#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..."
