#18) 'Night Moves' by Bob Seger - When I was a senior in high school, a bunch of friends and I all worked at the same place and hung out afterwards, and like many teenagers, we were on a never-ending search for someone to buy us alcohol, a quest that frequently led to a local married couple. These two, who must have been in their late twenties at the time but already looked rode hard and put away wet, had no problem providing us with booze and a place to drink it, which turned out to be their janky apartment above a drug store downtown.
Halfway through one particular party, the cops showed up, like cops tend to on small town Friday nights. We all fell silent at the sound of pounding on the apartment door. "Police department!"
Not a peep out of any of us for several moments. The swish of traffic on the street below filled the dead air that not ten seconds earlier had been congested with shouting, laughter and loud music.
Another round of pounding, more forceful this time. "Police! Open the door now!"
Any rebelling teenager worth his or her salt knows the response to this is to sit tight. They can yell and pound all they want, but unless they have a search warrant, they can't come in unless you let them in. Er...at least, that's what we all thought, and I think most of us were prepared to turn out the lights, keep quiet and wait it out.
But the married couple's response seemed to belie this confidence. They both sprang up and hastily disappeared into their bedroom without a word, as though knowing something we didn't, like the cops might actually have every intention of battering that door down. We heard the muted click of their bedroom door being locked, and in a panicked flash all followed suit, dashing into the kitchen and climbing through a window, onto a fire escape in the back of the building.
Seven of us stood there nervously, bouncing to keep warm without coats in 20 degree temperatures, as a buddy and I frantically tried to lower the ladder down to the ground to make our escape. We couldn't figure out how to do it, and wound up trapped on that fire escape, staring helplessly out at the roofs of buildings across the alley, windows of other apartments winking back at us dimly through the winter night. Another round of pounding on the door came to us, reaffirming the cops' determination. We all knew it was only a matter of time before they either tore the door down or got wise and came around back to the alley. Six people climbed back into the kitchen, took their chances hiding in a pantry closet. I was one of three, desperate to avoid an underage drinking fine, who jumped.
As I was plummeting 15 feet to the alley below, arms and legs extended out, Night Moves was playing.
Or should have been.
Bob Seger is just one of numerous musical 'heroes' I have moved beyond, because tastes and influences and circumstances are ever-changing. But there was a time when his music was nothing less than the soundtrack of my young life, both how I saw myself and what I saw myself becoming. And I'd be surprised to learn there's a Midwestern man in his forties or fifties right now, once a Midwestern teenager, who can't relate to Seger in much the same way.
In a rush to consider him overrated, I think Seger is underrated. I can see why some music purists don't like him. There's nothing hip about his music, or especially innovative; he's not a romantic poet like (early) Springsteen, nor does his music home in on something specific, like John Mellencamp and his farm country pride back in the day.
Seger lands on the bare bones side of roots rock. After his initial success in the late 1970s, he just grabbed that ball and took off running without ever trying something different, as both Springsteen and (especially) Mellencamp have (Key West Intermezzo and Pink Houses, for instance, are about as far apart, stylistically and in terms of subject matter, as can be imagined). There's warmth and reassurance in Seger's consistency if you can relate at all, testament to the very roots he rocks, but there's also boredom that doesn't go down so well on a dreary afternoon in Grand Rapids, Anywhere.
And then, of course, Like a Rock wound up in a Chevy commercial, and Seger and his music really became a caricature.
But there are subtleties in many of his songs that too often go unnoticed or unappreciated. It's too easy to dismiss Seger on the grounds of throwaways like Betty Lou's Getting Out Tonight, or Rock and Roll Never Forgets and miss what's really going on in Night Moves.
Reportedly inspired by the movie American Graffiti, Night Moves is a dark, sophisticated rumination that never turns sappy or melancholy, with lyrics that aren't too on-the-nose, but at the same time never try to be something they're not by straying too far from what the song's about: two teenagers looking for any opportunity to get their hands on each other and imagining how the news will play out among their social circle (in those Medieval days before Facebook when news traveled only a fraction of a second slower).
Implicit here are many facets of the world I knew the night I plummeted from that second story fire escape, and will want to be reminded of at certain moments during 1/48/50: keggars in downtown apartments; keggars in the woods; peppermint schnapps; worrying about the cops; worrying about parents (coordinating our stories); worrying about kids from other towns who showed up at our parties unexpectedly; guys you didn't mess with; guys you did mess with; fresh-faced, pony-tailed girls with big hair, big glasses and nice asses slid into tight jeans with rips in the knees, who laughed at everything; the bluster, the machismo, idiocy, bad jokes, fake facts, false starts and unhappy endings that for all of us - or most of us - protected a still tender naïveté, but with a shell about as unbreakable as a Saltine...
And these days, of course, I frequently awake to the sound of thunder... so maybe Seger isn't a poet, but instead, some kind of prophet.
"How far off I sat and wondered..."
#19) "Theme from 'New York, New York'" by Frank Sinatra - This song doesn't really matter to me one way or another, it's just great fun to sing along to. Though, come to think of it, I guess I can't say it means nothing. New York, New York is one of the first songs I ever took notice of, that I ever heard, in fact. When I very young I remember hoisting my Bee Gees transistor radio (seriously) up to my ear when this song came piddling out of the little water drop tweeter, and feeling really good listening to it.
It still makes me feel good. How can anyone hear that leg-kicking coda and not feel good? It might not be the song to define Sinatra's career, but I think it very much defines Sinatra. The tart melody and anxious lyrics are an ideal blend of the Chairman's finger-snapping Rat Pack side and his melancholy, staring-into-a-whiskey tumbler on a Sunday evening side.
I'd have loved to see him perform it live. (I guess that's what YouTube's for...)
"These little town blues/are melting away..."
#20) "Orange Blossom Special" by The Charlie Daniels Band - Instrumental, and reaching speeds of MACH 1, the CDB's Chicago performance of Orange Blossom Special makes them the Metallica of country music. Truthfully, this is country music you could bang your head to.
A consummate musician who travels with a merry band of consummate musicians, Charlie Daniels has always held a unique place in my heart as kind of a maverick in the business. Here, Daniels not only starts a fire with his fiddle bow (fiddle fire, literally...), but plucks his way through some 16 measures at just about the same speed, garnering the cheering approval of the crowd.
I've broken a sweat air-fiddling to this bad boy! I've broken a sweat listening to it.
#21) "Katmandu" by Bob Seger - Forgive me, Bob Seger was too important a part of my young life not to show up a few times on this list. Katmandu, from 1975's Beautiful Loser, might be considered one of his rock and roll throwaways, were it not for two things:
1) His vocals, thick and powerful, worthy of the greatness that's revealed on his live albums of the time.
2) His nod to the Midwest in the second verse, specifically the line, 'I'm tired of looking at the TV news...' There has always been something about television news, local television news, especially on gray days that get flushed into darkness, that has driven me toward (the likes of) Katmandu.
Further evidence that Seger knows things.
"But no one loves me here anyway..."
#22) "Ain't No Ramblers Anymore" by The Charlie Daniels Band - This might just be the first actual 'road song' on this list. Playful and spirited, it's another example of the CDB's tight musicianship, and precisely how I want the open road to unravel before me. The song describes a lot of what I want to see, but also how I want to feel when I see it. And any song that sounds like it could be played by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem is automatically going to get my attention.
"They ain't ever going to Boise..."
