Sylvia

I always think of
how she sealed the doors before
turning on the stove.

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Alright. So to celebrate my triumphant return to Gchat after a dreary two week absence and as a way of introducing Andy to Grooveshark.com we engaged in our favorite roadtrip game via the interwebs. It's a fun little exercise that can be as easy or hard as you choose to make it. We tend to shoot for middle of the road.

Anyway, the basic idea is that you are given a song that you have to start from, for the sake of an example lets say... Beat It by Michael Jackson, then you are given a song that you have to finish on, let's say Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da by the Beatles and a set number of "moves" to get there. In this case, to keep it simple, we'll limit it to one.

So: Beat It ---> as yet undiscovered song ---> Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

Now we just have to find a link. That link can range from something as simple as a similar guitar tone or tempo to a similarity or overlapping in album or song titles or lyrics, to shared personnel (people who worked or played with both people) or personal life (dated the same person, etc) and anything in between.

In the case of our example the obvious choice to me would be a Wings song like "Jet" with Paul McCartney as the link having recorded with both Jackson and The Beatles.

So:

1) Beat It - Michael Jackson who recorded The Girl is Mine with Paul McCartney which takes us to -
2) Jet - Wings - McCartney's post-Beatle's band, taking us to -
3) Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da - The Beatles.

See? That easy.

Here's the one Andy gave me yesterday:

- Get from Wicked Messenger by the Faces (covering Bob Dylan) to Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window by Bob Dylan in five moves with the middle one by a female artist over the age of 39 (apparently his reasoning for this was to disallow both Neko Case and Zooey Deschanel. The Jerk).

Immediately I considered using only artists that have covered Dylan. Which narrowed the field of artists to choose from by a whole... 2%. So then I had to go ahead and try and come up with some more concrete connections. Some of them (like the incestuous mess that is the first three songs) are very concrete. Others, like the last jump, feel a little less substantial. Anyway, here goes:

1) Wicked Messenger - Faces (covering Dylan) takes us to -

2) You Shook Me - Jeff Beck Group - As you know at one point or another both Rod Stewart (Best. Voice. In. Rock.) and Ron Wood played with Jeff Beck and were, of course, also the revitalizing force between the switch from The Small Faces to the Faces and Ron Wood carries us through to -

3) Shine a Light - The Rolling Stones. Despite his questionable personal life decisions Mr. Wood (though not on this track) is a fine guitarist but it's Mick Jagger that takes us to -

4) Because The Night - by Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen - John Agnello produced both Patti Smith (who was married to the lead guitarist from MC5(!)) and Mick Jagger at one point or another -

5) Hot Soft Light - The Hold Steady - As if the Springsteen to THS thing wasn't enough, this album is also produced by John Agnello (as was Patty Smythe (former lead for Scandal), who is often confused for Patti Smith and is featured in the lyrics of The Swish from THS' first album ("she looked shaky, but nice")) but it's The Hold Steady's second album (Separation Sunday) that takes us to-

6)The Chain - Fleetwood mac - This connection is fairly straight forward. The song Stevie Nix by THS off of Separation Sunday ("She got scared when it got druggy. The way the whispers bit like fangs in the last hour of the parties.") brought me to Stevie Nicks who has a writing credit on this riff-riding, totally driving-with-the windows-down-worthy song

7) Can You Please Crawl out your window - Bob Dylan - so, this one is a little bit more of a stretch... but she has toured with Dylan. *long, exhausted exhale*

And the one that I gave Andy to work on today is:

- Get from "Too Much Monkey Business" by Chuck Berry to "Thriller" by Michael Jackson in five (5) moves. With the Berry song coming out in 1956 and Thriller in 1982 I'm going to (approximately) split the difference and the middle song will have to be off of Motown Records (1965-1975). Of course the other four songs can be from anyone and any time. I wouldn't be surprised if your first pick after the Berry song was suggested by the opening guitar sound.

[more than] Enough.