Ye Olde Hit Parade: Fell In Love With a Girl

Editor's note: Ye Olde Hit Parade takes a look back at my favorite songs year by year (starting in 1978, when I really started paying attention to music).

2001: The White Stripes - Fell In Love With a Girl

When you think about newsworthy events in 2001, there's really only one thing that stands out: the merger of AOL and Time Warner.

I keed, I keed, it's 9/11, of course. But plenty of other stuff happened before that. Napster shut down. Apple introduced the iPod. The XBox and the Segway were released. Dale Earnhardt and Aaliyah died.

The dotcom economy tanked, as expected. At Webnoize, we saw it coming and as the year wore on, things got bleaker. We watched dotcoms run out of money and go out of business and by the end of the summer, it was obvious the ship was sinking. So I started looking for a new job. I had a little extra urgency because Deb and I found out we were going to have a baby the following spring.

Of course, September 11 really dealt the finishing blow to the company. Our conference in November still happened (although most of us didn't go), but given a lot of the companies that went the previous two years didn't exist or had no money to fly there. I went on some interviews, but nothing really clicked. Finally, I ended up getting a job back at my old company in Marblehead, so I gave my two weeks' notice. At the end of the first week in mid-November, we were all laid off. I had a unplanned week off, and then was back in Marblehead.

This year, a lot of '90s acts were continuing into the new decade on a strong note: Radiohead, Sloan, Guided By Voices, Frank Black, Built to Spill, but there were good new efforts from Stephen Malkmus, Destroyer, Ted Leo and the Strokes. Concerts attended included: Radiohead, Gord Downie, The Tragically Hip, Built to Spill, PJ Harvey and Buddy Guy.



The White Stripes were the breakout band for me in '01. I had been hearing tracks from their new album White Blood Cells on WMBR, but it was seeing the band at the Middle East with a bunch of my Webnoize buddies that clinched it. The guitar-drums garage rock attack was particularly effective in the live setting, but the album kicked ass, especially "Fell In Love With a Girl." Jack White's guitar especially provided a jolt of energy. It didn't really catch on nationally until it was released as a single in April 2002, but I loved it from the moment I heard it. And it was great to see the band when they were still playing small venues, which definitely was not the case when they returned on their next tour.

And speaking of changes, we were bracing for the biggest one so far in our lives coming the next spring.

Honorable mentions: The White Stripes - "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground"; Frank Black and the Catholics - "Robert Onion"; Stephen Malkmus - "Black Book"; Rocket From the Crypt - "Heart of a Rat"; Gorillaz - "Clint Eastwood"; Guided By Voices - "Glad Guys"; Guided By Voices - "Chasing Heather Crazy"; Destroyer - "The Sublimation Hour"; Radiohead - "Knives Out"; Radiohead - "Pyramid Song"; Sloan - "If It Feels Good, Do It"; Sloan - "The Other Man"; Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - "Biomusicology"; Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - "Timorous Me"; Built to Spill - "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss"; The Strokes - "Last Nite"; The Strokes - "Is This It"; Ben Folds - "Annie Waits"; Ben Folds - "Rockin' the Suburbs"; Tenacious D - "Tribute"; Fu Manchu - "Mongoose"; Jay Z - "Izzo (HOVA)";