I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag - Country Joe and the Fish

I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag - Country Joe and the Fish

2:54
Songs Of Opposition, 1965

Written by Country Joe McDonald

Okay, first, I always assumed, probably like many other people, that the Fish was the backing band, like the E Street Band.  Well, it's actually meant to be one guy, Barry "The Fish" Melton, the guitarist.  This version of the famous protest rag isn't the one most often played, the live version preceded by "The Fish Cheer."  It's an earlier, more folky version, released before the band even recorded their first album.  Well, this is a fantastic protest song, and I can't believe I never sat down and gave it a proper listen over the decades.  It summarizes the jingoistic industrial-military-Wall Street complex that got the United States mired in Vietnam, encapsulates the nihilistic bleakness of the era ("Whoopie, we're all gonna die!"), with black humor and dark irony.  "Come on fathers don't hesitate / Send your sons off before it's too late / And you can be the first one on your block / To have your boy come home in a box."  Now that the enlistment age has been raised to 42, this song's even more applicable today.

What You Get - They Might Be Giants

What You Get - They Might Be Giants

2:48

The World Is To Dig, 2026

Written by John Linnell and John Flansburgh

This song was originally written for the 2009 animated film Coraline, but was shelved and remained unreleased until 2026.  It's a classic Giants track that would have fit well on John Henry.  Lyrically, the song is a message of carpe diem (exhorting us to "make hay in the sun"), to experience life in all its vagaries, even though "you'll never know" what the mystery is all about.  I love the internal rhyme in the verses: "Xylophones made of bones / That you loaned from a boneyard / Play you out with a galliard / Whistle along by the boneyard."  The galliard is an athletic dance, characterized by leaps, jumps, and hops, popular in Renaissance Europe.  

Hit the Ground - They Might Be Giants

Hit the Ground - They Might Be Giants

2:30

The World Is To Dig, 2026

Written by John Linnell and John Flansburgh

This is a song about a lost love, framed with the imagery of the stage magician.  He's dragged off by his assistants, mumbling apologies.  His heart is broken and he can't (with all his power?) turn back the clock.  He feels powerless, drugged.  "Sim-sala-bim, everything's so dim / But my saucer eyes don't blink / My pencils are lined up like a firing squad / And there's something in my drink."  Sim-sala-bim is a phrase used by magicians, akin to abracadabra, originated or perhaps just popularized by Danish-American illusionist Dante the Magician.  It's delivered in a sort of neo-soul croon, crossed with eerie '60s keyboard frills.

Character Flaw - They Might Be Giants

Character Flaw - They Might Be Giants

2:51

The World Is To Dig, 2026

Written by John Linnell and John Flansburgh

This song, about a terrible person, brings to my mind the Giants' "Icky," another catchy song about an unpleasant man who conveniently forgets obligations and gets all up in your face.  But this one also, inevitably, evokes the current corrupt demented slug in the White House: "Tearing up the whole town / Breaking every law / People go out of their way to miss my character flaw / It's the flawiest flaw that you have ever saw / Everyone already knows about my character flaw."  I mean, if you were setting out to write a song about a human (technically) who's all of the seven deadly sins wrapped in a prancing, deluded, makeup-caked, obese pustule of a package, those lines would be pretty apt.  I have read that other people interpret the song wildly differently, even identifying with the narrator as some sort of transgressive rebel who owns his or her unique personality, but I think that requires some self-absorption and dismissal of the final verse about the carnage the narrator has created.

Outside Brain - They Might Be Giants

Outside Brain - They Might Be Giants

2:01

The World Is To Dig, 2026

Written by John Flansburgh and John Linnell

This is a super catchy, '60s garage pop-influenced track held together by Marty Beller's frenetic drumming.  The rapid fire guitar riffs and the express-train drum line support the lyrics, a slideshow of images representing a wave of anxiety and mania that somehow you have done the wrong thing, that everyone is starting at you, that you've missed some invisible social cue.  "The panic of a blown-out fuse / I can't take much more bad news / Spinning in this busted chair / Headstrong and unprepared."

Get Down - They Might Be Giants

Get Down - They Might Be Giants

2:47

The World Is To Dig, 2026

Written by John Flansburgh and John Linnell

The Giants just released their first album in five years, so I'm going to explore it.  TMBG is one of my top five bands of all time.  I remember clearly being entranced by the video for "Don't Let's Start" on MTV around 1986 when I was an impressionable youth of 15 or so.  Oh, there's more in the rearview mirror than in the road ahead at this point!  Anyhoo, this song's got a razor-sharp horn line and an urgent tone.  It's a call to get down.  The Johns have always had a knack for finding and exploiting words and phrases that can be interpreted more than one way.  There's value here, the lyrics aside, to the ambiguity of whether you take this phrase to mean ducking for cover or grooving to a beat.  In the lyrics, instructions come from space and baffle the world: "Just as we were hearing the news / The announcer's voice was cut off / The signal went dead and it cut to a different feed / A metallic and alien voice began speaking / Get down / I'm telling you for your own good / Right now you should."

Cryin' Heart Blues - The Del McCoury Band

Cryin' Heart Blues - The Del McCoury Band

2:59

The Family, 1999

Written by Lou Willie Turner, 1951

This song's credit goes to Big Joe Turner's wife, though probably he wrote it and credited her to give her an income stream in the event of his death.  Anyway, the song was recorded by honky-tonk duo Johnnie and Jack in 1951.  This version is a bluegrass gem, with leisurely banjo and mandolin picking interplay, high nasal tenor vocals, and high harmonies.  The Del McCoury Band really just has no close rivals in the bluegrass game.

Lucy Mae Blues - Frankie Lee Sims

Lucy Mae Blues - Frankie Lee Sims

2:27

single, 1953

Written by Frankie Lee Sims and Ishman Bracey

Sims was Lightnin' Hopkins' cousin, and only issued nine singles during his career.  The songwriting credit on this one goes to Sims and Ishman Bracey, who wrote the very similar "Saturday Blues" in 1928.  It's a slinky electric blues, in which the narrator has a lady for every day of the week, but "Better not let my, good gal catch you here / Ain't no tellin' what poor little Lucy Mae do."  Sims sings the lyrocs in a mush-mouth growl as his guitar does all the heavy lifting.  I like the line "She left one Christmas coming back that afternoon / Next time I see her, boy, it was the nineteenth of June."

Mother-In-Law Blues - Junior Parker

Mother-In-Law Blues - Junior Parker

2:35

single, 1956

Written by Don Robey

This is a straightforward, midtempo Mississippi blues about losing your baby.  Despite the title, the lady in question doesn't seem to be the source of the narrator's leaving; she seems to have made up her mind on her own, based on his drinking.  "I could hear her tell her mother, 'That's one no good man!' / Well, I watched my baby leave, her mother had her by the hand."  Parker himself provides the wailing, pleading harmonica lines that meld with his plaintive voice in bewailing his loss.

Bad Luck Blues - Guitar Slim

Bad Luck Blues - Guitar Slim

2:54

single, 1954

Written by Guitar Slim?

Guitar Slim died at age 32 of pneumonia, which is a musical tragedy, because he could have been a legend.  He experimented with guitar distortion and when playing live, showed off such musical tricks and playing while perched on the shoulders of his assistant, with his guitar behind his back, or (as Hendrix would a decade later) plucking the strings with his teeth.  This is a slow electric Mississippi blues.  Slim bellows the lyrics with the gravitas that only those who shared his rough upbringing can muster.  Lyrically, it's standard blues phraseology: "My woman, she have quit me, baby / And all my womens have put me down / Yes, I’ve got no money in my pocket, baby / And my friends don't come around."