You know the whole Bob Dylan bootleg thing has gotten out of control when I’m looking for a YouTube clip of today’s Random SOTD and I dig up at least four outtake versions, none of which appear to be the one I need.
Last year Dylan released an 18 CD set of every song recorded during the 1965-66 studio sessions that resulted in Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde.
This Laurie Berkner duet with Tom Chapin is indeed a happy song, but I wouldn’t call it the happiest song I know.
For starters, I would submit that Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’ is a happier song than this. R.E.M.’s ‘Shiny Happy People’ is, too. And those are just songs with “happy” in the title.
Way back in ’09, I did a week of happy songs that included the R.E.M. tune as well as Simon & Garfunkel’s ’59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)’ among others.
The title track from Belle & Sebastian’s third studio album, 1998’s The Boy With the Arab Strap, is a quintessential B&S song. It’s delicate, quietly rollicking, precious but snarky, unmistakably the work of this wonderful, improbable band.
Lead singer/songwriter Stuart Murdoch took the “Arab Strap” reference in this song from a Scottish band of the same name. He didn’t realize it referred to a device used by men to maintain erections.
Surprisingly, I’ve never featured Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ before, though I’ve blogged about four other tracks on the 9-song So album. This song was the record’s biggest hit, and Gabriel’s biggest North American hit, period.
Two other interesting bits of trivia I learned from the song’s Wikipedia page: the song ‘Sledgehammer’ replaced at #1 on the charts was ‘Invisible Touch’ by Gabriel’s former band, Genesis; and ‘Sledgehammer’ is the most-played video of all time by MTV.
The last time I featured a Maria McKee song on the blog — a little under two years ago, on another Random Weekend — I had the same thing to say that I was going to write now.
So I’ll just quote myself:
One of the nice things about Random iTunes Weekends is that I’m sometimes introduced to a brand-new song from my own collection.
I have no idea who Maria McKee is or how her album, Life is Sweet, ended up in my music library. I assume I got it at a dollar sale in a cut-out bin back in the days of CDs.
Meet Me In Montauk 