13 Wonderful Will Songs: The Next Generation - Vol. 6

Featuring songs by the Bolshoi, the Bongos, the Blow Monkeys, Bruce Springsteen, the Gin Blossoms, Randy Crawford, Laura Nyro, and more

That’s right, it’s time for another installment of 13 Wonderful Will Songs: The Next Generation, a series of playlists which are, in fact, in no way distinguishable from the original incarnation of 13 Wonderful Will Songs playlists. So don’t feel as though you need to have listened to those in order to appreciate these, because that’s not the case at all.

Hit “play,” and here’s hoping you enjoy what you hear!

1. The Bolshoi, “A Way”

I’m pretty sure I first heard this song on a mix tape made by my friend Heather, although if I have my timeline right, I believe I was already familiar with the band by that point, having picked up a copy of their album Lindy’s Party in a cut-out bin. As much as love the single from that album (“Please”), this is definitely still my favorite Bolshoi single. I always loved the lyrics near that lead from the first verse into the chorus: “The boys would stare / You'd cross your legs / And then you'd toss your hair…” That’s some darned fine imagery right there.

2. Zumpano, “The Party Rages On”

Like many college students in the early ‘90s, I became very aware of the Seattle label Sub Pop Records as a result of the rise of grunge and the part they played in it. Because my mind instantly had that frame of reference with the label, however, it would always surprise me when I discovered a Sub Pop band that was unabashedly pop in their sound, and Zumpano is a perfect example of that. It was many, many years later when I discovered that one of the band’s members was A.C. Newman, better known nowadays for his work in the New Pornographers. Now it all makes sense…

3. The Bongos, “The Bulrushes”

In a typical example of my discovering bands in a completely backwards-ass fashion, I didn’t know anything about the Bongos until after I’d become a fan of their lead singer, Richard Barone. When I was in college, I picked up a cut-out cassette copy of his live album, Cool Blue Halo, and I just absolutely fell in love with it. The live version of this song was one of the reasons. (Another reason was his live cover of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World,” and I believe I told Mr. Barone this when I interviewed him several years back, but I actually knew his version before I knew Nirvana’s or David Bowie’s!”

4. Johnny Hates Jazz, “Magnetized”

I don’t like to automatically presume that everyone who reads this newsletter already knows all of my oft-told anecdotes, but when it comes to Johnny Hates Jazz, I have kind of a history with them. By this, I mean that I wrote an absurdly detailed oral history of the band - it’s in three parts, which you can read here, here, and here - that two of the members of the band (Clark Datchler and Mike Nocito) got so angry about that they threatened legal action against me even after I asked them to provide me with additional quotes to help level out the things that their former bandmate Calvin Hayes had to say about his experiences in the band. But despite them being so dickish towards me, I still remain a fan of their music, and I particularly dig the title track from the 2013 comeback album that, ironically enough, is what inspired the interview and subsequently led to the squabble with the boys in the band.

5. The Blow Monkeys, “Digging Your Scene” [ACOUSTIC]

6. Bruce Springsteen, “Just Like Fire Would”

Obligatory cover song! Springsteen has proven many times over that he’s a guy who pays attention to other people’s music and has some pretty great taste - he appreciates the work of Wesley Stace, a.k.a. John Wesley Harding, and he’s a well-documented Raspberries fan - but even though he’s prone to throwing some really cool cover songs into his live performances, I was still surprised a few years ago when I learned that he’d covered this ‘80s single by the Australian band the Saints.

7. Seth Swirsky, “Edinburgh”

All too often in today’s society, we find ourselves having to make decisions about whether or not it’s possible to separate artists from their art. Sometimes it’s because the person has done something despicable, while on other occasions it’s because the artist has taken a political position that’s antithetical to what you believe. Why am I bringing this up here? Well, let’s just say that even though I couldn’t continue the Facebook friendship I had with this gentleman, it still hasn’t changed my belief that this is one of the loveliest songs of the 2000s.

8. The Heart Throbs, “Dreamtime”

Thanks to those years that I spent working for a record store, I know way too much about semi-obscure artists of the early ‘90s, and when you couple that with the fact that I was also regularly reading issues of NME, Melody Maker, and Q Magazine, you can only imagine the number of songs that randomly cross my mind and make me wonder, “I wonder if that’s on Spotify…” Well, for many years, this wasn’t. But now it is, and that’s both to my benefit and yours.

9. Paul Simon, “You Can Call Me Al”

I honestly don’t remember what I searched on YouTube that caused me to discover that Jensen Ackles and his wife Danneel had celebrated their wedding anniversary a few years ago by deciding to do a recreation of the video for “You Can Call Me Al,” with Danneel stepping into Chevy Chase’s shoes and Jensen playing the Paul Simon part. As a result of watching the video, I realized two things: 1) I still really love that song, and 2) I still remember the entirety of the lyrics. Which is fine, because I was never going to need to remember algebra anyway.

10. Gin Blossoms, “Found Out About You”

I’ve loved this band ever since they released this album, and I’ve continued to love them ever since. If you’ve never checked out the material that they’ve released since their heyday, by which I mean basically anything after “Till I Hear It From You,” I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how consistent they’ve remained over the years.

11. Randy Crawford, “Street Life”

This song was originally a 1979 hit for the jazz fusion group The Crusaders, with Crawford appearing as the group’s guest vocalist for the track, providing them with a top-20 R&B hit and a top-5 pop hit in the UK. Two years later, however, Crawford re-recorded the song with Doc Severinsen, of all people, for the soundtrack of the Burt Reynolds’ film Sharky’s Machine, and it’s this version which found a brand new life a decade and a half later when Quentin Tarantino utilized it on the soundtrack to Jackie Brown.

12. Laura Nyro, “The Right to Vote”

You know, I’d originally had this playlist ending with two completely different songs, but as I sat at my computer with the news playing in the background, I decided that it might not be the worst thing in the world to add a song with a bit of topical lyrical heft to it. At approximately the same time, one of my Facebook friends - a top-shelf singer in her own right - posted about the anniversary of having done a live Laura Nyro cover in concert, and with Nyro’s name in my head, suddenly everything aligned perfectly.

13. Spirit of the West, “Political”

I believe I stumbled upon this Canadian folk rock band not long after I became a Barenaked Ladies fan, a situation which led me to buy a double-disc collection of up-and-coming Canadian artists that featured a BNL song. These guys were on there, too, as you probably guessed, and although I can’t for the life of me remember which of their songs was on there, I obviously liked it enough for their name to stick with me, and I figured a song with this title was a perfect way to follow the Nyro track as well as close out this playlist.