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

 #382) "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Crosby, Stills and Nash - Over time, I've had an unreliable relationship with Crosby, Stills and Nash. For years and years, the only song of theirs that ever wound up on any playlist of mine was "Southern Cross", a tune from later in their career - that is, after their peak in popularity - that appealed to me the first time I heard it on Top 40 radio at the age of ten, and still very much does.

Aside from that, I didn't really pay attention to CSN, and what I actually knew about them, as compared to what I knew about other acts from the late 60s/early 70s that were considered "classic" by the time I came of age, was spotty at best, factually inaccurate at worst: I always assumed David Crosby was the leader of the group, merely because his name appears first. Nowadays, I wouldn't suggest there is or ever was a leader, per se. All three members of this "supergroup", each coming from a notable band before (Crosby from The Byrds, Graham Nash from The Hollies, Stephen Stills from Buffalo Springfield), contribute something valuable to the overall sound. I knew that Neil Young (also from Buffalo Springfield) made them a foursome for a short while (CSNY!), but that it didn't last. I always thought "Teach Your Children" was lovely, an anthem for a generation and all that, but for some reason, I never wanted to listen to it all the way through. Same with "Our House".  And "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" was just a song I caught fragmented stretches of on "classic rock" radio while at work on a Tuesday morning, a tune I never bothered to listen to for more than a minute. I'm not sure why. It always seemed a little too of the 1960s to be relatable, I just can't possibly explain what I mean by that.

I do know that the fact that I felt that way is a real shame. I'd give anything to have been able to experience this song, really listen to it, make it relatable, when I was twenty. For my money, the seemingly disjointed, rambling lyrics are anything but. Rather, they so capture the rarefied torture of going through a breakup when you're young. Stills wrote the song about his imminent breakup with singer Judy Collins, whom he'd been dating for a couple of years. He was 23 or 24 at the time, and you can tell, and I mean that in a good way. The professions and confessions sprinkled throughout the seven-minute masterpiece would seem to be torn straight from the pages of every young man's romantically muddled psyche, a little bit of everything: raw and random, earnest, pathetic and potent, easily distracted, ever anguished, restless, meaningless and inspired all at once. Gorgeous and awkward. Too much, and at the same time never quite enough.

This has to be true, because it's all pretty much the same stuff I used to write in notebooks when I was an emotionally muddled young man, the very same kind of addled all-over-the-place emotional imagery I tried mightily to work into my fiction, in days when I had everything before me and a much loftier sense of relevance driving me forward.  

It's something every young person who has ever been in - and/or lost - love can relate to, hitting its mark without ever being too specific, too much about Stephan Stills and Judy Collins, and that, coupled with stellar musicianship (moments of true floral notes both in the trio's vocal harmonies and Stills' expert guitar work) makes "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" nothing short of immortal ... far outlasting the mere 1960s, or Crosby, Stills and Nash, or me.

I mean come on, "Friday evening ... Sunday in the afternoon ..."  Nothing else needs to be said, right? ;-)

"I've got an answer / I'm going to fly away / What have I got to lose?"

#383) "Stray Cat Strut" by The Stray Cats - This is one of those songs that some might be inclined to dismiss as a novelty. It's so catchy, the subject matter borderline silly, lending itself to cartoons and other pop culture fare. The Stray Cats, with their upright bass and pompadours, were themselves a "novelty" act, decidedly retro if nothing else, although I do not mean that in any disparaging way. 

How could I? Brian Setzer is a talented guy musically speaking, and if you take a moment to do so, "Stray Cat Strut" is downright beautiful to listen to. The restless lyrics, equally restless rhythms, the angsty and theatrical chord progressions, bring out silliness, longing and sass in equal measure, all dressed in Setzer's wet, wonderful guitar work.

"Howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night ..."

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

 #380) "Don't Go Breaking my Heart" by Elton John and Kiki Dee - Yep, I know, not a ton going on musically here, not much to sink your teeth into. The melody doesn't lead anywhere, the lyrics don't lead anywhere. It's just a watery (if pleasant) little poof of 1970s pop pap. Moreover, I have no particular childhood memories associated with this song, nor do I really remember much about 1970s-era Elton John, or anything about Kiki Dee, and most damning to the warrant for placing it on this list, I don't even remember this song playing in my parents' bookstore all that much, if at all. I cannot recall it burbling from that beloved and accursed AM radio that sat on the sun-soaked south-facing windowsill behind the front counter, that little black and gray plastic fountain of music with the retractable antenna that introduced me to - and indoctrinated me with - so much Seventies gold bathed in so much golden Seventies late-morning / early afternoon sunlight.

And yet, "this song" did in fact play in my dad's bookstore, I'm sure of it. "This song", in a composite sense, was always playing, burbling continuously from that musical fountain picking up whatever local station was brushing the airwaves in its best precursor-to-"Lite Hits"-and-"Adult Contemporary"-radio fashion. I have no doubt "this song" dribbled out of that radio's tiny tweeters as my dad price-marked leftover Bicentennial merchandise half-off and cleverly placed last month's unsold, cover-stripped men's mags in brown paper bags and rebranded them "Slick Packs" (a masterful marketing maneuver if ever there were one), as I snuck penny candy out of the top shelf of the candy bar, my mom counted store inventory, and my brother fought a neighbor kid who was always waiting for him on the next block when he and I walked, ironically enough, to karate lessons at the youth center.

It's the specific time in my life that "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" represents that makes me want it along on 1/48/50, evident in the song's very structure: the watery, disco-ish beat, the stringy string accompaniment, the feel-good sentiment from that cramped space in American history - post-Vietnam, pre-Reagan 80s - the time represented hilariously and brilliantly in the movie "Dazed and Confused" (which gave us Ben Affleck's most terrifying role: Fred O'Bannion). 

I was a young kid then, already on the lookout for Fred O'Bannions in my daycare / pre-school /  kindergarten midst, but still safe in the knowledge that nothing would ever change as I accompanied my dad to his bookstore on so many sunny Saturday mornings, spent long stretches of summer days in and out of it. While it's possible I never actually heard "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" prior to many years later when the 70s became an historic era to look back on, I have no doubt it was there.

"Honey if I get restless / Baby you're not that kind ..."  

#381) "I'm Still Standing" by Elton John - "I'm Still Standing" was actually my first exposure to Elton John, as well as one of the first videos I can remember watching on MTV, back in those crazy early days when the "M" still stood for "Music". In the great annals of Reginald Dwight musical history, I think this one holds up, although it probably gets dismissed by music snobs for what they might consider  its throwaway pop sensibilities.  

It could be said it's not unlike "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" in this respect, but I think "I'm Still Standing" is much more durable, possesses much more gravitas, both musically and lyrically. It's just more interesting all around, and catchy as all get-out. In fact, I would venture it's a prime example of Elton John and Bernie Taupin at their pop songwriting best. 

"Your blood like winter freezes just like ice / And there's a cold lonely light that shines from you ... " 

 

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

#378) "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" by The Hollies - I'm thinking I might have to declare this the greatest song ever recorded. Well, okay, I don't have to, but I guess I really want to. Every time I listen to it, it makes me want to. 

I've been blabbing in this space for years now. A lot of good music has been blabbed about, a lot of similar declarations about musical magnificence made, but when it comes to urgent, excitable ballads, songs with a message, and in terms of overall musicality, there's nothing about this 1969 single I would do any different.

From the first squealing (and evocatively off-tune) harmonica wail, to the melted drizzle of the chords, to singer Allan Clarke's vocals (seeming to match the harmonica), the blue sky harmonies and that cirrus cloud-style orchestration I love so much (very much a musical memento that makes a lot of soft music from the 1960s and early 70s great in my opinion), right down to the message of the song itself (the lovely story of its inspiration dating back to a young Scottish girl in the nineteenth century), "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" performs like lace curtains; it covers the window, obscures sight of the ugliness outside just enough to bring relief, without ever preventing sunlight from streaming in. This is one of those rare songs that simultaneously fills my heart with joy and sorrow.

"The road is long, with many a winding turn / That leads us to who knows where, who knows where ..."

 #379) "Got You (Where I Want You)" by The Flys - Not the greatest song ever recorded, necessarily, but a sturdy jam cut from a very specific time in my life (and doubtless the lives of many Gen X'ers ... a crossroads, for sure), this weirdly ideal driving song (perfect for 1/48/50) has aged well, never sounds dated, which might be why it's a good driving song, especially if you're driving somewhere new.

And if you're driving alone, come on, try, try, try not to sing along with the chorus. ;)

"Well, I think you're smart, you sweet thing / Tell me your sign, I'm dying here ... "

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

#376 -  "Arrow Through Me" by Paul McCartney and Wings - Seems every time Sir Paul winds up on this 1/48/50 list, I have the same glowing things to say, primarily about his range as an artist. There's a lot of good music out there, fine songwriters, musicians and performers, but a very short list of artists who have been able to swing so effortlessly between styles, with no awkward (read: unconvincing) overlap, and all music that they wrote themselves. 

Just within the short six years The Beatles were in America, he gave us, "Helter Skelter', and "Yesterday", "Oh Darling!" and "Let It Be", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and "Mother Nature's Son".  "Penny Lane", and "And I Love Her". Yes, I know they're all credited as "Lennon-McCartney", but any Beatles fan worth his/her salt knows that they mostly wrote their own music. To that end, Lennon certainly contributed mightily to that which made the Beatles The Beatles, but was he as far-ranging as McCartney, musically speaking? As seamlessly adept at the execution? Nah, I don't think so.

And McCartney kept up this unique musical range throughout the 1970s, with Wings: "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Let Em In".  "Silly Love Songs" and "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey".  "Jet" and "Listen to What the Man Said".  "Live and Let Die" and "My Love". 

And then there's "Arrow Through Me" (like Maude!), from 1979.  Just when you think there isn't anywhere else for the man to go musically, or perhaps more accurately, nowhere else you think he will go, along comes something almost experimental-sounding, with an undulating melody and crisp, funk-inspired rhythmic and bass hooks, a kind of a musical mélange, to which McCartney adds some sassy brass and clavinet chords being turned inside out repeatedly, like someone working a stress ball, as he alternately (and handily) shrieks and croons in his inimitable Macca style.  

It's completely different, and yet unmistakably McCartney. A perennial joy to listen to. Far and away my favorite from the Wings era, and I'd venture one of his best of all time, although when it comes to McCartney, perhaps that notion is more open to debate than your average artist.

"You wouldn't have found a more down hero ... "

#377 - "Sunday Will Never be the Same" by Spanky and Our Gang - I was lucky, I think. This and so many other songs like it from the 60s and 70s formed nothing less than the architecture of my emotional state when I was kid. My parents owned a bookstore and there was a little AM radio on the window sill behind the cash register, and whatever station they were tuned into always played "sunshine pop" and "AM gold", all of the music that to this day people are quick to scorn and/or mock, yet secretly love at the same time. I wouldn't want to be my age and only ever listening to The Carpenters, but it's not a bad serenade to being anywhere from four to ten years old. 

Some insist on dismissing this kind of music as bubblegum schlock, and maybe that's what it was at the time. Maybe it could be argued that in 1967, songs like "Sunday Will Never be the Same" paled in comparison to what innovative and ground-breaking stuff the Beatles or the Stones or the Who were putting out, and might also be argued that even today the two camps don't compare.

But perhaps they don't compare because it's apples to oranges. If you want to go apples to apples, a fair, direct comparison, you have to compare the "schlock" (the one hit wonders, fast buck feel good ditties and cheesy love songs) of the 60s and 70s to the "schlock" of 80s, 90s and beyond, and by that yardstick, I maintain that post-1980 schlock does not age as well as pre-1980. 

I think much of this has to do with the fact that songs of this type were once built upon melody, rather than rhythm, and more so the fact that the whole process of writing popular music and either performing it yourself or finding someone else to perform it, did not take a pre-fab concept of "celebrity" into consideration so readily.  Nowadays, some form of a slick, glittery celebrity aesthetic is never too far removed from popular music of any kind or quality.  Artists need to look a certain way, comport themselves just so, say the right things at the right time (and lately, take caution never to say the wrong thing, while praying nobody discovers the "wrong" things they may have said 15 years ago). It's all slick and polished, carefully prescribed, produced, and more importantly, presented to a painstakingly scrutinizing audience who know nothing else other than the brightly but artificially colored, hi def world they grew up in, in which image isn't everything, it's the only thing. And that's not even to say that the music is better or worse, necessarily, just different. There are talented artists now, and good music being made, but it is roundly less organic, less accessible, less viscerally felt, I'd say, because the emphasis, the driving force, is always on the artist before the listener. 

"Sunday Will Never be the Same" wasn't about Spanky and our Gang as a group, as entertainers, so much as simply about the Sunday it speaks of, the park, the dying embers of love as clouds roll in. The listener could relate without any need to see Spanky and Our Gang, or care whether they were cool enough to be celebrities. This is a tricky and subtle point I'm making, open to debate surely, but definitely worthy of debate. 

Er, right? 😉

"Nobody waiting for me / Sunday's just another day..."

Road Rage

The other day I was waiting in the drive-thru at the bank, and in a fairly pissy mood. The weather had been shit all day, I'd been stuck in the line for over twenty minutes, and when the vehicle ahead of me didn't move on quick enough so that I could finally get up to the window, make my deposit, and go home, I blew my horn as a means of nudging it along. I didn't lay on the horn, but didn't merely tap it either. It was about a one-second yawp in the Key of F to express my impatience with this driver, and yes, also my general aggravation with an entirely unconcerned world.

The gentlemen driving the vehicle had just started to pull away, but when I blew my horn he braked, put it back in park, and climbed out. He took two steps toward me, spread his hands out and said, "Is there something wrong with me?"

Yes, there is, I thought. You sat there diddling on your phone with your foot holding the brake for a full 45 seconds before moving forward, demonstrating a gross lack of courtesy, a total disregard for the preciousness of anyone's time other than your own.

I didn't say that though. Instead, I passively swiped my hand in front of me, shook my head, and said, "Naw, we're good."

He was not a physically imposing individual; that wasn't the issue. He was short, and thin, and in his early 60s, if not older. Whether I could "take" him in a physical fight didn't matter, just as whether he should have immediately moved his ass after the bank teller completed his transaction didn't ultimately matter, no matter how much I thought it should in the moment. I'd inadvertently baited him, he was outraged, and it was incumbent upon me to suck up my pride and keep the situation from escalating. I had no way of knowing how pissed off he was (read: what he might have been capable of), and no way of telling if he might have had a gun in his vehicle, or on his person, in this state, which allows permitted concealed carry, so I "squashed it" (to borrow a line from Beverly Hills 90210 a hundred years ago), and it was the right call. I cooled my own jets, and he cooled his, got back in his car and drove off.

But the near-incident illustrated how low the flashpoint of people's rage is. It really doesn't take much to get someone flying off the handle, and that's got me reconsidering my own behavior when I'm driving around, especially on any extended trip. I'm not a hot head, exactly, I don't freak out over every little slight that comes my way (in a reversed situation, my response to him blowing his horn would have been to mutter, "yeah, okay, calm down, asshole..." to myself, before moving on...), but I can't say I've never laid on the horn, can't say I've never flipped anyone the bird, although it's almost always been in response to the other person doing it first. What can I say? I'm human. I fuck up sometimes, don't always have the right answer. But I will say that the older I get, the less often it happens. Thank God for that.

Road rage isn't really a new phenomenon. There were TV news stories about it when I was growing up in the 80s. Back then it was presented as a new, burgeoning phenomenon, and largely centered around urban areas, where traffic congestion tweaked the nerves of drivers on a daily basis. I seem to recall a kind of, "What's happening to our nation's urban freeways...?" theme. 

That, of course, is no longer true, if it ever really was. Road rage happens everywhere now, on all types of roads, in all types of places, involving all types of people of all ages, and YouTube provides a harrowing glimpse into how frequently it happens, how easily it can escalate, and indeed, just what people are capable of when it does. You watch enough of those videos depicting intersection screaming matches, angry tapping on driver-side glass or punching of hoods, the aggressive, multi-lane maneuvers, the occasional brandishing of firearms, it's hard to keep faith that anyone "squashes" anything anymore, hard to believe that we're not going (or gone) off the rails as a society.

I have a couple of completely unscientific theories as to why road rage happens (that is, frequently enough to qualify as a phenomenon):  

1) We're in motion when we're in a car, but we're not in control of that motion really, or at least always on the precipice of losing it. Instinctively, we know that something catastrophic could happen in a split second to wrest it from our grasp, and even if it's not something we consciously think about all the time, we're not at all okay with that notion. It makes us anxious ... puts us on guard.

2) Our feet aren't touching the ground, which further makes us feel vulnerable, and we're sitting down to boot, so when someone gets too close, or almost sideswipes us, or cuts us off, our kneejerk response is amplified.

I don't know if there's any warrant to either of those points, but they make sense, don't they?

Road rage is, in any case, a pretty horrible part of modern American life, and something to consider when I take this long road trip. On one hand, 1/48/50 will be an epically restorative experience. There will be something grand about having nowhere to be for an extended period of time, just tooling around here and there, wherever the wind (or the road) takes me, going places I've never been and will be unlikely to ever visit again.

But there will be a lot of driving, a lot of time stuck in my vehicle - that is, sitting down with my feet off the ground - and I wouldn't want a situation like what began to boil at my bank the other day to escalate when I'm in an unfamiliar town, or a thousand miles from nowhere (or anywhere ever, actually).  I can't really control how anyone else responds or reacts, but I can do my part, by keeping off the horn and keeping my middle finger in its holster. 

Also just by keeping my own anger in check, and the best way to do this is by keeping perspective: about how insignificant I am in the great cosmic all, and how unconcerned the world really is whether I get angry or not. It's not worth the elevated blood pressure, much less (God forbid) facing what may lie in wait at the end of an escalation. 

Just shake it off, reset, and drive on.

"Squash it!" ;-)