Up to Us

it’s got nothing to do with you …

“Up,” Ticklepenny Corner
“Up Above My Head,” Maria Muldaur & Tracy Nelson
“Up Against the Glass,” The Botticellis
“Up All Night,” Green
“Up Around the Bend,” Creedence Clearwater Revival
“Up in This (Blood on the Banjo Remix),” Don McCloskey
“Up the Hill Backwards,” David Bowie
“Up the Spout,” Mateo Messina
“Up to the Mountain (MLK Song),” Patty Griffin
“Up Up and Away,” Kid CuDi
“Uphill Battle,” Sarah McLachlan
“Upside Down,” Jack Johnson
“Uptight (Everything’s Alright),” Stevie Wonder
“Uptown,” Prince
“Upward Over the Mountain,” Iron & Wine
“Us,” The Call
“Us Amazonians,” Kirsty MacColl

The Don McCloskey video above is unfortunately, and hilariously, NSFW. The Enormous D has a genius for over-the-top egomania.

Ticklepenny Corner was a band that played at the Cornerstone Festival at some point in the 1990s. I missed their show but somehow arrived home in Philly with a copy of their CD, which turned out to have a nice front-porch vibe with some lovely, wistful folk-pop, including a really great Christmas song that ends up on most of my end-of-the-year playlists. Sorry I missed their show. They’re still around, sort of, in that they still have a myspace site (last updated in 2009).

Here’s a video of Sister Rosetta Tharpe doing “Up Above My Head.” The version in the list above is from the Sister Rosetta tribute album Shout, Sister, Shout.

That video is from the TV era, but if you search around you can find older clips — grainy, black and white footage of this astonishing woman playing killer guitar solos decades ahead of their time. Imagine you’re watching an old World War II newsreel and you suddenly see some GI in the background talking on an iPhone. That’s what it’s like seeing and hearing Sister Rosetta for the first time.