Reply To: TMBG
Of the TMBG songs that have gone unmentioned so far, my favorite is “They’ll Need a Crane,” which is (in my limited experience of TMBG) the song I find lyrically / thematically most similar to JoCo. Well, I suppose there might be a parallel between “Twisting” and some of the bitterer songs along the lines of “Someone is Crazy” / “Brand New Sucker”. I’d recommend both to JoCo fans. I have a very limited playlist of TMBG, because listening to an unfamiliar TMBG song is a lot like reaching into a grab bag — sometimes I find something I really, really like, sometimes I get a severed head.
[Mitch mentioned the This Might Be a Wiki “Song Ratings” page, which is probably worth a look.]
It’s probably easier for JoCo to write his funny/sad than for some of the more successful angry metal bands to write their angry, bitter, frustrated songs. What excuse do you have to be angry when you’re rolling in money? The Beatles already wrote a song in which they whined about paying taxes. I suppose Paul needs to write a song about a gold-digging ex-wife, if he hasn’t already.
I could start up an entirely different discussion on this point — linking JoCo’s recent “trying to write a happy song” Twitter to his admiration for Paul McCartney’s musical craftsmanship as far as writing songs like “I Will” (which he covered for TAW, of course), and “Good Day Sunshine” (a verse or two of which he performed live at Johnny D’s last October) — and of course “When I’m 64”. I’ll skip it for now, but it might be worth bringing up in the future