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

 #355) "Ain't Even Done With the Night" by John Mellencamp - John Mellencamp is kind of an enigma. He's an American small-towner, proponent and defender of the perceived sanctity of family farms and dirt roads and cornfields and small towns and general stores and bright afternoon sunlight glowing through frosted gymnasium windows just after school, as girls congregate in the bleachers checking their makeup and watching the boys down on the hardwood, who are running practice drills and pretending not to notice...and all that. 

Yet he's not a good old boy...not exactly...and if you look back at the height of his career in the 1980s, none of his work could be called bare bones anything. There was always something else going on, a certain artistic expression, a certain polish, that pushed him right to edge of legitimacy without ever pushing him too far. That's because John Mellencamp really is an artist, fully capable of bringing to bear a vision without ever letting it become overstated or obvious, or fake. He's kind of like the Billy Joel of the Heartland, except the argument has been made (by others, not me) that Billy Joel allowed his craft to push him a bit too far off the city streets and into schmaltz, whereas Mellencamp always seemed - to me anyway - legit. That is, always knowing completely that which he was singing about.

Just the name of the 1980 album on which "Ain't Even Done With the Night" appears suggests a certain expanded state of mind: Nothin' Matters, and What if it Did.  That's pretty heady, and any small towner who earnestly engages that kind of rhetoric is the one I want to sit and have a few beers with.

Sublimely tender without ever becoming too much so, "Ain't Even Done with the Night" sways, swings and bumps its way along with equal parts confidence and clumsiness, mirroring the vulnerable nature of the lyrics. It's fun, funny, sexy and pathetic all at once, not to mention compellingly pretty, and never allows whatever vulnerability might be afoot to quash a stellar sense of anticipation.

"Well I don't even know if I'm doin' this right..."

#356) "All Those Years Ago" by George Harrison -  My introduction to the Beatles came in two parts when I was eight years old: first the assassination of John Lennon in December 1980. When it happened, I was mostly just annoyed, because coverage of the tragedy interrupted my after-school TV viewing (a full week of The Brady Bunch, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and Battle of the Planets got pre-empted), but eventually I learned, through my parents, who John Lennon was, what the Beatles were, and how significant that impossible tragedy was.

Then, a few months later, George Harrison's musical tribute to his fallen friend was released and pretty much defined the year 1981 for me, turned me into a Beatlemaniac for life. 

This is more of a thing all around as I age, but man, when this song was new, I really considered "all those years ago" to be some mythical epoch long, long ago, covered in the dust of the ages and only detectable through the micro-lens of George Harrison's first-hand songwriting. But it was barely 15 years past that Harrison was singing about when he sang about it. Not even one generation. The Boomers were barely into their thirties at the time, and Gen X...well, we were all still kids. Nowadays, of course, fifteen years feels more like the amount of time it takes to lift a coffee mug to my lips, take a drink and set it back down. 

As to the song itself, it's one of Harrison's best, and the "quiet Beatle" had a lot of songs that placed him shoulder to shoulder with the "Lennon-McCartney" songwriting juggernaut. I think it's brilliantly suited to its subject matter, bonded seamlessly to melancholy and reminiscing, with Harrison's uniquely bittersweet musical signature - gentle humor, and winsome-sounding chords strained like juice from a citrus fruit.  Maybe that's a tortured metaphor, but I'm sticking with it. ;-)

"You were the one that they said was so weird..."

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

#305) "Jack and Diane" by John Mellencamp - John Mellencamp (Cougar...whatever...) is a true artist, one of the last in pop music, for my money. Yeah yeah, there is still good music being made, still talented young people coming up and doing interesting things, but I believe we've lost something, collectively, from pop music/rock and roll over the decades. Songs like "Jack and Diane", that so artfully bridge the crevasse between rock roll and folk music, offering something to be absorbed in what's not being said as much as in what is, are not being written these days, or recorded, OR (and perhaps this is really the point) they don't wind up reaching number one on the Billboard charts in any case, as "Jack and Diane" did in 1982. And that's a shame. I'm sure they don't think it, or realize it, or give a shit, but for a long time I've thought that kids these days - Millennials and younger (although the first Millennials are barreling toward 40 at this very moment!) - are getting shortchanged when it comes to their music.

To hear Mellencamp tell the story, "Jack and Diane" was not an easy song to record, and throughout the process he was more than once ready to scrap the whole thing. The hand clapping, so integral to its sound and vibe, was never intended to be part of the finished product, was only done so the musicians could maintain the tempo as they recorded (or something to that effect). At some point, Mellencamp and crew wisely decided to keep that part in.

But the notion that the song came together more or less by accident makes perfect sense, because you can't fashion the greatness of "Jack and Diane" intentionally. It does tend to just happen, when and if it happens. There are precious few songs out there that withstand the scrutiny of changing tastes and styles, and remain as true today (that is, relevant) as they were nearly forty years ago, quite as heartily as this one does.

And it's not just that takeaway line about life going on after the thrill of living is gone, it's everything that happens before that in the lives of Jack and Diane - football stars and debutantes in back seats and hanging out at the Tastee-Freeze, talking about running off to the city, Diane's overly-cautious wisdom reining in (squelching?) Jack's teenage boy bravado.

Mellencamp really encapsulated a universal truth about being that age, about being bored and at the same time fatally restless, a truth that has not only spanned generations, but circumstances. It doesn't matter if you're white or black, or whether you grew up in the "heartland" or on the coasts, city or country, or if you were a jock or a prep or a nerd or a slut or a dirtball in your teenage years, or a brainy kid, or the weird kid who wore trench coats and thought he could hear poetry being read whenever it rained...every kid at some point between the ages of 13 and 17 goes through some version of "Jack and Diane". And what's brilliantly reflected here is not just that restlessness, but also a certain creeping apathy.

And yeah, the restlessness has a way of vanishing as the years peel away, leaving only the faint, ineffectual warmth of memories on an ashy Wednesday afternoon....so watch that apathy, kiddies. "...as long as you can..." Changes are coming.

"Diane says, 'Baby, you ain't missing nothing...'"

#306) "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" by Billy Joel - "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" is what people who love Billy Joel's work love about it.  I made a similar assertion last week about a Pink Floyd song, but I think it's more significant with Billy Joel, because I think Billy Joel's influence is more far-reaching than Floyd's. Yes, in a way it's comparing apples to oranges, and no question I prefer Pink Floyd, consider them a bigger part of my jam (er, whatever that means...). Nevertheless, I think Joel's body of work, as it pertains specifically to songwriting and musicianship, and contribution of same to the annals of late 20th century music, is more impressive.

But unlike last week's Pink Floyd song, "Scenes..." also contains many of the things that people who hate Billy Joel's music hate about it.  I'm not sure what that is, exactly... I guess a certain level of schmaltzy-ness, a little too slick and polished...finger-snapping musicians fleet-footedly treading that line between "rock and roll" and West Side Story.

But Billy Joel is a gifted songwriter, one of the greatest of the 20th century I'd venture, and like "Jack and Diane", I think - intentionally or not - he really taps into a universal (and durable) truth about being young in "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant". This time it isn't about being in high school, it's being just out of high school, freshly launched into the adult world, a couple who rush into things, who get married and get "an apartment with deep piled carpet and a couple of paintings from Sears..." (which I know from experience is exactly how it goes down). It could be considered the next chapter in Jack and Diane's life, after they've graduated and were unable to hold onto 16...or didn't bother trying.

"Then the king and the queen went back to the green, but you can never go back there again..."

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

#72) "Take Me Home" by Phil Collins - Seeing as Phil Collins is a drummer, I guess it's not too surprising that the prominent musical feature of Take Me Home is its rhythm. Collins has been known to ruin some of his more popular songs by allowing heavy percussion to crash the party, but here his drumming keeps the melody and strangely haunting vocals sewn up snugly with almost bewitching precision.

The song reads profoundly sad to me, speaking to an unfulfilled life, a small existence. The line, 'There's a fire that's been burning right outside my door, I can't see but I feel it, and it helps to keep me warm', remains to this day among the most lovely and unsettling phrases ever uttered in a song, in my opinion.

Yet if Take Me Home is actually supposed to be haunting or depressing, it's either so subtly (expertly) embedded as to be almost unnoticeable, or just my imagination. Truth is, the song ponders but never broods, reflects but never complains. This constitutes what I consider to be its brilliance, and is complemented (and affirmed) by the video - a string of pensive but light-hearted shots of Collins in various locations around the world. I remember watching it on MTV when I was twelve years old and being led to wanting to go places. Rather than leaving me feeling unfulfilled and small, it filled me with hope that I one day would.

"Take that look of worry, I'm an ordinary man / They don't tell me nothing, so I find out what I can..."

#73) "Pink Houses" by John Mellencamp - A lot more going on in this song than meets the ear; I think it's quite possibly the greatest protest song ever written.

Okay, maybe not a 'protest' song in the traditional sense, Pink Houses seems to be a stinging indictment of 1980s America nevertheless - the rise of corporatism, the death of the family farm and attendant 'little man', growing economic disparity and the casualty of dreams. Strewn under a deceptively patriotic premise (and refrain), Pink Houses' real meaning socks you in the nose when you come to realize it, and I'd be willing to bet that's just how Mellencamp wanted it. Like Springsteen's Born in the USA, he has more than once refused (certain) politicians and organizations permission to use this song in ads - politicians and organizations who just don't get it, who peg this as a mere flag-waving anthem, rather than a rough portrait of American life at the dawn of the technological age, signed in the lower right corner with the tip of Mellencamp's middle finger.

If nothing else, Pink Houses sounds like trains to me. In the first few measures, it mimics the resonant rumble engines make when they're not moving but turned on and warming up, and then later comes the tell-tale clack-clack embedded in the song's rhythm. I don't think this was intentional necessarily, but I hear it, and I like it. There's never anything about trains I don't like listening to, or looking at.

Same goes for Pink Houses. I love me some Pink Houses...always gets thinking and wondering and wandering in my mind. I'd rate it in the Top 10 greatest pop songs of all time for sure, even if I'm delusional about what I'm hearing. ;-)

"Cuz they told me, when I was younger, they said boy you're gonna be president / but just like everything else, those old crazy dreams just kind of came and went..."


#74) "N.W.O." by Ministry - Just a nice steaming pile of aggression and outrage to growl along with. When I was a young man, this song was actually an effective motivator when I was at work and there was work to be done....still is, come to think of it.

"????!!!???!!???!?!?!??!???!!?!???!???..."

#75) "1979" by Smashing Pumpkins - No other song seems to have a greater hypnotic effect on people than 1979, and this too is really no surprise. The song flows like cool, refreshing water, a tributary emptying straight into one's stream of consciousness.

I've seen this phenomenon in action, as a matter of fact. When 1979 gets played at my work, a lull invariably sweeps over everyone; seriously, every time. The women bob their heads left and right, mouth along silently with the words (as women tend to do), the men, however raucous and loud they were a minute ago, quietly set to the task at hand, whatever that may be. Some serious, and mysterious, hypnosis going on!

The song has a lulling, and fairly analgesic, effect on me as well, has a way of becoming my stream of consciousness. I should be careful with this song on 1/48/50, come to think of it...don't want to fall asleep at the wheel.

Of course, there are worse songs to be playing when the grim reaper comes a-calling. ;-)

"And we don't know just where our bones will rest, to dust I guess / forgotten and absorbed to the earth below..."