#150) "Where the Green Grass Grows" by Tim McGraw - Someday...someday...when all my battles have been fought, all my goals met, plans carried out, all the 1/48/50's driven at least twice, when the gray now merely peppering my five o' clock shadow has come to define my look, this is how I'd like to have things play out.
And I like any song that throws direction into the mix. Point our rocking chairs toward the west, indeed...
"I don't know who my neighbors are, and there's bars on the corner and bars on my heart..."
#151) "Cant Get There From Here" by R.E.M - Years before their mainstream success sort of turned them into mush, R.E.M was a cutting edge band struggling to survive but achieving legend status through relentless touring. Can't Get There From Here is for my money the best example of the band's pre-success greatness. Fun and savvy, it's almost hard to believe this is an R.E.M song. No offense, but when it comes to R.E.M, I was left, through no fault of my own, sometime in the early 1990s at the height of their popularity, with the indelible image of Michael Stipe crawling into a pile of stuffed animals and assuming the fetal position to sing Everybody Hurts.
After that, word is they got back to their roots and stayed there until disbanding in 2011. Sadly, by then I had stopped listening.
But Cant Get There From Here just kills it...kills it dead. I was 12 years old when this song came out, and felt pretty hip grooving to it.
I wasn't...but I felt it. Still do. Even though I'm still not. ;)
"When the world is a monster, bad to swallow you whole..."
Friday, March 27, 2015
Friday, March 20, 2015
Friday, March 13, 2015
The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)
#148) "Roll Me Away" by Bob Seger - Oh, would that it were this easy.
But alas, the story told in Roll Me Away is so far-fetched, so implausible, it's difficult to suspend disbelief. I mean really, come on, he just steps outside one day, looks down a road, and decides now is the time to go? No destination is given, no details as to what he's leaving behind, only that he's 'tired of his own voice'...he meets a girl, she's convinced, and together they speed off into the high plains.
More believable, perhaps, when one is young and prone to (or capable of) believing romanticism and idealism are soul mates.
I still like Roll Me Away, though. It's the song that started it all, back in that motel room in Madison, Wisconsin, when I was thirteen.The piano introduction, strung together by a thin orchestral wire, always stirs something in me...and there are parts of the story that ring quite true. Notably the fact that the girl he meets in the bar, who at first is pulled in by the idea of taking off, eventually can't keep going with him.
"She said she missed her home / I headed on alone..."
That's part of what my road trip will be about. I can talk all day long about responsibilities and being sensible, but it is a little bit true that the innate fear of stepping away, even temporarily (much less permanently), from what's familiar, has kept me around. 1/48/50 will be about marshaling that...for a little while.
"I too am lost, I feel double crossed, and I'm sick of what's wrong and what's right..."
#149) "My Next Thirty Years" by Tim McGraw - Back in my DJ days, I was twice wrong about Tim McGraw. First, I predicted that his career was not likely to survive Y2K, because Indian Outlaw was the dumbest song I'd ever heard, and would prove to limit the scope of his career to that of a novelty artist.
My second prediction was that he and wife Faith Hill would not last much into the 21st century as a couple. This was inspired by the heavy blast of duets they recorded and released in the late 1990s, each one sappier than the last, that listeners just couldn't get enough of. It's Your Love might have been the most requested song at our station in 1997 and 1998. I didn't (and don't) have anything against them personally, or as artists, just a knee jerk 'get a room, you two...' mentality at the time, and belief that celebrity couples, particularly in the music industry, are almost always doomed.
I obviously didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Twenty years since Indian Outlaw, McGraw is still active in country music and taken his place among the revered. And against all odds, he and Faith Hill are going on twenty years. Good for them.
2000's My Next Thirty Years is also a kind of fantasy, how you hope things will go as you cross the dreaded threshold from your twenties to your thirties. But unlike Roll Me Away, it doesn't have to remain mere fiction. It's possible to achieve what the song is talking about, if you fashion the right circumstances in your life, smartly and incrementally relinquish certain lifestyles and viewpoints in the name of the growth required for smooth transition of life stages. I like that kind of optimism, and I gotta say, I've been able to make a little bit of it true. I don't want to get old, I don't want to die, nobody does...but so far my next thirty years have been a lot more enjoyable than my first thirty.
"Maybe now I've conquered all my adolescent fears / And I'll do it better in my next thirty years..."
But alas, the story told in Roll Me Away is so far-fetched, so implausible, it's difficult to suspend disbelief. I mean really, come on, he just steps outside one day, looks down a road, and decides now is the time to go? No destination is given, no details as to what he's leaving behind, only that he's 'tired of his own voice'...he meets a girl, she's convinced, and together they speed off into the high plains.
More believable, perhaps, when one is young and prone to (or capable of) believing romanticism and idealism are soul mates.
I still like Roll Me Away, though. It's the song that started it all, back in that motel room in Madison, Wisconsin, when I was thirteen.The piano introduction, strung together by a thin orchestral wire, always stirs something in me...and there are parts of the story that ring quite true. Notably the fact that the girl he meets in the bar, who at first is pulled in by the idea of taking off, eventually can't keep going with him.
"She said she missed her home / I headed on alone..."
That's part of what my road trip will be about. I can talk all day long about responsibilities and being sensible, but it is a little bit true that the innate fear of stepping away, even temporarily (much less permanently), from what's familiar, has kept me around. 1/48/50 will be about marshaling that...for a little while.
"I too am lost, I feel double crossed, and I'm sick of what's wrong and what's right..."
#149) "My Next Thirty Years" by Tim McGraw - Back in my DJ days, I was twice wrong about Tim McGraw. First, I predicted that his career was not likely to survive Y2K, because Indian Outlaw was the dumbest song I'd ever heard, and would prove to limit the scope of his career to that of a novelty artist.
My second prediction was that he and wife Faith Hill would not last much into the 21st century as a couple. This was inspired by the heavy blast of duets they recorded and released in the late 1990s, each one sappier than the last, that listeners just couldn't get enough of. It's Your Love might have been the most requested song at our station in 1997 and 1998. I didn't (and don't) have anything against them personally, or as artists, just a knee jerk 'get a room, you two...' mentality at the time, and belief that celebrity couples, particularly in the music industry, are almost always doomed.
I obviously didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Twenty years since Indian Outlaw, McGraw is still active in country music and taken his place among the revered. And against all odds, he and Faith Hill are going on twenty years. Good for them.
2000's My Next Thirty Years is also a kind of fantasy, how you hope things will go as you cross the dreaded threshold from your twenties to your thirties. But unlike Roll Me Away, it doesn't have to remain mere fiction. It's possible to achieve what the song is talking about, if you fashion the right circumstances in your life, smartly and incrementally relinquish certain lifestyles and viewpoints in the name of the growth required for smooth transition of life stages. I like that kind of optimism, and I gotta say, I've been able to make a little bit of it true. I don't want to get old, I don't want to die, nobody does...but so far my next thirty years have been a lot more enjoyable than my first thirty.
"Maybe now I've conquered all my adolescent fears / And I'll do it better in my next thirty years..."
Friday, March 6, 2015
The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)
#146) "Highwayman" by The Highwaymen - The Highwaymen consisted of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, and the 1985 single, Highwayman was the country super group's biggest hit, although they continued recording and performing together until Jennings' death in 2002.
It concerns four intrepid characters at different times in history, and how an indomitable spirit keeps them coming back again and again. Strangely, each singer's voice works with the particular story he's telling: Nelson the old west bandolero, the 'highwayman' meeting his fate at the end of a rope, Kristofferson the sailor lost at sea in a heavy blow, Jennings a dam builder whose one misstep has disastrous consequences, and Cash an astronaut who is not likely to ever return, but may one day come back as a 'single drop of rain'.
The song was written by Jimmy Webb, who gave the world Wichita Lineman, among others, so its mindfulness of something that transcends mere flesh and bone is not all that surprising. It's a good haunting song to reflect by, watching miles peel away like years, wondering if we are all just drops of rain...
"But I will remain, and I'll be back again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again..."
#147) "The Time (Dirty Bit)" by The Black Eyed Peas - This is a toughie for me; even as I type this, I'm not entirely sure why I am. I'm not a fan of The Black Eyed Peas. There's nothing about them that appeals to me, nothing I can latch onto, call my own (even under the brightly lit auspices of being 'open minded' or ' young at heart'...), nothing that doesn't get me rolling my eyes a little, truth be told. I think they try way too hard to be whatever it is they try to be...and I find their sound, and their look (including Fergie's sex appeal), to be among the most contrived (and overrated) entities in all of entertainment. They are a fully inorganic band, offering inorganic music and style for inorganic times, emissaries from the same damaged place in our society's psyche that has allowed the Kardashians to become celebrities.
Every fiber of my being wants to dismiss The Time... (a cover no less) as the rendering of a lame song from the 80s into an even lamer millennial rehash, and I would, were it not for the 'dirty bit'.
The dirty bit shuts me up.
The dirty bit, for reasons I can't explain, electrifies this jaded asshole.
The other components of The Time, the hodgepodge of half-baked lyrics and chants and sampling, don't work with each other at all. They manage only (barely) to comprise a clunky musical Frankenstein monster that lumbers out of will.i.am's basement laboratory in search of a dance partner to help it feel like a real human.
But the dirty bit alone emits an energy that could very well be detected on a distant world across the galaxy one day (picked up by Johnny Cash's starship!...;-). The Peas would have done themselves a world of good to build the entire song around this finely textured electromagnetic storm.
Sometimes (also for reasons I can't quite lock down, and maybe wouldn't admit), when I'm driving a LOT less than 14,000 miles, I just have to listen to it. And I do. And damn, if I don't have the time of my life.
Score one for music and its charms, I guess.
There isn't a single line in this song that isn't a lame throwaway, so I'll just take this opportunity to say, "Hello! What's cookin'?", instead...;-)"
It concerns four intrepid characters at different times in history, and how an indomitable spirit keeps them coming back again and again. Strangely, each singer's voice works with the particular story he's telling: Nelson the old west bandolero, the 'highwayman' meeting his fate at the end of a rope, Kristofferson the sailor lost at sea in a heavy blow, Jennings a dam builder whose one misstep has disastrous consequences, and Cash an astronaut who is not likely to ever return, but may one day come back as a 'single drop of rain'.
The song was written by Jimmy Webb, who gave the world Wichita Lineman, among others, so its mindfulness of something that transcends mere flesh and bone is not all that surprising. It's a good haunting song to reflect by, watching miles peel away like years, wondering if we are all just drops of rain...
"But I will remain, and I'll be back again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again..."
#147) "The Time (Dirty Bit)" by The Black Eyed Peas - This is a toughie for me; even as I type this, I'm not entirely sure why I am. I'm not a fan of The Black Eyed Peas. There's nothing about them that appeals to me, nothing I can latch onto, call my own (even under the brightly lit auspices of being 'open minded' or ' young at heart'...), nothing that doesn't get me rolling my eyes a little, truth be told. I think they try way too hard to be whatever it is they try to be...and I find their sound, and their look (including Fergie's sex appeal), to be among the most contrived (and overrated) entities in all of entertainment. They are a fully inorganic band, offering inorganic music and style for inorganic times, emissaries from the same damaged place in our society's psyche that has allowed the Kardashians to become celebrities.
Every fiber of my being wants to dismiss The Time... (a cover no less) as the rendering of a lame song from the 80s into an even lamer millennial rehash, and I would, were it not for the 'dirty bit'.
The dirty bit shuts me up.
The dirty bit, for reasons I can't explain, electrifies this jaded asshole.
The other components of The Time, the hodgepodge of half-baked lyrics and chants and sampling, don't work with each other at all. They manage only (barely) to comprise a clunky musical Frankenstein monster that lumbers out of will.i.am's basement laboratory in search of a dance partner to help it feel like a real human.
But the dirty bit alone emits an energy that could very well be detected on a distant world across the galaxy one day (picked up by Johnny Cash's starship!...;-). The Peas would have done themselves a world of good to build the entire song around this finely textured electromagnetic storm.
Sometimes (also for reasons I can't quite lock down, and maybe wouldn't admit), when I'm driving a LOT less than 14,000 miles, I just have to listen to it. And I do. And damn, if I don't have the time of my life.
Score one for music and its charms, I guess.
There isn't a single line in this song that isn't a lame throwaway, so I'll just take this opportunity to say, "Hello! What's cookin'?", instead...;-)"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)