As I recently sat on a smoldering hot plane, idly sitting on the tarmac for over an hour in that lousy interlude before the A/C comes on and you get airborne, I found myself playing a little game. It was partly designed to distract me from the frequent annoyances of travel — cramped spaces, constant delays, crabby co-passengers, and crummy communication — but also my neighbor’s fleshy appendages radiating heat against me, having spilled over the invisible barrier from the middle seat to form a sweaty, heavy blanket on my right side. Aside from an increasingly futile attempt at preserving my calm, it’s also just a fun game to play, one I often do as songs come on shuffle or a band comes up in conversation. I ask myself (or my companions), “What are the three songs I/you would recommend someone listen to by this band/artist to convince them they’re any good?”
Before they can answer I quickly explain the rules — you can’t use any of their hits. If they’re truly hits, odds are the person has heard them already, so if they’re still unsure whether they like the band/artist or not, there’s no point choosing those songs. (“You’re not sure if you like the Beatles? Have you heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Hey Jude?”) So rule 1: dig deep.
Rule 2 is you can’t pick multiple songs from the same album. It’s too easy to just say “listen to this one record — you’ll get it.” Part of the exercise is to convince the listener that this band/artist matters — this is supposedly someone they have totally missed the boat on (the responder usually approaching the topic with an increasingly high-pitched incredulity — “what do you MEAN you don’t like band/artist ***? They’re one of my favorites!!!”) — so if they don’t have more than one album worth picking from, I would argue the listener hasn’t really missed that much. So rule 2: don’t double dip.
Last rule reinforces something touched on by the first two — you really have to be strategic. You only get three picks to encapsulate what a band/artist is all about — to make the case why the listener should feel mildly embarrassed for not already knowing/loving this entity as much as the frothy responder does — so aside from not picking the obvious singles and doubling up on stellar albums, you really want to pick tracks that capture the range of what a band/artist can do. Unless you’re certain the listener is into rockier songs, you might be blowing your chance to win over a new fan by solely picking those types of songs — maybe they’d be more into the band’s/artist’s slower, moodier songs? Or their trippier, more atmospheric jams? Or their quirky synth/country/metal side that they trot out from time to time? If you only focus on one aspect of the band/artist, you’re limiting your argument and diminishing your chances of convincing the jury. (And again — if a band/artist only HAS one mode, is the listener really missing all that much?) So rule three: think big.
Other than that, there’s nothing to it! This game is a fun companion to one of our other ongoing segments, the longer form mixtape posts of One You Should Know (which we’ll be revisiting soon, I suspect), and often sparks a more spirited debate as the responder frantically tries to compress their selections down to the required three. It goes by a number of names (Triple Play, Three’s Company, etc), but the one I like best is the one from the title — in part because it stems from a previously played round where we debated which three tracks to pick from the artist that gave us that song. (We’ll do a “classics” version of the game in a subsequent post, including choices for that fantastic band then, so stay tuned..)
For this running we’ll stick to some favorite modern acts, two of which I was mulling over on that sweltering plane, having just had a discussion the night before with a fellow music fan at the bar in Bogota. He had never heard of two of my all-time faves — Built to Spill and My Morning Jacket — so I was deciding which three songs to text him back to listen to. What I came up with are the below — and then added another somewhat polarizing band, Modest Mouse, when I conducted this exercise at work the following week.
I’ve included my coworkers’ responses where available and invite others to send me theirs. (And your recommendations for future runnings of the game — in addition to the aforementioned “classics” edition, I’ve already gotten a couple of good suggestions for bands/artists that we’ll share in the coming months.) So fire at will and hit me up. Other than that, pop on some headphones, queue up these killers, and see if you find some new favorites!
Until next time…
–BS
Modest Mouse (my TV must be reading my mind, or is otherwise reading my texts, because it suggested this old Pitchfork documentary that I re-watched the other night — a solid look back at Modest’s classic Lonesome Crowded West. Worth a watch if the below convince you they’re worth your time (it’s really a fantastic album…):
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- Cowboy Dan, Different City, Alone Down There (Harry)
- Blame it on the Tetons, Spitting Venom, Dance Hall (Doc)
- Paper Thin Walls, Doin’ the Cockroach, Custom Concerns (this is a perfect example of why this game is so hard – what about “Trailer Trash,” or “Dramamine,” or practically anything off the album with Johnny Marr? “Bukowski!” Uuuuugh!) (BS)
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Built to Spill:
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- Carry the Zero, The Plan, I Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly (Harry)
- Carry the Zero, The Plan, Goin’ Against Your Mind (Doc)
- Broken Chairs, Velvet Waltz, You Are (BS)
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My Morning Jacket:
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- Gideon, Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt 1, Circuital (Doc)
- Circuital, Dondante, Steam Engine (BS)
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