Pandemic jukebox

Just how it feels right now...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iEId2vmb0M

Pandemic jukebox 2

One Summer evening in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul, in the 1990's, my wife and I went out to sit on the front steps of the four-plex Queen Anne house we lived in. Someone was playing music really loud. We could hear it reverberating through the ground in that way that overemphasizes the bass and drums and makes it hard to pick out the singing and melody. But at some point we were able to pick out that it was R.E.M.

"Who would play this so loud?" We asked each other.

Then "How could anyone play it so loud like this?"

And then the other strange, wonderful shoe dropped.

We lived a mile or two from a stadium where a popular minor league baseball club played at the time- Midway Stadium. The place also sometimes hosted concerts. We saw Bob Dylan there once with Ani Difranco. And once, one Summer evening in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul, in the 1990's, my wife and I went out to sit on the front steps and we heard R.E.M. playing there live in a way that mysteriously carried through the humid air all the way to us.

This was that time!

And all of that is to introduce what I firmly believe is the greatest music video ever made. Of course I adore the song, but to bring it to film and actually deepen it is an astonishing act of art.

If you've never seen it the subtitles may throw you at first, as I think they maybe did me. They are not accidentally there. Stick with it.

I hope you like it:


Everybody Hurts

Pandemic Jukebox

In doing my hundred greatest albums of all time I regularly wonder: How will I fit the Kinks in there? They are easily one of my favorite bands of all time, but I'm not sure there is any album in particular that I can pick out. For me, more than any album, it's all those... songs.

As we stroll through the pandemic, with some of us dropping away to die (well, I mean, I HOPE not!), I do plan on providing a jukebox. I mean, can't you listen to a song or two from the computer you're at right now? And if you can, maybe you should listen to what, for me, belongs as the absolute song of the Pandemic.

Yes, THE SONG OF THE PANDEMIC!

Strangers on this road we are on. We are not two we are one.

Come on.

Maybe sometimes the songs I'll be sharing here will just be the music, but if I can, well: this is not only one of the most lovely Kink's songs, and one of the most lovely songs ever written, but as seen here it is from one of the most beautiful passages of film I have ever seen. 

I'm sorry that maybe it cuts off. I hate that, but I do beg you to take a look.

A favorite song in a favorite movie and absolutely essential to our current moment:

Strangers





Bonuses for those of you doing the deep dive:

Keep in mind this is the second best song writer in the Kinks!

An enormously personable cover

You guys like the Kinks?

And one more singer I like



but these are all just footnotes.