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

#357) "Hang Fire" by The Rolling Stones - Released in 1981, at the tail end of what might be considered the Stones' hey day, this is among the first songs I remember jamming out to, that is, jumping around my bedroom (or down in the living room if nobody was home), air-guitaring like nobody's business. I was both lead guitarist and singer in this imaginary band, electrified as much by the "doo doop doo-doo doo doop..." as anything. Still love it, still feel impelled to get the old band together in my mind when I listen to it, still think it's one of the Stones' best.

But what never occurred to me is what I read about the song as I prepared to write this post. According to Wikipedia anyway, "Hang Fire" is about the decline of the British economy throughout the 70s and the inability of politicians to do anything about it. Scanning the lyrics, that seems obvious now, but as often as I've jammed out to this song over the years, I never once made a connection between the lyrics and anything specific, at least nothing having to do with Britain...that is, until just now.  Maybe I was too distracted by the "doo doop doo-doo doo doop..."

And really, can you blame me?  ;-)

"You know marrying money is a full time job / I don't need the aggravation, I'm a lazy slob..."

#358) "Out of Tears" by The Rolling Stones - By 1994, the Rolling Stones had taken their place in the pantheon of rock legends. While that's doubtless a venerable spot to be, the place any artist would one day like to get to, it means you're not cool or current anymore.  It means styles and predilections have changed, the world has, collectively, passed you by, and while you might truly be great, "legendary", you are no longer what the kids are dancing to, and no matter how enthusiastically you try to spin it, that simply cannot feel like anything other than a downgrade.

I would imagine...

Since the early 80s, which for my money is when their "current" status started to wane, the Stones have never really had a comeback, but they've never really gone away either. "Strolling Bones" they may have become (such fate awaits us all), but the fact is, they are still strolling, still touring and packing in audiences. And the truth is, their music never gets stale. The phrase "moves like Jagger" can refer to more than just his behavior on stage...it can also refer to the sheer durability of the band's music, the fact that it should still interest new generations, in some measure (that I've observed) more so than the Beatles.

Known for their rock anthems, The Stones have never been slouches when it comes to writing ballads..."Angie", "Wild Horses"....both are suitable precursors to the drafty, lonesome resignation that colors "Out of Tears", a song that like the other two, engages a certain emotional nihilism in the face of the end, but also (befitting the fact that this song was released in 1994, not 1965...or 1973) a certain maturity.  Whatever that end may be, whatever the situation, such is all that's left when the dust settles: an inability to weep anymore being the only thing offering hope of moving on.   

Really a gorgeous song...and a gorgeous ending.

"I can drift, I can dream, 'til I float off your screen..."

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

#325) "Goodbye Stranger" by Supertramp - I was introduced to this song on the television show WKRP in Cincinnati when I was a kid (it started playing during a dramatic scene...or at least as dramatic as can be achieved on a sit-com), and like Bob Seger's "Roll Me Away" at the end of the movie Mask, it sparked a powerful stirring - an electrical charge of restlessness that bordered on titillation. In my mind, the elegantly simple electric piano riff that starts the song and pulses its way reliably throughout has forever remained on that short list of musical sounds sure to get the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention. But there is something else about this song that I love, and it has nothing to do with musicality. Musical styles and stylizations come and go, and at the end of the day, what's good and what's bad, what's moving and what's not, are never more than subjective at best.

It's the sentiment of the song: the notion of moving on or hoping to move on to something new, something better, or maybe feeling the need to keep on moving on in order to keep yourself right, making travel plans for a completely uninspiring and uncertain future as a means of coping.

Concepts like that don't seem to be much of a thing in popular music anymore, certainly not the way they were for the likes of Bob Seger, Jackson Browne and Lynard Skynard back in the day. Nobody rambles and roams anymore, or even thinks they might want to, or need to. Maybe they never did; maybe it was always a bit of a smoke and mirrors illusion. But a lot of the music from the late 70s, when "Goodbye Stranger" was released, seemed to suggest the notion that personal peace-of-mind was directly linked to physical freedom, the ability to come and go at will, with no chains, no one to answer to, nothing holding you back, holding you down.

No longer. Music is all about staying put these days - or at least being perfectly content with how things are, how you are - and that's not really surprising, I guess, with the Internet being a virtual means of escape. Nobody's stuck staring at the same four walls, even if they're surrounded by the same four walls. They can essentially travel the world without ever leaving the house, see things, talk to people, choose to talk to no one if they so desire. This leaves - that I've noticed - young people, who don't know a world any different, with little or no inclination to go anywhere, ever. They're living with their parents well into their twenties, or thirties, barely bothering to get driver's licenses unless it becomes absolutely necessary.  This is weird to me.

Yes, the whole "freedom" think is dangerously idealistic, and a bit of a tread-worn trope, and yes, it can certainly be argued that it was a uniquely Baby Boomer thing to put such a premium on unmitigated freedom. Millennials and Gen Y might be self-absorbed, but it's no secret the "Me" generation was selfish.  The frosty farewell evident in "Goodbye Stranger"...literally the lyrics, "goodbye stranger" and "I have to have things my own way to keep me in my youth"... were doubtless spoken to wives, husbands and children all too often back in the aftermath of 1960s, when it might be argued that too many doors were left wide open.

But that it doesn't turn up in songs at all these days is something lost, as far as I'm concerned. Once in a great while, "freedom" - in terms of hitting the road not merely to get from point A to point B, but to disappear into the sunshine - pops up in the odd country song, but not often. Usually in country music these days, you get a lot of thick, pasty patriotism and/or a completely cartoonish portrayal of redneckism that reveals no inclination to leave whatsoever, would even appear to suggest rambling and roaming is the coward's way out.  This is my land, the modern country artist is far more inclined to croon smugly, my country, my family, my roots are here, I'm not going anywhere! I got everything I need right here, and every right to be here! I'm staying put. I'm blessed. So fuck you.

In her lovely 1971 ballad "So Far Away", Carole King sang (negatively): "...one more song about moving along the highway / can't say much of anything that's new..."

I feel that way now, but for the opposite reason.  Nobody seems to want to hit the highway anymore, they don't want a sprawling leap into an unknown creating soul-feeding distance and perspective. They really do just want to sit at home and play on their computer in whatever capacity they prefer, let the world come to them in RGB. And make no mistake, I fall victim to that impulse (or lack of impulse) all the time, and I am by no means a Millennial.

But am I right in the assertion that it's more than a little too bad?

"It was early morning yesterday, I was up before the dawn..."


#326) "Awoo" by Sofi Tukker - Since their debut in 2016, Sofi Tukker, a New York based duo consisting of Sophie Hawley-Weld, Tucker Halpern and an extensive list of collaborative and/or contributing guests, have proven themselves to be a force to be reckoned with, existing and thriving on the funky and just a little kooky fringe of pop music, where they can blend equal portions of ultra cool and ultra ridiculous, do both very well, and appeal to everyone. I hear a little Prince in their sound, a little Lady Gaga, a lot of the B-52s, even a little Steely Dan, yet they've created their own vibe that is unflinchingly unique to their time, their generation.

Pop music, rock and roll, whatever you want to call it, is first and foremost all about being interesting.  Being boring - basic  - is the only real offense, and Sofi Tukker are anything but that. "Awoo" is sexy and playful, never taking itself too seriously, yet coming across entirely legit.

"I was there and then I quit..."

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

#284)  "Journey to the Center of the Mind" by The Amboy Dukes - On one hand, it's difficult to associate Ted Nugent - Mr. Anti-Liberal/Anti-Drug/Good Hunting Uber 'Merican - with a song I've always associated with hippies and their chemically expanded minds (or at least nerdy kids LARP-ing rather than hunting and fishing). 'Twas the times, I guess, the late 1960s, Summer of Love, etc. What else could a young Nuge do but dress like Sgt. Pepper and  participate if he wanted to get anywhere, get anyone to take notice?

On the other hand, I've never been one for pointing fingers when it comes to music. At the end of the day, songs are about whatever the listener wants them to be about. That's the artistic process at work, really. "Journey to the Center of the Mind" need not be about drugs any more than John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" (which isn't...), and I truly don't care if it is or not. My point is that musically speaking, as early as this song came in his career, it still has Nugent's fingerprints are all over it, which is what I like about it. He was still a good decade away from swinging across the stage in a loin cloth, but you can tell by the body language of the blistering guitar licks heard here, that the Motor City Madman, as we would come to know, love and hate him, was already present.



"Beyond the seas of thought, beyond the realm of what / Across the streams of hopes and dreams where things are really not..."


#285) "Sweet Young Thing" by The Chocolate Watchband - I don't know what else to say about this song other than sometimes sexy is just sexy. It always makes me sort of wish I had come of age in the 60s. I can think of no better soundtrack to being that age, discovering all that I could as fast as I could, than this song, and this kind of music.

I had hair metal to treat my acne, and it was just not the same.

"Hey sweet young thing, come on an open your door..."

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

#279) "Rocker" by AC/DC - Before the untimely death of lead singer Bon Scott, AC/DC was considered hard rock. The loud, aggressive style of music they helped pioneer in the 1970s didn't become the caricature I knew as "heavy metal" until the 80s, with, I'd venture, the release of the monumental album, Back in Black, a tribute to Scott with new front man, Brian Johnson.

That album is great, groundbreaking in its way (forging new paths in musical metallurgy), but as a whole, the genre got lamer and lamer as the decade progressed, more about image in the video age than anything real or relatable. By the time I entered high school, it had been watered down to a little thing called hair metal, which didn't provide or produce much good in the world, outside of the ratted hair look (on women). That noise wasn't silenced until 1991, with a band called Nirvana and a music (-al movement) called "grunge", which, when you think about it, also wound up becoming a caricature.

The album Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap has always struck me as a solid emissary from that moment just before hard rock became metal. And "Rocker", the best example of rock and roll that may have been hard, but had not yet lost its more organic, bluesier roots in the dervish of spandex, eye liner and ratted out hair...on men...that for better or worse, informed my youth.

This is nothing less than rock and roll history:




"Got little red socks, blue suede shows / V-8 car and tattoos..."

#280) "Ride On" by AC/DC - From the same album, and nothing if not "bluesy", there are two things I love about this song: 1) the message. It's how everyone should approach life, really the only option everyone has, and at certain moments in my own life it's actually served as a beacon. Ride on. 2) Angus Young's guitar solo, which, for my money, is among the best ever, in "rock and roll", "hard rock", "metal" or whatever else you want to put quotes around.

"Bought myself a one-way ticket, going the wrong way..."

#281) "Big Balls" - On the surface a throw-away, but listen, and consider it was the mid-1970s when this was recorded. It was actually kind of funny, and daring (dare I say: ballsy), for its day.

Whether it holds up today, either as a piece of art, a piece of comedy, or a piece of music, I'm not so sure. But there was a time, man, 7th or 8th grade, when "Big Balls" was pretty shocking and hilarious and cool, and I felt pretty shocking and hilarious and cool jamming out to it. That alone makes it worth taking along on my road trip.

"It's my belief that my big balls should be held every night..."

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.  ;-)

"Beautiful Loser" by Bob Seger

"'Live' Bullet" by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

SUMMER PROJECT: 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.  ;-)

"Dressed to Kill" by Kiss

"G N' R Lies" by Guns and Roses

(The B side, at least!! ;-)