40 Watt Gigolo

Well here it is, The 30 Songs I Digged Most In 2017, a quasi-annual celebration of the best songs to catch my ear and appear in this blog.

I found 2017 to be a wildly unsettling year in music. You get a sense that the landscape is shifting and that this "era" is coming to an end.  What comes next is anybody's guess.

Compiling these songs, I found that major genres - like jazz, blues, folk, reggae, rap, hip-hop, soul, and dub - are, on the surface of things, largely absent.  However, you find them captured - in a morphed kind of way - in music that is labeled "alternative."

I'm not sure that I know what alternative means anymore.  It has become so expansive, not just in terms of its underpinning influences and vibe, but in its diversity of performers and instrumentation.  Sometimes I wonder what it is an "alternative" to.

Maybe its an alternative to white guys with guitars?  In honesty, although I am a white guy with a guitar, I found this music a…

So here is the tenth and final episode of 2017 In Aspic.  My goal with this series was to create a document detailing the songs that I enjoyed most this year.  All of the 140 songs included in the series appeared in my blog throughout the year.

My greatest regret is that I did not have time to include some of the other 50 songs I blogged about.

This mix is wildly eclectic.  It swings from alternative to R&B, jazz, country, and rock a bit more abruptly than the other mixes in the series, but I feel like that might just be a good thing.

This mix continues to emphasize a common theme of 2017: how artists of all ages and genres can meld together to create something cohesive and beautiful.

You will find older artists like Mavis Staples and Eddie Palmieri delivering tunes that stand up against their great works of 50 years ago.  On the flipped, you find artists like Cigarettes After Sex and Nai Palm release amazing debut records.  And when you mix it together, it sounds fantastic.

I re…

from the album Hard To Sleep, Easy To Dream (2017)

There was was a time, centuries ago, when the world was amazingly small.  Over the course of a lifetime, most people never travelled far from their villages and their lives were remarkably similar to prior generations in terms of opportunity and technology.

In these small communities, people could stand out.  Shine.  There was the woman who baked the best pies, the woman with the most beautiful garden, the brothers who distilled the finest whiskey.  In this world, people could excel, feel important, and be proud.

Then came the railroads.  The telegraph.  Suddenly, communities were better connected and people could taste better pies, visit more beautiful gardens, drink finer whiskey.  And sadly, many of those who once shined found themselves a bit more ordinary.

Fast forward to today.  We live in the blossoming of the Informations Age.  Commerce is global.  Intercontinental travel is measured in hours.  Five billion videos are watched …

from the album A Deeper Understanding (2017)

With its extended length (over 11 minutes) and a modern, rambling vibe that evokes comparisons to Neil Young and Bob Dylan for its '70s FM radio sheen and its exquisite guitar and harmonica work, Thinking Of A Place is perhaps my favorite song of 2017.

My fascination with this song is driven from its lyrics.  Its use of metaphor is poetic, Homeric, and beautiful, with light serving as a metaphor for love.  Conversely, darkness represents love's absence.

The song opens with the singer laying on the banks of the Missouri River - in Little Banks, South Dakota - basking in the sunlight, which slips into darkness.  From there, the singer follows the moon across the countryside, trying endlessly to recapture the light.

Instrumental and vocal melodies serpentine, as the haunting chorus speaks to the quest for love:

I'm moving through the dark
Of a long black night
Just moving with the moon
And the light it shines
And I'm thinking of a p…