It’s just another day in our hall-decked-but-still-essentially-random universe, wherein I pull out my whole laptop Christmas library, throw it in the air, and see what comes down first. Look out below.

“A Warm Little Home on a Hill”/Stevie Wonder. A charming holiday scene in waltz time. Like many of the original Christmas songs concocted by Motown songwriters, it flirts with terminal sappiness, but there’s something about Wonder’s delivery that keeps it from the edge of the ledge.

“The Mistletoe and Me”/Isaac Hayes. From a Stax compilation dated 1982, which features two versions of the great “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’,” by Mack Rice and Albert King, plus the Staple Singers’ “Who Took the Merry out of Christmas?,” all three of which have more going on than this holiday bedroom ballad.

“Kitty Cats Christmas”/Leon Redbone. Before the world was baffled by Bob Dylan’s Christmas album, I was baffled by Leon Redbone’s. (It occurs to me, however, that bafflement is part of the reaction Redbone means to provoke. Dylan, too.) Christmas Island was released in 1987 and reissued in 2003 with “Kitty Cats Christmas” as a bonus track. Despite the presence of a children’s chorus, it’s not awful.

“The Christmas Song”/Vince Guaraldi Trio. If this song is heard anywhere in A Charlie Brown Christmas, I’ve missed it the first 44 times I’ve watched the show, but I promise to pay extra-close attention the 45th time, which may be as soon as tonight.

“My Christmas Card to You”/Partridge Family. I must have known about the album A Partridge Family Christmas Card at its release in 1971, given that I was a fan of all things Partridge that year, yet I have no recollection of it. I would almost certainly have bought it if my brother didn’t, but he didn’t, and I didn’t. I recall being surprised to learn of it, which wasn’t until I saw it in a used bin at some point during the 1980s. (Did I buy it then? Hell and yes.) Partridge Family records were always heaped with sugar, but their Christmas album is especially sugary. If you’ve got a high tolerance for that sort of thing, “My Christmas Card to You” probably won’t hurt you.

“Swingin’ Silent Night”/Asleep at the Wheel. Lots of artists become paralyzed in the face of certain Christmas songs—afraid to mess with them and therefore, incapable of bringing anything new to them. The thing about “Silent Night” is that it’s both simple enough and beautiful enough to withstand new approaches, like the Western swing take of Asleep at the Wheel, recorded in 1997.

“Christmas Blues”/Canned Heat. Cut as a single sometime in the late 60s, “Christmas Blues” has appeared as a bonus track on a couple of different Canned Heat re-releases, and it’s been anthologized quite a bit. What hasn’t been anthologized quite so much is “Christmas Boogie,” which features a guest appearance by Alvin and the Chipmunks. I shit you not.

“O Holy Night”/Green Pajamas. The Green Pajamas are the living embodiment of indie: 20-some albums in 25 years and never a major-label deal. They cut their gorgeous version of “O Holy Night” in 2006, and it’s become a Christmas essential around my house.

“Christmas Time”/Jimmy McCracklin. Like Charles Brown, Jimmy McCracklin left the South (St. Louis, actually) for California after World War II and found his place in the blues scene out there. The only release date I can find for “Christmas Time” is 1961, but it sounds older than that.

“Little Drummer Boy”/Duke Pearson. From Merry Ole Soul, another of the classic Blue Note albums produced and engineered by Rudy Van Gelder, whose studio was actually in his house. The album is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and it would be a fine candidate for Blue Note’s ongoing series of remastered reissues. It’s a keeper.

“Swingin’ Silent Night”/Asleep at the Wheel (buy it here)
“O Holy Night”/Green Pajamas (I don’t know if you can get this or not; the band’s website is here)

It’s time again for a feature begun two years ago, in which I put my Christmas music stash on shuffle and we see what comes out. The list begins in an entirely predictable fashion.

“What Child Is This”/Vince Guaraldi Trio/A Charlie Brown Christmas. Fun fact about the special, which aired Tuesday night on ABC and will run again next week: two product placements for the show’s original sponsor, Coca-Cola, were edited out of the show in time for its fourth airing in 1968. In the opening, Linus goes flying while ice skating, but viewers never see him land because he crashes into a Coke sign. Later, he knocks a can off a fence with his blanket. In the original version, it was a Coca-Cola can. A short announcement at the end, wishing viewers “Merry Christmas from your local Coca-Cola bottler” was also removed.

“Please Come Home for Christmas”/Charles Brown/Blue Yule: Christmas Blues and R&B Classics. Don’t call him Charlie. Charles Brown recorded this first, in 1960, and it was famously covered by the Eagles. Other artists who’ve tackled it include Pat Benatar, James Brown, Dion, Fats Domino, the Drifters, Etta James, Aaron Neville, the Platters, various country singers, Southside Johnny (on the Home Alone soundtrack), the Three Degrees, and both Johnny and Edgar Winter.

“Silent Night”/Charlie Musselwhite/Alligator Records Christmas Collection. Theme of the post so far: all Charles all the time, apparently. This “Silent Night” is nicely done on harmonica.

“I Believe in Father Christmas”/Emerson Lake & Palmer/Works Volume 2. An atheist’s Christmas carol.

“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”/Harry Belafonte/Time-Life Treasury of Christmas Volume 2. I’m planning to write a whole post about this song, surprisingly dark yet at the same time undeniably hopeful. So stay tuned already.

“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and “Deck the Halls”/Moog Machine/Christmas Becomes Electric. Almost exactly the same vintage as Plastic Cow (1969), Christmas Becomes Electric got most of its fascination from being a Moog album at a time when the Moog synthesizer was the hottest technology going. Forty years later, it’s still a fairly pleasant listen, if you’re a particular kind of geek.

“Greensleeves”/Jimmy Smith/Organ Grinder Swing. B3 master Jimmy Smith recorded a Christmas album (Christmas Cookin’) in 1964, but the MP3 tag on this track says it’s from Organ Grinder Swing, which was released in 1965. I should probably compare the two to see if they’re the same recording, but this blog sucks, so I ain’t gonna.

“Medley” (various carols)/Living Strings/The Spirit of Christmas. Here’s an album that never gets out of the player at our house around the holidays. Two years ago I called it the greatest Christmas album of all time, and I haven’t changed my mind. This carol medley ends with a single string player (a viola, I think) playing “Silent Night,” and it’s one of the prettiest moments on the record.

“Lonely This Christmas”/Mud. This song spent a month at Number One in the UK starting just after Christmas in 1974 without charting in the States. (I wrote about it and some other British hits of 1974 here.) It’s where glam-rock meets doo-wop, but nobody wins, really.

Also: Today’s the 30th anniversary of the stampede at the Who concert in Cincinnati, in which 11 fans were killed. I’ll be writing about it at WNEW.com this weekend. It’s also the 41st anniversary of Elvis Presley’s 1968 comeback special. I wrote about that last year, and the post contains an error that’s bugged me ever since. I said that the special, which Col. Tom Parker had wanted to consist exclusively of Christmas tunes, didn’t contain a single one—but it did. A performance of “Blue Christmas,” which had been edited out originally, was restored at Parker’s insistence.

In the spirit of error, rather than posting the Elvis version, I’ll put up a different one that features some of  the whitest people in the world trying to get their doo-wop on.

“Blue Christmas”/Partridge Family (buy it here)

At this blog, I pride myself on offering not merely entertainment, but anything else you, the esteemed blog reader, might need. I have limits, however. Here’s a short list of six things I’ll do, and four things I won’t.

“I’ll Make Love to You Anytime”/Eric Clapton. From Backless, an album that many critics consider lifeless to the point of needing electroshock, but one I once dug quite a bit. (I’ve listened to a lot more Clapton in recent years, and I like Backless a lot less now as a result.) On this track, Clapton does not merely channel J.J. Cale, he does an impression of him.

“I’ll Remember April”/Miles Davis. The records Miles recorded for Prestige in the early 50s are about as good as he ever got. This is from Blue Haze, released in 1954 from sessions in 1953 and 1954. This track and several others feature Horace Silver on piano; Charles Mingus provides piano on one track.

“I’ll Understand”/Soul Children. An early single by the group Isaac Hayes and David Porter formed at Stax after their primary project, Sam and Dave, left the label. The group’s J. Blackfoot claimed Porter discovered him singing outside a liquor store on McLemore Avenue near the Stax studios, which is an R&B story if ever there was one.

“I’ll Close My Eyes”/Jimmy Smith. This was the flipside of the single release of “Organ Grinder Swing,” which crept to Number 92 on the Hot 100 in October 1965, a beautiful late-night ballad with Kenny Burrell on guitar.

“I’ll Always Love You”/Spinners. An early track from 1965 by the group known in England as the Detroit Spinners.

“I”ll Be Around”/Spinners. On the radio this week in 1972, when they were still known in England as the Detroit Spinners.

“I’ll Never Sail the Seas Again”/Detroit Emeralds. A group not known in England, or anywhere else to my knowledge, as the Emeralds, and also not from Detroit.

“I’ll Never Fall in Love Again”/Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach. I have a couple of friends who are pained greatly by the knowledge that I generally have no use for Elvis Costello. It’s an opinion that goes back to the 1970s, and one that was reinforced by his early slur on Ray Charles, done in a craven attempt to get publicity. I gotta admit, however, that I admire quite a bit of what I’ve heard from him in recent years, especially this version of the Dionne Warwick classic, from a 1998 collaboration with its co-author.

“I’ll Never Be the Same”/Nat King Cole Trio. Recorded long about 1943. The trio at this time featured Nat at the piano, Oscar Moore on guitar, and Johnny Miller on bass, although this particular track is a piano solo.

“I Will Not Dance”/Chi Coltrane. Also on the radio during this week in 1972 was Chi Coltrane’s indelible “Thunder and Lightning.” She never did anything else quite as good, but she’s still gigging, and her website’s got the pictures to prove it. Here she is on German TV circa 1973:

One More Thing: You have probably noticed the Christmas-themed TV ads already. Some of our favorite blogs are getting ready for the holiday, too: AM, Then FM is seeking requests for this year’s Three Under the Tree, and Popdose is preparing another dose of Mellowmas. We’ll do something around here, too. But not for a while yet.

The standard length of a pop song has long been considered three minutes, even though pop songs haven’t consistently been three minutes long for a generation or more. The creep began in the 70s—American Top 40 went from a three-hour show to a four-hour show in October 1978 because the records were getting so long—and it’s continued to this day. But if brevity is the soul of wit, it must also be the soul of music. Think of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s classic singles, for instance, practically none longer than 2:50 and some as short as 2:05. So anyway: Here’s a random selection of songs from my music stash that run between 2:59 and 3:01. Your mileage may vary—the length of an mp3 does not necessarily correspond to the official timing on a record—but this is what I’ve got.

“My Baby Loves Lovin’”/White Plains. One of the mighty quartet of Tony Burrows records that ran the charts early in 1970. Hear it here, then check the version Elton John recorded for an album of soundalike hits released scant weeks before he became a star.

“Celebrate”/Three Dog Night. Written by Gary Bonner and Allan Gordon, who also wrote “Happy Together” and “She’d Rather Be With Me,” and featuring all three of the group’s singers, Danny Hutton, Cory Wells, and Chuck Negron. Live performance from Soundstage here.

“I’m Only Sleeping”/Beatles. Features backward guitar lines played by George, and differences between the mono and stereo versions, if Wikipedia can be believed.

“God, Love and Rock and Roll”/Teegarden and Van Winkle. One of my favorite one-hit wonders, and one we’ve discussed here before. Listen here, where it’s preceded by a classic CKLW shotgun jingle

“People Get Ready”/Kenny Rankin. The Impressions song, from Silver Morning, by the singer/songwriter who died earlier this year.

“Sad Day”/Rolling Stones. The B-side of “19th Nervous Breakdown,” and a pretty good song.

“Invisible Man”/Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators. You’d swear this group is from the days of the three-minute pop song, but their album Keep Reachin’ Up was actually recorded in 2005.

“Warm Love”/Otis Clay. From a 2003 Van Morrison tribute album featuring various R&B stars, including Little Milton, Bettye Lavette, Eddie Floyd, Ellis Hooks, and others. The original is from Hard Nose the Highway, and is very fine indeed.

“Don’t Ask Me Why”/Billy Joel. I was never quite sure what this Latin-flavored earworm was doing on what was supposed to be Billy Joel’s hard-rock album, Glass Houses, but it’s harmless.

“They Don’t Know”/Tracey Ullman. Now THIS is a three-minute pop song. Although the video cuts off a few seconds early, it goes on long enough for a special guest to appear.

From time to time, we give ourselves over to the shuffle gods and see which of the nearly 12,000 tracks in my laptop music stash will come up first. Despite the fact that the stash contains everything from Monty Python to John Coltrane to the Starland Vocal Band, there’s not a single train wreck on this list. Not to my ears, anyhow.

“Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)”/John Mellencamp. I have never found comparisons between Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen to be all that persuasive, and “Key West Intermezzo” doesn’t sound much like Springsteen, either. It does contain some lyric lines from Springsteen’s discard pile, though. For instance, “In the bone-colored dawn me and Gypsy Scotty are singing/The radio is playin’, she left her shoes out in the back.”

“Sugar Sugar”/Archies. Bubblegum music’s “Stairway to Heaven.” It’s no wonder that Archie would propose to Veronica—if somebody whispered “I’m gonna make your life so sweet” to you the way it’s whispered it here, you’d marry her too. Now I suppose it’s possible that it could be Betty singing that line . . .  but why am I so sure it’s Veronica? The video provides no evidence either way.

“Harlem Shuffle”/Booker T and the MGs. Originally recorded by Bob and Earl, whose recording just missed the Top 40 early in 1964, “Harlem Shuffle” was also famously covered by the Rolling Stones, plus the Righteous Brothers and by Edgar and Johnny Winter on a 1976 live album. The Booker T version was recorded sometime in the 60s at Stax, but not released until 1995.

“Is That News?”/Gypsy. A Minnesota band of the 1970s much beloved by people who remember them. Like whiteray at Echoes in the Wind.

“Engine Number 9″/Wilson Pickett. In which Pickett’s soul shouting meets some seriously burnin’ guitar under the direction of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. That something so hot was on Top 40 stations at the same time as “I Think I Love You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun” leaves me woozy with delight.

“Joey”/Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. “A song about a restraining order,” as Grace puts it, and my favorite song on Nothing But the Water, the Nocturnals’ 2005 breakthrough album. The version that popped up today was recorded for Free at Noon, a live radio concert series produced by WXPN in Philadelphia; another version recorded in Birmingham, Alabama, is here.

“Coca-Cola Commercial”/Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. From a whole series of Coke spots I’ve collected, this jingle is sung about as well as anything else Marvin and Tammi did together.

“Barb’ Wire”/Jimmy McGriff. What the purpose of the apostrophe following “Barb” might be, I have no idea, but this is a pretty decent blues featuring Jimmy Ponder on guitar. Ponder played for several years with Hammond B3 player Charles Earland in addition to working with McGriff, and even on his own recordings as a bandleader, he frequently features the B3.

“I Got a Woman”/Johnny “Hammond” Smith. Another B3 player, less well-known than McGriff but still mighty mighty, doing the Ray Charles tune that mixed the secular with the sacred so successfully that some fans found it blasphemous. It closes Smith’s 1967 album Soul Flowers.

“Dancing in the Moonlight”/Boffalongo. For a long time, I knew this band only because they are name-checked during the fade on Reunion’s “Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me).” As it turns out, they were the first band of Larry Hoppen, later of Orleans. One of his bandmates was Wells Kelly, also later of Orleans. Kelly’s brother, Sherman, joined Boffalongo in 1970, and brought a song along: “Dancing in the Moonlight.” It appeared on Boffalongo’s second album, Beyond Your Head, although it wasn’t added until a second pressing of the record, and Sherman Kelly doesn’t appear on any of the album’s other tracks.

Man, I love trivia like that.

“Engine Number 9″/Wilson Pickett (buy it here)

I am having one of those weeks when actual remunerative labor gets in the way of blogging, so here’s a quick burst of randomness from the 11, 331 songs currently in the laptop music stash to get us both through the next day or two.

“Desperado”/Eagles. This version is from a bootleg called Second Night MTV Unplugged, recorded in April 1994 at the same Los Angeles stand that produced the Hell Freezes Over album. The recording is widely available on the Internet, and the sound quality is as good as an official album release.

“Falling Apart at the Seams”/Marmalade. In which the same band that recorded the exquisite “Reflections of My Life” in 1970 updates its sound for 1976. It should have sounded great in a season filled with the likes of “Silly Love Songs” and “Right Back Where We Started From,” but it reached only to Number 49 in Billboard.

“UFO”/Jimmy Caravan. Caravan is a Hammond B3 organ player, and “UFO”’s approximate vintage is the late 60s. Beyond that, I know nothing.

“Schoolgirl”/Steve Forbert. From the Little Stevie Orbit album. It occurs to me that one reason I’ve never really embraced this album is that for every good song on it, there’s a throwaway like this one.

“George Bruno Money”/Brian Auger and the Trinity. If you haven’t explored the Brian Auger catalog much, start. His ’60s recordings with the Trinity and with Julie Driscoll are grossly underrated—how it is they didn’t become approximately as big as, say, Traffic, I dunno. Then move forward in time to . . . .

“On the Road”/Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express. From the first album billed to Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express, released in 1971, a fusion album heavy on Auger’s B3. In any contest to pick the coolest band name of all time “Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express” would have to be in the semi-finals. Someday I’ll tell the story about the first time I ever heard ‘em.

“Lost Hearts”/Cochise. From the extremely obscure Swallow Tales, about which I blogged earlier this year.

“Radio Operator”/Rosanne Cash. From Black Cadillac, the 2006 album Cash made in the wake of the deaths of her parents and stepmother. Johnny Cash had been a radio operator in the Air Force, which makes Rosanne’s lyric about signals from a distance particularly poignant. (Rosanne talks about the writing of the album and plays “Radio Operator” and “I Was Watching You” here).

“Jim Dandy”/Black Oak Arkansas. Made Top 40 radio in early 1974 mostly for its novelty value. (I blogged about it nearly four years ago.) It was the 1970s—we couldn’t help ourselves.

“Never Can Say Goodbye”/Cal Tjader. A tasty version of the Jackson Five hit, from a 1973 album called Last Bolero in Berkeley, on which the vibraphonist also covers “I Want You Back,” “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” and “Where Is the Love.”

Later in the week: Another installment of my 1976 daybook and the first part of a 1976 countdown, because sooner or later, we always come back to 1976.

“Desperado” (live)/Eagles (bootleg)

I hit 10,000 songs on the laptop this week. If I played them all start-to-finish, it would take 724 1/2 hours—a whole month. So this seems like the time to put the stash on shuffle and check .001% of it.

“Max Is Making Wax (aka ‘Chance It’)”/Miles Davis Quintet/The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions. From a 1955 TV broadcast with Steve Allen. Davis Allen, a noted hater of rock music, didn’t seem to have much use for jazz, either—his introduction of Davis and a later interview on the same show are condescending and uncomfortable to listen to. As prideful and combative as Davis was, he can’t have enjoyed it one bit, although he did return to Allen’s show in later years.

“She’s Made a Fool of You”/Moon Martin/The Very Best of Moon Martin. When guys like Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe became stars in the late 70s, Moon Martin should have, too. His second album, 1979’s Escape From Domination, featured an actual Top-40 hit in “Rolene.” A year later, Street Fever included the completely ass-kickin’ “Five Days of Fever.” Martin’s career sank after his fourth album, however: On Mystery Ticket, producer Robert Palmer applied a coating of the same electronic goop that was derailing his own career at that moment. (Martin had written Palmer’s hit “Bad Case of Loving You.”) Thirty-plus years later, however, Martin is still around.

“Taboo”/Chet Baker/Young Chet. It’s surprising to me that with the preponderance of pretty-boy movie stars these days, none of them has gotten the idea of playing Chet Baker. It should be the kind of role that gets Oscar nods, plus it’s a damn good story. Baker was the top trumpeter in jazz (and an androgynous sex symbol as well) during the early 5os, but lived through a drug-fueled fall that took 30 years to play out before ending under suspicious circumstances.

“Goodbye to Love”/Carpenters/From the Top. According to Wikipedia (so who the hell knows for sure), the Carpenters actually got hate mail after this song hit the radio, thanks to its un-Carpenter-like guitar solo, played by one Tony Peluso. All these years later, it remains a unique moment—the only time in history anybody in their band ever made a guitar-hero face.

“Keep on Running”/Spencer Davis Group/The Finer Things (Steve Winwood box set). Muff Winwood’s bass stomps everything in its path on the original, but it’s Davis’ guitar that sounds especially great on this performance from Scandinavian TV circa 1967:

“Forever Autumn”/Justin Hayward/The Best of the Moody Blues. If forced to pick one, I might grab this as the ultimate October song, for lots of reasons.

“If Not for You”/Olivia Newton-John/Definitive Collection. Here’s a staggeringly young ONJ lip-synching her first American hit on Australian TV one million years ago:

“Soul Shake”/Delaney and Bonnie and Friends/To Bonnie From Delaney. If the phrase “good time rock ‘n’ roll” hadn’t been adopted by so many oldies radio stations, and thereby turned into a cliche referring to a particular pool of Beach Boys and Motown records, it might be better applied to this.

“Shake Your Hips”/Rolling Stones/Exile on Main Street. For those of you who dig ZZ Top’s “La Grange,” here’s one of its potential influences.

“Stay”/David Bowie/Station to Station. The video below is 4:58 of sublime goodness. It’s a performance of “Stay” from the Dinah Shore daytime variety show circa 1975, in which Bowie busts out some twitchy dance moves and lead guitarist Earl Slick burns the place down. Housewife TV in the 70s was awesome.

The laptop music stash is up over 9,400 songs now, all on a little portable drive I can slip into a shirt pocket. (In many ways, the 21st century is really, really cool, although I don’t understand the attraction of Twitter.) Late yesterday afternoon while I was killing time waiting for The Mrs. to get home from work, I fired it up on “shuffle,” and here’s what came out.

“The Second Arrangement”/Steely Dan. From a collection of demos and outtakes made during the recording of Gaucho. The story is that much of the final version of “The Second Arrangement” was accidentally erased by an engineer before the album was completed. The full-band version of the song that’s found in the outtakes (posted below) has an abrupt ending, but I suspect it’s an earlier version and not the final one, which was supposed to have been three-quarters destroyed. The band didn’t recut it, and it was eventually replaced on Gaucho by “Third World Man”—the tune of which appears among the outtakes with different lyrics and the title “Were You Blind . . .”

“For All We Know”/Carpenters. I love those old-time Top 40 segues that go from one thing to something entirely different, although we’d probably have used a jingle back in the day.

“Passionate Kisses”/Lucinda Williams. The original recording of the Mary Chapin Carpenter hit from the early 90s.

“Fire Eater”/Three Dog Night. I have decided that the best way to hear Three Dog Night is in compilation form. Each of their studio albums from the first half of the 1970s, enormous sellers though they were, seems to have at least one track that’s either painfully dated or downright stupid. I’ve deleted a few from the drive, even though I like to keep complete albums together whenever possible. “Fire Eater” is not one of the casualties, however—it’s a hard-rockin’ fuzztone guitar and organ-driven instrumental from the 1971 release Naturally.

“I Never Cry”/Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper scared the hell out of American parents in the early 1970s, but if he’d undertaken a deliberate campaign to become less scary, he couldn’t have done better than to record “I Never Cry” and “You and Me” a few years later. I don’t know the reason for the change: Maybe it was his reinvention from bandleader to solo performer, or maybe it was just the alcohol. Here’s a live TV performance from the 70s, in which his shock-rock persona fails utterly to match the tone of the song, and he looks physically ill.

“Funny How Time Slips Away”/Al Green. Perhaps the second-most famous song from the pen of Willie Nelson next to “Crazy,” “Funny How Time Slips Away” has been recorded by non-country stars from Perry Como to Bryan Ferry, but nobody ever did it better than the Reverend Al.

“Whose Hands Are These”/Neil Diamond. From last year’s Home Before Dark, which takes Diamond about as far from “Cracklin’ Rosie” as it’s possible to go, but I like it.

“Godwhacker”/Steely Dan. From a bootleg recorded live in 2003, when the band was out in support of Everything Must Go—an album that has been pretty much ignored on succeeding tours in favor of oldies from the 1970s. God knows I love me some Steely Dan, but even I don’t really need to hear “Hey Nineteen” again. Here’s a live “Godwhacker,” also from the  2003 tour:

“Sunday Morning People”/Honey Cone. From a vast compilation of Honey Cone tunes going far beyond “Want Ads,” which proves that the Invictus/Hot Wax production machine manned by ex-Motown producers Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland was a mighty thing indeed. Even the album tracks were often deeply funky.

“I’m Not My Brother’s Keeper”/Flaming Ember. Another one from the Invictus/Hot Wax factory. Flaming Ember was a white group from Detroit who had a handful of records make both the pop and soul charts between 1969 and 1971. Their 1970 hit “Westbound #9″ was bigger, but this made the Top 40, too. YouTube DJ Music Mike has more.

“The Second Arrangement”/Steely Dan (bootleg)

It was a rainy morning today. I had an errand to run, and I took my time getting home. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fond of rainy days. I used to think that sunny days distorted one’s personality, and that people were closer to the way they really are on a rainy day. Now I know there’s no reason why the opposite shouldn’t be true, but as a result, I no longer have an explanation for why I like rainy days. I just do. And because I don’t have a better idea on what has now become a rainy afternoon, here are a few rain songs from my music stash.

“Another Rainy Day in New York City”/Chicago. As close as anybody has come to capturing in music the feel of a sudden shower on an urban afternoon.

“Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again”/Fortunes. Maybe this is why I dig rainy days—“Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again” is an AM-radio classic on which it would be impossible to improve.

“I Wish It Would Rain”/Temptations. One of the great poetic inventions at Motown, in which a sad guy wishes it would rain so he could go outside and cry, and with a wet face, no one would know. Written by the great Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong along with a writer named Roger Penzabene, who took his feelings of loss from real life. His wife was cheating on him, and while his song was still on the radio, he would commit suicide. Here it is, live on the old Hollywood Palace TV show, in February 1968:

“The Rain Song”/Led Zeppelin. From Houses of the Holy, this might be the coolest and most ambitious thing they ever did, if they’d never done “Stairway to Heaven.” Live performance from 1975 here.

“Raincoat and a Rose”/Chris Rea. From the 1979 album Deltics, which closely followed Rea’s first American hit album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?, and its single “Fool (If You Think It’s Over).” It’s not a bad album, but rather than risk branding Rea as a balladeer by releasing “Raincoat and a Rose,” his record company went with the weakest track on the album, “Diamonds,” as the single. Somehow, it got to Number 44, but then it disappeared without a trace, taking the album, and Rea’s American career, with it. He’s continued to make good records ever since, but you’ve got to search them out.

“Standing in the Rain”/Electric Light Orchestra. From Out of the Blue, an album that’s much better than a two-record set has any right to be. “Standin’ in the Rain” is the opening song of “Concerto for a Rainy Day,” four thematically related tunes that take up what was side 3 of the album. It’s also the song the band used as the opener on their 1978 tour. Not that I can remember hearing it or anything.

“Walk Out in the Rain”/Eric Clapton. From Backless, which doesn’t get a lot of love in Clapton’s catalog, but I like it fine. “Walk Out in the Rain” was co-written by Bob Dylan. Live performance from 2004 here.

“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”/Willie Nelson. Written in the 1940s, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” was the first big hit as a singer for Willie Nelson, who had been known mostly as a songwriter. It went to Number One on the country charts (and Number 21 on the Hot 100) in the fall of 1975. Its spare arrangement could have come straight out of the 1940s, and it helped to kickstart the whole Willie-and-Waylon/outlaw country movement of the late 70s. (I’ve got a post about 70s crossover country percolating in my head at the moment, so stay tuned.)

“Rain Dance”/Guess Who. Somebody mentioned this in the comments the other day, I think. I have no idea what it’s about—not rain, I don’t think—but I dig it nevertheless.

“Rainy Night in Georgia”/Brook Benton. And we’re back where we began: as close as anybody has come to capturing the feel of a lingering rainstorm on a lonely night. Here’s Benton—a greatly underrated soul singer—performing it live sometime in the 80s. (Benton died in 1988.)

“Another Rainy Day in New York City”/Chicago (from Chicago X; buy it here)
“Rain Dance”/Guess Who (from So Long, Bannatyne; buy it here)

There are 282 songs in my library that have titles beginning with the word “I.” And that doesn’t count “I’d,” “I’ll,” “I’m,” and “I’ve.” And when I cued up the list and hit “shuffle” this afternoon, here’s what came out:

“I Never Think About You”/Huey Lewis and the News. This is a mid-tempo tune from the 2001 album Plan B that would likely have been a monster single had it come out during the band’s glory years. Plan B proves the band still had in 2001 what made them stars nearly 20 years before, even if the general run of listeners wasn’t getting it anymore.

“I Just Want to Make Love to You”/Foghat. Another classic song written by Willie Dixon, one that was a sizable hit for Muddy Waters in 1954. It’s been covered by dozens of artists, but Foghat’s is probably the best known version today. Although the live version made Number 33 in 1977, the studio version from Foghat’s 1972 debut album is more commonly heard on the radio.

“I Miss You”/Klymaxx. This record never fails to remind me of my days as a Top 40 morning-show host, and it ended up being one of the top songs from that whole year, 1986.

“I Just Wanna Stop”/Gino Vannelli. A fabulously romantic ballad that never fails to remind me of my first semester at college, which wasn’t all that great—except for some of the tunes.

“I Found Somebody”/Glenn Frey. The first single from Frey’s first solo album, No Fun Aloud. How was it that a guy who co-wrote and sang some of catchiest stuff in history made such bland music on his own? Perhaps Don Henley was a greater talent than we thought.

“I Enjoy Being a Boy (In Love With You)”/Banana Splits. I’m not sure what happened to it, but I used to have an EP of Banana Splits tunes that I got by sending in Kellogg’s box tops. Now that I’ve listened to the Splits again 40 years later, I find that some of it sounds pretty good, and some of it sounds pretty weird. Like “I Enjoy Being a Boy.”

“(I Know) I’m Losing You”/Rod Stewart and Faces. I’m not ready to add Rod’s version of “I’m Losing You” to the list of Motown Remakes That Stomp the Originals (I’m actually closer to adding Rare Earth’s version), but it’s pretty good, and it’s a worthwhile reminder that once, Rod could rock.

“I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me”/Rosanne Cash. A Grammy winner for Best Country Vocal in 1985, this song was inspired by an earlier loss at the Grammys, when Rosanne couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t won. Hear the story and see the video here.

“I Ain’t Got You”/Sugar Blue. You have probably heard this guy play harmonica and you didn’t know it. He guested with the Rolling Stones on Some Girls (and played on “Miss You”), Emotional Rescue, and Tattoo You.

“I Do the Rock”/Tim Curry. A deeply strange record, but one that’s hard not to love once you’ve heard it. Here’s Curry performing it live on TV sometime in the 80s, a little faster than the original, but you’ll get the idea: