Street Songs
We’ve spent all this time building up our digital music libraries, so why not tinker around with them a bit and have some fun? Last week I explored tunes that clocked in at 2:28. This week, I take it to the streets.
The exercise this week is to locate your street songs. I’m not talkin’ lanes, avenues, roads, courts, and the like. Nuh-uh. I’m talkin’ Streets.
What’s more, I’m looking for songs that are simply names of Streets. “Oak Street”, “Main Street”, “This Street”, “That Street”. So that leaves out a lot of quality tunes obviously (“Positively 4th Street”, “Incident on 57th Street”, to name a couple). I’m interested to see what other “Street” gems are out there. So use the Search area of your favorite media player, look for some “___ Street” songs, and drop some into the comments.
Me? I came up with 17 streets. Here are four of my tops…
- Christian St. (mp3) – Marah | An ode to their hometown of Philadelphia, this is on Marah’s 2nd album, Kids in Philly
. It’s my favorite Marah album – just bristling with life. I spent the better part of the year 2000 with this record.
- Straylin Street – Pete Droge | From Pete’s ’94 album, Necktie Second
.
- Great Jones Street – Luna | Never owned any other Luna albums other than Bewitched
, but this song is a soft stunner. They had me at Great.
- Cherry Street – JJ Cale | From JJ’s latest, Roll On
(a concept album about deodorant. Just kidding.).
The Others…
Alphabet Street – Prince
Boogie Street – Leonard Cohen
Dominick St. – Steve Earle
Grafton Street – Nancy Griffith
Grey Street – Dave Matthews Band
Highway One Zero Street – Joe Strummer
Lonely Street – Bap Kennedy
Love Street – World Party
Meadowlake Street – Ryan Adams
Rain Street – The Pogues
Shakedown Street – Grateful Dead
Shouting Street – Joe Strummer
South Street – The Orlons- Christian St. (mp3) – Marah | An ode to their hometown of Philadelphia, this is on Marah’s 2nd album, Kids in Philly
Ick’s Picks (Week VIII): JJ Cale’s ‘Roll On’
Pumping out these Ick’s Picks every week is making this year fly by. Week eight already? Can someone please tell me how we’re almost in March?? Thankfully, it is my favorite month: Cactus League baseball, a beer festival, and my anniversary. Oh wait, let me reorder, my wife reads this, you know. March is my favorite month: MY ANNIVERSARY, and yeah, that Spring Training and beer festival thingy is all right too, whatever.
That said, this week’s pick is the new album by JJ Cale. There weren’t any releases this week that had me jumping up and down in excitement, so I decided to take a listen to JJ’s new one, because he’s written some seriously solid tunes: “After Midnight”, “Cocaine”, “Call Me The Breeze”, and “Travelin’ Light”. These were the four JJ Cale songs I was familiar with due to their covers by Eric Clapton, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Widepsread Panic, respectively. And after hearing the originals over the years, Cale’s versions were just as solid, and a tad more laid back, which suited my style.
I’ve listened to Roll On this week about five times. It’s a well produced mash-up of roots / acoustic / jazz sounds that are all pleasant to the ear. There’s nothing that absolutely blows me away, though I do have three favorites: the guitar on “Cherry Street”; the undefinable groove of “Fonda-Lina, whose namesake has “her bosoms hangin’ over the window sill / It’s a story as old as Jesus / Fonda-lina has a void to fill.”; and “Old Friend”, which faces the passing of time from the wise perspective of Cale’s 70 years: “I hear all the old folks are gone / I guess we’re the ones now / That’s the way it goes / those crowded days are behind us now.”
Clapton appears on the title track, and the legendary Jim Keltner plays the drums on some tracks, but other than that, Cale handles pretty much all the instruments by himself. It’s a solid piece of work, and probably an album that I’ll appreciate more as time goes on (like a lot of them seem to be). It would also suit me well to dip into some of Cale’s older records. There a reason he’s been covered so many times over the years.
Buy Roll On
Links: JJ Cale’s Official Site |MySpace
Here’s a stellar live version of “Call Me The Breeze”, with JJ and Mr. Clapton (sweet guitar, Eric)…