Hey folks. This is the first of a planned series of games of Name That Tune. Each of them is also a puzzle. Here’s how this one works:

I have uploaded twenty-one very brief song clips. Most of the songs are famous; none of them are obscure. They are drawn from a variety of styles and decades, from the 1950s to the present. It’s likely that you’ll find a few of them instantly recognizable, while a few others you won’t know at all (but other people will).

There are two parts to this game. The first is guessing the songs themselves. The second part is guessing the puzzle song (clip 21). The first letters of the names of the musicians for songs one through twenty spell a clue to the identity of song 21. (And if song 21 is guessed early, that ought to help nail down the rest of the songs.)

Some songs may go unguessed the first time round. If songs remain unguessed after a day, I’ll upload longer clips.

The Rules (subject to modification in future games):

• Maximum 3 guesses between updates of the list, to give everyone a chance to play. (Updates will be made in the comments, filling in the spaces with the correct guesses so people can see the puzzle coming together.)
• Clip 21 may only be guessed once between updates.
• While I’m not going to be a stickler for spelling and punctuation, you must guess the correct musician and song title to a close approximation.

And here are the song clips:

1. Clip 1
2. Clip 2
3. Clip 3
4. Clip 4
5. Clip 5
6. Clip 6
7. Clip 7
8. Clip 8
9. Clip 9
10. Clip 10
11. Clip 11
12. Clip 12
13. Clip 13
14. Clip 14
15. Clip 15
16. Clip 16
17. Clip 17
18. Clip 18
19. Clip 19
20. Clip 20

And the Big Puzzle Clip:
Clip 21

If you’d prefer to download all the clips at once, we have a zip file and an rar file.

I suggest subscribing to the comments on the post (click on “Track Comments”) to more easily follow the progress of the game. Have fun!

Popularity: 23% [?]

Mainstream Rock: Steve Miller Band, “I Want to Make the World Turn Around” (1986)

Scott: Man, I really like this tune. Its moodiness and slinky backbeat really resonate. His guitar playing reminds me of Gilmour in his ’80s heyday. I don’t even mind that sax part.

John: Well, it’s no “Bongo Bongo,” that’s for sure. Talk about making a hasty retreat from synthpop to Glenn Frey-ville. Some people call him the Midnight Cowboy — I call him the Gangster of Sludge. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 19% [?]

My friend Solly came down last weekend on a miniature vacation from Seattle. She was unlucky enough to have the rain follow her down and catch up to her by Monday, but the weekend was still nice, if chilly. I had checked the local listings to see if anyone decent was playing; I noticed the Les Savy Fav listing but ignored it. I’d had a chance to see them play a couple years ago with The Hold Steady up at the Avalon (the first show I saw after I moved to LA) and ended up leaving early; watching Craig Finn close their set with a blue-lit version of “Killer Parties” was all I needed to complete my night. But Solly found the listing herself and proposed we go, and although I balked at paying an $8.00 service charge to Ticketmaster for advance tickets, the show hadn’t sold out by Saturday afternoon so after dinner at El Coyote, we parked on 9th Street and walked the two blocks up to Wilshire to try our luck at the box office. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 17% [?]

This is a pretty vast digression from the concerts I’m normally going to review here. For one thing, I don’t normally patronize “the arts.” For another, the bands I see are normally “on tour” and after reading this review there is a potential that you can “go see them.” But the ticket cost fifty bucks (most likely to be paid for by my girlfriend, since she bought the tickets and at this point is still refusing to cash the check I wrote to her), so I figured I’d be damned if I’m not going to at least attempt to write about it. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 20% [?]

“Who cares what I think? I’m not the president. I’m just a storyteller, man.”

So says Bob Dylan — or, at least, Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn as Bob Dylan — in Todd Haynes’ wonderful, baffling film I’m Not There. But whether Quinn/Dylan’s dismissal is sincere, or just part of his circa ‘65 scramble to negate every aspect of his public image, the question he poses is one with which artists and entertainers have been struggling for decades. Their celebrity brings access to cameras and microphones, but does it also bring the ability — or the responsibility — to influence political debates and even turn elections? Can actors and pop stars really change the world by speaking their minds? Should they bother trying? And, honestly, who cares what they think? Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 17% [?]

Canadian Nick Gilder had a penchant for writing sugary-sweet pop/rock songs about underage hookers/street trash/what have you for a couple of years in the mid-‘70s with Canada’s glam answer to The Sweet, Sweeney Todd. But after scoring a #1 hit and a Juno Award up north in 1975 with the single “Roxy Roller,” Gilder struck out on his own for solo stardom, giving a young 16-year old Bryan Adams his shot as Sweeney Todd’s new lead singer (wonder whatever happened to that Adams kid?).

Gilder’s first solo album came and went with nary a blip, but in 1978, the lead single off his second album, City Nights, changed everything. “Hot Child in the City” hit the top of the charts in the U.S. and Canada — and made the Top Ten in quite a few other territories — making Gilder the one of the hottest new superstars in rock.

Then came follow-up time.

”Here Comes the Night” seemed a natural for City Nights‘ second single. It was written by Gilder and his guitarist James McCulloch, just like “Hot Child in the City.” It was instantly catchy, just like “Hot Child in the City.” It was about hot jailbait, just like “Hot Child in the City.” But it was a flop, not like “Hot Child in the City.”

To this day, I’m confounded by “…Night’s” failure to become a hit. As a admittedly pop-forward-thinking 10-year old, I bought the 45 and wore it out, even more than “Hot Child.” I even held up my little portable cassette player to my stand-alone phonograph and recorded it over and over, so I’d have the song on a nice loop and wouldn’t have to wait for the tone arm to go back and forth before I could hear it again.

This explains much about me.

“Here Comes the Night” peaked at #44 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart in 1978.

City Nights was recently re-released on CD alongside the next Nick Gilder album Frequency as a two-fer — you can grab them both for a decent price on Amazon

Popularity: 22% [?]

In New Hampshire, we’ve been shot up good with presidential political shrapnel for more than a year. We get canvassed on our home and cell phones, we get out-of-state college students knocking at our doors to interrupt dinner with a smile and a plug, and (this was the worst) we get Ron Paul henchmen handing us fliers while sitting in traffic on I-93 during a snowstorm waiting for tow trucks to clear an accident up ahead.

In that case, just roll down the window and smile to accept the material, it’s the fastest way to get rid of them. Even though you might be tempted to mess with them and say “Your man Ron says he’s against something he calls ‘birthright citizenship,’ which I sense has something to do with the children of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil, but my four-year-old in the back seat here is worried you are going to rip him out of our home and send him to Iceland if he gets elected so we refuse to vote for your man.” Just to show those goofy twits that you are paying attention to the race and are ashamed that they have bought into that candidate’s particular brand of jive.

This primary business can be overwhelming, but Jan. 8 is the end of it. We Granite State voters wield zero power nationally once our little popularity contest is over. The candidates won’t be back, ever, whether they win or lose the primary.

So our time is now, and we take our mission quite seriously: Thinning the candidate herd so that voters back in my home state of Ohio, for instance, don’t screw up any worse than they have in recent years.

We listen to debates. We read the papers. We can’t help but hear the spin of every broadcast pundit. Especially the loudest, crassest buffoons on the right: Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and the jack-assiest of them all, Michael Savage — unholy triumvirs who cast a putrid stench on politics, squelch intelligent debate, and in general give so many people permission to feel good about being callous, uncaring, ugly Americans.

While I am proud, flag-waving liberal, I’m also tired of my side’s reasonable, measured responses to this garbage, as John Lee Hooker liked to refer to some of the people in his personal universe. I’m tired of our side meekly offering milquetoast, spineless ripostes to the right-wing TV clowns who focus on issues that completely don’t matter: Who cares about whether gay men and women can marry if the hospital’s about to foreclose on my house because I can’t pay my medical bills? Really? Who gives a flying freak?

It’s all too much. Besides my own self, I trust one other commentator. You want political Wisdom with a capital “W,” you go to John Lee Hooker. That’s why, before I vote, I’m ordering up “Democrat Man” (download), a cold shot from the box set called, simply, Hooker.

He played his guitar in the no-spin zone, where he ain’t got no shoes. Clearly, however, he’s no fool, and can see that he’s not the only one pissed off with the situation at hand, and we’re all gonna vote. Won’t be too long, he says, until election time, and the Democrats get back in again.

Popularity: 21% [?]

What is a basement song? It has nothing to do with the Basement Tapes. I can only think of a couple Dylan and /or Band songs that may qualify as a basement song. My best description of a basement song is that it’s a personal tune that settles into a certain moment or moments of your life and stays with you. For the rest of your life, within seconds of hearing it, a basement song can transport you to a time or place, often causing you to relive emotions, good or bad. As I can only write about my own experiences, that’s what will fill this space each week. One song. One moment in a lifetime of music. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 31% [?]

Chuck Mangione - Love Notes (1982)
purchase this album (Amazon)

In all the months since Jefitoblog bit the dust, I don’t think a week has gone by that I haven’t received some kind of communication from a distressed former reader, wondering if and when the site would be coming back.

Well, friends, we’re back together again. This is what you’ve been waiting for: Chuck Mangione! Right in your ear! Ha ha ha! Was it worth the wait?

Mangione has actually undergone a sort of rebirth since the mid-to-late ’90s, thanks to his appearances on King of the Hill, as well as the fact that he performed “Feels So Good,” also known as “The Greatest Smooth Jazz Song of All Time, Ever,” a song so good it very nearly validates the existence of smooth jazz. But not quite. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 26% [?]

With Popdose having just rolled off the showroom floor all shiny and new, still full of that “new car smell,” I am chuffed to the ‘nads to be a part of such a venture. Never before has such an intimidating conglomeration of blog talent been gathered to unleash their musical musings upon the world. Truth be told, you, faithful Popdose readers, are some lucky sumbitches.

Seriously, think of Popdose as a real-life Justice League — except, instead of skin-tight spandex, snazzy masks, and flowing capes, the superheroes of the Popdose variety are adorned in ripped sweats, t-shirts with all manner of long-defunct band, record company, or dot.com logos, and mandatory bathrobes with loads of rear ventilation. Don’t let appearances fool you, though. We’re bad-ass. For example, I’ve been known to tag a misbehaving neighbor kid from thirty paces with a well-aimed slipper without spilling a drop of morning java.

Being that the odometer has rolled clean past 999999 on yet another year and we prepare to write “2008” on all checks from this point onward, I’m betting that some of you are filled with a sense of hope that this year will somehow be better than ol’ ’07.

How the fuck could it not be?

To put it simply, 2007 was to music what Pamela Anderson-Lee-Rock-Salomon is to the institution of marriage.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a new year without the barrage of year-end Best Of lists being proffered by every nitwit who has ever fancied themselves a rock critic. So many critics, yet every list seem comprised of the same ten albums. Arcade Fire, Spoon, Feist, Amy Winehouse, Of Montreal, yada yada yada.

How can that be? Were only ten albums released in ’07?

That adult life is no different from high school is never more obvious than when you see critics the world over name-check the same small reservoir of bands and albums, unafraid to admit that they never really got around to listening to the new Sigur Ros CD, but feel compelled to place it high upon their lists nonetheless.

Round up these same scribes and relocate them to the nearest deserted isle with only their year-end Top 10 selections and a solar-powered iPod to keep them company, you can bet your sweet music-loving ass that each one of them would be throwing themselves from the highest cliff or chiseling away at their own ears with a monkey skull and crayfish claw within the hour.

See, that’s what happens when you listen to an Arcade Fire CD minus the roomful of irony-drenched hipsters and kitschy ambience of a slumming socialite’s Lower East End loft.

Airdrop a few copies of my “Antidote For Those Forced To Listen To Their Own Year-End Top 10 List Selections” (see below), and watch just how quickly the last remaining survivors remove their necks from the noose and embrace the care packages with tears pouring from their bloodshot eyes.

If only they hadn’t lopped off their ears and tossed the bloody lumps into the sea that first day.

My irony-free wish for 2008 is that great music is made, embraced, and praised to the ends of the earth by those in a position to bring about change from the sickening sameness that has tainted the well these past umpteen years.

Various Artists/Antidote For Those Forced To Listen To Their Own Year-End Top 10 List Selections (Hey, You Kids! Records)

Beatles - Revolution (acoustic)
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Mary Jane’s Last Dance
Cheap Trick - On Top Of The World
Slow Runner - Usual Chords
Heavens - Dead End Girl
Romantics - What I Like About You
Tourists - Week Days
Guster - One Man Wrecking Machine
Replacements - Talent Show
R.E.M. - At My Most Beautiful

Popularity: 35% [?]