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

#301) "Nightshift" by The Commodores - I was twelve when this song was released, and before I knew what it was about, before I knew anything about Marvin Gaye or Jackie Wilson, before I could wrap my head around what a truly touching ode to the two performers and their untimely deaths it really is, its quiet, contemplative mood appealed to me. I remember listening to it on the radio after I'd gone to bed, and associating it with the static glare of the streetlight outside, which would lay itself across the wall over my bed when I turned out the light, making it impossible to go to sleep. Not because it was keeping me awake, but because it was making me restless.  More than three decades later, I think this interpretation is still very apt. For all its "quiet, contemplative mood", "Nightshift" is a very restless song. It's good restlessness. The kind that spurs anticipation, rather than longing.

"Gonna be a long night, it's gonna be all right, on the nightshirt..."

#302) "Drinking My Baby Goodbye" by Charlie Daniels - One thing that can be said about Charlie Daniels is that he and his band have always been, first and foremost, consummate musicians. Over the last 50 years, they've brought a sound to country music that is exceptionally airtight, sometimes downright innovative, and most notably, uniquely their own. (Daniels himself has said he never thought of himself as an "outlaw" country artist so much as an "outcast".) It's a sound that guarantees his status as a (living) legend will continue, and flourish, long after his passing.

"Drinking My Baby Goodbye" has all the elements for the quintessential Charlie Daniels song: rhythm meshing seamlessly with vocals and instruments, particularly (of course) the fiddle, an instrument which Daniels has at certain moments in his career managed to break the sound barrier with. It's all stitched up right nice into a song you simply cannot help tapping your foot to, and again, a song that couldn't be anyone else but Charlie Daniels.

"Pour me another one, I'm finished with the other one..."

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

#260) Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day - One of Green Day's best was written for front man Billy Joe Armstrong's father, who passed away when he was ten, but the song is so good at collecting emotional fragments and assembling a larger sense of loss, it oddly makes the whole worth more than the sum of its parts. If that's not an apt description of art, I don't know what is. The poetic lyrics do a nice job of intriguing rather than explaining, almost as if they're holding something back, not revealing everything they know. At least not right away.

The video, which draws heavily from the anxious, war-torn 2000s, is a bit over-wrought at moments, but there lies a dreaminess within it that lends itself to the "art", doing the music and lyrics justice. It's in the way it's shot, and the way it's acted.

To that end, I love the look of the kids in the video; I always have. Actors Jamie Bell and Evan Rachel Wood were excellent choices to represent average kids, looking and acting (and speaking) exactly as average kids would if they found themselves torn apart by the sense of duty and equally potent sense of futility that war evokes.

No doubt plenty of "average kids" actually did find themselves torn apart back in 2005, just as they did in 1968.

And 1952. And 1943. And 1917....




"Summer has come and passed / The innocent can never last / Wake me up when September ends..."

#261)"Uneasy Rider" by The Charlie Daniels Band - Charlie Daniels is one of the greatest country musicians - greatest musicians of any genre - of all time. "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", his most famous song, with its tight (as in circulation restricting) sound was innovative (as in Earth shattering) for the time, and it's actually only the beginning. Some of the greatest country songs of all time are CDB deep tracks.

That being said, Charlie Daniels is not the same person he was when he started out. Over his long, illustrious career he has undergone a dramatic sea change, the once "long haired country boy" becoming (like a lot of "elder statesman" country singers) a staunchly right-wing conservative, driven by his faith and a balls-to-the-wall (and for this, unavoidably self-righteous) brand of patriotism. He's entitled to his opinions of course, and he's certainly never failed to use his music to express them (in other words, it shouldn't be all that surprising), and mind you, I do not have a problem with patriotism or ALL right-wing thinking.

But I don't know, man...I've been going through a kind of divorce from country music the last few years, as it's become more aligned with the far right in this country. Not the right, not normal conservative/Republican, but the ideology that gave us President Trump. I just can't get there the same way anymore.

Perhaps that's because I too have gone through a sea change over time. As I've aged, I've gotten less conservative. Not MORE liberal, exactly, just less conservative. I support the military (certainly the vets), I support cops, I'm for law and order, and ultimately I just want it to be fucking quiet in my neighborhood and my midst at any given hour of the day. I support gun ownership, but do I think those rights should be left unrestricted? No. I'm a mid-western, middle-aged heterosexual male, but do I care if gays get married? Nope. Do I think pot should be legal? Yup. Do I think we should gut out every last bit of green space to, as Joni Mitchell sang, "put up a parking lot"?  Nope. We have enough parking lots. Enough opportunities to consume.

I'm a middle-of-the-roader on just about everything. I refuse to take a cartoonish stance on one side or another of the brewing culture war in this country.

At the end of the day, it should only ever be about the music, and to that end, everyone should be able to groove to whatever they want - together, ideally. Music really should be, to quote Longfellow, the "universal language of mankind".

It's just that Charlie makes it about much more than the music. A song like "Uneasy Rider", which in 1973 satirized (if not mocked) the south, southern culture, and the very type of "redneck" people that he now identifies so staunchly with, would never, ever be recorded by 2017's CDB.  And that's too bad.

Charlie must have realized his sea change early on, because there is a 1988 "update" to "Uneasy Rider" (on the album Hometown Heroes) in which Charlie and a buddy find their way into a gay bar...in this incarnation, he's the redneck, laughing with a predictable roll of his eyes at all the funny queens and the "orange haired feller" on the stage "singing about suicide". It's meant to be funny...but it isn't. It tries way too hard, its premise makes HIM the one with the issues, and in the current agitated political climate, it's even less funny than it was 30 years ago.

I still enjoy the original "Uneasy Rider" though. Not because it's "liberal" or "Democrat", because honestly it wasn't actually those things in 1973 either (Charlie Daniels was never those things entirely...he was always a maverick, hard to figure out...good for him), but because it is funny...it's clever. It tells the story of a situation you'd never want to find yourself in, but also depicts the exact way you fantasize that you would handle it.

"I couldn't resist the fun of chasing them just once around the parking lot..."

AS SUMMER WINDS DOWN: Whole Albums to Travel By

Those rare musical treasures that require no song-to-song cherry picking, no fast forwarding (for those 35-plus who know what that is...), no selective exclusion from playlists. They are their OWN playlists...each a greatest hits package of brand new material, still fresh even decades on from their release. You know...desert island albums. 

In the case of 1/48/50, whole urban areas, entire counties, fully one half of any state even, may be traversed on the power of a single inspired album playing all the way through.

So good, in fact, they require no two cents thrown in by the likes of me.  Just listen.  ;-)

"Million Mile Reflections" by The Charlie Daniels Band

"The Rutles" by The Rutles

Conceived by Monty Python collaborator Neil Innes and Python's own Eric Idle, "The Rutles: All You Need is Cash" was a pretty brilliant 1978 "mockumentary" about the pre-Fab Four, Dirk, Stig, Nasty and Barry. The soundtrack, music written by Innes, digs even deeper into that brilliance. Fantastic parody. And honestly, 40 years on, each song still could stand on its own, be considered derivative (in a good way) rather than parody.

The Top 100 Songs (or so) I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#38) "Twenty-one" by The Eagles - There's a brand of breezy cockiness to this song that I felt deep in my bones around the age of twenty-one (maybe a little younger, maybe a little older), even though I had little at the time to be cocky about. I was a young parent, had no money, had taken my turn in line with the other losers in town either not smart enough or motivated enough to go to college, whose paths crossed mine amid the few low-pay, low talent jobs available.  

But I was nevertheless certain of things back then, certain as much of what I didn't want in my life as what I wanted. I knew what I was capable of, if not exactly where I was headed; I knew what mattered and what didn't; I existed, in my mind at least, on a self-styled rarefied plane of existence, knowing myself, knowing 'things'. Twenty-one was a truly authentic contribution to the soundtrack of my young life, and these days, its bright tune and fantastically optimistic lyrics still speak to me, even though I have crossed the halfway point and don't have nearly as much time on my side.

But truthfully, I didn't have nearly as much time as I thought back then either. It's always later than we think, which is why optimism, even if it drifts into cockiness once in a while, is vital.

'They say a man should have a stock and trade/but me, I'll find another way...'

#39) "Ragin' Cajun" by The Charlie Daniels Band - Though the story this song tells is pretty ridiculous, Charlie Daniels is unique in country music for his brand of folklore-style storytelling, and Ragin' Cajun not only vividly illustrates CDB's tightly woven musicianship (also unique - as in rare - in country), but gets me thinking a little about what it means to be southern.

I am not southern. I'm the opposite of southern, in fact. I am from Wisconsin...northern Wisconsin, at that. I've always had a theory that the further north you travel, the less communicative people become. Not unfriendly or hostile, necessarily, just with less to say, and less concern whether anything gets said...laconic, terse. I've always liked being a part of that culture a little.

But in the south, man...they are just full of their southern pride, and never content to revel in it quietly. Some of it is warranted  - an undeniable friendliness and slower pace (that I've experienced anyway), pockets of really good food (Creole, Cajun, et cetera...) - some of it isn't; that is, some of it comes across like an over compensatory response to losing the Civil War...but it's there, it's real, and felt by just about everyone. Their land, their women, their sports, their traditions, figures of speech and habits, all of it lauded in song time and time again, under the unified banner of 'southern', and in this song, literally, the fiery explosion of fiddles that ushers in its frolicsome, square-dancin' middle eight section with the absolutism of a new law being enacted.

Yes, I'm proud to be where I'm from, but that pride just never reaches a fevered pitch in Wisconsin, or anywhere north of St. Louis that I've seen.  For reasons I can't quite explain, I find the phenomenon of southern pride fascinating. 

'He was faster than a copperhead, and he warn't afraid of hell...'

#40) "I Ain't Heard of That" by Slim Thug - Talk about a narrative that I don't understand, I am about as far away from the person anyone would expect to be listening to this song as can be.

And yet, I don't like having to buy into that thinking. Is music not the universal language of mankind? What's the point of making music if only for a depressingly narrow audience? Of course, subject matter is a factor. You got to be able to relate to a song somewhat in order to be fully moved by it. And I don't pretend to be moved by the lyrics to I Ain't Heard of That. They are witless and menacing, and like the previous Charlie Daniels song (ironically enough), tell a more or less ridiculous story.

But it's the rhythm of this song that gets me...infectious, hypnotic. Rhythm, for my money, is what MAKES music the universal language. Ever since the first Cro-Magnon, bored out of his gourd on a long, winter night, thought to pick up two bones off the cave floor and start tapping away on a rock, then kept at it over and over again, until his snaggle-toothed girl hoisted herself up and started shaking her ass, rhythm has been what's brought us together.

Not as a culture, or a race, but a species.

"If it make you want to move, then move..."

#41) "We Can Make the Morning" by Elvis Presley - I'm a big 'late Elvis' fan. Everything he did from his television 'comeback special' in '68 until his death in '77 represents the quintessential Elvis, what he felt he was, and was, really - his music rooted, style-wise, in the gospel he loved above all else.  I am well aware there are many in the world who would heartily disagree. Elvis is the King of Rock and Roll, they'd say, and all that Vegas-era crap he did after meeting with Richard Nixon is just his musical decline mirroring his physical decline.

But for me, there's something refreshing, something hauntingly distant and ethereal sounding, about his music from his final decade: Kentucky Rain, If I Can Dream, Memories, his fantastic live rendition of Unchained Melody in the very last weeks of his life, when it was apparent that while his body may have failed him, his voice never did. His voice soars in this era, and the music follows, as if caught in a swift updraft, right through the rain into the sunny cloud tops. We Can Make the Morning is quintessential 'late Elvis'...and late Elvis songs are like the soundtracks to dreams for me...good dreams. The ones you don't want to wake up from.  I predict more than a few of them on this 1/48/50 list.

And yeah, maybe a few early ones too.  ;-)

"Hope creates a foothold for the light...."

The Top 100 Songs (or so) I Absolutely Must Have on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#18) 'Night Moves' by Bob Seger - When I was a senior in high school, a bunch of friends and I all worked at the same place and hung out afterwards, and like many teenagers, we were on a never-ending search for someone to buy us alcohol, a quest that frequently led to a local married couple. These two, who must have been in their late twenties at the time but already looked rode hard and put away wet, had no problem providing us with booze and a place to drink it, which turned out to be their janky apartment above a drug store downtown.

Halfway through one particular party, the cops showed up, like cops tend to on small town Friday nights. We all fell silent at the sound of pounding on the apartment door. "Police department!" 

Not a peep out of any of us for several moments. The swish of traffic on the street below filled the dead air that not ten seconds earlier had been congested with shouting, laughter and loud music.

Another round of pounding, more forceful this time. "Police! Open the door now!"

Any rebelling teenager worth his or her salt knows the response to this is to sit tight. They can yell and pound all they want, but unless they have a search warrant, they can't come in unless you let them in.

Uhhh...at least, that's what we all thought, and I think most of us were prepared to turn out the lights, keep quiet and wait it out.

But the married couple's response seemed to belie this confidence. They both sprang up and hastily disappeared into their bedroom without a word, as though knowing something we didn't, like the cops might actually have every intention of battering that door down. We heard the muted click of their bedroom door being locked, and in a panicked flash all followed suit, dashing into the kitchen and climbing through a window, onto a fire escape in the back of the building.

Seven of us stood there nervously, bouncing to keep warm without coats in 20 degree temperatures, as a buddy and I frantically tried to lower the ladder down to the ground to make our escape. We couldn't figure out how to do it, and wound up trapped on that fire escape, staring helplessly out at the roofs of buildings across the alley, windows of other apartments winking back at us dimly through the winter night. Another round of pounding on the door came to us, reaffirming the cops' determination. We all knew it was only a matter of time before they either tore the door down or got wise and came around back to the alley. Six people climbed back into the kitchen, took their chances hiding in a pantry closet. I was one of three, desperate to avoid an underage drinking fine, who jumped.

As I was plummeting 15 feet to the alley below, arms and legs extended out, Night Moves was playing.

Or should have been.

Bob Seger is just one of numerous musical heroes I have moved beyond, because tastes and influences and circumstances are ever-changing. But there was a time when his music was nothing less than the soundtrack of my young life, both how I saw myself and what I saw myself becoming. And I'd be surprised to learn there's a Midwestern man in his forties or fifties right now, once a Midwestern teenager, who can't relate to Seger in much the same way.

In a rush to consider him overrated, I think Seger is underrated. I can see why some music purists don't like him. There's nothing hip about his music, or especially innovative; he's not a romantic poet like Springsteen, nor does his music home in on something specific, like John Mellencamp and his farm country pride back in the day.

Seger lands on the bare bones side of roots rock. After his initial success in the late 1970s, he just grabbed that ball and took off running without ever trying something different, as both Springsteen and (especially) Mellencamp have (Key West Intermezzo and Pink Houses, for instance, are about as far apart, stylistically and in terms of subject matter, as can be imagined). There's warmth and reassurance in Seger's consistency if you can relate at all, testament to the very roots he rocks, but there's also boredom that doesn't go down so well on a dreary afternoon in Grand Rapids, Anywhere.

And then, of course, Like a Rock wound up in a Chevy commercial, and Seger and his music really became a caricature.

But there are subtleties in many of his songs that too often go unnoticed or unappreciated. It's too easy to dismiss Seger on the grounds of throwaways like Betty Lou's Getting Out Tonight, or Rock and Roll Never Forgets and miss what's really going on in Night Moves.

Reportedly inspired by the movie American Graffiti, Night Moves is a dark, sophisticated rumination that never turns sappy or melancholy, with lyrics that aren't too on-the-nose, but at the same time never try to be something they're not by straying too far from what the song's about: two teenagers looking for any opportunity to get their hands on each other and imagining how the news will play out among their social circle (in those Medieval days before social media, when news traveled only a fraction of a second slower).

Implicit here are many facets of the world I knew the night I plummeted from that second story fire escape, and will want to be reminded of at certain moments during 1/48/50: keggars in downtown apartments; keggars in the woods; peppermint schnapps; worrying about the cops; worrying about parents (coordinating our stories); worrying about kids from other towns who showed up at our parties unexpectedly; guys you didn't mess with; guys you did mess with; fresh-faced, pony-tailed girls with big hair, big glasses and nice asses slid into tight jeans with rips in the knees, who laughed at everything; the bluster, the machismo, idiocy, bad jokes, fake facts, false starts and unhappy endings that for all of us - or most of us - protected a still tender naïveté, but with a shell about as unbreakable as a Saltine...

And these days, of course, I frequently awake to the sound of thunder... so maybe Seger isn't a poet, but instead, some kind of prophet.

"How far off I sat and wondered..."

#19) "Theme from 'New York, New York'" by Frank Sinatra - This song doesn't really matter to me one way or another, it's just great fun to sing along to. Though, come to think of it, I guess I can't say it means nothing. New York, New York is one of the first songs I ever took notice of, that I ever heard, in fact. When I very young I remember hoisting my Bee Gees transistor radio (seriously) up to my ear when this song came piddling out of the little water drop tweeter, and feeling really good listening to it.

It still makes me feel good. How can anyone hear that leg-kicking coda and not feel good? It might not be the song to define Sinatra's career, but I think it very much defines Sinatra. The tart melody and anxious lyrics are an ideal blend of the Chairman's finger-snapping Rat Pack side and his melancholy, staring-into-a-whiskey tumbler on a Sunday evening side. 

I'd have loved to see him perform it live. (I guess that's what YouTube's for...)

"These little town blues/are melting away..."

#20) "Orange Blossom Special" by The Charlie Daniels Band - Instrumental, and reaching speeds of MACH 1, the CDB's Chicago performance of Orange Blossom Special makes them the Metallica of country music. Truthfully, this is country music you could bang your head to.

A consummate musician who travels with a merry band of consummate musicians, Charlie Daniels has always held a unique place in my heart as kind of a maverick in the business. Here, Daniels not only starts a fire with his fiddle bow (fiddle fire, literally...), but plucks his way through some 16 measures at just about the same speed, garnering the cheering approval of the crowd.

I've broken a sweat air-fiddling to this bad boy! I've broken a sweat listening to it.

#21) "Katmandu" by Bob Seger - Forgive me, Bob Seger was too important a part of my young life not to show up a few times on this list. Katmandu, from 1975's Beautiful Loser, might be considered one of his rock and roll throwaways, were it not for two things:

1) His vocals, thick and powerful, worthy of the greatness that's revealed on his live albums of the time.

2) His nod to the Midwest in the second verse, specifically the line, 'I'm tired of looking at the TV news...' There has always been something about television news, local television news, especially on gray days that get flushed into darkness, that has driven me toward (the likes of) Katmandu.

Further evidence that Seger knows things.

"But no one loves me here anyway..."

#22) "Ain't No Ramblers Anymore" by The Charlie Daniels Band - This might just be the first actual 'road song' on this list. Playful and spirited, it's another example of the CDB's tight musicianship, and precisely how I want the open road to unravel before me. The song describes a lot of what I want to see, but also how I want to feel when I see it. And any song that sounds like it could be played by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem is automatically going to get my attention.

"They ain't ever going to Boise..."