JITJ Playlist 003: Coffee and Clay

An impromptu, no thinking, whatever comes to mind playlist of "blank and blank" songs.

Nov 29, 2023

For those of you that were reading this newsletter last month you’ll know that my wife Tina and I were hiking the 90-mile Dales High Way through the Yorkshire Dales, from Saltaire in West Yorkshire to Appleby in Cumbria. It was an absolutely gorgeous walk despite the biblical rain we experienced on Day 3. On our second day of walking, we decided to stop in for a hot drink and some cake in the lovely market town of Skipton in North Yorkshire. There were numerous options from which to choose, and we randomly settled on Coffee and Clay, an independent shop conveniently located on the High Street, which “combines an imaginative paint-a-pot studio with a delicious cafe and party venue.” The latte and the lemon drizzle cake (I’m a sucker for a good slice of lemon drizzle; well, for most sweet treats to be fair) were sublime!

As I was enjoying the decor and ruminating on the cafe’s name, my word association circuit activated, and the chorus of Magnet and Steel by Walter Egan began playing on my internal jukebox. As I started singing it, quietly, of course (can’t have the paparazzi showing up again), Tina asked, “why that song? Random!”.

“Well obviously!” I replied, “I’m picking up on the coffee and clay vibe! Songs with the word “and” in the middle, let’s go!”

I’ll often do this in the middle of a conversation, been doing it for decades (much to Tina’s chagrin). “Songs with the word green in the lyrics!”, “Songs with the word clown!”, “With the word blood!”. And on and on it goes. Normally we’ll just go back and forth naming songs (and speaking/singing the relevant lyric) until someone comes up empty. As long as the other person has one more song remaining in their mental record stack, they win! How fun!

In this instance it was a pretty rapid-fire exercise - no taking turns, just throwing out song titles. “I can use this for one of my Substack playlists!” I said (excited much?), so we settled on ten tracks and ended up . . . here!

I’m sharing these in the order they came to us in the cafe, which kinda kills me a little bit. I’ve always been a stickler for appropriate sequencing of playlists (or mixtapes as we used to call them “in the olden days”). Whether it was theme, or musical style, or bpm, or song feel (this was a popular one), there was always something linking individual tracks, or series of tracks, together in a meaningful way. But not this time! Not on this bad boy!

So go ahead, grab yourself a cafe latte and a slice of lemon drizzle cake, settle into a comfortable chair, and enjoy Coffee and Clay, the third offering in the JITJ Playlist series . . .

Magnet and Steel - Walter Egan

From Not Shy (1978)

Walter Egan’s highest charting song, Magnet and Steel, from his second solo album, peaked at # 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978. It’s also one of the 442 tracks featured on my Time Life Morning Megamix Sonos playlist. Yes, every weekday I wake up to a random selection of soft rock / AM Gold music, a gentle throwback to the simpler and more innocent days of my youth. I’ll be covering five of my favorites from my morning wake-up playlist in a soon-to-be-released new series on JITJ. But until then, enjoy this lovely track!

Alive and Kicking - Simple Minds

From Once Upon a Time (1985)

A somewhat embarrassing admission: I’d never heard of Simple Minds before 1985’s Don’t You (Forget About Me) from John Hughes’ classic movie The Breakfast Club. But as I look back to that time in my life, I recognize that, growing up on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic, I just had very few avenues for musical discovery (it still remains a mystery to me how it came to be that the first record I ever owned was 1975’s Dressed To Kill by Kiss). There was plenty of R&B and reggae on tap on the radio, along with the soft rock of the late 70s/early 80s and some of the more popular new wave in the early 80s (and, of course, Casey Kasem on Sundays). But the new and exciting music coming out of the UK rarely made its way to my ears. Back to this track, it was the first single from Simple Minds’ seventh studio album Once Upon a Time. On the back of the success of the non-album single Don’t You (Forget About Me), which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Alive and Kicking made it to #3 in the US, #4 in Canada and #6 in the UK.

Leather and Lace - Stevie Nicks & Don Henley

From Bella Donna (1981)

The second single from Stevie Nicks’ debut solo album Bella Donna, this gorgeous song peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Two incredible singers, both at the top of their game, making musical magic with this Nicks-penned ballad. Originally intended for Waylon Jennings and Jessi Coulter, who never recorded it (and later divorced), Nicks wrote the song in 1975 when she was dating Don Henley. According to the interview with Nicks at the beginning of this video, Henley originally hated the idea of Leather and Lace but “helped” her write the song (apparently by saying, “that’s terrible, start over”). Thankfully for music lovers this track didn’t “end up on a shelf” as Nicks speculated it might have if Henley hadn’t agreed to record it with her.

Joy and Pain - Rob Base & D.J. E-Z Rock

From It Takes Two (1989)

This was one of my top 5 jams from the summer of 1989, the year I left Bermuda for the “big city” of Halifax (population 310k that year) for university. It was right up there with Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance, Biz Markie’s Just a Friend, Milli Vanilli’s Girl You Know It’s True, and Young MC’s Bust A Move, just a handful of the selections to be heard blasting out of DJ Marky Mark’s boombox in suite 10-4-1 of SMU’s Loyola Residence in the first couple weeks of September 1989.

Jack and Diane - John Cougar

From American Fool (1982)

I only ever knew of this as a “John Cougar Mellencamp” record, but it was actually released when Mellencamp was performing as John Cougar, as he did between 1976 and 1982. I never really followed Mellencamp’s work outside of this track and Hurts So Good, the lead single from the same album. But then in 1994 he released Wild Night with Me'Shell Ndegeocello, a fantastic pairing, driven by Ndegeocello’s infectious bassline with her husky voice complementing Mellencamp’s perfectly. I loved it so much that I went out and bought the CD single! Remember those? Absolute marketing genius getting people to pay $5 for two songs.

Lee and Molly - Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers

From Conscious Party (1988)

Lee and Molly is the second track from the Grammy-winning Conscious Party, Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers third album, their first on Virgin, released in 1988. Tomorrow People was the biggest hit from the album, reaching #39 on the Billboard Hot 100, but I’ve always been partial to this track, which features Keith Richards on lead guitar.

Round and Round - Ratt

From Out of the Cellar (1984)

I’m not sure I ever listened to this song in the 80s, but I became aware of it in the late 90s when the Monsters of Rock double CD was being heavily promoted. In fact, I’m fairly confident that this is the only Ratt song I’m even remotely aware of. And I’ve no idea why it would possibly come to mind over coffee and cake in the Yorkshire Dales. But it fit the bill, so it made the playlist!

Master and Servant - Depeche Mode

From Some Great Reward (1984)

An early classic from Depeche Mode, Master and Servant appeared on their fourth full length Some Great Reward released in 1984. I was late to the DM party only arriving in 1985 through the Catching Up With Depeche Mode compilation. Strangely that would be the only Depeche album I ever actually owned until the Singles collections (81-85 and 86-98) were released. I’ve found their last few albums to be hit and miss (including this year’s Memento Mori) but have enjoyed some of Dave Gahan’s solo and collaborative efforts, particularly his cover of Cat Power’s Metal Heart performed with Soulsavers.

Fire and Rain - James Taylor

From Sweet Baby James (1970)

When I was a kid, pre-internet (at least pre-widely available internet, notwithstanding the public network that spawned “Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War”), the story was that James Taylor’s bandmates had bought a plane ticket for Suzanne, his girlfriend/fiancée/wife as a surprise, to come visit him while he was out on tour. Sadly, the plane crashed, and she died, leaving his “sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.” That story, as you probably know, isn’t true, but we just didn’t know any better back then (in another shocking development, Mikey from the Life commercial didn’t die from eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke). The actual story behind the song is no less sad as it does refer to a real-life Suzanne, a childhood friend of Taylor’s who died by suicide, news of which didn’t reach him until six months after her death. The “flying machines” reference relates to James Taylor’s original band (James Taylor and The Flying Machine), which failed to gain any commercial traction.

Love and Pride - King

From Steps in Time (1984)

This track was originally one of three singles released from 1984’s Steps In Time, none of which achieved any chart success when they were initially released. Love and Pride was re-released in January 1985 and ultimately became a hit, peaking at #2 on the UK Singles Chart in February. Thankfully it was still getting heavy airtime later that year when I visited the UK and it became one of my favorite songs of the summer, right up there with Nik Kershaw’s Wide Boy and Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round (Like A Record).

Hope you enjoyed this one, see you next time!

Thank you for reading Joy in the Journey, I appreciate you being here! If there’s someone in your life you think may enjoy this post, feel free to share it.

Joy in the Journey