Ye Olde Hit Parade: Wolf Like Me

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).

2006: TV On the Radio - Wolf Like Me

You remember 2006, don't you? Well, I guess it's all kind of a blur now. But it was the year that Dick Cheney shot a dude in the face and was so powerful that the victim apologized to him. James Brown, Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein all died within a few days of each other at the end of the year. And the movie Borat introduced the fun-loving side of the country of Kazakhstan to the rest of the world.

Satellite radio had been around for a few years, but Sirius made a big push in '06 when Howard Stern made the jump from terrestrial radio. Back when I was at Webnoize in '01, my buddy Ric and I got a sneak preview of then still-to-be-launched XM (pretty sure it was XM and not Sirius, but I could be wrong); they had just set up the satellite repeaters around Boston and gave us a ride around the city listening to it. Anyhoo, Sirius and XM merged in '08 and are still at it, but I've never seen the need to pony up the dough for it. At the same time Stern was starting his satellite era, David Lee Roth began as his replacement but only lasted a few months before getting canceled.


No big changes in the work situation and the family was good. Both Deb and I were doing a lot of running early in the year as she ran the Boston Marathon and I did the Vermont City Marathon in May; I also ran the Chicago Marathon in the fall. For concerts, I saw Pearl Jam, Arctic Monkeys, Mission of Burma, Bloc Party, X/Rollins Band, Yo La Tengo, Iron Maiden (a work buddy got me back into them and we saw them at Agganis Arena...but were a bit bummed when they played their new album front to back), the Hold Steady, Frank Black, the Twilight Singers and the Hold Steady again while I was on a work trip in New Orleans.



There were some terrific albums out in '06, including the Arctic Monkeys' debut, the Hold Steady continuing their hot streak with their third straight great release, another excellent comeback record from Mission of Burma, a killer double album from Sloan and a terrific Twilight Singers album. But it was TV On the Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain and specifically the song "Wolf Like Me" that was the big one for me. Just a whirling dervish of a song that was simultaneously catchy and creepy. It was the sound of a band hitting its stride, combining killer instrumental chops with amazing vocals. 


Honorable mentions: Arctic Monkeys - "I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor"; Arctic Monkeys - "Fake Tales of San Francisco"; Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - "Rise Up With Fists!!"; Robert Pollard - "Love is Stronger Than Witchcraft"; The Minus 5 - "Rifle Called Goodbye"; Ray Davies - "Things Are Gonna Change (The Morning After)"; Danko Jones - "Invisible"; Destroyer - "Your Blood"; Neko Case - "Star Witness"; Band of Horses - "The Funeral"; Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Gold Lion"; The Black Angels - "Sniper at the Gates of Heaven"; The Black Angels - "Bloodhounds on My Trail"; Built to Spill - "Goin' Against Your Mind"; Eagles of Death Metal - "I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News)"; Drive-By Truckers - "Gravity's Gone"; Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"; Pearl Jam - "World Wide Suicide"; The Raconteurs - "Steady As She Goes"; The Twilight Singers - "Bonnie Brae"; The Twilight Singers - "Forty Dollars"; Mission of Burma - "Spider's Web"; Mission of Burma - "2wice"; Frightened Rabbit - "Be Less Rude"; Sonic Youth - "Incinerate"; TV On the Radio - "Province"; Peter Bjorn & John - "Young Folks"; The Black Keys - "Your Touch"; Mastodon - "The Wolf Is Loose"; Yo La Tengo - "Mr. Tough"; Sloan - "Who Taught You to Live Like That?"; Sloan - "Ill-Placed Trust"; Beck - "Cellphone's Dead"; The Hold Steady - "Stuck Between Stations"; The Hold Steady - "Massive Nights"; The Blood Brothers - "Spit Shine Your Black Clouds"; The Tragically Hip - "The Lonely End of the Rink"; Jarvis Cocker - "Running the World"