The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#124) "Layla" by Derek and the Dominos - Yes, Derek and the Dominos in '71, NOT Eric Clapton in '92. I don't know what he was thinking with that miserable acoustic version on MTV's Unplugged. (I guess sometimes the worst cover versions are done by the original artist.) Of course, this is the same guy that re-did After Midnight, turning the hot little boogie blues jam from the early 1970s into the blandest Miami Vice-sounding beer jingle ever in the late 1980s, a move that encapsulated, I'd venture, the collective story arc of his generation. I'm surprised JJ Cale, the song's writer, allowed that to happen, actually. Money is money, I guess.

Whatever. I don't really care about that. I'm not a fan of Eric Clapton, and I don't know much about JJ Cale. But I give credit where it's due, and there is but one Layla (or should be) in the great pantheon of rock and roll. The lyrics and vocals are neither here nor there for me. It's all about the musicality with this one. The squealing guitar and driving percussion are the factory sounds of memories being manufactured in sweet days of innocence, before money, and success, before any threat (or thought) of failure, when everything is still new, the country still undiscovered...before any impulse to re-do or re-mix wraps its spiny fingers around your aging neck. When it's all original.

And the piano coda (in which the guitar can still be heard squealing), is the sunny spaces above the clouds, where memories go to live forever.

"Like a fool, I fell in love with you / turned my whole world upside down..."

#125) "Fine Memory" by Bob Seger - Seger reveals his singer/songwriter side with this under-appreciated number from 1975's Beautiful Loser. Fine Memory is one of those quiet, compact songs that constructs a single moment in time and resides within it. And it's one of those songs that makes me wonder if there's a specific woman it was written about and if she's still out there somewhere, and where or when the exchange might have happened.

And there have been moments through time when I thought it might have been written for me. I've been there. I can't think of any encounter with a woman in my past that was anything less than a fine memory, and oh the suns I've watched coming up through the trees.

Er, not always after a night with a woman...but still...  ;-)

"And I'll take it far as I go / I'm gonna take it far as I go..."

#126) "Life in a Northern Town" by The Dream Academy -  I grew up in a 'northern town', and I remember hearing this song for the first time around the age of fifteen and being blown away for how accurately it seemed to reflect the emotional hue of my childhood. From the spacey, drifting arrangement to the melancholy, sometimes bleak, lyrics, this is what my hometown felt like, and sounded like.

It wasn't my life itself that was bleak. I had a relatively happy childhood (not perfect, but happy, all things considered). It was something else that I was aware of from an early age, something about living on a northern fringe (a micro rust belt, at that); maybe something in the air, or the water, or maybe the light in the sky in the evening...or the morning, that yes, sometimes did seem to last all day.

I was so moved by "Life in a Northern Town" the song, and so inspired by the video (which features some of the most haunting images I've ever seen), I made my own video for it. I had my dad drive me around town one Saturday afternoon in the winter of 1988, and did my best to capture what I saw as the lonesome bleakness of it all. A girlfriend at the time watched the end result and said, You'll be glad you did this one day. 

She was right. I'm very glad I have it to watch now and then, to be reminded where I come from.

And I gotta say, for having no good technology at my disposal (I could do no snipping or cutting and pasting, and just trying to get the music to play over the video had me switching 'in' and 'out' audio jacks like a 1940s telephone operator on crack), it turned out pretty good, an accurate illustration of the northern town I grew up in, awash in pale sunlight and dirty snow, wheezing its way drably and tiredly (but beautifully) through another winter of my youth. 

I wish I could share it here, but YouTube won't allow that ... and honestly, I respect that. 

"And the morning lasted all day, all day."

The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#121) "The Pretender" by Jackson Browne - Like many, I'm interested in the 1960s as a time of precipitous social change, some of it good, some of it bad. But I also consider the period to be, lamentably, the apex of our American society, and this defeatism is harder to admit openly because I am fairly patriotic; I don't want to think it. It was a critical decade when, relinquished from the repression of the past, and with so much changing all at once (but not yet changed irreparably), dreams and expectations could afford to - for short period of time - become idealized.

It's no secret that what was idealized was never actually realized. Something happened along the way. We took a wrong turn or forgot where we wanted to go, and now the society we live in - a violent, impulsive, image-obsessed world where ad execs are our philosophers and our artists and innovators are the ones programming our computers much more often than they are anyone using them - doesn't quite live up to even the most bare bone dream of the Baby Boom generation. It may have been inevitable, may have from the beginning been more of a delusion than a dream, but the let down, the extent of it, surely wasn't anticipated, and the fact that it happened almost entirely within the span of my life, haunts me a little.

The Pretender is very 70s - its mellow piano, vaguely disco rhythms and thick-shouldered orchestral accompaniment are unique musical artifacts of that time period. I really like the sound, but the song's genius, I think (that which supports my earlier assertion that Jackson Browne is to the 70s what Bob Dylan was to the 60s) is found in the sublimely illustrative lyrics, which paint an anguished portrait of an exhausted America, right at the critical crossroads of the post-Watergate era.

If Browne had written this song in 1986, or 1996, after the fact, when his generation had already reached middle age, when their music was already being called 'classic rock', John Lennon was already gone and it was obvious there remained no hope whatsoever that even a faint blip of 60s idealism had not been swallowed up by the cynicism, consumerism and commercialism that had once been thought (naively) to be conquerable, it wouldn't have meant nearly as much. But in 1976, this was pretty damn prescient. Browne predicted, and lamented, the replacement of 'hippie' ideals with yuppie ideals - and all that it would mean for us, as individuals and a society - years before it really got underway.

I'm gonna be a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender / where the ads take aim, and lay their claim, to the heart and the soul of the spender / and believe in whatever may lie, in the things that money can buy...

Are you there, Browne sings, as the bass gently wrings an exquisite despair worthy of the 1970s right out of the air (listen for it), say a prayer, for the pretender.

And I love the cover of the album. In myriad ways intentional or otherwise, it too is an accurate portrayal of the 1970s.

"And the children solemnly wait for the ice cream vendor..."


#122) "Little Man" by Alan Jackson - A kind of thematic cousin to The Pretender, Alan Jackson's Little Man concerns itself with the vanishing American downtown, how 'Mom and Pop' has been snuffed out by big business in every form, from the grocery store to gas station, bookstore to the candy shop. How specialization has given way to one stop shopping, stadium-sized department stores where you can buy motor oil in one aisle and bed spreads in the next, and a six foot TV on the end cap. And don't forget candy for the kids, and grandma's pills, and her Echinacea, and the latest copy of People, and milk, cereal and ground beef, bleach, window cleaner and trash bags, diapers, fishing lures and a betta for little Jimmy, he really wants one...

It's a nice thought, a stellar rumination for Sunday afternoon, surely, to lament how impersonally (and overwhelmingly) global and corporate the world's become even in its most remote, far-flung corners...and it's completely true. I witnessed the demise of the little man first-hand, growing up. My parents owned a bookstore throughout the 1970s, a 'Mom and Pop' concern that even then was on borrowed time. My parents did some things to keep it afloat, tried to diversify. They sold art supplies, had candy and video games in one corner for the local school kids, even made homemade fudge for a while.,.but it didn't last too long into the 1980s, and the reason was simple. Even before huge bookstores came along selling more coffee than books, before anyone could imagine ordering something on a computer (or knew anything about computers), and long before the veritable witchcraft of Kindle, my dad explained it: The day the big department store at the edge of town started selling the Top 10 best sellers was the beginning of the end.

But there's another side to this saga. Yes, something has been lost in the last forty years as small towns have been slowly absorbed into the global economy  - a sense of community, a sense of purpose and place, a certain identity. But the truth is that Wal-Mart is as much the great equalizer as it is the killer of downtown, structured to benefit everyone who once called downtown home. Wal-Mart stores typically have a regional (rather than local) reach, and can therefore provide more jobs and more hours...better pay, holiday pay, benefits, et cetera. Mom and Pop simply could not do this. Moreover, Wal-Mart's business model enables it to (truly) offer the lowest prices, and as there are other big box chains to contend with, an element of competition arises that didn't exist in days past. Before 'big box', the sad truth was that if you lived in an isolated small town, you paid whatever the 'little man' wanted to charge you, and endured significantly less selection.

And as for customer service? Well, I think the notion of the unconcerned Wal-Mart worker roaming the aisles like a zombie and providing no help or answers of any kind is a myth. If anything, the opposite is true. Wal-Mart generally goes out of its way to train its employees well, not only so that they're knowledgeable (sorry, but I've never received an inadequate response to a question in the electronics or garden department of Wal-Mart...), but also so they properly engage the customer. Some are better than others at this song and dance, of course, but it's at the Mom and Pop places that I have gotten hit with indifference - sometimes hostility - from the help. The various Wal-Mart department workers have answers. The Wal-Mart exit greeters flash me a smile and a 'hello' when I come in and when I leave, because they're trained to do so.

The worker at the dusty little store downtown looks up from his magazine and scowls at me for disturbing him. And think about it: it's the same "local" person working at both locations.

I think on balance the consumer and worker alike have benefited from the Wal Mart-ization of America,

"New store came where you do it yourself, you buy a lotto ticket and food off the shelf / forget the little man...forget about that little man..."

#123) "Summertime Blues" by Blue Cheer - When my brother and I were kids, we thought this was the funniest song, and Blue Cheer the funniest band, with the drummer's hair hanging in his eyes, completely obscuring his face as he ruthlessly punished his drums. I remember, we jokingly called him Cousin It, from the Addams Family, and I remember being as excited as I was amused by the band's look and sound. They were the embodiment of youth and rebellion to me from about 7th grade on, even though they came a full generation before. In the winter of '87, I actually got a little crap from classmates for digging Blue Cheer.

I don't know why. They are crazy good. I still think their version of Summertime Blues is a great - as in fucking awesome - interpretation of the Eddie Cochran original. Check out the drumming! Turns out 'Cousin It' really is a monster. :-)

Everything about this band was monster, really. Their whole album Vincebus Eruptum is fantastic. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.

"I done told my congressman and he said, quote, 'dig this, boy...'

The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#118) "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" by Billy Joel - I'm not sure exactly what, but something about this song has always stirred restlessness. Maybe it's the rolling waves of piano chords that sound like they're crashing on shore, or the lyrics alluding to that sense of futility that almost always precedes goodbye.  I can't honestly say I relate to any of what the song is actually saying (nor that I'm entirely sure what that is...), but somehow it's always been easy to plug what it's not saying (or leaving unsaid) into my own life.

Whatever it is that appeals to me, it's found only in the live version, released as a single in the early 1980s and found on Joel's double Greatest Hits package from '85. The studio version, from 1976's Turnstiles doesn't pack nearly as much of a punch.

I wonder why that is...how can that be, really? It's the exact same song, and I'm not a fan of live music; yet for some reason, when I listen to the live version of Say Goodbye to Hollywood, depending on my mood, and the time of day, and if the light outside is just right, and/or I'm driving fast enough, I get chills. Chills.

The studio version....meh. Never gonna happen.

"Say a word out of line, you find out the friends you had are gone, forever....forever..."

#119) "Roadrunner" by The Pretty Things - I'm always squawking on this page about how the original version of any song is the best, but I'm not totally inflexible on that point. Once in a while someone comes along and does a worthy cover version, sometimes even eclipsing the original, and for better or worse, it's also true that sometimes what one considers the 'original', and therefore the best, is the first version one happens to hear. I know for a fact there are those walking among us who prefer The Dixie Chicks' version of Landslide, for instance, and Faith Hill's version of Piece of My Heart for that matter, solely because that's how they were introduced to the song, and that first musical impression can leave an indelible (if unfortunate) mark.

I guess I'm guilty as well. The Pretty Things' version of Roadrunner was for a long time the only version I knew. In fact, only recently did I learn it was a Bo Didley song, and in spite of The Originator's sacrosanct legend, I'm sticking with The Pretty Things when it comes to this list. Musically, their version might be considered just this side of sloppy, but the garage band bundle of noise wipes out what I think of as the cartoonish sterility of the original...you know, that goony sound that used to find its way into John Hughes movies a lot back in the day (think Uncle Buck...)...and lends a recklessness that befits the subject matter, further embellished by Phil May's petulant sounding vocals.

What can I say? Sometimes there's no message, no relating, nothing to relate to, really, and no point tearing something apart in order to examine it. Sometimes you just like the way something sounds. Sometimes music provokes an impulse rather than a thought, and that largely indescribable phenomenon is at the heart of rock and roll. I'd be willing to bet Bo Didley, of all people, knew this.

Whoever sings it, this song just screams for the open road. Hell yeah, for four or five months, I fully intend to not be kept up with.

"I'm a road runner honey, and you can't keep up with me..." 

#120) "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones -   Fifty years on, that simple but razor-edged guitar riff remains the first and last word in rock and roll. With Satisfaction, The Stones brought the rebellion first hatched by Elvis and James Dean in the 1950s one step closer to that place of madness and menace that would come to define the 60s.

In 1979, Jeff Bridges hosted a remarkably comprehensive rock and roll retrospective called Heroes of Rock and Roll, in which he very rightly says, "Unlike the Beatles, the Stones wouldn't be content to hold your hand."

Discontentment too is at the heart of rock and roll.

"When I'm watching my TV and a man comes on to tell me how white my shirts can be / But he can't be a man cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me..."

The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#115) "Angie" by The Rolling Stones - Much like Wild Horses, Angie evokes very specific memories for me, of being a young adult overwhelmed by the adult world, of having responsibilities outpacing my means, of wondering how the hell I got where I was, and whether doing something different, or not doing something at all, might have made a difference. All of it at that age when we like to think our personal drama (especially romantic drama) matters in the great cosmic all more than it actually does, and so we hand-feed it, in a continuous and ultimately exhaustive process of nursing it back to health.

The acoustic introduction in Angie is like an emotional Tar-Baby, ensnared in which I can find every dreary Wednesday afternoon I ever sat through wishing I were somewhere else. And draped over the thin but broad shoulders of the orchestral accompaniment as the song climaxes, I can find every sunset I ever sat and watched while coming to the restless realization that is if anything was going to change in this big, daunting world - in my big, daunting world - something drastic needed to happen.

Haunting to this day, but gorgeous. Just gorgeous. For my money, Angie is one of the most expertly rendered ballads ever - vocals, percussion, instrumentation...it's all there (listen to that fucking piano!), and The Stones are certainly one of the most diverse rock bands ever. They stand second to no one. 

"Angie, Angie, ain't it good to be alive...?"

#116) "Suddenly Last Summer" by The Motels - The lyrics leave a little to be desired...well, okay, they leave a lot to be desired. But Martha Davis' voice brings them to life...well, okay, maybe performs mouth-to-mouth. But the positively mesmerizing bass line, coupled with a middle interlude of bells, synthesizers and guitars that tumble down the rock canyon of my senses, creates a phenomenal mood, the kind of place, the kind of time, I would always prefer to find myself in love in.

And as to the lyrics, does love always - or ever - make sense? Or have to?

"It keeps me standing still, it takes all my will..."

#117) "Free Will" by Rush - A long time ago, I made the mistake of engaging in a debate with a music snob, one of those people who set forth nothing less than a self-styled moral authority on what they consider to be good music and what they consider to be bad music, and always make sure to throw down names of musicians and bands nobody's ever heard of to inoculate their taste from the dreaded charge of mediocrity. This, whether they actually listen to or know the music at all. Often, for many, it's enough to be fashionable.

It's likely this guy wasn't a poser, however. He was a musician himself, a drummer, and I'm pretty sure he actually listened to and liked all that obscure, alternative music he spoke of. And that's fine. The problem wasn't that he was alternative anything, it was that he immediately dismissed the whole of Top 40 music spanning forty years as mere pap, and was quick to pounce when I remarked, mostly in passing, that a) Rush was a fairly innovative and talented band in their day, with a lot to say, and (especially) b) Neil Peart was/is a hell of a drummer. 

Whether Rush deserves to be remembered in the annals of music history is open to debate, I guess (I still think so), but if you listen to Free Will, Neal Peart's seemingly computer timed rhythm-keeping makes the song what it is, yet it was this very precision that the music snob took issue with. No, no, no, he said (definitely a 'three no' kind of guy...), Neil Peart's a little too tight, little too stringent.  He flashed a patronizing (and totally stringent) smile. He doesn't really know how to interpret.

I didn't know what the hell he was talking about at the time, and I still don't. I think Neal Peart's drumming in all of Rush's music has a way of creating a melody all it's own.

Whatever.  All I know is that in my fantasy band, especially when I'm driving down the road (as I will be for long stretches on 1/48/50), I'm almost always the singer, or pianist, or guitarist.

Unless I'm jamming to Rush, when I become the drummer (er, you know, in the richly decorated rumpus room of my mind...;-), the guy who keeps it all together, sitting mostly hidden at the back of the stage, stitching it all up nice and tight, and in Peart's case, doing nothing less than making the bleeding stop. ;-)

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice..."

The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#111) "Ride to California" by The Paper Tongues  - A great road song, with restless rhythms and a fevered incantation pointing the way toward the spurious but irresistible promise of California living, Ride to California  also showcases singer Aswan North's unrivaled ability to shred sideways through paper with his voice...er, tongue...?  

"I can't wait to get a ride to California / 'Cause it makes sense to go to California..."

#112) "Take It On The Run" by REO Speedwagon - Once again, REO Speedwagon demonstrates an ability to wield an emotional weapon. Take It On The Run has a thin barbed tip, perfect for letting a little air out of their pudgy reputation as love sick warblers. And once again, Gary Richrath, who wrote the song, reveals himself to be a fantastic guitarist, with a sharp ear for composition.

"And you need never look back again..."

#113) "One in a Million" by Guns -n- Roses - Not everyone will agree I'm sure, but I think the B-side of the album GNR Lies, released in 1988 as a follow up to the wildly successful - as in generation defining - Appetite for Destruction, is Guns and Roses' best work. Maybe because it's the first time I remember getting excited by music that was considered new, feeling that I was marching in time to my 'generation', and feeling cool and current telling people about. I'll never forget a morning in February 1989, skipping 1st hour, hiding out in one of the band practice rooms with two girls named Karen and Cheryl. As we cautiously glanced out the window at the hallway scanning for any sign of authority (and as I tried not to gawk too much at Cheryl's ass), the three of us agreed that Guns and Roses did not sound good singing a slow song...("Patience", which earlier that week they'd performed at the American Music Awards).

All these years later, I think we were right. That very performance is available now on YouTube and it really isn't good, nor are many GnR live performances (aside from Axl Rose's frequent on-stage tantruming). But it felt good to be sixteen and sounding cool, skipping class with two hot girls in a band practice room, rebelling and having something to contribute to the conversation. (Until we ended up getting busted, which they blamed me for...yeah, I think I may have sneezed or something...). But Side B of ...Lies has a command presence all its own, and my praise for it includes "One in a Million", a song that caused controversy for its racist and homophobic lyrics.

It's an irrefutable charge, really. There's not a lot of room for interpretation. "One in a Million" spits out bile and ignorance in toxic quantities, no question.

At the time, Axl Rose was quick to defend the song, and himself, by saying it reflects a certain point of view, to some extent his point of view, his experience when he first came to LA from the Midwest. I have always accepted that explanation, and taken it a step further, in fact:

"One in a Million" is the larger experience of the disenfranchised, and disadvantaged, white guy.

First off, let's be very clear, am I that guy? Not at all. But I know him well. I grew up with him, went to school with him, used to avoid him on the playground, in the hallways, the cafeteria. When I was older, I drank with him at parties, took my beer to the other side of the bonfire when he (invariably) got too drunk and out of control, then, later, to the other side of bar.

As a young man with not a hell of a lot going on myself, I worked with him. Our paths regularly crossed pumping gas, flipping burgers and loading trucks. We competed for these jobs, and for hours, and favor with management, and I usually won because he was an asshole and/or never stuck around.

In recent years, I've hired this guy, fired him, and hired him back. He doesn't stick around any more now than he did twenty years ago, but he's not a bad worker when he's not distracted by trying to reconcile the shit hand life has dealt him with his own bad decisions, a currency he inevitably finds more worthless (and accepted at less places) with each passing year. Although even though I grow older, he never seems to...he's always somewhere between 19 and 28.

By no means is he right in his worldview, but he's part of the world nevertheless, embedded in every facet of our lives, populating the places most people strive to avoid, yet visit on a daily basis. He prepares our food, cleans up after us, does all those proverbial jobs "nobody wants to". And we would all be well-advised not to dismiss him any more quickly than we might the disenfranchised and disadvantaged African American, Latino, or whatever.

I contend that his ignorance makes him fearful, not hateful (an important distinction). I view the hostility in "One in a Million" as a defensive posture, and maintain that the song itself is a spot-on representation of his emotions, for better or worse, not his opinions.

Controversy aside, both Axl Rose's vocals and Slash's guitar work are pretty astonishing here, rising in intensity as the song progresses. Best vocals from Axl Rose to be found, I'd say.

"Radical and racist, don't point your finger at me / I'm a small town white boy, just trying to make ends meet / don't need your religion, don't watch that much TV..."

#114) "Tuesday's Gone" by Hank Williams Jr. - Another cover that does the original justice, lending it a sky-draped drama.  This is the version I've turned to over time, time and time again, whenever Tuesday has gone.

"Now I don't know where I am going / I really wanna be left alone..."