The Shuffle

The best songs I heard while running yesterday:

1. "Get to Know You" by the Vandalias. This is from one of the Yellow Pills compilations of power-pop. It's classic late-period crunchy power-pop, and catchy, too, of course. Plus, it has this magic chord in the chorus, the same magic chord that The Beatles use all the time. I don't know what it is, exactly, but you know it when you hear it. It's that transitional chord, that minor-seventh, or something.

2. "Message to the Boys" by the Replacements. One of the two new songs on the Don't You Know collection. I won't argue that this is, like, the equal of "Left of the Dial" or "Alex Chilton" or "Favorite Thing" "Color Me Impressed," but it is good. And it's got a great opening line: "Met her in bar / Like I always say." And maybe that's almost too easy a line for a Westerberg song, but it acknowledges it's own self-mythology, right?

3. "Shake Some Action" by the Flamin' Groovies. This one speaks for itself.

I suppose a real blog-person would go ahead and link to some on-line shop offering those albums for sale. Right.