Clang & Clatter

I just wanna wake up with IckMusic’s Friday Five.

Counting Crows - “Have You Seen Me Lately?” (Recovering the Satellites, 1996)
Counting Crows seems to get a bad rap, but I have always loved these guys. OK, Adam Duritz can be a bit much at times, what with the hair and his fondness for completely rearranging vocal melodies, or lyrics, or even entire songs live. While I really like the energy of the album version, I think I prefer the acoustic version found on Across a Wire.

Anthrax - “Gung Ho” (The Greater of Two Evils, 2004)
Anthrax released this “live performance” reinterpretation of its early-period material with then vocalist John Bush. As if this sacrilege wasn’t enough—at least in the eyes of diehard fans who refused to acknowledge Bush-era Anthrax in the first place—the band fell headlong into drama of soap opera proportions that found them with a revolving door in the vocalist position: Bush, Joey Belladonna, Dan Nelson, Bush again, and now currently Belladonna. All that to say that while I love Bush-era Anthrax as well as Bush as a vocalist (especially fronting Armored Saint), I’m not a big fan of the versions found on TGOTE.

Switchfoot - “Dare You to Move” (The Beautiful Letdown, 2003)
While a very strong album in its own right, this disc was a bit of a letdown for me (har har har!) compared with my favorite of their releases New Way To Be Human, seeing the band move in a more radio-friendly sound that helped them break big outside the CCM market. This song is actually a repeat—albeit with a much better mix here—from the band’s previous album, Learning to Breathe, where it was by far the strongest and most accessible track.

Beatallica - “A Garage Dayz Nite” (A Garage Dayz Nite, 2001)
A Beatles/Metallica mashup by a band with a singer that does a very good James Hetfield impression? What’s not to like about that?!

Mae - “Someone Else’s Arms” (The Everglow, 2005)
I’m sure a band named after an acronym of a college course on the study of sensation, perception, emotion, and meaning in art and music is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it should be. Mae is big on hooks and pop sensibilities, and while some might dismiss them as an emo act based on a few of their songs, anyone who actually takes the time to listen would not be so quick to pigeonhole them as such.

It’s Friday. IckMusic. Friday Five. You know the drill.

At the Drive-In - “Skips on the Record” (Acrobat Tenement, 1996)
At the Drive-In. Love the attitude. Hate the out-of-tune guitars on their debut. And you can’t blame it on the usual culprit Omar Rodríguez-López since he was playing bass at the time.

I Mother Earth - “Three Days Old” (Scenery and Fish, 1996)
iTunes is at it again. This week it’s a another selection from I Mother Earth’s second release. This particular tune has too many thematic shifts for me to really get into. Your mileage may vary.

Switchfoot - “Twenty-four” (The Best Yet, 2008)
Switchfoot is one of those CCM bands that I really used to like (around the New Way to be Human era) but is becoming much harder to stomach of late since becoming so popular. I purchased this “best of” collection for my pre-teen son who began to listen to some of their songs a couple of years ago. “Twenty-four” comes from the fourth release The Beautiful Letdown, which was the last major release from the band that I purchased, and is the band’s typical radio-friendly ballad, not that that’s a bad thing. Had I known at the time that The Best Yet was the usual last-ditch effort to cash in on the band by the record company after Switchfoot ended contract relations with Columbia/Sony, I would have refused to buy it.

King’s X - “Prisoner” (King’s X, 1992)
One of my all-time favorite King’s X tunes from their often-overlooked—though at one point most popular and best-selling—self-titled fourth release. This was the last album on which the band would work with manager/producer Sam Taylor, citing the usual creative differences reason. Seeing as the band’s next release was the stripped-down, grunge-ish Dogman, and hindsight being what it is, it’s not hard to believe that now. King’s X retains that classic King’s X sound from the first three albums, but introduces a bit of a darker side, both sonically and lyrically. Guitarist Ty Tabor’s playing is excellent throughout the entire album as it is here on “Prisoner,” making the album worth checking out if for that reason alone.

Toad the Wet Sprocket - “Scenes from a Vinyl Recliner” (Bread and Circus, 1989)
I first heard this song on a live bootleg of a Glen Phillips solo concert, and I much prefer that stripped-down acoustic version to the one on the TTWS debut album. That being said, I love the song, and in typical Glen Phillips fashion, the lyrics and song title become deep and weighty as you dig into them, with the allusions to the “circus” portion of the album title (itself a phrase that has come to mean to placate the masses) and the hint of comfortably and safely watching the misfortunes of others from the outside. Deep.

Hey, no Rush or Geoff Tate this time. I guess that’s something.