ConCon

[koganbot]

Inspired by Scott Woods' list of His Top 10 Canadian singles, here are my Top 10 Connecticut songs. Criteria have something to do with important bandmember being reared in Connecticut, rather than, say, living there in your old age like Keith Richards. (And if you think the pickings are sparse for Connecticut, you should try Colorado, which gives us the Fray and Big Head Todd And The Monsters. And a bunch of people I've never heard of who for all I know may be good. Actually, Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire is from Denver.)

Oh yeah, and I put a limit of three on the Cassie songs allowable. And the only eligible Monkees songs were ones that Peter actually had something to do with:

1. Cassie "Turn The Lights Off"
2. Gene Pitney "Mecca"
3. Cassie "In Love With U"
4. Cassie "Me & U"
5. The Wildweeds "No Good To Cry"
6. Steam "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"*
7. The Monkees "Daydream Believer"
8. Weezer "The Good Life"
9. Sonic Youth "Kotton Krown"
10. Moby "Honey"

*Seems to contain a xylophone or glockenspiel.

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

i'd've put daydream believer much higher but that's because it reminds me of an advert for milk when i was younger & so i am more emotionally invested in it than most people, i suspect.

the bands from my home town are almost all so uniformally appalling it is hard to comprehend how they can have existed. we were, sadly, responsible for the cooper temple clause and are currently raining down terror with dan le sac and scroobius pip. although they're actually quite good for something from reading i s'pose.

[koganbot]

Two of these performers - Peter Tork of the Monkees and Rivers Cuomo of Weezer - actually are from my home town, though that's not where they made "Daydream Believer" or "The Good Life." And Peter is twelve years older than I am, and Rivers C. is sixteen years younger.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I've always thought about doing Montreal but being not very good at lists it's taken me several years. XD;

[brak55.livejournal.com]

I would do New York, but I'd have to call it NYCON and I'd probably get sued by some camera company.

Rochester would be interesting, but I'd have to pick from Chuck Mangione, Cab Calloway, Teddy Geiger, Lydia Lunch, Foreiger (Lou Gramm), Son House, Tweet, Mitch Miller and the Plasmatics (Wendy O. Williams).

Relatively long list. Not a long list of music I like.

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

This seems about right to me: Connecticut and the whole of Canada roughly equivalent in terms of pop excellence, with the here-and-now greatness of Cassie giving Connecticut a small leg up.

[koganbot]

Well, if Connecticut were a country, there'd be a lot of discussion about the fact that its musicians go elsewhere to record music. Of course, that's one of the features of a big modern country, that there is sizable geographic mobility in the workforce.

[koganbot]

But I wouldn't say that Moby's "Honey" is better than a lot of Canadian content you didn't name. Celine Dion's "When The Wrong One Loves You Right" comes immediately to mind; it wasn't a single, but to generate my Connecticut list I allowed myself to count nonsingles. Celine's single "Drove All Night" beats "Honey" too. As does a hunk of Neil Young. Probably there are tracks by Lime and by Tapps that'd beat "Honey" too.

Speaking of my list and Canadian content, the Poppy Family's cover of "No Good To Cry" went Top Ten in Canada in 1972, which is a lot better than the Wildweeds' original did in the U.S.

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

Well, my comment was clearly somewhat in jest... lots of other good-to-great Can-pop I can come up with, though the Celine song I like best is probably considered one of her more boring entries (I mean by people who listen more closely to her stuff than I have) - "A New Day Has Come," which I just find really pretty. The one Lime song that came close to making it was "Angel Eyes," which I like better than songs called "Angel Eyes" by both Abba and Jeff Healey. Lime are a group I probably like more than I'm aware of, if that makes sense (I mean, I really like what I've heard -- love the helium-voiced singer -- but haven't put in the hours with them to figure them out.) As for Neil... obviously, it's a big oversight, and he's my favourite Canadian pop artist, but none of my favourite songs by him were official singles, and that was a pretty clear instruction from the publisher. (Though maybe I should've checked Wikipedia for his full singles list... there may be stuff that charted low which I didn't consider. I would include the song "After the Goldrush," for instance, if it was a single.)

[koganbot]

If you can figure out how to conjure up a Voice link to Pazz & Jop 2002, you're a better man than I, but if one did exist and old ballots were available, mine would read:

SINGLES
1. Paulina Rubio - "Don't Say Goodbye" (Universal)
2. Tweet* - "Oops (Oh My)" (Gold Mind/Elektra)
3. N.O.R.E. - "Nothing" (Def Jam)
4. Kylie Minogue - "Can't Get You Out of My Head" (Capitol)
5. Celine Dion - "A New Day Has Come" (Epic)
6. Serial Rhyme Killers - "Something About Mary" (High Times)
7. Truth Hurts feat. Lata Mangeshkar and Rakim - "Addictive" (Aftermath)
8. Ian Van Dahl - "Castles in the Sky" (Robbins)
9. Tony Touch feat. Fat Joe, N.O.R.E., & Juju - "Capicu" (Tommy Boy)
10. Brandy - "What About Us" (Atlantic)

*As featured in Brak55's Rochester list from above.

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

BTW, I wonder if anything from this rap compilation would be worthy of a spot on your list:
http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/The_Third_Unheard:_Connecticut_Hip_Hop_1979-1983

(I bought this comp when it came out and still haven't given it a proper listen.)

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

sorry, screwed up the link. try this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Unheard:_Connecticut_Hip_Hop_1979-1983

[koganbot]

Might well, but at most I've heard only one track on it (the name "Mr. Magic" brushes a memory switch, but I think there was another Mr. Magic as well, a NY DJ, so I don't know).