Song of the Week – Can’t Find My Way Home & Ain’t No Two Ways About It (It’s Love), Ellen McIlwaine

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Ignored   Obscured Restored

Back in the early 1970s, one of my cousins introduced me to the music of Ellen McIlwaine.  At the time, McIlwaine was a singer-songwriter making the rounds in New York’s Greenwich Village, earning a reputation for her dazzling slide guitar work and inventive use of harmonics.

Like many artists who never quite received the recognition they deserved, she gradually faded from my radar.  Recently, however, her name resurfaced in my memory, prompting me to revisit her catalog.  What I found was a reminder of just how original — and ahead of her time — she really was.

One of the first songs that appears on Spotify’s list of her most popular recordings is her extraordinary interpretation of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” from her 1972 album Honky Tonk Angel.

The performance showcases everything that made McIlwaine unique.  Her fluid slide guitar lines weave around a rich bed of harmonics, while her expressive voice transforms Steve Winwood’s melancholy classic into something entirely her own.  Listening to it today, I’m reminded of Karen Dalton’s ability to sound both vulnerable and commanding at the same time.

By the following year, on We the People (1973), McIlwaine was pushing her music even further.  The album’s opening track, “Ain’t No Two Ways About It (It’s Love),” features a vocal style that blends blues, folk, and African-inspired rhythmic chanting into something difficult to categorize.  It sounds startlingly modern more than fifty years later.

In fact, her vocals on the track immediately brought Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs to mind.  The resemblance is striking enough to raise an intriguing question: has Garbus ever heard these recordings?  Given the adventurous vocal techniques and rhythmic approach that both artists employ, the connection is hard to ignore.

McIlwaine’s career never followed the trajectory her talent seemed to promise.  Yet revisiting these recordings today, it’s easy to hear why musicians and dedicated record collectors continue to speak of her with such admiration.  She occupied a musical space all her own, drawing from blues, folk, rock, and global influences long before such cross-pollination became commonplace.

I’m glad I rediscovered Ellen McIlwaine.  Though she passed away in 2021, her recordings remain vibrant, adventurous, and surprisingly contemporary.  If there is such a thing as a musical buried treasure, McIlwaine’s catalog surely qualifies — waiting patiently for a new generation of listeners to uncover it.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Save Me, Joan As Police Woman

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Those of you who have been following the SotW for some time will be familiar with my “Evolution Series.”  That’s where I select a song and trace how different artists have interpreted and recorded it over the years.

In a twist on that concept, the artist known as Joan As Police Woman (Joan Wasser) has recently revisited her own debut album, Real Life (2006), reinterpreting the entire record.  Appropriately enough, she has titled the project Real Life Evolution.

Before emerging as Joan As Police Woman, Wasser was best known as a gifted violinist and as the fiancée of Jeff Buckley. His sudden and tragic death in 1997 left an indelible mark on her life, and the emotional honesty that has characterized her music ever since can be traced, in part, to that devastating loss.

Take a listen to “Save Me” from the original album.

Wasser’s piano-based song captures a sense of emotional desperation as she struggles to salvage a relationship that is “already good as gone.”

In the newly reimagined version, Wasser recruits Iggy Pop to handle the lead vocal.

Pop’s weathered voice, combined with a harsher musical backdrop, changes the song’s emotional tenor.  The desperation remains, but it is now tempered by tension and friction rather than the wounded self-pity that permeated the original recording.

Wasser’s willingness to revisit and reinterpret her early work demonstrates the creative courage of an artist who continues to grow, evolve, and find new meaning in familiar songs.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Allentown, Billy Joel; Rage in the Cage, J. Geils Band; Out of Work, Gary U.S. Bonds

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I’ve been reading Won’t Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America by Erin Osmon, and it’s an outstanding book. Osmon traces the evolution of Heartland Rock throughout the 1980s, with each chapter devoted to a single year.

Right off the bat, I’ll confess to stealing an idea from the book.

In the chapter covering 1982, Osmon highlights several songs she calls “recession rock” — songs that “proffered evocative vignettes of those without work or much hope.”

Since this is Labor Day weekend, it seems like the perfect time to revisit a few of them.

First up is Billy Joel’s “Allentown.”

The second single from Joel’s The Nylon Curtain, “Allentown” tells the story of a city and its people struggling with the decline of the manufacturing industry that had once been the engine of its economy. The song is less about the demise of a single steel town than it is about the people left behind when the jobs disappear.

Next is “Rage in the Cage” by the J. Geils Band.

Built around a prominent horn-driven riff and the band’s mix of rock and early-’80s new wave, the song captures the frustration, boredom and desperation of a young working-class person stuck in a dead-end town with few prospects.

And then there’s “Out of Work,” recorded by Gary U.S. Bonds but written by Bruce Springsteen.

Bonds takes a somewhat lighter, almost tongue-in-cheek approach to a decidedly unfunny subject, offering a relatable portrait of unemployment — standing in line, looking for work and finding precious few jobs to be had.

What struck me about Osmon’s “recession rock” selections is how little the underlying subject matter has changed. The economic circumstances may be different, but the anxiety that comes with not being able to find work, make ends meet or see a better future is hardly confined to the 1980s.

With so much of today’s economic conversation focused on affordability — the rising costs of gas, groceries, housing and healthcare — these songs from more than four decades ago sound surprisingly timely.

Maybe that’s the thing about good songs: Sometimes they don’t just capture a moment in time. They capture something that refuses to go away.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Brown Eyed Handsome Man, Chuck Berry; Brown Eyed Girl, Van Morrison; Good Times Bad Times, Led Zeppelin; Brown Eyed Women, Grateful Dead

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The use of the term “brown-eyed” as a coded or sanitized lyrical euphemism for a person of color has served as a clever way for R&B and rock artists to signal racial identity, celebrate Black beauty, or sidestep segregation-era radio censorship for decades.

One of the earliest and most famous examples is Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” released 70 years ago in 1956.

Written during the last gasp of the Jim Crow era, Berry employed the title phrase as a winking, multi-layered code for a brown-skinned Black man.  By framing his subject in terms of attractiveness, charisma, and resilience, Berry created an anthem of pride that celebrated Black identity while remaining accessible to mainstream audiences who might miss the song’s deeper social commentary.  The result was both subversive and commercially viable.

A decade later, Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” carried similar implications.  The song was originally written and recorded under the title “Brown Skinned Girl,” a phrase that more directly suggested an interracial relationship.

Concerned that such an explicit reference might provoke controversy or limit radio airplay in the late 1960s, the title and key lyric were changed to the more generalized “Brown Eyed Girl.”  While Morrison later suggested that the change may have resulted from a recording mix-up, music historians have long viewed it as a practical concession to the racial sensitivities of the era.

Led Zeppelin offered another intriguing variation in “Good Times Bad Times.”

Good Times, Bad Times, you know I had my share / When my woman left home for a brown eyed man, well, I still don’t seem to care.

Rock historians and musicologists have frequently debated the song’s reference to a “brown-eyed man,” with many interpreting it as a nod to Chuck Berry’s vernacular.  Given Led Zeppelin’s deep immersion in — and frequent borrowing from — African American blues and early R&B traditions, some critics view the phrase as an intentional coded reference to a Black man.  Within the blues tradition, losing a romantic partner to an outsider or a person of another race was a recurring lyrical theme.

The Grateful Dead’s “Brown-Eyed Women,” however, occupies murkier territory.  Unlike the Berry, Morrison, and Zeppelin songs, there is little evidence that the title was intended as a racial reference.

Brown-eyed women and red grenadine / The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean

Instead, the song unfolds as a Depression-era narrative populated by bootleg whiskey, family hardship, and fading memories.  The phrase “brown-eyed women” functions primarily as part of the song’s rich tapestry of Americana rather than as an obvious racial signifier.  Lyricist Robert Hunter was famous for writing evocative, open-ended lyrics and generally resisted providing definitive explanations for their meaning.  Neither Hunter nor Jerry Garcia ever suggested that the title carried a racial dimension.

As a result, “Brown-Eyed Women” remains an interesting outlier.  While listeners are free to interpret the song through a racial lens, there is no persuasive evidence that such an interpretation reflects Hunter’s intent.  Yet its title inevitably invites comparison with a long tradition of songs in which “brown-eyed” served as a subtle marker of race, identity, and cultural expression.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Helpless, Sugar

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Bob Mould made his first big splash in the music business with the band Hüsker Dü.   The Minnesota-based punk rock band, founded in 1979, released a string of critically acclaimed albums on the independent SST label, including Zen Arcade and New Day Rising, before moving to Warner Bros. for Candy Apple Grey.  Dozens of bands that followed have cited Hüsker Dü as a major influence.  In fact, it is hard to imagine the grunge movement of the 1990s taking the same shape without Hüsker Dü paving the way.

After Hüsker Dü dissolved, Mould embarked on a solo career, releasing a series of albums between 1988 and 1991.  The first of these, Workbook (Virgin, 1989), was outstanding.

By 1992, Mould was feeling the urge to play with a band again.  He teamed up with bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis for a few informal jam sessions.  Having lived in Boston during the last quarter of the 20th century, I was already familiar with Travis from his work with Human Sexual Response — a band I saw live numerous times — as well as the Zulus.  The chemistry between the three musicians was immediate, so they decided to stay together under the name Sugar.

Today’s SotW is “Helpless” from Sugar’s debut album, Copper Blue.

“Helpless” is a perfect example of the Sugar sound: layers of melodic guitar, driving rhythms, and Mould’s unmistakable blend of power and vulnerability.  The song captures everything that made Copper Blue such a compelling record.

The band — especially Mould — had modest expectations for commercial success. Instead, Sugar quickly found an audience far larger than anyone anticipated. Within a couple of years they were playing arenas.  Mould often remarked that Sugar became the most commercially successful project of his career.

The Sugar story is told in the short documentary Changes: The Story of Sugar, which is currently streaming on YouTube.  At just 21 minutes long, it is well worth your time.

And for fans of The Daily Show, there’s one more bit of Mould trivia: his song “Dog on Fire” serves as the show’s theme song.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – I’m Only Sleeping, The Beatles; Visions of Johanna, Bob Dylan

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Sixty years ago, two of the most groundbreaking and important albums in the history of rock and roll were released within weeks of each other: Revolver by The Beatles and Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan. Both albums are frequently cited as their creators’ finest work, and both represented the culmination of remarkable artistic evolution.

In Rolling Stone’s most recent list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Revolver ranks at #11 and Blonde on Blonde at #36.

To mark this anniversary, let’s focus on one song from each album that explores the world of dreams and altered consciousness.

John Lennon’s “I’m Only Sleeping” celebrates the simple pleasure of staying in bed and letting the world drift by.  To mirror this dreamlike state musically, engineer Geoff Emerick recorded George Harrison’s dual guitar solos and then manually reversed the tape, creating an ethereal, melting soundscape unlike anything heard in pop music at the time.

In Tell Me Why: The Beatles — Album by Album, Song by Song, the Sixties and After, author Tim Riley writes:

“I’m Only Sleeping captures the bleary-eyed mood of returning to consciousness after a midday nap, and everything about the song is drugged with weariness, from the laid-back drumbeat to the yawning bass solo at the end of each refrain.”

Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” (originally titled “Freeze Out”) is one of his greatest artistic achievements.  The entire song unfolds in a quiet, claustrophobic room during the early morning hours.  Its lyrics flow like a drug-fueled stream of consciousness in which time seems suspended.

“The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face.”

“Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial”

The song captures the heightened sensory distortions of a pre-dawn comedown, where memories, desires, and hallucinations blur together.

Wikipedia cites the perspective of music critic and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton:

“…Dylan’s technique of throwing out ‘skittering images’ evokes ‘a mind floating downstream’; these ‘non-sequential visions’ are the record of a fractured consciousness.”

Both songs invite listeners into dream states, but from opposite directions.  Lennon finds comfort in retreating from the waking world, while Dylan wanders through a restless landscape where reality and imagination become indistinguishable.

It is difficult to imagine two more consequential albums being released within six weeks of each other.  Sixty years later, Revolver and Blonde on Blonde remain towering achievements — not only because they expanded the possibilities of rock music, but because they continue to illuminate the strange and fascinating terrain of the human mind.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – The Passenger, Iggy Pop

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I’ve always been a fan of Anthony Bourdain.  I read his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.  I watched his television series, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.  I even own a couple of his cookbooks (I love his recipe for French onion soup), and we both favor a classic Negroni as our cocktail of choice.  So I was excited to learn that a Bourdain biopic, Tony, co-written and directed by Matt Johnson, has been receiving positive reviews from critics.

The film opened in select U.S. theaters yesterday and will expand to nationwide release on August 21.

News of the movie reminded me of my favorite use of music in Parts Unknown.  In Season 5, Episode 2 (“Miami”), Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” plays in the background during a beachside conversation between the two men.

Bourdain felt a close kinship with Pop, drawn to their shared anti-establishment attitudes and rebellious personalities.  Although Bourdain interviewed countless celebrities throughout his career, he was rarely starstruck — except when it came to Iggy Pop.  In his field notes for the show, Bourdain wrote:

“It was a dream come true to actually hang out with my hero and (for better or worse) early role model for the filming of the Miami episode of Parts Unknown.”

More importantly, “The Passenger” perfectly reflects Bourdain’s worldview, travel philosophy, and complex psyche, both musically and lyrically.

“I am a passenger / And I ride and I ride”

Bourdain famously rejected labels such as “journalist” or “expert.”  Instead, he saw himself as a witness — a passenger moving through other people’s worlds.  His approach was built on listening, observing, and experiencing cultures on their own terms rather than imposing his own perspective.  Like the song’s narrator, he was content to look out the window and take it all in.

“He sees the stars come out tonight / He sees the city’s ripped backsides”

There is a persistent undercurrent of melancholy and detachment running through the song. Despite having a job that millions envied — one that allowed him to travel the world and experience its many wonders — Bourdain often wrestled with loneliness and existential fatigue.  He was constantly surrounded by people, yet frequently seemed to view himself as an outsider looking in through a pane of glass.

“So let’s ride and ride and ride and ride”

Bourdain maintained a relentless travel schedule, spending nearly 250 days a year on the road filming. The song captures that sense of perpetual motion — the feeling that there is always another destination, another story, another meal waiting around the corner.  For Bourdain, the journey itself became the destination, and movement was both a calling and, perhaps, a necessity.

As audiences discover — or rediscover — Bourdain through Tony, “The Passenger” endures as his unofficial theme song: equal parts wanderlust, loneliness, curiosity, and the perpetual search for what lies just beyond the horizon.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – What A Way To End It All, Deaf School

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Back in 1978, a copy of English Boys/Working Girls by the British band Deaf School arrived at WZBC, where I was a DJ at the time. It was the height of the punk rock revolution.  I gave the album a listen and found it bafflingly out of step with the moment.  It wasn’t quite punk, but it wasn’t anything else I could easily identify either. So where exactly did it belong?

I recently read an article about Deaf School in MOJO magazine (#395) and was surprised to learn that English Boys/Working Girls was actually the band’s third album, not their debut as I had assumed all these years.

MOJO awarded Deaf School’s first album, 2nd Honeymoon, released 50 years ago this month, a five-star review.  Their synopsis, written by Fergal Kinney, read:

Though those who caught Deaf School around this time swear that this album never quite captured their dazzle, 2nd Honeymoon endures as a truly sparkling English pop record: consistently surprising, tight as a vice, and abundant with hooks, wit and often dramatic arrangements. Their biggest splash.

That was enough to send me searching for the album.  I wasn’t disappointed.  This set from the Liverpool Art College collective takes elements of Kurt Weill, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and — remarkably, given that they would not appear for several more years — the sort of theatrical Latin-pop exuberance later associated with Kid Creole and the Coconuts, blending them into something entirely distinctive.

Take the opening track, “What A Way To End It All.”  A song about suicide (“Goodbye cruel world and cheerio / Through all this time I’ve got to / What a way to end it all”) is set to jaunty music-hall cabaret.  The song’s sardonic black humor collides with its buoyant melody, producing a result that is both unsettling and irresistible.

I was also surprised to discover “What A Way To End It All” was included on the 1978 Warner Brothers “Loss Leaders” sampler, Limo.

The album is packed with similar delights.  “Where’s the Weekend?”, “Bigger Splash”, “Knock Knock Knocking”, and “Hi Jo Hi” are all overflowing with memorable hooks, clever arrangements, and the band’s wonderfully eccentric sense of fun.

Fifty years after its release, 2nd Honeymoon remains a dazzling, inventive record that sounds unlike anything else before or since.  If you’ve never heard Deaf School, run to your favorite streaming service and give this criminally overlooked album a spin.  You won’t regret it.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Little Sister / Get Back, Elvis Presley

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I was recently on a cross-country JetBlue flight and had time to watch a movie.  I selected EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a documentary directed by Baz Luhrmann that was released in the United States in February 2026.  The film draws heavily from previously unseen footage of Presley during his various Las Vegas residencies in the 1970s.

When I started the movie, I was a little apprehensive about what I was about to see. I’ve always preferred 1950s rocker Elvis — and even the movie-star Elvis of the 1960s in films like Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, and Viva Las Vegas — to the bloated Las Vegas caricature that has come to define his final decade.  But Luhrmann’s film presents Elvis in a very different light.  The footage shows him as charming, funny, and fully engaged with his audience, while the musical performances are often electrifying.  Take, for instance, his spirited medley of “Little Sister” and the Beatles’ “Get Back,” which demonstrates just how much energy and charisma he still possessed.

Some viewers may argue that the film is a whitewash that fails to present the full picture of Elvis’s declining health and personal struggles during this period.  In fact, as noted on Wikipedia, The Guardian’s Radheyan Simonpillai praised the concert sequences while criticizing Luhrmann’s “refusal … to meaningfully hold Elvis to account.”

I don’t care.  I enjoyed the movie and was delighted to encounter a perspective that challenged my long-held belief that ‘70s Elvis was merely an overweight, drugged-out squanderer of his immense talent.  EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert reminded me that even during his final years, Elvis Presley remained a captivating performer capable of commanding a stage like few others.  See the movie and form your own opinion.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Riptides, Death Cab for Cutie

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Death Cab for Cutie emerged from the Pacific Northwest in 1997 as the brainchild of singer-songwriter Ben Gibbard.  The band released its debut album the following year and, last month, unveiled its eleventh studio effort. I’ve been listening to the new record regularly and have come to appreciate it more with each spin.

When Death Cab first appeared, they were often grouped with the late-’90s and early-2000s indie bands that filled my CD player.  I gave their music a fair hearing, but at the time I found their music a bit too steeped in Emo sensibilities for my taste.

The new album, I Built You a Tower, is the band’s first since Gibbard’s divorce.  While the breakup is never addressed directly, feelings of heartache, loss, and emotional dislocation run through much of the record.

Nowhere is that more evident than on the standout track, “Riptides.

From the opening lines, Gibbard conveys a profound sense of sorrow and exhaustion, capturing the feeling of someone struggling to stay afloat after a life-altering upheaval.

These days I say goodbye without opening my mouth
I just stare into the distance ’til you figure it out
‘Cause I feel as invested as a border guard
Who’s seen too many people leaving to take it too hard

I’m too tired to talk, I’m too tired to end the war
And I can’t seem to hold it together anymore

Yet despite its heavy lyrical themes, the music never wallows in despair.  Gibbard wraps his emotional reflections in bright, melodic indie pop, creating a tension between sound and subject matter that gives the songs much of their power.

Elsewhere on the album, Gibbard explores heartbreak, aging, and change with a maturity that avoids both self-pity and regret.  Rather than dwelling on loss, the songs seek understanding and acceptance.  As a result, I Built You a Tower feels less like a breakup album than a thoughtful meditation on life’s transitions. It’s a fully realized work that rewards repeated listening.

Gibbard has joked that, had he known his band would achieve lasting success, he would have chosen a better name.  Ironically, it was the name itself that first caught my attention. I recognized it as the title of a song by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who in turn borrowed it from an old pulp-fiction crime magazine.  Whatever its origins, Death Cab for Cutie has long since transcended its quirky moniker, and I Built You a Tower stands as further proof that the band still has plenty to say nearly three decades into its career.

Enjoy… until next week.