SUMMER PROJECT: 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.  ;-)

"...AND JUSTICE FOR ALL" by Metallica

"APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION" by Guns n Roses

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..."

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

#14) 'I Got a Name' by Jim Croce - I have a somewhat haunting memory of hearing this song for the first time around 1979 or 1980. I was with my parents at a bar or diner somewhere; it was a Saturday or Sunday morning, bright sunlight through a fly-speckled window laying a yellow bar across a heavily worn 50s-era red carpet. I Got a Name was pulsing thickly from a jukebox in a corner and I remember being intrigued, even at age 7 or 8, by the line 'Moving me down the highway...', excited by the implied limitlessness, with no actual clue as to what the lyrics were really saying.

As a teenager, I rediscovered it on some '70s Hits!' compilation I picked up at Pamida, and its talk of pines trees lining winding roads and (especially) the north wind whistling down the sky spoke profoundly to me, though I was still unable to wrap my head around the message.

Now, of course, life IS well on its way to passing me by, so, road trip or not, I feel I gotta keep moving. Gotta keep moving.

From 1973, this was one of the last songs Croce recorded before his death, reluctantly, because he did not write it. But it fits well in his repertoire, and seamlessly into the singer/songwriter vibe of the time, when many songs emerged that traded hipness for a recognition of something else...something personal and satisfying that we don't always reveal to other people, but surely gets bandied about our minds in moments of reflection, and makes many of these types of songs enduring classics. I was pretty devastated (okay, just highly annoyed) when I Got a Name appeared in a Remax commercial last year, though have since learned that it's been used in many commercials and films over time...no doubt for for that very 'personal and satisfying' element. 

"They can change their mind, but they can't change me..."

#15) 'Sister Christian' by Night Ranger - Hard as it is for me to believe, or admit, this song has probably commanded more of my attention over the years than any other, on account of two separate heated arguments I've had about it.

The first, when I was eighteen, driving somewhere with a girlfriend. "Sister Christian" was playing on a mixed tape, and at the end I took it upon myself to sing the last bellowing note - the (overwrought) 'YEEAAAH....MOTORING!...' 

This annoyed her more than impressed her, but she didn't know what she was getting herself into when she said I sounded flat.

The second, many years later, was a far less emotional, more intellectual, debate over whether the song should be lumped in, and dismissed, with other 'hair metal' power ballads of the day.

I'll address the singing part first: yeah, I was probably flat. In fact, I'm sure I was. I just couldn't be told anything in those days. My Herculean ego could only interpret her (mostly passing) critique as a totally unfair, and heartless, criticism.  Had I been in her shoes, I might have conceded just to shut me up, but (to her credit) she didn't. She stood her ground, insisted that it didn't matter how many times I rewound the tape and sang again (determined to prove I could hit the note), I was still coming up flat every time. All these years later I have no problem admitting she was right.

As to whether "Sister Christian" is a 'typical' power ballad, deserves to be deposited on the ash heap of 80s hair metal history along with Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison, Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue or Carrie by Europe, I don't think so. I won't presume to bore the reader with what I think the song's about, but merely from a musicality standpoint, I think "Sister Christian" stands head and shoulders above any other swaying lighter stadium anthem of the time. And not that there's anything wrong, necessarily, with the aforementioned "hair metal" ballads (I'd wager that at least one of them will wind up on this list eventually, possibly two ...), my only argument is that I've always felt there was something else, maybe something more, going on in, and with, "Sister Christian".

The piano at the beginning and end really is quite lovely, the line 'You're motoring...', as it's applied here, fairly poetic. The guitar solo acts as all good guitar solos should, spinning wildly away from the original melody but never at its expense, instead taking the song to a new place for a moment. And I especially like the thunderous drumming at the very end (the result of the song's composer and singer, Kelly Keagy, being Night Ranger's drummer). I think it blends with the piano and punctuates the melancholy of the song. To me it's always sounded like noises coming through walls from the next room, or the next apartment, or the house next door. You wonder what's going on, but you may never know because it doesn't concern you. Not everything that happens concerns us. And that thought by itself has always struck me as sad.

The video, though, I admit, is kind of hilarious...how old were the band members, like 35, cavorting with school girls?

"And you know that you're the only one to say okay/but you're motoring..."

#16) 'Master of Puppets' by Metallica - I think it was Kurt Loder from MTV who once aptly called Metallica the 'thinking man's metal band'. They were also, in their day, hugely ground breaking. How crazy must it have been to be a teenager in '83 and hear The Four Horsemen or Whiplash for the first time? These days fast and loud of that caliber is a common tool of the trade in metal, but thirty years ago it was largely unheard of and, for kids needing such an outlet, probably perceived as a form of alchemy.

But Loder was right. There was more to Metallica than merely metal for the sake of metal. They were fantastic musicians, really did play as fast and precise live as on their albums, but more to the point, James Hetfield, the primary songwriter, was a kind of poet, and as such, their songs tended to be not just 'fast and loud', but worthy indictments of injustice and tragedy far and wide.

By 1986, Metallica hit their stride musically. Master of Puppets, the song, is what kids today might call epic. Almost nine minutes of emotionally complex metal virtuosity, and probably a stronger anti-drug message than 'Just Say No' spoken in a hundred different languages.

"Needlework the way/never you betray/life of death becoming clearer..."

#17) 'Blackened' by Metallica - From 1988's ...And Justice For All (their best album, for my money; the one that introduced me to the band), Blackened is another sterling example of Hetfield's poetry, further evidence that Kurt Loder hit the nail on the head.  If environmentalists took this tack to get their message out, we might have a cleaner, more livable world on our hands, global warming a thing of the past.

Metallica could sustain me clear across the wind-swept plains if I needed them to. Maybe I'll devote an entire state to them....Nebraska?

"Blackened is the end/winter it will send/throwing all you see/into obscurity..." 

#18) 'That's Life' by David Lee Roth - In the end, the big end we all face, this song is really all that's left to say. This is our charge on Earth: to roll with things, with the lemons, the shit sandwiches, the shit that happens, the treachery and dishonesty, disappointment and hurt feelings...to grin and bear it, to laugh out loud as much as possible, try not to take things too seriously for too long, least of all ourselves. 

Roth has always been good at not taking himself (too) seriously, and he really shows his range here, legitimately belting this number out without making you wonder why he's bothering. You got to respect anyone who can shift from the likes of Panama to That's Life, from (Just a) Gigolo to Yankee Rose. 

Whether it's Frank Sinatra's version or David Lee Roth's, That's Life has done a better job of casting me out of funks than any other song. It is critical musical gear for 1/48/50.

"That's life, and as funny as it seems/some people get their kicks, stomping on a dream..."