 20 tracks. It could be as little as an EP of 4-5 songs. It could be a three-sided special edition of 13. It can be comprised of four monster prog-rock epics and nothing else. However you see fit. Just no more than 20 songs.
- You needn’t theme your playlist nor concern yourself with connective tissue among tracks. Leave that to the obsessives. I’m a nerd for concept, so my playlists will likely reflect this terrifying existential threat we’re collectively facing and how it morphs us over the coming weeks and months and years. But simply rounding up 10 unrelated songs you’ve turned to out of happiness or rage or some feeling in between is every bit as valid as whatever Super Important Statement I think my list of faves makes.
- All of your choices can be by the same artist if you like, or a collection of multiples from a handful of talents. Note to Chris Hoggatt: If 20 spins of Eminem’s “Killshot” in a row says it all, then 20 spins of “Killshot” it shall be.
I’ve got two more playlists in the hopper taking shape after this inaugural run. I’ll spring ‘em when they’re ready. For now, I thought an opening 2xLP opus might set the stage nicely. Only wish I could have mixed it seamlessly. I hate unnecessary gaps of silence and awkward shifts.
I’m annotating this one out of fun; I cannot guarantee that habit will continue. You are under zero obligation to do likewise. Indeed, you are under zero obligation to do anything at all, other than stay safe.
One last note: As someone currently nursing his partner in life through what may or may not be covid-19 — Jessica has endured fever spikes, nasal congestion, heavy fatigue, body aches and an occasional cough for the past 11 days, yet none of these symptoms have been severe enough to snag her a proper test — I do not at all wish to be seen as making light of a killer virus that, if numbers are to be believed, is highly likely to claim someone dear that you or I know. That said, sometimes the only way I can cope is to laugh in the face of such unseen, unpredictable danger.
We’re all in this together. Might as well dig some tunes while we’re at it.
- Dire Straits, “Industrial Disease” (1982) — This is what got the ball rolling. Heard it on Sirius XM’s Deep Tracks on Leap Day, hadn’t thought of it in years, and Mark Knopfler’s very British but also very Dylanesque rant really nailed my percolating paranoia, albeit in a zippy toe-tapper. It’s all in good fun — but were I singing it, I’d sneer those last verses, about the two Jesuses and the protest singer, like I was emulating the late great Joe Strummer. Also, I like how it kicks off as if they’re warming up and testing amps.
- Michael Penn, “Brave New World” (1989) — More surrealism spit in rapid-fire wordplay, this time from the criminally unsung Mr. Penn, elder brother to Sean and the too-soon-departed Chris. The sheer confusion of it all captures my outlook in uncertain metaphors. We’re all driving down this road to nowhere whether we like it or not. Appropriately from a thoroughly excellent album entitled March.
- Prince, “Sign o’ the Times” (1987) — “You turn on the telly and every other story is tellin’ you somebody died.” As relevant as ever: “In France a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name …” His Purpleness, still so sorely missed, was talking about AIDS. But you could update most any line from his foreboding funkpocalyse and the meaning — and those guitar riffs — will still sting as wickedly.
- Suzanne Vega, “99.9º F” (1992) — “Stable now with rising possibilities … it could be normal, but it isn’t quite … could make you want to stay awake at night.” Very on-the-nose, I admit: “Pale as a candle and your face is hot / And if I touch you, I might get what you got.” But it felt much more appropriate than the Black Keys’ (or Peggy Lee’s) “Fever.” (Not that I’m above including those at another time.)
- XTC, “Scarecrow People” (1989) — Prescient forewarning from the brainless, heartless title creatures, vivid figments of reclusive singer-songwriter Andy Partridge’s imagination, encapsulated as airline announcements. Boy, have we ever got lots in common with them; they thought they’d base their civilization on ours, “cuz we’re all dead from the necks up, now ain’t we?” Take heed: “If you don’t start living well, you’re all gonna wind up scarecrow people too.” And listen for the fiddles in the final choruses.
- The Police, “Too Much Information” (1981) — If only the bulk of it were useful information. Not the irresponsible, wishful-thinking nonsense that the orangutan in the Oval Office has been spewing merely to keep his/our/Wall Street’s numbers from worsening. Now they’re undeniably worse, and getting bleaker all the time — and still I have no clarity. Drivin’ me insane. (Aside: Sting really needs to work with horns again.)
- Big Audio Dynamite, “Medicine Show” (1985) — The spoken-word snippets, largely taken from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns like The Good, the Bad & the Ugly and Duck, You Sucker, help set the dusty-gone-digital atmosphere, as Mick Jones (at the time just sprung from the Clash) reduces the snake-oil-salesman’s pitch to its crass basics and winds up making voodoo sticks and sharks’ fins sound as beneficial as anything in a Pfizer rep’s sample case. Right now, months and months away from a coronavirus vaccine and with false rumors of a miracle ivermectin cure emerging, a Wild West Medicine Show sounds not too far removed from reality.
- Temples, “Shelter Song” (2014) — Look! They aren’t all from the 20th century! I’ve got lots of other shelter-related songs on deck, from tender ones (Lone Justice’s “Shelter”) to despairing ones (Rage Against the Machine’s Godzilla cut “No Shelter”). And of course there’s “Gimme Shelter,” except that I wish this war was “just a shot away.” This nugget, however, is dappled with a ray of psych-rock sunshine, which I keep thinking I see peeking through the clouds whenever I step outside.
- The Plimsouls, “Shaky City” (1983) — You probably know this briefly brilliant L.A. outfit, led by still-at-it troubadour Peter Case, for its lone, superb kinda-hit “A Million Miles Away.” The album from which it hails, Everywhere at Once, is a start-to-finish gem like Michael Penn’s March after it. This ditty, catchy as it may be, nonetheless captures the same unsteady feeling so many people and businesses are now encountering amid the economic havoc that’s being unavoidably wreaked. “It’ll all come down, down on you.” Wish I could edit out the lead-in drums at the tail-end.
- Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam, “Sick as a Dog” (2016) — This teaming of the frontman for the Walkmen and Vampire Weekend’s self-exiled keyboardist yielded so many sublime pleasures on their thus-far-lone effort, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine. I had Aerosmith’s decidedly different track of the same name waiting in the queue, but this tune’s fanciful approach and don’t-shut-me-up cries evokes the mood better, even if the song’s sickness isn’t really so palpable in the lightly jaunty music.
- Coldplay, “Don’t Panic” (2000) — “All of us are done for,” Chris Martin quickly concludes in his band’s first-album opener, then immediately turns his back on impending doom to declare “we live in a beautiful world!” That schizophrenia makes a lot more sense to me now, even if I still don’t believe that “everybody here’s got somebody to lean on.” Also, the title ought to be posted in every supermarket from here to Chris Christie’s manor, which I assume is stocked like one.
- Paul Simon, “Run That Body Down” (1972) — My all-time favorite music critic, Robert Christgau, wrote nearly a half-century ago that Simon’s post-Garfunkel solo debut was positively the only thing that made him happy during the opening months of ’72, and now I’m starting to understand why. The ebullient joy of classics like “Mother and Child Reunion” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” reproves how on-point he was. But his assessment surely had as much to do with this album’s gentler introspective pieces, like this breezy bit of self-critique — words of advice we all ought to heed. I also love that even back in ’72 Paul’s primary care physician was a woman.
- Wilco, “How to Fight Loneliness” (1999) — Chief answer: “smile all the time.” That’s a hard prospect for some of us, one that could become concrete as people inevitably lose jobs and land in hospitals or makeshift quarantine centers. Even in our hyper-connected global village, intensifying loneliness — the anguish and self-doubt it bolsters — can become suffocating the moment we end our FaceTimes and try to sleep. Wish I knew if simple solutions were even helpful, but for now, to mash Jeff Tweedy with that plucky, amnesiac blue fish voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, just keep smiling. When you can.
- Frightened Rabbit, “Woke Up Hurting” (2016) — “… though I can’t quite see why.” Yeah, that sounds about right. Most of me would prefer, at a time like this, that we hadn’t recently (and frustratingly) lost Scott Hutchinson, yet another troubled soul who opted out of this daily participation prize we endure. Part of me callously figures this isolating terror would have done him in anyway. People who can conjure such tempered, tear-stained optimism in their melodies while conveying soul-gutted grit in their words are always in short supply. Now I’m even more pissed he’s gone.
- Jets to Brazil, “Morning New Disease” (1998) — Here’s the thing about this side-end as well as the start of the next: The first draft of this series-launching playlist included a much larger chunk of fractured, guitar-slashing, emo-verging, world-ending cataclysm-rock. Then my mood changed a little, and I pushed aside selections from Rage and Cage and Cave and Gang of Four, all of which are on high rotation in my mental jukebox as much as anything mellower. But some element of that suite of anger needed to remain, and JTB’s oh-shit eye-opener makes for a spiffy tandem with “Woke Up Hurting,” don’cha think? Sure I’m conceptualizing long-term: No matter how well or how long we hide, this may be any one of us, any day now.
- Queens of the Stone Age, “Sick, Sick, Sick” (2007) — Correct: not at all about the same kind of sickness. Messrs. Homme & Associates are here wallowing in that age-old resist-yield push-pull that comes from dwelling on perverse temptations — a condition easily stumbled into condom-free when one is housebound. That said, if you don’t bother looking up the lyrics and instead roll along with Josh’s delirious cadence, the thrash of it all can handily encapsulate all the fury you might unwisely want to unload at your television during newscasts.
- David Bowie, “Sunday” (2002) — Nothing remains? Surely not. Everything has changed? Unquestionably. Irrevocably. As profoundly as 9/11, I figure, by the time this is really over and we’ve counted the final cost. And yes of course King David has a spot here. In times of crisis, don’t you turn to your heroes?
- Elvis Costello, “This Is Hell” (1994) — OK, yeah, that’s overstatement; hell wouldn’t have Amazon Prime and the Criterion Channel, not to mention so many delivery options. Yet here we are, many of us cushioned by teleworking and endless entertainment choices — and what seems like an extended dream staycation may next week (or next month) start to feel like the house arrest it really is. Sorry to tell you, per E.C.: “It never gets better or worse … but you’ll get used to it after a spell.”
- Cheap Trick, “Gimme Some Truth” (2019) — Why not Lennon’s? Maybe because I’ve got his “Isolation” on tap for future playlists and wanted to avoid doubling up? Nah. Maybe because that well-intended but nausea-inducing “all-star” rendition of “Imagine” going around the webz irritatingly revives a currently-unnecessary song I’d prefer to retire from an album I’d otherwise happily play? Eh, probably not. I really just wanted to hear a different version this week. The original is a forever touchstone, no matter how much the “son of Tricky Dick” line dates it. For proof, count up all the solid versions that have sounded relevant over the half-century since it was recorded, whether from Sam Phillips (the female singer-songwriter, not the guy who owned Sun Records) or Jakob Dylan & Dhani Harrison (theirs lacks bite) or Pearl Jam, who tweaked a few lines of it and released their own cover as a single last year — coincidentally, just like the mighty Trick did. Personally I think Robin Zander sings it better than anyone but John. Plus Rick Nielsen’s typical oomph doesn’t drown out the Beatles vibe, it amplifies it.
- Warren Zevon, “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” (2000) — Man, I wish Zevon were still with us now. Bet he’d have more critiques to share than, oh, Randy Newman, his storytelling superior, who nonetheless never seems to have much to say when you need him most. Otherwise, this parting lullaby is presented without comment, only a hope that its title stays true for you and yours.