Hot Burrito #1 - The Flying Burrito Brothers

Hot Burrito #1 - The Flying Burrito Brothers

3:37

The Gilded Palace Of Sin, 1969

Written by Chris Etheridge and Gram Parsons

The Burritos came about after Gram parsons, who'd helped lead the Byrds into country-rock, refused to tour South Africa, and left the band with Chris Hillman.  This song is a bitter complaint about a breakup.  The line "I'm your toy" is famous (and even become the title of come later covers), but I think the first verse is some of the coldest spite this side of Bob Dylan: "You may be sweet and nice / But that won't keep you warm at night / 'Cause I'm the one who showed you how / To do the things you're doing now."  Over a drifting, almost narcotic groove, Gram Parsons sings with a bruised tenderness that never quite resolves into anger or acceptance.

Hallo Bimmelbahn - Nighttrain

Hallo Bimmelbahn - Nighttrain

3:22

single, 1973

Written by Jürgen Huth, Heinz Huth, Michael Holm

Nighttrain is a German rock duo.  This song, listed on the original single as simply "Bimmelbahn," is about a man who watches his lady get on a tram and leave him.  Translated from the German: "The tourist train, it hissed, my sweetheart wanted to ride along / And I called after her, don’t leave me all alone."  The narrator bemoans the loss of the tram as well as his love, adding a plaintive "bye bye bye" in English.  The song was covered and transformed by Boney M. in 1979; they left in the catchy "oooh oooh hoo" chorus, but changed the setting to the Caribbean.

I Killed Sally's Lover - The Avett Brothers

I Killed Sally's Lover - The Avett Brothers

2:37

A Carolina Jubilee, 2003

Written by Scott Avett, Seth Avett, and Bob Crawford

Featuring rapid-fire banjo picking that would make Del McCoury proud, this is an old-timey bluegrass murder ballad.  Finding the titular Sally in bed with another man, the narrator calls for his shotgun and pocket blade and slays the adulterer. Unlike in many of these songs, though, he doesn't then direct the violence toward his faithless paramour: "But I just ain't that mean / So I go and get my murder tools / I throw them in the lake / Gonna steal me an automobile / And drive so far away."  But he doesn't get far, ending the song, as is traditional, with advice to other poor sad sacks who may be moved to crimes of passion: "A bleeding heart is better than the penitentiary."  Avett screams the last lyrics, the anguish of a man breaking rocks while Sally lives it large with her new lover.

Dying Crapshooter's Blues - Blind Willie McTell

Dying Crapshooter's Blues - Blind Willie McTell

3:11

single, 1940

Written by Blind Willie McTell

McTell recorded this song three times, but this is the original version, as evidenced by the spoken-word introduction, in which he says it's a song "I made myself, originally this is from Atlanta."  Interestingly, he wrote it around 1927 and it was recorded in that era by several different women blues singers, but he didn't commit it to wax until 1940.  Over a sparse twelve-string, McTell lays out the hallucinatory dying wish of the funeral of a gambler who used "crooked cards and dice," shot by the police; the reason is not given.  The dying man demands, among other things, police in his funeral march, the high sheriff at the head playing blackjack. "One foot up, a toenail dragging / Throw my buddy Jesse in the hoodoo wagon."  A marked card on his hearse, the judge putting dice in his shoes.  "I want nine men going to the graveyard / But only eight mens comin' back."  It's an eerie, surreal vision, the revenge poetry of the damned, and it's easy to see how this ironic black humor inspired Dylan's later, similarly hallucinatory jeremiads.

Fixin' To Die Blues - Bukka White

Fixin' To Die Blues - Bukka White

2:48

single, 1940

Written by Bukka White

This song is a prime example of prewar Chicago blues.  I know the version from Bob Dylan's first album, which has many of the same lyrics but is as transformed as Led Zeppelin's reinventions of blues standards.  This one is just an insistent bottleneck guitar riff with backing from Washboard Slim, a counterpoint to White's worn but forceful vocal.  The lyrics circle familiar blues themes of death and loss, but without delving into melancholy.  It's bleak but realistic, all motion, rhythm, and the stubborn insistence on going with dignity ("Mother take my children back, 'fore they let me down / I don't need for them to be screamin' and cryin' on the graveyard ground").

I Don't Intend To Die In Egyptland - Josh White

I Don't Intend To Die In Egyptland - Josh White
3:03
single, 1933

Written by Josh White

The title is also sometimes listed as "Egypt Land," with a space.  This is a placid but catchy spiritual, the lyrics citing Pontius Pilate, the Garden of Eden, and Moses.  "The Pilate's wife, she had a dream / I don't intend to die in the Egypt land / That an honest man she seen / I don't intend to die in the Egypt land."  White's smooth voice, accompanied only by his sparse, eerie guitar, make this a compelling mix of dirge and gospel.  White was also an activist who recorded anti-segregation songs.  White also enjoyed a long and close relationship with the family of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and he became the first African-American artist to give a command performance at the White House, in 1941.

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.