SONG OF THE DAY

“Born For Me” by Paul Westerberg (Suicaine Gratification, EMD, Capitol, 1999).

WHY TODAY?

I love when this kind of thing happens. I was singing this chorus in bed last night (sometimes I have karaoke nights in bed where I test out songs in my head for hours to see if they’re compatible with my range) and kept not being able to think up what exactly the song was. I knew it was from the Nick Hornby Songbook soundtrack, but I couldn’t remember the artist and song. Well, that was at 2:00am. At 5:45am when I got in the car to head to Newport, RI to watch my cousin play golf, this song came on second on shuffle mode. Second. WTF. And, are you kidding me? And, I guess there is a higher power, and he/they/she wants me to write about this song TODAY. Okay, okay I get the message.

Nick Hornby’s Songbook playlist

1. Teenage Fanclub – “Your Love Is the Place Where I Come From”
2. Bruce Springsteen – “Thunder Road“
3. Nelly Furtado – “I’m Like a Bird“
4. Led Zeppelin – “Heartbreaker“
5. Rufus Wainwright – “One Man Guy”
6. Santana – “Samba Pa Ti“
7. Rod Stewart – “Mama, You Been on My Mind”
8. Bob Dylan – “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” / The Beatles – “Rain“
9. Ani DiFranco – “You Had Time” / Aimee Mann – “I’ve Had It”
10. Paul Westerberg – “Born for Me”
11. Suicide – “Frankie Teardrop” / Teenage Fanclub – “Ain’t That Enough”
12. The J. Geils Band – “First I Look at the Purse”
13. Ben Folds Five – “Smoke”
14. Badly Drawn Boy – “A Minor Incident” (from the About a Boy movie soundtrack)
15. The Bible – “Glorybound”
16. Van Morrison – “Caravan“
17. Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture – “So I’ll Run”
18. Gregory Isaacs – “Puff, the Magic Dragon“
19. Ian Dury and the Blockheads – “Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3” / Richard and Linda Thompson – “Calvary Cross”
20. Jackson Browne – “Late for the Sky”
21. Mark Mulcahy – “Hey Self-Defeater”
22. The Velvelettes – “Needle in a Haystack”
23. O.V. Wright – “Let’s Straighten It Out”
24. Röyksopp – “Röyksopp’s Night Out”
25. The Avalanches – “Frontier Psychiatrist” / Soulwax – “No Fun” / “Push It”
26. Patti Smith Group – “Pissing in a River“

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

– That’s Shawn Colvin on the harmonic backing vocals of the chorus.

– Suicaine Gratifaction is the third solo album from former The Replacements leader Paul Westerberg.

– Co-producer Don Was had admired Westerberg for years. He used Westerberg’s solo debut, 14 Songs, as daily inspiration while producing the Rolling Stones’ Voodoo Lounge. Westerberg had originally been interested in working with Quincy Jones.

– Regarding the album’s strange title, Westerberg said, “I don’t want to think about it too deeply other than the fact that it seems wrong, and therefore it’s attractive to me.”

- Paul Westerberg is an American musician, best known as the former lead singer, rhythm guitarist, and songwriter of The Replacements, one of the seminal alternative rock bands of the 1980s.

– He launched a solo career after the dissolution of that band. In recent years, he has cultivated a more independent-minded approach, primarily recording his music at home in his basement.

– In the late 1970s Westerberg was working as a janitor for U.S. Senator David Durenberger, and one day while walking home from work, he happened to hear a punk band practicing Yes’s “Roundabout” in a basement. He talked his way into the band by convincing the singer that the other band members — Bob Stinson, Chris Marsand, and Tommy Stinson — were going to fire him. The singer quit and Westerberg joined the group.

– The band was originally called “The Impediments,” and played their first gig in the basement of a church, playing to members of a nearby halfway house who did not appreciate their drunken shenanigans, but they soon changed their name to “The Replacements” after several venues declined to advertise the band under their original name.

– The Replacements quickly made a name for themselves in the Twin Cities punk scene, largely thanks to Westerberg’s songwriting. The band made several critically acclaimed albums for local label Twin/Tone before signing to Sire Records in 1985. Despite the jump to Sire, the Replacements never translated their critical success into commercial sales.

– By 1990, the band had run its course. The 1990 Replacements album All Shook Down was for all intents and purposes a Westerberg solo project.

– Westerberg’s cover of Jonathan Edwards’ “Sunshine” appears on the Friends television soundtracks, released in 1995. CHECK THIS COVER OUT!

– His third album Suicaine Gratifaction is a piano-driven, melancholy, and highly personal work.

– The label was undergoing reorganization, and failed to push the album.

– Westerberg then quit the major label circuit and disappeared for three years before staging a major comeback in 2002. With new management and a new independent label, Vagrant Records, he released two records simultaneously, Stereo and Mono (Mono being released under his alter ego Grandpaboy). Stereo and Mono were recorded in Westerberg’s basement studio. They were acclaimed as his best works since the Replacements, and Westerberg became increasingly prolific, releasing Dead Man Shake (as Grandpaboy), Come Feel Me Tremble, and Folker all within the next two years to critical success.

– Westerberg contributed a cover of The Beatles’ “Nowhere Man” for the 2002 soundtrack to the 2001 film I Am Sam.

– On July 17, 2008 it was announced that on “June 49” (July 19) Paul Westerberg would release an album with 49 minutes’ worth of music for 49 cents. The album, 49:00… Of Your Time/Life, was released on July 21, 2008. A few weeks after 49:00 was released, it was taken down from Amazon.com and TuneCorestore. In its place, Westerberg released a song titled “5:05” (in reference to the fact that 49:00 was really 43:55 long, 5:05 shorter than 49:00). From the lyrical content of “5:05,” it is believed that 49:00 was recalled due to copyright issues in the ending cover medley.

– Westerberg is married to former Zuzu’s Petals guitarist and author Laurie Lindeen.

– Westerberg severely injured his fretting hand in 2006, in an accident while trying to remove candle wax with a screwdriver, and as of 2008 had since performed only one live show.

– He resides in Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. His younger sister, Mary Lucia, is a D.J. at local radio station 89.3 The Current.

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