Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#297) "Drive" by The Cars - There are some ballads that don't make the listener feel sad so much as emotionally manipulated, not sure quite what to feel, which often results in an unsettling emotional hybrid I have for a long time referred to as "oogy".  "Oogy" is something that can't really be forged. It's mostly an unconscious discipline on the artist's part, and yes, universally subjective on the listener's part. But there are nevertheless certain songs I think speak to a greater, more implacable sense of disquiet, distress and unease that transcends politics, personalities and personal lives, and lingers around whether anything bad is actually happening, and whether other people are there to witness it.

Ever since it reached No. 3 in the summer of 1984, "Drive" has been one of those songs for me. Over the years I've more than once found myself transfixed when it was playing, not wanting to listen for how it was making me feel, the colors it was painting the walls of my mind with, but not really able to turn it off either.

Thirty-four years after its release, I think I've finally figured out why (in other words, what makes for an "oogy" song): it's because nothing is ever explained. You don't know what's wrong, or what's happening (or has happened), you just know that it's not good. Someone is suffering; someone is teetering on - about to be laid waste by - tragedy. And the string of rhetorical questions that comprises the lyrics suggests only that that same "someone" is in denial about it all.

Alas, the video, with Cars frontman (but not singer on this track) Ric Ocasek and his lovely then-girlfriend Paulina Porizkova, does what a lot of videos do to their parent song: it waters it down, extinguishes the fire by introducing visually interpretative (and emotionally flame-retardant) information that is completely unnecessary.

Unaided (or unencumbered) by the video, "Drive" unbridles the imagination by not saying too much, not revealing too much. Its very charge as a piece of music is to remain secretive, I believe. Its dense, dreamy, synthesizer sadness really tweaked my thoughts when I was eleven.  Still does.

"You can't go on thinking nothing's wrong..."


#298) "I'll Never Pass This Way Again" by Tracy Lawrence -"I'll Never Pass This Way Again" was written for The Civil War, a 1990s theater production in which the lyrics of many of the songs were drawn from or based on actual letters that Civil War soldiers on both sides, slaves, and other people from that era sent to friends and loved ones. A collaboration of country music artists resulted in a Nashville soundtrack release, on which Lawrence's rendition appears. This is another song that, had I not been working in country radio, I probably would never have heard of, because although it was released in the exact same manner as other singles of the day, it didn't exactly burn up the charts or request line, where I worked or anywhere else.

That isn't because it's not a great song, it just didn't fit the 'Hot Country!' radio mold of the day. To the contrary, for all its deceptive simplicity, "I'll Never Pass This Way Again" has remained among my all-time favorite country ballads. From its opening measures, in which fiddles create a compellingly mournful bagpipe-style skirl, to the contemplative horse-trot beat carrying along a weeping arsenal of string instruments (guitar, banjo, mandolin...not to mention Lawrence's solid vocals, which fits right in), "I'll Never Pass This Way Again" evokes a real specific kind of melancholy, which, like The Cars' "Drive", speaks to something greater than merely the moment at hand.

It's in the title, first and foremost: the inflexibly linear architecture of time ceaselessly tows us forward, making access to the past, returning home, impossible.

It's also in the lyrics, which, although I'm not sure of this, I like to think are largely based on some of those actual letters from Civil War soldiers. They evoke a sense of duty, no doubt, but not chest-pumping patriotism. They don't take a side, as such, because the emotional moment the song presents - feeling compelled to go but wanting desperately to stay - is neither the time nor the place for the listener to take sides. This hands-off approach allows the song to become potent, affirming that all of us, whether blue collar or white collar, soldier or civilian, black or white, would rather stay right the hell where we are than go anywhere, get everything we can from the moment at hand, while we can, in the place we find ourselves, rather than risk losing it for good, which we know eventually we will.

"If I had a penny I would wish me a spell / I would kneel and pray that here I'd stay forever, amen..."

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#264) "Them Bones" by Alice in Chains - Back in the early 1990s when I was an angst-ridden 20-something making my way through a world where flannel had suddenly become cool, I was much more an Alice in Chains man than Nirvana. Layne Stayley had the greatest voice, and just as Ozzy's banshee wail was perfectly suited to Tommy Iommi's dark musical vision in the early days of Black Sabbath, there really could not have been a better companion for Jerry Cantrell's music than Staley's panicked growl.

I would say AIC was the best thing to come out of Seattle at the time, best of the "grunge" movement. Yeah, yeah, I know people love their Nirvana, but there was something in Alice in Chains' sound that I was able to dial into that just wasn't there for me with Kurt and crew. In as far as I refuse to believe (or accept) that at the end of the day all art is merely hoax, I can say I always felt more emotionally and psychologically connected to Alice in Chains than Nirvana.

There was a lot of "grunge" back then and there's always been a lot of "metal", but as I've remarked about other special bands/artists on this list over the years, who else could "Them Bones" be but Alice in Chains?  That's saying something...

"I feel so alone, gonna wind up a big ol' pile of them bones..."


#265) "Whale and Wasp" by Alice in Chains - From their incredible Jar of Flies EP, the deeply compelling instrumental "Whale and Wasp" really doesn't need (or deserve) me trying to describe or explain. It's a "just listen" proposition...

Man, just listen...


#266) "I Can't Live Without my Radio" by LL Cool J - Long before I was an angst-ridden 20-something, I was actually a hip hopper in training.

Er, at least, in 7th and 8th grade I did the best I could. Which, looking back at the clothes and gear I employed to try pulling it off (bright yellow parachute pants, and a Swatch watch...lol!!), actually left me a totally legit b-boy, if the "b" stands for "Best of intentions But Bunk moves and emBarrassingly Badly dressed".  I think I had a pretty nice pair of Converse though, actually...although I killed off any swagger they might have lent me in the summer of '86 with the beret. 😕

Ay-yi-yi...

I did have one thing going for me: my older brother attended college in New York City at the time, and not only were there solid bragging rights to be dug up out of that fact alone, but he would send me cassette recordings of real live New York radio, where, on certain stations (including the now legendary but defunct Kiss FM), rap music was being played on-air...something unthinkable in northern Wisconsin back then, where only recently had we finally gotten an FM station that wasn't still scooping out gelatinous blobs of Carpenters, Orleans, Christopher Cross and America (or .38 Special if they really felt like rocking out).

I wasn't aware at the time, but I very well might have been getting exposed to some great groundbreaking stuff on account of those tapes, stuff that you had to be a local to hear, and I seem to recall the on-air deejays being as much performers themselves as they were announcers: I know I saved those tapes. I'll have to dig them out someday and figure out how to play them again. (I can't remember the last time I pressed an actual physical "play" button.)

THEY should definitely come along with me on 1/48/50!

But being from small town Midwest, that was all very unusual. I jammed to those cassettes over and over, but there were three must-have mainstream rap albums that were far more important back then: Run DMC's Raising Hell, Run DMC's King of Rock, and LL Cool J's Radio.  Cory, Max and I would break dance (or maybe just convulse spastically) in our front yards with those albums playing as loud as we could manage (can't remember which of us had a portable boom box...it wasn't me...). And I remember trying to do my best pop and lock moves to "I Can't Live Without My Radio", throwing in some moonwalking (??!!), before throwing myself onto the sidewalk for the worm...and feeling more "street" than I ever had, or ever would again

It's one of those memories that makes me fucking cringe, but which nevertheless I wouldn't trade for anything. 

Musically speaking, "I Can't Live Without my Radio" holds up. It's definitely dated to the 80s, but there's something still very listenable about it, something hypnotic about the relationship between LL Cool J's flow and the simplistic but jackhammer rhythm surrounding it.

"My radio believe me I like it loud / I'm the man with the box who can rock the crowd / Walkin' down the street to the hardcore beat / While my JVC vibrates the concrete..."