As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)
Row N, Seats 301-302 – left-hand section, 13 rows back, on
the aisle. Sightlines and sound were both excellent.
It’s been over four years since the
last time we saw SNC, but the ensemble certainly hasn’t lost its touch. I’m
surprised they’ve never put out a live DVD – while I enjoy listening to the one
CD of theirs that I own, you miss a lot without the choreography, background
screen imagery, and general craziness of their live shows. As usual, their
musical timeline was quite long, going as far back as Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ The
Night Away” and extending all the way up to Dua Lipa’s “Levitating”, which
still gets plenty of airplay on Top 40 radio stations. It was a particularly
big evening for Bill Withers fans, as their first set included both “Lovely Day”
and a medley of “Use Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine”. I even enjoyed their take on
a couple of songs (“Fix You” and “Shut Up and Dance”) that I don’t especially
like.
This is the second in-person #XPNFest that’s been in
September rather than late July, and the first that I attended. (I actually bought
a 3-day pass last year, but decided not to go due to the prevalence of covid/delta
that fall.) Since there wasn’t anyone I was desperate
to see the first evening, and Friday parking/transportation had gotten
complicated over the years, I just went to the Saturday and Sunday sessions at Wiggins
Park. The weather could hardly have been better. There was no threat of rain,
and the somewhat higher-than-normal autumn temperatures were mitigated by low
humidity and some welcome breezes on Sunday.
As usual, I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Mt. Laurel.
The breakfast buffet was well-stocked, and the wi-fi was fast and reliable once
they got it working around 9:00 Friday night.
I will try to forget the traffic on the way up and back.
Since the WXPN folks did a great job of writing up each act
and providing the set lists, I won’t go into a lot of detail here. Just follow
the links – with some of them, you can also stream the archived audio from
their sets.
Kathleen Edwards
-- best set from an expected source, who also killed
it three years ago. Edwards and her band were in fine form, both on the
rockers and the slower material. (While she primarily sticks to rhythm guitar,
she also rocked it up on a couple numbers.) If fellow Canadian Neil Young had
been born a woman, he
probably would have grown up sounding a lot like Kathleen Edwards.
The
Suffers – best set from someone I never particularly noticed before – they’ve
played the festival before, but for some reason I never connected with them until
this year. This was a great set from beginning to end – think Sly and the
Family Stone, War, and/or Rufus with Chaka Khan.
Lo
Moon – I mentioned them very briefly in 2018, comparing them to Broken
Bells. That still holds, although Death Cab For Cutie also comes to mind. They
did quite a nice set of “ethereal, moody indie-rock.”
Lucinda Williams
– Longtime favorite Lucinda Williams and her crack band certainly deserved their
spot as the final Wiggins Park act Saturday evening.
Valerie
June – I’ve seen Valerie June on two previous occasions as the opening act
for other artists. While her voice is still somewhat of an acquired taste, I mostly
enjoyed this performance, highlighted by “Call Me A Fool” and “Working Woman
Blues.”
Cosmic
Guilt – Tuneful local band with great harmony vocals.
Highnoon
– Another Philly area band, which (coincidentally or not) kicked off Saturday’s
performances promptly at 12:00.
