One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#316) "Brady Bunch Theme" by Frank De Vol - Okay, okay, not the Brady Bunch theme itself! I know that over the last six years, I've taken a lot of liberty in this space with my definition of what qualifies as a "road song".  But even I admit it would be one sad stretch of highway on a 14,000-mile road trip across America that I or anyone else spent grooving to the Brady Bunch theme.

But mind you, that's the opening theme. The closing theme is a whole other topic. When I was a kid and a hardcore Brady Bunch fan (which yes, I was...), I never got to hear the closing theme as the end credits rolled because an announcer was always talking over it. YouTube has changed that, changed the very way in which we see/remember our childhoods. There's virtually nothing you can't find there anymore, nothing from television days past that someone hasn't discovered on a 1982-era VHS tape in the attic and taken the initiative to transfer to a digital format and post (or simply rip from a DVD collection), and I've discovered that the closing theme of The Brady Bunch is actually a killer jam, testament to a by-gone age when, 1) quite a bit of thought went into television theme songs, 2) musicianship still ruled.

There are two versions, one from the first season of the show (1969), and one from a few seasons in (Season 4). Both are musical extrapolations of the theme song everyone knows the words to, but with complex hooks and a truly savage bass riff added, which render them (as strange as it feels to be typing this) authentically jam-worthy.

Jam-worthy, that is, if you truly appreciate music, and don't really care whether you look cool while you're listening to it.  If you do, you should move on, because there's simply no way to look cool here. But this isn't about something being cool; it is about something just being good, expressive, interpretive.  Who knew?  (The bass line, especially, is incredible.)





#317) "Sanford and Son Theme" by Quincy Jones -  Honestly, it feels a little like sacrilege to talk about this instrumental too much. It's nothing if not - first and foremost -  testament to Quincy Jones' genius. This simply wails. Wails like nobody's business. I want to say that it's another example of a TV theme song created in a time when great thought went into how theme songs might enhance the viewing experience, but this music did not start life as a TV theme song.  This was actually a single off Jones' 1973 album, You've Got it Bad Girl, called "The Streetbeater".

And may I say, the Streetbeater was the motherfucker.

How can anyone not look cool jamming to this?  Not feel cool, at least! ;-)

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#314) "One Less Set of Footsteps" by Jim Croce - Last week I mentioned that nearly all of the songs Jim Croce recorded in his lamentably short career were "poignant songs of love and longing", but that assertion can really be distilled down to one word: poignant.  And not just his slow ballads, but the upbeat tunes as well. His songwriting style had a way of wringing a certain populist exasperation, a pensiveness that never becomes too emotional (and is all the more potent), right out of the air, and "One Less Set of Footsteps" is no exception. It's a break-up song, but takes a different tack: less accusatory fingers pointing out of a deep pool of devastating sorrow and resentment, more the long eye roll into that good night, fueled as much by relief as grief.

"Salty," the kids might say today. ;-)

"You've been talking in silence, well if it's silence you adore..."

#315) "Working at the Carwash Blues" by Jim Croce - Once again, a deceptively simple song that speaks directly to the way we all see ourselves; a recognition of the wasted talent each of us is sure we are, stuck in our unchallenging, dead-end jobs/careers/lives.  I have found myself "walking home in soggy old shoes" on more than one occasion through time. And again, Croce spins the song with more poignance - a kind of winsome humor - than anything.

"You know a man of my ability, he should be smoking on a big cigar..."

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#312) "Peaches" by The Stranglers - This has always struck me as one of those songs you'd see mentioned in a movie like "High Fidelity" (starring John Cusack and Jack Black), the sort of song that might wind up on the play list of an insufferable know-it-all who is positive he and he alone (because - of course - it's always a "he" who acts like this) knows what is worthy and what is not, when it comes to all things musical.

I could be wrong about that, but released in 1977, "Peaches" would seem to have two important things going for it, as far as know-it-alls are concerned: 1) an elegantly simple yet pounding bass line that keeps it galumphing along at an unabashedly humorous (and at the same time totally sexy) pace, 2) a finger on the aggressive and unapologetically UN-politically correct pulse of the British punk scene of the mid-1970s. "All this skirt lapping up the sun..." indeed...

In any case, I love this forever juvenile jam, love its candor, its lack of inhibition, its complete lack of concern. Interestingly, The Stranglers are still going strong to this day, having long outlived the scene in which they came up.

As most of us do, whether we like it or not.

"Why don't you come and lap me up....?"

#313) "Photographs and Memories" by Jim Croce - What a remarkable achievement here: a poignant song of love and longing that never crosses that event horizon into over-wrought cheesiness. It might be the perfect love song, actually, and, if I'm being perfectly honest, there isn't really a lot Jim Croce did in his too-short career that wouldn't be brought along on a cross-country road trip. It might be said that every one of his songs is a "poignant song of love and longing that never crosses that event horizon into over-wrought cheesiness."

"All that I have are these to remember you..."

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#310) "Ace in the Hole" by George Strait - These days, George Strait is considered the "King of Country Music", and that's fair enough. He's been around a long time and has been one of the most reliable hitmakers for a lot of years, so his natural evolution as an artist was bound to include becoming an elder statesman at some point. I believe he still holds the record for the most number one hits in country music, and this does not surprise me. Already well on his way to "elder statesman" status by the mid-1990s, when I was working in country radio, the man simply could not release an unpopular song, never a half-baked single wheezing its way halfway up the charts for George Strait. They all seemed to shoot to #1 and maintain a prolonged presence on "all-request Friday nights".

And to me, there was something refreshing about the George Strait persona. He was neither a rowdy redneck stereotype, nor did he come across as a lamely forced caricature of the broad, gleaming white smile, plate-sized belt buckle and 300 gallon hat-wearing cowpoke dude. Moreover, his song selection was top notch. Choosing the right songs at the right time in one's career would seem to be a unique skill set for artists who generally don't write their own music but rely on the talents of others. George Strait always chose really catchy music - "mid-tempo country in the neo-traditionalist style" at its finest - and it was almost as if he stood out by not standing out, singing the perfect (somewhat idealized, but still truthful) accompaniment to all the little moments that make up small town life, or rural life, or cowboy life.

Released in the summer of 1989, when I was sixteen and had no interest in country music whatsoever (was in fact hostile toward it), "Ace in the Hole" became Strait's 18th #1 single, and what I might have hated about it back then is what I love about it now: the finger snappy, ragtime / big band / rockabilly feel, its positive but not overly preachy message. Among George Strait songs it does stand out, and totally works. Some songs are simply pleasant to listen to, and remain so.

"Life is a gamble, a game we must play..."

#311) "Lawyers in Love" by Jackson Browne - Once again, Jackson Browne reveals himself to be worthy of a place among the rock and roll intelligentsia (although I got to admit, I'm never quite sure what I mean when I say things like that), with a song that says something about the society we live in, with a Bob Dylan-style presence of mind that too often Browne doesn't get enough credit for.

As surely as "The Pretender" predicted the rise of the yuppie in 1976, "Lawyers in Love" is kind of the play-by-play as it was happening in 1983's Reagan era. As with a lot of Browne's music, it's all about the lyrics. He really can turn a good phrase, but does it so skillfully, the lyrics never seem too arcane or forced. They remain easily interpretable, and when you interpret them, you realize (or I do, at least): holy shit, he's right.

"I can't keep up with what's been going on..."