Top 4 for September 4, 2014

Short and sweet today, little if any explanation --

Bad Mango - Dave Douglas and Sō Percussion

from album of the same name, Vol. 3 of Dave's GPS set.

Let's Call This - Thelonious Monk 

from the famous Friday the 13th, 1953  session. One of your better bebop French horn solos. I always confuse this song with "Let's Cool One". This is the trickier and less often played one.

Top 5 from November 26, 2013

Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat – Bob Dylan from The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert

A particularly rockin' blues from the “what the audience doesn't want” segment of the show. Also notable for a rather terrible guitar solo (Is that Bob?, it can't be Robbie. There's a song with a terrible Bob solo on Blonde in Blonde which I thought laid to rest any expectation the he would ever play lead again, but, then again, this came first) The song itself is distinguished by being in an otherwise standard twelve-bar-blues form, but having its lyrics organized into four-line stanzas (he fourth line occupying the usually vacant bars eleven and twelve). Dylan didn't like to waste space in songs. The performance of She Belongs to Me and in another couple of spots on the solo first disc of this set has measures dropped here and there between lyrics.

Stuck Between Stations – The Hold Steady, from Boys and Girls in America

Love this song, usually gets me pumped-up and air drumming, singing or at least mouthing the words, volume cranked. I heard it this morning stuck in the back corner of the 71 bus and had to do this all internally. The archetypal Hold Steady song, for me at least - probably as it's one of the first I knew. Kerouac and Berryman are invoked here. The line between Springsteen and Strummer is walked.

(h/t @FakeCraigFinn)