When I turned up the radio, my buddy, who was slouched down in the passenger seat and hadn't said anything for a while (I'd assumed he was asleep), tilted his head toward me and groaned, "Dude, what the hell are you listening to...?"
"It's 'Wildfire', it's a classic," I replied. "Go back to sleep."
Another mile or two passed in silence. Murphey sang of "planting by moonlight", of "hoot owls outside windows" and "horses busting down stalls" on "cold Nebraska nights." My buddy outright snorted with contempt.
"Oh my God!" he cried. "How much weed did this guy smoke!?"
He was trying to be funny, but his underlying indignation was hard to miss. This was definitely not his type of music. All through Pennsylvania, while he was driving, I'd been subjected to Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and KMFDM. That was pretty much all he listened to, which meant this song's drifty, mellow essence was not only something he had no taste for, but something he could hardly have wrapped his mind around.
I couldn't really blame him. It's easy to make fun of an intimately non-threatening song like "Wildfire", even more so the era from which it came - that aesthetically laughable decade we call the 1970s, that showed up to the party dressed in pea green and burnt yellow. This is where "Wildfire" comes from, and the impulse to dismiss it as part of that time when America wasn't quite sure who it was, or where it was going, or how it really felt, is completely understandable.
But "Wildfire" isn't a cheesy 70s ballad. Unlike the cheesy 70s ballads I've placed on this list (and defended), there is a rich emotional depth and texture here that is not immediately realized. This song is not really about what the lyrics are saying at all...it's a parable, a metaphoric examination of the psychological condition we all experience as we wander the taiga of our minds, hoping to figure things out. And of all the songs I'll want along with me on 1/48/50, all the songs I've ever listened to, it probably has less to do (as in, not at all) with being high, or impaired in any way. To the contrary, "Wildfire" represents the moments in life when we are as sober and lucid and aware of everything that has ever happened, is happening now, and could possibly happen in the future, as we will ever be.
"She's coming for me, I know / And on Wildfire we're both gonna go..."
#178) "Pink Elephants on Parade" from 'Dumbo' - There are several good Disney movies, especially from the old days, but 1941's Dumbo stands out for me. It's gorgeous, simply gorgeous: beautiful animation, fun characters, a nice balance of humor and pathos. Even the scene with the crows, in spite of being maligned by some for being racist (unfairly, in my estimation), has what I believe to be a grandness to it. The entire movie swims in a certain melancholy that Disney wouldn't achieve again until 1977's The Rescuers.
It's impressive what the animators and writers were able to come up with here, considering they had been instructed at the outset of production to keep everything simple and under cost. (This, after reportedly losing their financial shirts with the release of 'Fantasia' the year before.)
What I love about "Pink Elephants..." is how musically tight it is, and this is what will actually matter on 1/48/50. From the first splattering bray of tuba to the final piccolo tremor ushering in a new day, in which Timothy mouse and Dumbo are in a tree with no idea how they got there, the piece is at once rousing, moving, fun, and funny. Disney has had quite a few memorable musical numbers over the years, but I view "Pink Elephants..." as the first precipitous step out of the cautious "Snow White"-style golden age, straight into the silver, the moment when a certain amount of adult(ish) flash and humor became requisite in any children's movie.
That this four minutes of madness exists at all has become, like the scene with the crows, historically significant. Timothy and Dumbo accidentally getting drunk, which inspires their night of 'pink elephants', would never happen in a Disney movie today. Moreover, the entire sequence is surprisingly trippy, even kind of edgy, for 1941, ahead of its time for what it reveals. And yet for all of that, it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb; it fits well within the framework of the story.
And from what I remember of my younger days, the aforementioned madness is a pretty accurate portrayal of how a drunken night plays out. In my time, the best of them always reached a fevered pitched and then ended, like this one does, with remnants of the night - leftover flecks of the craziness - drifting down and becoming sunrise clouds.
Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.
"What'll I do, what'll I do, what an unusual view....!"
