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

#321) "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues" by Elton John - Elton John is one of those artists whose career is so long and far-reaching, it's debatable which era he is/will be best known for.  Though in the end, he's most likely to be remembered for the glammy outfits and crazy glasses in which he made a name for himself in the 1970s, the relatively staid 80s Elton John produced much better music. He ushered in the decade with "Little Jeannie", which set the bar pretty high, and followed it up with a string of hits that valued substance over flash. Although it could be argued that Elton John is Sir Elton John because  his music was substantive from the beginning, even when he was on stage dressed like Donald Duck.

In terms of vocals and musical structure, "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues" is among John's best songs, and also among his most durable, sounding just as fresh today as it did in 1983. "Bennie and the Jets" (for instance), always seems dated to me, as does "Little Jeannie" for that matter (which is saying something, seeing as it's far and away my favorite song of his).  But "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues" is fairly timeless, which makes it a song that can lend itself to another artist's repertoire without that interpretation seeming like an affront to the original. That's really saying something for me, because I generally don't care for covers.  A song has just two lives, in my opinion: its life in the time it was recorded/released, and its life in the time I first heard it. Although I know that in the end, it's all subjective; I know for a fact there are young people in our midst who know only (and/or prefer) "Landslide" sung by the Dixie Chicks.

Poor little bastards.

"Laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder, under the covers..."

#322) "Reminiscing" by The Little River Band - Reportedly among John Lennon's favorite songs at the time his death, "Reminiscing" is one of those I had to mature a little (okay, a lot), before I could appreciate fully. For years, in my youth and young adulthood, it remained just another dismissible eye-roller from what I was pretty sure was a one hit wonder band (I was wrong about that of course, although much of that time, I didn't realize the song was by The Little River Band).

Then one day, fairly recently, for no reason at all, I heard it on the radio somewhere, and also for no reason at all, I actually listened, and started realizing just what is going on there. It's simply gorgeous, just right in every way....and really, not "simple" at all.

"How to tell you girl / I want to build my world around you..."

#323) "Baby Come Back" by Player - Here, also, we have a song that remains forever in danger of being dismissed as an FM lite hits sludge nugget, but give a second listen and you realize that nothing could be further from the truth. The bass line, the ringing guitar, and the vocal harmonies all contribute to a quite lovely whole that is worth much more than its parts. "Baby Come Back" is a clean-burning ballad that carries on solidly 40 years after its release.

A bit dated in its sound, perhaps, but none the worse for wear.

"There was something in everything about you..."

AS SUMMER WEARS ON: Whole Albums to Travel By

Those rare musical treasures that require no song-to-song cherry picking, no fast forwarding, no selective exclusion from playlists. They are their OWN playlists...each a greatest hits package of brand new material. 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.  ;-)

"BLACK SABBATH" by Black Sabbath

"ELTON JOHN"  by Elton John

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

#101) "Time For Me To Fly" by REO Speedwagon - There's something about Kevin Cronin's voice when he's not warbling a diabetic love song that appeals to me. 1978's Time For Me To Fly has a distant, restless sound that suits not just the subject matter, but his thin vocal quality and featureless Midwestern drawl, and the middle 8 guitar section sounds a lot like a long, helpless sigh.

If you really think about it, there aren't a lot of songs like this on the radio anymore. When was the last time you heard a heavily barbed break-up song in the Top 40? Plenty of songs about self esteem, about eternal love, about sex ratcheting the frequency of body and soul up into the stratosphere, lots of songs about friendship and drinking and clubbing, some cheating songs, and in country music the usual complement of redneck puns...

No songs about two people at an impasse, and the long helpless - and a little sarcastic - sigh it engenders. 

"I make you laugh and you make me cry..."

#102) "Little Jeannie" by Elton John - This is one of Sir Elton's under-appreciated songs. Released in May 1980, to me it would seem to serve as a bridge between his wacky sunglasses/Donald Duck costume days and the more staid and matured performer he became in the 1980s. Staid, I guess, until he put on the powdered wig for his Australia concert in '86. By then it clearly was not as shocking (or interesting) a thing to do as it once was, more a caricature.  He was looking a lot like a middle aged man dressed like George Washington, even if the songs he was singing were already well on their way to becoming 'classics'.

Little Jeannie is one of them. Nothing flashy, nothing dramatic, it falls like gentle rain through the time and space of a time and place in history.

"And I want you to be my acrobat / I want you to be my lover..."

#103) "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by Green Day - What haunts me about this song isn't the lyrics or Billie Joe's boyish vocals delivering them, it's the string section, notably the viola, the way it seems to seep up from the ground, how it drives the sentiment home with a bittersweet sandpaper edge that rubs against the grain and always draws a shiver up my spine. Reportedly never intended to become, as it has, the official anthem to every single momentous occasion in our lives - from weddings to proms to graduations to bar mitzvahs to potty training - Good Riddance is emotionally complex. It is the conjoined sorrow and relief over the passages that punctuate our lives.

'Good riddance' indeed, but I won't forget.

How could I forget...?

Still, good riddance...

"It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right..."

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

#91) "Sad" by Elton John vs Pnau - Listen to this and try not to be mesmerized - by the lush melody, the breezy club mix beat that seems to smell as good as it sounds, by Elton John's vocals sounding nothing less than custom fit to the arrangement.

The album from which it comes, Good Morning to the Night, is considered a 'remix' album, with elements of past Elton John songs folded into a new interpretation. I would be quick to predict a recipe for failure here (think 1981's Stars on 45 or 1989's even more cringe-inducing Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers), but in this case, it just works, giving Sir Elton's career a new lease on life (the album reached No. 1 on the UK charts in 2012) and revealing the members of Pnau (Nick Littlemore and Peter Hayes) to have a truly deep-seeded understanding of what sounds good.

Seriously, I'm not usually a fan of remixing, sampling or cover versions. In my opinion, music is like Chinese food...you can reheat it, but why would you? It'll never be as good the second time around. But Good Morning to the Night is more a collaboration than merely someone's remix, and it's seamless.  Sad, along with any one of the songs from the album for that matter, could stand on its own.

"I used to know this old scarecrow / my joy and sorrow..."

#92) "Rainy Days and Mondays" by The Carpenters - At the risk of sounding like the kid in the movie About a Boy (who I am not like, by any means...), I've always been fairly open and honest about listening to The Carpenters. Is it road music? Certainly not. Music to party to? Naw. Make love to? I'd definitely have to say no.

But there is a reason why their music endures, a reason they have carved out a legacy in spite of being as 'stuck in the 70s' as any musical act could possibly be, a state that was only exacerbated by Karen Carpenter's untimely and tragic death in 1983. Indeed, there is a reason why the 1994 tribute album If I Were a Carpenter saw contributions from as varied a crew as Sheryl Crow, the Cranberries, Sonic Youth and Cracker.

There's just something about much of The Carpenters' music, at least the well-known hits that peppered the AM landscape in the early 70s, an overpowering melancholy that turns out to be captivating, often without the listener realizing.

Nowhere is this more true than in 1971's Rainy Days and Mondays. It's in Karen's voice I think; the comforting, everybody's mother quality that drizzles gelatinously from the speakers, or diffuses in the air like flower petals. It's also in the arrangement, and melody, and the sentiment of the lyrics, which...if you take away the overbearing 70s vibe, remain a powerful message nobody can't relate to.

I'm really not like the kid from About a Boy, but rainy days and Monday do get me down...sometimes.

I admit that part of the Carpenters' allure for me might be because this is what I remember from my earliest days. This kind of music, this 'AM Gold', was the soundtrack of my young life, for better or worse.  I'm talking my very young life, the days before kindergarten. The first day of kindergarten is, for most of us, the first big precipitous step we take in our lives, tantamount to leaving the womb. Before that, for me, Carpenters music was like a womb. How could I not take them along on 1/48/50? Cruising through a town in Idaho in my mid or late 40s, it will be nice, soothing, and kind of trippy, to hear a song that reminds me so vividly (still) of being four.

"Hanging around, nothing to do but frown..."

#93) "White Stripes" by The Mexican Institute of Sound - This is one of those songs I might not otherwise know about, were I not in the habit of clicking my way through Rhapsody to seek out new tunes. Periodically, I like to conduct a kind of musical straw poll, where I give any random unknown song 15 seconds of my time - 15 seconds to keep me from moving on to something else.

I do this just to keep things fresh, so as never to get too comfortable with the status quo, never allow my playlists to get too stale.  Most of what I find doesn't hold my attention, but every once in a while...

Even then, however, there's been little that deserves to wind up on this list. One would think this list by its very definition - or purpose - cannot help but be stale, populated mostly by those old standards that have stood the test of time in my life, and it has been true to some extent.

But not entirely. I love White Stripes. I love the structure of the song, the harmonies, the humor, the whistling. The creative force behind MIS is a Mexico City deejay and producer by the name of Camilo Lara. And while once again, I'm not a huge fan of sampling or remixes, sometimes someone comes along who's just undeniably good at it, who has figured out that elusive recipe that creates a whole new dish from last night's leftovers.

"It's hard to understand when there's trouble all around, that my love for you is gone..."

#94) "Me and Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin - If you remove all other (great) considerations from this song - Kris Kristofferson's poetic lyrics and the late afternoon/late 1960s angst they create, the lightly funked out instrumentation that goes a long way toward balancing out the angst - you are left with everything.

Listen to how Janis sings this song, her method of attack, and tell me that beyond the obvious great chops, this is not the perfect vocal representation of the female psyche: all the love, the loyalty, all the irrationality and vulnerability, the whole of what men can't resist, yet will never understand, all of it swirling up into a frenzy of piano.

Seminal to - and for - the fairer sex.

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..."