Keith Pille's Weekly Shuffle

Every week, I will fire up the Shuffle Songs option on my iPod; the first song to come up, no matter what it is, will get an instant, unvarnished review. We're at the mercy of random chance and the limits of my digital music collection. Let's see where this takes us.

You Win Again
Keith Richards, Timeless: Hank Williams Tribute

I love the music of Hank Williams almost without reservation. And I often like Keith Richards, particularly his token lead-vocal songs on each Stones album (with the usual pre-80s caveat that you pretty much universally have to apply to anything Stones-related). But I hate this recording. Hate, hate, hate. Itunes tells me that this is the first time I've ever listened to it since digitizing my music collection (if memory serves, I listened to it once before, when I first bought this CD… and I think I skipped through it then).

It's bad enough when Keith Richards coasts on his own reputation… in this slow, crappy, limp, dead version, he's coasting on Hank Williams' reputation. That's even worse. There's no emotion here. There's barely any music here. Just Keith Richards moaning sort of blandly over a dead-slow vibrato-heavy guitar part and a sleepy horn section.

Hank sounded forlorn and heartsick; Richards sounds like he has to crank something out so that he can get cred for participating in the coolio tribute album. I expect better from the guy who hooked us up with "Happy" and "Before They Make Me Run."

By the time you read this online, this song will already have been deleted from my library. Deleted with extreme prejudice. If I could send killer robots out to destroy the master tapes, I would.

Weekly Shuffle Scoreboard (Best to Worst):
1. "Rock N Roll Radio V2," Derailleur
2. "Back from Somewhere (live)," Husker Du
3. "The Ride of the Valkyries," Richard Wagner
4. "Powderfinger," Neil Young
5. "Sliver (live)," Nirvana
6. "Whiskey Bottle," Uncle Tupelo
7. "Don't Be Afraid of the Robot," Electric Six
8. "Allison's Starting to Happen," The Lemonheads
9. "Gassed & Stoked," Lou Reed
10. "Shooting Star," Golden Smog
11. "Wherever I Go," Steve Earle
12. "You Are the Everything," R.E.M.
13. "Nicotine & Gravy," Beck
14. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (live)," Wilco
15. "The Calming Sea," Beachwood Sparks
16. "John, I'm Only Dancing," David Bowie
17. "Take It or Leave it," The Strokes
18. "Is It Too Late?", World Party
19. "P'twgs," The Honeydogs
20. "Monkey Dot," Money Mark
21. "I Wanted to Tell You," Matthew Sweet
22. "Dazed and Confused," Led Zeppelin
23. "Soldier's Joy," Mark O'Connor
24. "Blue-Eyed Soul," Wilco
25. "Masoko Tanga," The Police
26. "Scenery," Neil Young and Pearl Jam
27. "We Got The," The Beastie Boys
28. "The Big Foist," The Minutemen
29. "Climbing up the Walls," Radiohead
30. "That's When I Reach for My Revolver," Mission of Burma
31. "You Win Again," Keith Richards