Michael Pink: 13 Songs

I ask artists to put their iPods on shuffle and talk about what comes up. This week I sat down with local acoustic pop madman Michael Pink. More to come in upcoming issues of HPR.
1) The Mavericks – What a Crying Shame
In the 90s, country was pretty much like it is now, only maybe not as cheesy yet. These guys came out of nowhere and, in the middle of George Strait and all this other crap, were using 12 stringed guitars. They had a kind of Beatles meets Buck Owens thing going on, just writing really great pop songs, but then they’d be playing the fairgrounds right next to Blackhawk or something, and sometimes you wonder how that happens.

2) The Who – Armenia City In the Sky
This song was off The Who Sell Out from 1967 I think. It’s a cool little album with all the fake pirate radio spots. This is such a great song and a lot of people don’t know that it’s Keith Moon doing vocals. My uncle Jeff got me into the Who when I was in 6th grade. I got so into them, that I sold all my KISS cd’s (I had like 15 of them) to Disc n’ Tape (they weren’t quite so Discontent yet) for a single Who Box Set “Maximum R&B” with 4 cd’s. I lived off that box set for years to come.
3) Roxy Music – More Than This
I really like Brian Ferry’s voice. I don’t know that many of (Roxy Music’s) songs, in fact I remember hearing this song in “Lost in Translation” where Bill Murray is doing this in a karaoke bar and I remembered that it used to be on the Muzak at the WalMart where I worked in Yankton, S.D. I always thought it was such a great melody. It doesn’t really matter to me what genre a song is. Whether it’s elevator music or a commercial, I am always drawn to a good melody. When I found out that (Roxy Music) did this song I was kind of nervous. What if I didn’t like the original song? Finally I picked up the record and ended up really liking it. A good pop song is a good pop song.
4) The Kinks – Waterloo Sunset
I think Waterloo Sunset is one of the best pop songs ever written. That real crusty, kinda 60s production just really lends itself well to that kind of song. And the vocal harmonies on all their records are just amazing. It’s one of those songs where you don’t know what the chorus is because he starts off with the chorus and it really just ends up sticking in your head.
5) Lisa Loeb – I Do, off the Firecracker album.
My wife had this when I met her. It’s one of those where you wait for her to fall asleep before you creep over to the stereo and plug in the phones. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing unique about that circumstance as I’ve talked to a lot of fellas who got into this song in this same way. I love how it sort of reminds me of The Sundays if they hadn’t been on Sub Pop. I love the guitar sounds and her songwriting on this one. I love how the drummer opens up as the song fades out. His hi-hats open up more and more and his fills, which were once simple, become very elaborate and expressive and carry over.
6) Flying Burrito Brothers – Dark End of the Street
Flying Burrito Brothers and Gram Parsons in general I listen to a lot. Gram was a great songwriter, Grievous Angel, Dark End of the Street, Thousand Dollar Wedding, the lyrics really add a visual thing to his songs, you can see what’s happening and feel what’s going on. I also really like the story about Gram, I think it was with the Flying Burrito Brothers, they got a chance to play the Opry. They were supposed to play two covers and they played the first one and then Gram said, “My grandma’s watching, I’m gonna play a song I wrote,” and they played Hickory Wind and got kicked out of the Opry, which is another reason I like Gram.

7) Big Star – September Girls
The first time I ever heard that song it was on a Superdrag EP that I found in the bargain bin at a CD warehouse. It was a CD single and I can’t even remember what the actual single was, some song I’ve never heard and then they did this acoustic cover of September Girls. I had never heard the original before, like a lot of great songs, you end up hearing a different version of the song before you hear the original. Superdrag’s version, on this CD, became one of my favorite songs and I listened to it all the time, even though I didn’t listen to the A Side at all. In fact I do a cover of this song and it is more like Superdrag’s version than Big Star’s.

I finally checked out Big Star and at first I was really put off by them. I did not expect them to sound like that. I thought, “This is almost kinda funky, like a Memphis soul thing.” I had to really try to like it at first but the more I listened to it and got into how diverse they were, the more I realized it was just Alex Chilton and Chris Bell writing really good pop songs.

8) Paul Westerberg – These Are the Days
I like Paul Westerberg solo more than I like The Replacements, which I know is pretty much against the law for some people but when Paul went solo he started incorporating that 12 String kind of stuff and this song is definitely like that. I bought this CD (eventually) and it was my first exposure to Paul Westerberg or the Replacements. I think I was 21 or 22 and I was up in Langden, North Dakota where my wife is from and we went to Duckwall-Alco and they have a pretty pitiful CD selection. They had five copies of Eventually by Paul Westerberg in the bargain bin, again, shopping in the bargain bin, so I picked it up. I used to love this song so much that I actually needed to have it around me. I was a janitor at a bank in Yankton and I would bring the CD with me and find someone’s CD player on their desk and put it on. I haven’t gotten obsessed with one record like that in a long time.

9) Dwight Yoakam – Thousand Miles From Nowhere
Dwight Yoakam is one of those guys, on the one hand he’s played the Fargodome, but I’ve also seen him at a Gram Parsons festival with Keith Richards playing, “Hickory Wind.” I really like that he writes all of his own songs and yet manages to really stick in there in the mainstream. He tries to deliver some good, real country music in an era of people like Toby Keith. Dwight is one of my biggest influences. I think, as far as singers go, Dwight Yoakam and Rufus Wainwright are two of my favorites.

10) The La’s – There She Goes
Lee Mavers is kind of like an Alex Chilton figure, just a crazy guy who wrote one really good pop song. He’s probably crazy somewhere in an apartment in London living off royalties, but he got it right one time. I think a lot of writers just write the same song over and over again, and I think he really perfected it. He cut off all the fat, it could have been really overblown and complex but instead it’s just 2 minutes and 20 seconds of pop perfection.
11) Petula Clark – Sign of the Times
I listen to this song more often than one probably should, but I really like it. That being said, I’m sure I wouldn’t like it as much had it not been recorded so perfectly. I love the backup vocals on “tiiiimes” how they’re almost out of tune and sort of pathetic sounding. Tambourines are some of my favorite things and this song is filled with it. There is such a great room sound to this recording, and her vocal performance is perfectly flawed. This sounds like it was recorded by Phil Spector and if that’s the case, you don’t wanna make him mad, because he’ll shoot you where it counts, which is anywhere.
12) Cheap Trick – She’s Tight
I got into bands like Cheap Trick and the Knack, all the quirky, skinny tie, 70s power pop when I was in junior high. All my friends were listening to Guns and Roses and I was listening to “Live at Budokan.” I remember listening to this record when I was a kid and wanting it to rock harder, so I took a razorblade and actually cut the speakers of my boombox to get them to distort. But they’re just one of those cool bands, no matter what they did they were always cool.
13) Stiff Little Fingers – At The Edge
One of my carryovers from my punk days because the songwriting and feeling are so great. Back in the day, I would go into Media Play (when it wasn’t a Halloween super duper store) and I’d listen to the John Peel Sessions which was a double CD set that was way over my price limit, so I’d ask the clerk if I could listen to it. They’d cut the plastic and pull out this portable CD player with phones and stand there and watch you listen to it, but this song in particular was so great I didn’t care that I was being hounded by some minimum wage jerk.

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