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

#284)  "Journey to the Center of the Mind" by The Amboy Dukes - On one hand, it's difficult to associate Ted Nugent - Mr. Anti-Liberal/Anti-Drug/Good Hunting Uber 'Merican - with a song I've always associated with hippies and their chemically expanded minds (or at least nerdy kids LARP-ing rather than hunting and fishing). 'Twas the times, I guess, the late 1960s, Summer of Love, etc. What else could a young Nuge do but dress like Sgt. Pepper and  participate if he wanted to get anywhere, get anyone to take notice?

On the other hand, I've never been one for pointing fingers when it comes to music. At the end of the day, songs are about whatever the listener wants them to be about. That's the artistic process at work, really. "Journey to the Center of the Mind" need not be about drugs any more than John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" (which isn't...), and I truly don't care if it is or not. My point is that musically speaking, as early as this song came in his career, it still has Nugent's fingerprints are all over it, which is what I like about it. He was still a good decade away from swinging across the stage in a loin cloth, but you can tell by the body language of the blistering guitar licks heard here, that the Motor City Madman, as we would come to know, love and hate him, was already present.



"Beyond the seas of thought, beyond the realm of what / Across the streams of hopes and dreams where things are really not..."


#285) "Sweet Young Thing" by The Chocolate Watchband - I don't know what else to say about this song other than sometimes sexy is just sexy. It always makes me sort of wish I had come of age in the 60s. I can think of no better soundtrack to being that age, discovering all that I could as fast as I could, than this song, and this kind of music.

I had hair metal to treat my acne, and it was just not the same.

"Hey sweet young thing, come on an open your door..."

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

#282) "Interstate Love Song" by The Stone Temple Pilots - I was never really into The Stone Temple Pilots. In fact, were it not for Scott Weiland's distinctive vocals, I might not otherwise have known "Interstate Love Song" was their song, because I honestly can't say it ever did anything for me.

Looking back, I don't know why. It's really a gorgeous piece of music, one of those (in my opinion) perfectly constructed songs, universally appealing, that from my point of view wound up draped fully across the decade in which it was released. In the past, I've said that nothing smells like 1975 more than "Sister Golden Hair" by America, more recently I claimed nothing smells more like 1997 than Smash Mouth, but nothing smells more like the whole of the 1990s (especially as time has passed and it's gelled into a by-gone era) as "Interstate Love Song".

It never got my attention, and yet it always seemed to be playing in the background of my life - on the radio at work, in my car, the jukebox at a bar, at parties, on TV. It was, in a word, ubiquitous, and it isn't hard to understand why. It's brilliantly not too "grunge" for its own good (or post-grunge, or other classification that for better or worse helps us interpret our world), not too much anything and yet a little bit of everything. There is nothing specific in its lyrics that speaks to me personally, but when I think of the full scope of being in my twenties - of ceremonious drinking late into the night all the way to sunrise, of flannel and hole-y jeans and carefully crafted stubble, of smoking cigs because I still had plenty of time to quit and taking selfies (with an old film camera) with one of them dangling out of my mouth because I was the even more carefully crafted "writer guy", hell-bent on doing things my way, living life on what I thought were my own terms - it's simply this song that is playing in the background, probably more frequently than songs I liked a lot more, even though I never actually listened to it until three years ago.

"Waiting on a Sunday afternoon, for what I read between the lines / Your lies..."

#283) "Why Can't I?" by Liz Phair - Same exact deal as above, only replace the 1990s with the 2000s, and replace hooking up, drinking until dawn and cigarettes dangling from my mouth with attempts to quit, health kicks, kids, business ventures and all the attendant adult bullshit "writer guy" swore would never, ever be his life. My stubble was still there, but a little grayer. I was still writing, but it was less a pleasure, more a chore. I found I didn't have nearly as much time as I once did...and noticed it was running a lot faster. Though, of course, not as fast as it is now. 😐

While all of that transformation and transition was going on, "Why Can't I?" was the song droning in the background.

"We're already wet and we're gonna go swimming..."

On Bridges and the Importance of Infrastructure...and How it Relates to my Love of Driving Over Bridges

August 1, 2007 was a memorable day in my life, for all the wrong reasons. It was the day when the  I-35W bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota collapsed during rush hour traffic, killing 13 and injuring over a hundred. I was nowhere near the Twin Cities when it happened, but the tragedy affected me emotionally nevertheless.

In my youth, there were two main go-to destinations in my life. One was Duluth, Minnesota, just an hour away from where I grew up. I reserve a special place in my heart for Duluth to this day. Among the most physically beautiful cities I've ever been to, she was in my youth keeper of all the "big city" shopping mall action I could handle - Aladdin's Castle, Musicland, Orange Julius, Barnes and Noble, et cetera. Duluth had everything my hometown didn't have. The trick was finding a way there. 

The other was Minneapolis. Any trip there meant something truly awesome was happening.  I'm very familiar with I-35, which runs from the Twin Ports to the Twin Cities, where it splits into 35W, which runs through Minneapolis, and 35E, which wends its way through St. Paul. I rarely had any reason to go to St. Paul. Minneapolis was where it was at. I had crossed that 35W bridge countless times on my way to the airport, or Valley Fair, or the Mall of America, or the Metrodome or numerous points around or south of the Cities.

That fact alone isn't significant, of course. In theory, we're all a hair's breadth away from tragedy at any given moment, so the number of times I drove over that bridge prior to its collapse doesn't mean anything. But there was something about crossing that particular span that always sent an anxious trill through my bones.

I don't mean in a clairvoyant way. I don't claim ever to have thought something would happen, no visions of the future, but I can in good conscience say something about it unnerved me. It was high, for starters, arching more than a hundred feet above a stretch of the Mississippi that seemed like a gaping maw, surrounded by a visually severe landscape - the big beautiful Minneapolis skyline on one side, and a lot of rough industry - with a power plant, and a dam - on the other. It was more exciting than intimidating I guess, but every time I crossed that bridge, I thought about it collapsing out from underneath me. Again, to be clear, I never thought it actually would, but the hypothetical notion would float through my mind, and so when it did, when I realized it was that bridge's demise being covered on the national news, I was left momentarily floored.

The other reason the tragedy affected me, is because I've always considered infrastructure to be a big deal. Our bridges should no more be collapsing out from under us - ever - than our drinking water should be tainted with lead or other poisons, and yet we are reminded time and time again when some unexpected-and-yet-really-no-surprise tragedy occurs that not nearly enough time or attention is being given to shoring it up. If it were, perhaps things like the I-35 bridge collapse, or the entirely outrageous Flint, Michigan water scandal (not to mention countless places across the country where people's tap water comes out flammable) might be avoided. Clear roadways to get around, potable water and electric power should in 2017 be considered basic human rights the world over.

A report earlier this year by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association found that over 50,000 bridges - many of them part of major roadways bearing huge traffic loads on a daily basis - are structurally deficient. The report stressed that "structurally deficient" doesn't mean collapse is imminent, only that problems have been detected that need or will eventually need repair, but it's unnerving just the same to think about that number: 50,000-plus bridges in this country all trembling - however slightly (and who knows how many are more than slightly) - under the weight of our need to get from one place to another on a daily basis, our reliance on big rigs moving product, our love of driving, of motion, of freedom, needing some kind of repair work.  In the case of the I-35 Bridge, the sheer volume of traffic it endured on a daily basis was staggering, and as early as 1990 (just 23 years after it was constructed) it had been labeled "structurally deficient", and would again receive this designation in 2005, two years before it came down. 

How many of the 50,000 bridges noted in the ARTBA report currently have a cloudy history like that? One would be far too many.

It's especially frightening, considering I love driving over bridges. I have on numerous occasions driven out of my way just to be able to drive over a bridge, and the specific route I take on 1/48/50 will almost certainly be determined (partially, at least) by whether there's a bridge I can drive over.

Indulging this little driving kink should not be a matter of tempting fate.

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

#279) "Rocker" by AC/DC - Before the untimely death of lead singer Bon Scott, AC/DC was considered hard rock. The loud, aggressive style of music they helped pioneer in the 1970s didn't become the caricature I knew as "heavy metal" until the 80s, with, I'd venture, the release of the monumental album, Back in Black, a tribute to Scott with new front man, Brian Johnson.

That album is great, groundbreaking in its way (forging new paths in musical metallurgy), but as a whole, the genre got lamer and lamer as the decade progressed, more about image in the video age than anything real or relatable. By the time I entered high school, it had been watered down to a little thing called hair metal, which didn't provide or produce much good in the world, outside of the ratted hair look (on women). That noise wasn't silenced until 1991, with a band called Nirvana and a music (-al movement) called "grunge", which, when you think about it, also wound up becoming a caricature.

The album Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap has always struck me as a solid emissary from that moment just before hard rock became metal. And "Rocker", the best example of rock and roll that may have been hard, but had not yet lost its more organic, bluesier roots in the dervish of spandex, eye liner and ratted out hair...on men...that for better or worse, informed my youth.

This is nothing less than rock and roll history:




"Got little red socks, blue suede shows / V-8 car and tattoos..."

#280) "Ride On" by AC/DC - From the same album, and nothing if not "bluesy", there are two things I love about this song: 1) the message. It's how everyone should approach life, really the only option everyone has, and at certain moments in my own life it's actually served as a beacon. Ride on. 2) Angus Young's guitar solo, which, for my money, is among the best ever, in "rock and roll", "hard rock", "metal" or whatever else you want to put quotes around.

"Bought myself a one-way ticket, going the wrong way..."

#281) "Big Balls" - On the surface a throw-away, but listen, and consider it was the mid-1970s when this was recorded. It was actually kind of funny, and daring (dare I say: ballsy), for its day.

Whether it holds up today, either as a piece of art, a piece of comedy, or a piece of music, I'm not so sure. But there was a time, man, 7th or 8th grade, when "Big Balls" was pretty shocking and hilarious and cool, and I felt pretty shocking and hilarious and cool jamming out to it. That alone makes it worth taking along on my road trip.

"It's my belief that my big balls should be held every night..."

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

#277) "Walking On the Sun" by Smash Mouth - What the band America was to the 1970s, it might be said Smash Mouth was to the 1990s. Make no mistake, I think America was a much better band, and their music had a much greater (lasting) impact. But as I once said that nothing smells more like 1975 than "Sister Golden Hair", nothing smells more like 1997 in my mind than "Walking on the Sun".

Into a world with "Friends", "Frasier" and "Seinfeld" on TV, "blazing fast!" 56K technology taking the Internet by storm, and everyone drinking fancy coffee in a fancy coffee house and planning to publish a poetry book, Smash Mouth released "Walking on the Sun", a never unlistenable little jam that says more about the let-down of the 1960s than a lot of painstakingly rendered historical documentaries. I feel the second verse in particular distills the unfortunate road society has taken since that time (idealism crushed cruelly beneath the boot heel of corporate-controlled consumerism) down to a simple, deceptively rhetorical question:

"Twenty-five years ago they spoke out and they broke out of recession and oppression
And together they toked
And they folked out with guitars around a bonfire
Just singing and clapping, man, what the hell happened...?"

Drop the mic, boys...

"Because fashion is smashing the true meaning of it..."

#278) "Drinking Song" by Loudon Wainwright -  Though it might be considered a deep track (truthfully every one of Wainwright's songs, other than 1972's "Dead Skunk", which for better or worse is probably what he'll be remembered for, might be considered a deep track), "Drinking Song" encapsulates everything I've loved about the man and his music over the years.

It is quintessential Loudon. He treats the guitar as much as a percussion instrument as a string.  The song starts like any other of his ditties - a little anxious but also a little clever and wry, nothing if not comical. But like all his music, the best of it at least, "Drinking Song" has a way of turning overcast as it wears on. By the end, that trademark anxiety Wainwright employs to fuel his music has gotten itself onto you, like a musty smell, and you are left sort of wondering why you were laughing at all.


"
Drunk men stagger, drunk men fall, drunk men swear and that's not all / Quite often they will urinate outdoors..."