Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#238) "Remember When" by Alan Jackson - It's certainly true that you can get too sentimental in life, too sappy, too morbid, moribund, and morose. It's all too easy to fall into a pattern (often without realizing) in which you're not merely looking back, but dwelling on something long gone that no amount of emotional black magic will ever bring back. Life offers only forward progress, so keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.

It's no secret certain songs aid greatly in the application of sappy, sentimental sorrow, and as a rule I do everything I can to avoid them. But like with nearly everything else in life, there are a few notable exceptions, songs that lean toward sentimental rather than sappy (sentimentality being a less blinding shade of the same emotional impulse), and one of them is Alan Jackson's "Remember When". I must confess, it's on a short list of songs almost guaranteed to get me tearing up if the light is just right.

Sure, it's easy to dismiss as cheesy, a Hallmark card set to music, but that's mostly if you don't like country music and are disposed to dismissing the entire genre out of hand.  I haven't been that way since I worked in country radio and - stuck listening to it as part of my job (rather than just hearing it drone from a radio in the background) - realized, hmm, some of this isn't so bad.  It was a revelation; I'd spent my entire childhood believing otherwise.

I think for me it's not so much what "Remember When" says, but how it says it. The mewling mandolin, the sturdily constructed orchestration, Jackson's tenderly father-like vocal, all seem to conspire to preserve something, or fix something, put something right...like a musical bed sheet snapped in the air, falling gently and protectively, in a room where time stands still, nobody has to say goodbye, and everyone stays the same forever.

Of course, that's not even close to how life plays out, but through the ordeal of this sometimes heartbreaking mortal coil, in which time flies by, every has to say goodbye at some time or another, and nobody gets (or wants) to stay the same, most of us carry a reasonable expectation: that amidst a certain amount of ceremony, we will grow, live, grow again through our children, grow old and die, hopefully with memories intact and most of those not too painful. "Remember When" taps deeply and powerfully into this universally anticipated (and sought) story arc, giving it the architecture we crave.

Yes, you can dwell too much on the past, but at the end of the day sentimentality, like humor, is among the traits that distinguish us from animals and, at least every once in a while, our ability to allow waypoints in life to blossom into exquisitely sentimental moments is what makes it worth living.

Without some "architecture" applied to the process of living, nothing really matters. We simply live, and die. And that can be a devastating thought...especially if the light is just right.

"Remember when old ones died and new were born / And life was changed, disassembled, rearranged..."

#239 "Choices" by George Jones - Three words: drinking fucking sucks. 

Make no mistake, I had my moments in younger days - nights I don't remember, or nights I wish I could forget, hellacious hangovers, the whole bit. Alcohol has led me to plenty of bad choices - passing out in places I shouldn't have, with women I shouldn't have, saying things I normally wouldn't, hearing about them the next day and cringing between dry heaves.

But I was always merely a weekend warrior type...I could go out, hang out, get plastered, have the greatest (or worst) night of my life, and then be good for a week or two, sometimes more, before I felt any urge to drink again.

It never became a lifestyle. I rarely drank alcohol with dinner. I never drank alcohol just to relax. Never drank to escape. In fact, the opposite. Moments of turmoil in my life (financial, romantic, whatever...) have always been met with an urge to get more sober, not less, as sober as I could be.  I don't like not to be in control of myself, especially when things are shitty.

And honestly, I never saw much point to drinking at all unless there were women present...meaning, if the night was going to be just four hairy asses sitting around a high top table in a grungy tavern, insipid banter broken only by an occasional glance up at the TV above the bar for the score, I'd have just as soon drank water all night, or Dr. Pepper.

Sometimes I would drink water, or Dr. Pepper, even if there were women around. Talk about exquisite: at bar close, when everyone else was slinking, stumbling, puking and pissing out the back door, watching for cops, praying to get home safely, I would jump into my car, clear eyed and big as you please, light a cigarette, crank the radio, and take a late night drive along a country road. I was kind of a weirdo I guess, to be 21, 22, 23, and get so excited by doing that...and yet, not really. Country roads at three in the morning are gorgeous, and whatever the reason, staying sober guaranteed I would never get an OWI, or kill someone, or kill myself.

I know it's not totally a matter of choice. Alcohol is a drug like any other. Some people can handle it, some people can't. But from what I've seen of some of those "some people" over the years, I'm thankful (sincerely...) that I've always preferred to be sober...or at least been okay being sober.

Released in 1999, "Choices" was George Jones' twilight catharsis. The singer of "White Lightning" was in his late sixties by then, and "Choices" was a somber acknowledgment of what too much white lightning, over time, can lead to. (Fucking sucks...)  Around the time of its release, Jones was involved in a serious drunk driving accident, which underscored the song's relevance and message. I think it says everything that needs to be said about alcohol as a lifestyle, without (and this is important) overstatement or preaching.

"I was tempted, by an early age I found I liked drinking, and I never turned it down / There were loved ones, but I turned them all away / Now I'm living and dying with the choices I've made..."

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#236) "Lotta Love" by Nicolette Larson - If you're hell bent on doing a cover version, here's a reliable recipe sure to please the whole family (er, well....you know...): take a Neil Young melody and infuse it with a mid-tempo country/disco (ish) rhythm, throw in a wispy 70s string section, pair it with a young woman's simple (but for this, compelling) vocal, and et voila! - an intriguingly more tense interpretation of an already beautifully somber song, with a depth and breadth that outshines the original.

I like Neil Young, but his version, recorded about the same time for the album Comes a Time, is actually kind of clunky and plunky. Once again, it is revealed here that, yes Virginia, there are good cover versions.

"It's gonna take a lotta love to change the way things are..."

#237) "Sea of Love" by The Honeydrippers - This version of the 1959 Phil Philips song was released in '85, but it wasn't until much later (early 90s at least) that it occurred to me that the leader of The Honeydrippers is Robert Plant, the wailing voice behind Led Zeppelin's finest moments.

Of the video that accompanied "Sea of Love", I remember only three things: 1) someone riding a horse through the water, 2) some dude playing the xylophone in his underwear, 3) perhaps not surprisingly, Robert Plant failing to convince me that he actually wants to be in the video.

In spite of that, I think the song is fantastic. Sometimes certain pieces of music work so well, they gel into something else, something flawless. I can't say it's my favorite song of all time, but "Sea of Love" nevertheless has the notable distinction of pretty much being exactly how I would prefer (were I given the choice) all my afternoons and evenings on this Earth sound.

And actually, upon further review, I have decided the video is pretty awesome. ;-)


"Come with me, my love, to the sea, the sea of love / I wanna tell you, just how much, I love you..."

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#233) "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister - I always knew Dee Snider was a funny guy and a class act. Whether testifying (handily) before the US Senate regarding the formation of the PMRC in the 80s, or playing "penis ping pong" on the Howard Stern Show (and crying out, "What a time to go flaccid!"), or hosting House of Hair back in the day, just when hair metal was becoming "historical", he's always come across to me as the epitome of intelligence, humor and graciousness, wrapped up in a "metal" package. The fact that last summer he recorded a piano version of "We're Not Gonna Take It" to raise money for - and awareness about - childhood cancer is not the least bit surprising. (For more on that, visit www.crissangelhelp.com)

But while the song is perfectly fitting in that context, and Dee's performance of it perfectly moving, it is, of course, the version from the album Stay Hungry that rocked this eleven-year-old's socks in the summer of '84.

To speak nothing of the video. My little snickering buddies and I would re-enact the opening sequence that showcases Mark Metcalf reprising his role (sort of) from Animal House. I seem to recall putting on an actual stage show one evening, gathering neighbor kids together to vote on who did the best impersonation. (I'm sure we all sucked.)

The funniest part of the video is when Metcalf scurries up the stairs and comes face to face with Dee in full hideous 'twisted' regalia...the look on his face cracked me up then, and still does. (Although, truth be told, this jerk-off - not Metcalf, but the character he portrays - is probably too prevalent a father figure in too many American families, that is, too many kids' actual experience, to really be funny.)

One thing I appreciate about this song now that I didn't when I was a kid was Dee Snider's killer voice. Listen closely, it's just a beast of a vocal, and Dee can still tear it up. That's partially what makes the 2016 childhood cancer version moving.

Interesting (er, maybe not...) side note about this song: one of the waypoints of my life in the last fifteen years that told me in no uncertain terms that I was getting older, was seeing this song in a diapers commercial. I can't remember if it was Pampers or Luvs, or whatnot, but there was a little army of future head-banger babies crawling along with this song playing. At the time I was annoyed, but that's mostly because I hadn't made peace with the passage of time just yet.

Now, what the hell...? I'm down...really, why should babies have to "take it" any more than adults?

"Your life is trite and jaded, boring and confiscated / If that's your best, your best won't do..."




#234) "I Wanna Rock" by Twisted Sister - Same thing as above, really. Mostly funny, but still, you can't stop listening when the song plays. There's something compelling about it. Truly must be Dee Snider's voice...

"I've waited for so long so I could hear my favorite song, so let's go..."



#235) "1969" by Keith Stegall - This song was released in the mid-1990s, when I was a deejay at a "hot country" radio station. It didn't make a lot of headway on the charts, nor much of a dent in our station's listenership (not a lot of requests to hear it during Friday night's "Request Express with Dave Kline!" ;-), but twenty years on, I still really enjoy this thoughtful reminiscence, this reflection on troubled times.

In the course of my life, there's been no shortage of looking back on the Sixties, that's for sure. By the time "1969" was released, the decade had already been examined and interpreted six ways from Sunday, and between The Wonder Years and Family Ties, the Monkees revival and Led Zeppelin's command of "classic rock" radio, the (rightful) lionization of Jim, Jimi, and Janis, the Stones, the Beatles and Bob (er, Dylan), not to mention I don't know how many movies about Vietnam, there's definitely been some overkill. But the somber melody and what the lyrics are actually saying, I think, set "1969" apart. Rather than idealizing the times, or glorifying them, they are recalled here with a kind of tired resignation that befits how it all played out, and ended.  How all eras play out and end, really.

Plus, make it 1989 instead of '69, and I can relate pretty well, because some things never change. America is a tough town, when you're eighteen with a child...

"It was the age of innocence, but our innocence was fading / We waited for the best of times, and just kept waiting..."

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#232) Ozzy Ozbourne/Black Sabbath - You listen to Black Sabbath's early stuff, you realize, first, that it's fucking fantastic. In the early 1970s, the four members helped invent the sound that would one day become "heavy metal", but before it became a stereotype (as I knew it, growing up in the 80s), it was just a form of rock and roll that no one had ever heard before. I've written similarly of Metallica in southern California in, say, 1982 - oh to have been a teenager or someone in their early 20s and heard something like "Whiplash" for the first time.

And before he too became a walking stereotype - biting the heads off bats, pissing on the Alamo, ratting out his hair, pretty much letting Maybelline become the official eye liner of the "prince of darkness" - what better ambassador for Tony Iommi 's dark music and Geezer Butler's matching dark poetry could there have been than pasty, slightly pudgy Ozzy Osbourne, with a crazy smile and a voice that could, in certain moments, dismantle the sky?

You realize, also, as you listen, that there's a lot going on in Sabbath's music, much more than "devil worship" - heady lyrics about social injustice and war and peace and politics gone awry ("War Pigs", for instance, is hardly about Satan...), all of it strung, like society's dirty laundry, across intricate rhythms and guitar hooks that, truth be told, aren't really just a "wall of sound". There is some airtight musicianship in a lot of their old stuff.  Bill Ward's drumming, alone...

In later years, Ozzy would fall victim to drugs and alcohol, leave Black Sabbath, and embark on a solo career, which, like so much in the 80s, became more about the image, less about the music. (Although I do like 1991's "No More Tears", and 2002's "Dreamer").

By the 2000s, of course, he let himself become a reality TV punch line - schlepping around his Beverly Hills kitchen, struggling to figure out how to change a garbage bag - and that's where I start to agree with Ted Nugent, who at the time, very rightly maligned The Osbournes as "soulless".

But early on, Ozzy and Sabbath were the motherfucker, full of soul, and vigor, and anger, with a lot to say about how messed up everything is. Between Ozzy's vocals (again, who else...??) and the band's compelling musicality, they were ahead of their time, and as a result, their music is still relevant today. 

As I do in situations like this, I've chosen my five favorite songs. But there are countless others that could, and probably will, come along for the side on 1/48/50.

"Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"

"War Pigs"

"Black Sabbath"

"Changes"

"The Wizard"

-------------

For my money, THIS is "Ozzy"...not the flowing robes, jeweled crucifixes and big hair that became part of his 'image' in the 80s...and sure as shit not anything that transpired on The Osbournes: 

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#230) "Streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen - Even though the song was written specifically for "Philadelphia", the 1993 movie starring Tom Hanks (at this point it's crazy to think that Tom Hanks was once just that guy from the TV show "Bosom Buddies"), it creates such a raw emotional moment, it almost inadvertently takes on a universal meaning. That isn't to detract from its actual message, or the message of the movie, only to suggest, with much appreciation intended, that it's one of those songs you start listening to, and by the end you're so compelled, you're not quite sure how long you've been sitting there listening.

"I was bruised and battered, I couldn't tell what I felt, I was unrecognizable to myself..."

#231) "I'm On Fire" by Bruce Springsteen - This song, on the other hand, is about as universal as can be. It's Bruce's quiet moment amidst the pipe-banging bluster of Born in the USA.  I guess there's "My Hometown" on that album as well, but everything is above board with "My Hometown". It's obvious what he's singing about, and you either can relate to it, or you can't. "I'm On Fire" also is obvious, but it's one of those rare moments when what becomes obvious is something intensely intimate and personal. That's artistry.

This just might be Bruce's finest song, and although I think it gets mocked by purists (Bruce is the caliber of artist to have "purists" squawking over his work, grading it, assigning it to eras, thinking they are the only ones who get it....), I think the video really does the song justice. It was innovative for its day (and heralded, I remember, as The Boss's first non-concert video). It is also, in a hundred different painstakingly subtle ways, haunting: the fact that you never see the woman's face (only her ring as she drops the car keys into his hands), Bruce driving out to the hills to deliver the car late at night, then the shot from those hills as he walks home, resigned to his place in the world...I don't know, man...this, perhaps more than any other music video I've ever seen, compels me to watch, and at the end I'm not sure how long I've been watching.  Musically and visually, it's fucking hypnotic.

As for the song itself, I was there once...and yeah, that's pretty much exactly what it sounded like.

"At times it's like someone took a knife, baby edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul..."