Songs for the Weekend
We’ll be upstate at the Beefstock Festival til Sunday and will be full of news about it when we get back on Monday. Since the mountain valley up there has no frankenpines, and no cell or wifi service, unless we can score a dialup connection somewhere we’ll be (somewhat gratefully) offline til then. In order to keep the best 666 songs of alltime countdown going without missing a beat, Friday’s song is #111:
Phil Ochs – The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns
Like the Thresher, the Scorpion was a US nuclear submarine that went down off the coast of New Hampshire. Ochs uses the story as a springboard for his own tale of departing and never returning: “I’m not screaming, I’m not screaming, TELL ME I’M NOT SCREAMING!!!” The piano-based art-rock version on the classic Rehearsals for Retirement album, 1968 is pretty intense, but others prefer the janglerock guitar version on the live Edmonton album, recorded the same year but not released until the 90s.
Saturday’s song is #110:
Ninth House – Put a Stake Right Through It
In our predecessor e-zine’s first year of publication, 2000, this was their pick for best song of the year, a despairing, exhausted, Rachmaninoff-esque guitar-and-string-synth-fueled portrait of complete emotional depletion. From the Swim in the Silence cd.
And Sunday’s is #109:
The Dead Kennedys – Dead End
Written by guitarist East Bay Ray, this is a rare non-political song for these guys, but still a great one, all trebly reverb-drenched guitar with characteristically melodic bassline and morbid lyrics. From Plastic Surgery Disasters, 1983.
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