Welcome back to Melissa Recommends Music, and happy March!
Today I’m excited to share the second installment of DFGAS2, featuring a selection full of some of my favorite songs. The playlist ended up having a distinct A/B-side feel, with the first half comprised of upbeat, more vintage tracks and the second half nostalgic but a little more modern. Also, you can now listen to my playlists on YouTube! Please accept my formal apology for the Spotify monopoly of the last few playlists.
Read on for Eugene McDaniel’s abbreviated bio, detailed scrutiny of a Marvin Gaye deep cut, and a couple songs pulled from my Spotify Top Songs of 2021 and 2022.
Track Listing
“Sagittarius Red” - Eugene McDaniels
“Desabafo e Desafio” - Moraes Moreira
“You Are That Special One” - Marvin Gaye
“Go Go Round This World!” - Fishmans
“Baby You Come Rollin’ ‘Cross My Mind” - The Peppermint Trolley Company
“True Blue” - Dirty Beaches
“When Fortune Smiles” - Kitty Craft
“The Vanishing American Family” - ScubaZ
“Daydream” - Charlie’s Uncalled Four
“So Weit Wie Noch Nie” - Justus Köhncke
1. “Sagittarius Red” by Eugene McDaniels
Kicking off this week’s playlist is a track from Outlaw (1970), the ninth studio album from Eugene McDaniels and the first under his full name. On the back of the album, there’s a statement that reads:
“Under conditions of national emergency like now, there are only two kinds of people – those who work for freedom, and those who do not… good guys versus the bad guys.”
Outlaw marked a significant shift in McDaniels’ career. For the first half of the ‘60s, he’d found fame putting out hit records under Gene McDaniels, working with studio-sanctioned pop that eventually fell out of style towards the end of the decade.
After writing the chart-topping protest anthem “Compared to What,” famously recorded by Roberta Flack and popularized by Les McCann and Eddie Harrie, he turned his focus to the emerging black consciousness movement, which is where Outlaw comes in.
“Sagittarius Red” is not the first track on the album, but with a buildup like that it had to be the first on this week’s playlist. Opening with a sultry and sparse arrangement, the song unfolds throughout the next three minutes as an ode to freedom. “Yeah passion suits me more / You know that it holds no bounds,” McDaniels sings, his own voice and technique displaying a boundlessness that, especially in the final minute, threatens to burst from the seams of this song. “As my life comes to me / I will go to my life.” OOF!!!
It bears mentioning that McDaniels was also a successful songwriter, penning the seminal “Feel Like Makin’ Love” for Roberta Flack; later, his music was sampled by De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, Beastie Boys, and a whole slew of others. In short, he’s a legend, and there’s a great website dedicated to him with more interesting background on his long-spanning career.
2. “Desabafo e Desafio” Moraes Moreira
Keeping the momentum up is a song from Moraes Moreira, the vocalist and one of the founding members of legendary Brazilian band Novos Baianos. I wish I could recommend all the songs on his 1975 self-titled debut solo album, but I’ll have to settle for just one; in this case, the opening track of the album, whose antsy first few seconds keep us on our toes until those rowdy guitars come in with a lick that feels like an instant classic. “Desabafo e Desafio” sounds distinctly cinematic to me, progressing with a sense of forward-motion and storytelling that goes beyond whatever narrative the lyrics tell. In other words, it’s one of those songs that I could easily picture on a soundtrack, perhaps accompanying visuals depicting a funny little car chase or a silly robbery…
3. “You Are That Special One” by Marvin Gaye
Maybe it’s because the opening of this Marvin Gaye deep cut reminds me of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” but this track immediately fills me with jolly. It’s a masterclass of a song, beautifully produced and expertly mixed, with fun elements like the flute and call-and-repeat backup vocals (“There’s something about the way you walk” “WALK!”) adding to the jolliness.
My favorite part is the breakdown from 2:03-2:30, where you can really hear some of those individual elements shine. The funky bass line, that staccato guitar at 2:08, “And only heaven kno-ows” at 2:17, and an instrument that I cannot for the life of me identify at 2:14 and onwards—is it a toy piano? A harpsichord? A guitar?? If you have any ideas, meet me in the comments section.
The story behind this album, You’re The Man, is that it was meant to be released in 1972 as a socially conscious follow-up to What’s Going On. After the release of the first single, Marvin Gaye scrapped the whole project due to differing political views between himself and then-Motown CEO Barry Gordy. While a few of its tracks ended up on compilations and other releases, You’re The Man didn’t resurface in its entirety until 2019, when Motown released it in celebration of what would have been Gaye’s 80th birthday.
4. “Go Go Round This World!” by Fishmans
Fishmans is a Japanese band formed in 1987 that in recent years has amassed a fervent international cult following, as exemplified by the existence of their Fandom website, a Fishmans movie (only available in Japan), and a Fishmans Reddit page. While the lead vocalist tragically passed away in 1999, the band continues to play live and release new material to this day.
5. “Baby You Come Rollin’ ‘Cross My Mind” by The Peppermint Trolley Company
I’m a sucker for classically ‘60s sunshine pop songs like this one, the biggest hit from Redlands, CA-based The Peppermint Trolley Company. The band went through so many iterations and personnel changes in the four years they were active that Wikipedia even has a nifty chart to sum it all up.
Their claim to fame, “Baby You Come Rollin’ ‘Cross My Mind,” was actually written by Jesse Lee Kincaid, former guitarist of Rising Sons and frequent collaborator of Taj Mahal’s. But The Peppermint Trolley Co. switched out the country strains of the original for a baroque pop arrangement featuring violins, a piano and a flute, following a trend shaped by songs like “Ruby Tuesday,” “For No One” and “Walk Away Renee.”
On the same site that I found this sweet picture, I also found this sweet note:
“Today, the members of the Peppermint Trolley are still tight. They recently reunited for Greg Tornquist’s wedding. Greg leaves us with these final thoughts: ‘1968 was a time of momentous change for this country, politically. [As a result] we were a pretty serious group, lyrically. And yet, we were just kids. Not only were we happy to be playing music together and living together, we were also very important to each other in understanding the times that we were living in. Dealing with Vietnam and the draft… We were real brothers.’
6. “True Blue” by Dirty Beaches
“True Blue” has accompanied me on many a pensive moonlit walk. Dirty Beaches is the now-defunct project of Canadian-Taiwanese musician Alex Zhang Hungtai, who guest starred on Twin Peaks in 2017. Interesting tidbit I found in a 2018 Bandcamp article quoted below:
“In 2013, [JPEGMAFIA] reached out to musician Alex Zhang Hungtai for career advice. At the time, Zhang—then known as Dirty Beaches—performed solo and dealt with racism as an Asian-American creating lo-fi blues. Zhang’s reply was encouraging: ‘Just do what you want to do. Fuck everyone else. Just do it your way.’ JPEGMAFIA recently shared this correspondence on Instagram ahead of the release of Veteran, calling it a catalyst to his self-discovery.”
7. “When Fortune Smiles” by Kitty Craft
From the mind of genius musician Pamela Valfer, AKA Kitty Craft, comes this swoon-worthy, sample-heavy track off of one of the best albums of all time, Beats and Breaks from the Flower Patch. (Can you tell I love Kitty Craft?) “When Fortune Smiles” is my favorite song of hers, and immediately elicits a sigh of relief from me, no matter how relieved I may already be feeling. A small secret: I think this song sounds like the feeling of falling in love…
8. “The Vanishing American Family” by ScubaZ
This song arguably also sounds like falling in love, but there’s a tinge of wistfulness to it that offsets any hint of butterflies. Lush and sparkly, it’s the title track on ScubaZ’s only full-length release from 2001, but it’s an anomaly on the the rest of the album, which is a joyride of breakbeat and rock that sounds like the best of Fatboy Slim. Apart from the fact that ScubaZ was a UK duo, I couldn’t find any other information on the group or their one release. Some people on Reddit speculate that Thom Yorke does the vocals on this track, but I disagree.
9. “Daydream” by Johnny’s Uncalled Four
So sweet, so pensive, so very much like the best kind of daydream, this song is perfect to me. The Ohio high school foursome behind it never caught their big break, only putting out a handful of singles from 1964-1965 before Wick Records re-released this and “Please Say” in 2020. However, John Golden, the band’s lead, went on to have a very successful career as a recording masterer, with credits on dozens of famous recordings. In my internet digging I found a really cool interview with him where he talks about recording, mixing, mastering, and his general career trajectory, if you’re interested.
10. “So Weit Wie Noch Nie” by Justus Köhncke
Oh boy! Rather than end this playlist on a nostalgic or pensive note, let us be quietly uplifted by “So Weit Wie Noch Nie,” a breezy track that mixes electronic elements with classical ones like violins, horns, and harps for instant mood-boosting results. The title seems difficult to translate to English—I found a few competing versions, like “As far as never before” or “Further than ever before.” No matter the exact translation, the feeling of reaching beyond or stepping into the future definitely comes through on the song. Thank you to my sister Marina for showing me this gem in 2019!
We made it to the end! Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoyed it. Some questions for you: Do you have a song that sounds like it should be on a soundtrack? What about a song that sounds like falling in love to you? What did you think of the order of the playlist (I spent longer than usual working out the progression)? If you care to share, let me know in the comments!
The next newsletter is LR3, and it goes out in two weeks. Hope I see you back here then :)
Another stellar round-up and write-up Melissa! Interesting that "When Fortune Smiles" sounds like falling in love to you because it sounds like collaging on a sunny Sunday afternoon to me. The insanely romantic "Enchanted Mirror" by Luiz Bonfa would be my pick for the love category