John Hiatt’s 2000 album Crossing Muddy Waters is an entirely acoustic affair, recorded with two backing musicians and no drums. It was the first fully acoustic recording in the legendary singer-songwriter’s storied career.
Today’s random selection is the title track, one that (like many of Hiatt’s songs) has been performed by many others. I can’t imagine you’ll find a more effective version than this one, though.
This is the third Random Weekend appearance of a song from Green Day’s 2004 punk rock opera, American Idiot. While I enjoy the album, it’s telling that I have never posted about it deliberately but only through these random spins of the musical dial.
I’ve always appreciated this album more for the musical variety than the story, which I haven’t taken the time to fully comprehend. Today’s track introduces St. Jimmy, the alter ego of Jesus of Suburbia, and blah blah blah.
‘Hotwax,’ the second track on Beck’s breakthrough 1996 album Odelay, sums up the genre-busting weirdness of that album quite nicely.
This song mixes a blues guitar riff with hip-hop beats, rapped lyrics and a Spanish-language chorus, and emerges as something wholly unique. Or at least as unique as everything else on Odelay, which is full of sonic mind-fucks like this.
This early Joni Mitchell song is one of her most popular, having been covered by more than 200 artists. It follows a boy through childhood, comparing the passage of time to a carousel.
Mitchell released this song on her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon, a few years after it had already shown up on albums by Buffy Sainte-Marie and Tom Rush.
Nil Lara is a Miami musician who my wife and I saw live a few times back in the 90s. His early self-released albums and EPs were excellent.
Lara signed with a major label in 1995, releasing a self-titled album that collected his best work in more polished (and less effective, IMO) form. He didn’t put out another album until 2004’s Da, on which today’s SOTD is the opening track.
Meet Me In Montauk 