There's gonna be a jailbreak, somewhere in this town
Diving into last week's recommendations for songs about magic, there seemed to be an abundance of metal songs in there, which brought back fond memories of listening to Peelie as a teenager; back then I was thoroughly bewildered by the two-minute blasts of "hurgh! grrrrrrrrrhurghrrrrrrrrrrrrrah!" that would intersperse his sets. Megadeth, Slayer, Opeth, Emperor et al were all suggested, and I hope that this week's recommendations for songs about prisons inspire similarly enjoyable fits of the giggles.
As ever, there wasn't enough room in the A-list to do justice to all the excellent recommendations. All I can do is apologise to those who feel that their suggestions aren't being appreciated, and point out that each week you collectively provide some 500+ recommendations - last week, jasonaparkes offered 50 on his own. This isn't a complaint, just a gentle reminder that, whatever I do, there is no way I can represent all genres, all eras, and all readers, every single week. I'm not ignoring anyone, or failing to listen to anything - I've listened to more Dr John this past week than I have in the past five years. But, as usual, my shortlist for the A and B lists was 64 songs long. Something's got to give.
And so to the B-list. Lovin' Spoonful's Do You Believe in Magic? made a useful opening paragraph for my column, but couldn't quite squeeze into the final 10, so it kicks off proceedings here, followed by Aphex's Logon Rock Witch, Black Heart Procession's The Spell, Cymande's It's Magic, Kate Bush's decidedly freaky Waking the Witch, Tyrannosaurus Rex's Cat Black the Wizard's Hat (which stands in for all Rex suggestions, as I loved them all almost equally), Steeleye Span's entertaining Alison Gross, Exuma's Mama Loi Papa Loi, Janie Jones's Witches Brew and the Sonics' excoriation of the girl next door, the last song to drop off the A-list and the most missed. No jazz, but thank you ever so much to May1366 for Miles Runs the Voodoo Down, ejaydee for Ronnie Foster, nilpferd for Wayne Shorter and lonniej for Lee Morgan, all of which gave me a lot of pleasure. Thanks also to Japanther for introducing me to the riot that is Raccoo-oo-oon, and to saneshane for the rather gentler Mariee Sioux.
I'm aware that country and reggae haven't had much of a look-in lately, but I'm hoping that both will come up trumps with this week's theme, which is prisons. It may be that courtroom dramas, an enticing suggestion for a theme from Chris7572 last week (thank you!), make their appearances here, too. Deadline is midday Monday. Now is that the RR Archive and Overspill blog I spy attempting a break-out?
