#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..."
