Happy One Year Anniversary! I got nine left to make this happen...;-)
#95) "Spaghetti Western" by The Brains - Another shot of adrenaline for long driving stretches - maybe that stretch of I-70 that goes on for 1,000 barren light years through Utah without a single place to stop and pee - Spaghetti Western bursts out of the gate, hits the ground running, rises in intensity, and stands its ground until the last note. It is a well-timed musical engine puttering along on the power of singer Rene D La Muerte's aggressive vocals.
And Spaghetti Western sounds like more than a few relationships I've had in my life, engines that were not so well-timed. Nothing like bringing all the untenable situations of my life along with me on a 14,000 mile road trip. ;-)
"There's only room one of us, is that what we should be...?"
#96) "Suspicious Minds' by Elvis Presley - Once a while back, Suspicious Minds played at work, and a kid who worked for me listened a moment, then remarked, "This song reminds me of the movie Lilo and Stitch."
Several months later, it happened again, different kid, but the same song and same movie reference.
Apparently Suspicious Minds, along with several other Elvis songs, can be found on the soundtrack of the 2002 movie. This is not the first time something like this has happened, nor is it all that unusual, nor do I mean to pick on Lilo and Stitch. But in recent years I have noticed that many of the Millennial generation - those born after 1984, and especially post-1990 - recognize music - even some of their own music - only through the vast store of movies and cartoon videos they grew up with, and that is a new phenomenon.
As a Gen X'er who was a kid in the 70s and early 80s, I got a little taste of this. Videos were certainly around, but there weren't nearly as many, and they were not readily for sale. Video stores were the only place to acquire one, primarily by renting, and it was a special thing, a big deal. There were no extensive collections of movies displayed on living room shelves at the time, at least not in my house. For that matter, there were no 180 cable channels or satellite television (that didn't require a six-figure income and 5 acres of land just for the dish). Among the channels that existed, there were none (outside of pay channels like HBO) devoted solely to cartoons or movies, and the 24-hour all-access the Internet provides nowadays was completely unheard of. Cartoons were still a Saturday morning thing. Feature length movies of any kind were still a 'Special Television Presentation' on Friday, Saturday or Sunday night. And while it was possible to record something off TV, programming a VCR really was no simple process, certainly not a matter of 'point and click' like a DVR today.
All of it meant that music was almost entirely heard on the radio, and of course MTV (back when the 'M' still meant something...), and therefore, I theorize, still being absorbed organically.
These days, so many songs are co-opted for other uses, and perhaps more to the point there are so many other uses (we are all being 'entertained' into oblivion), many have become associated primarily with a movie, or a video game, or in some cases on YouTube by some random user not observing copyrights.
I think this phenomenon leaves young people shortchanged, especially in a world too often determined to find a category for all music - a nice sensible - and totally limiting - mold to stuff each and every song into.
Suspicious Minds is not the greatest song in the world, but it's unique to Elvis post '68 comeback special / pre-physical and mental decline that led to his untimely death in 1977, at the age of 42. It is his lovely but ultimately futile push toward restoring his career in a world and an industry that had passed him by. It reached number one in 1969, and was the last of his music to do so in the U.S. during his lifetime.
I think that's important to know. Or at least have some awareness of.
As music shouldn't be whored out to sell sneakers, cell phones, beer, potato chips or diapers, it probably shouldn't be folded freely into the saccharine story line of a kiddie movie...or any movie.
It should be left alone to comprise the soundtrack of our lives.
"Let's don't let a good thing die, with suspicious minds..."
#97) "I've Got Dreams to Remember" by Otis Redding - The best pop songs usually end up defining something. That could be the times we live in (the times the song was released into), or a certain type of music (genre), or, for certain artists, perhaps their career, or their artistic direction at a certain moment in that career.
I've Got Dreams to Remember is one of those songs that doesn't necessarily define anything. It's not the song Redding is remembered for, nor is it a stamp of final approval on the 'soul' genre. But for this - and more, I think, than others in Redding's musical library (any one of which could be considered a 'final stamp') - it achieves a timelessness that defines everything, and endures.
Definitely on my - and I'd wager a lot of people's - 'soundtrack'.
"Nobody knows what I feel inside..."
