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

#198) "Rapture" by Blondie - When this song was recorded in 1980, America was at a crossroads: post sexual revolution, pre-political correctness. It was a time when our sexual impulses, and the manner, extent and honesty to which we acknowledged them had been freshly brought out from under the pall of repression, allowed to soak in a little sunlight, but were not yet getting manipulated by insulting and desensitizing image overkill, the kind that would eventually come to define our society in decades to come.

To be sure, the news wasn't all good then: the newfound sexual freedom led to newfound aberrations, dark spots in the human psyche that needed to be reined in BY things like political correctness, lest our society collapse completely into some modern day Gomorrah. But that being said, it must have been a great time to be young - before Madison Avenue took over and image really did become everything. By the time I was "young", about ten years later, AIDS had already entered the scene, as had corporate America's stranglehold on every move we make. From these turns of events, an intractable cynicism and jadedness became as much a part of a free lifestyle as anything for disaffected Gen X'ers.

Maybe it was always that way, I don't know. But in any case, the bass line in "Rapture" is itself a sexual expression, as are the drums, and the horns, and the bells, all chained together by Debbie Harry's voice, which is crystal clear and angelic sounding, and at the same time enticingly amoral and untrustworthy. As a song, a "jam", it's dated...definitely sounds like a disco ball monument to the hedonistic 70s...and yet, it's not dated the way, say, an Andy Gibb song might be. It's better than that. Much better. It stands the test of time. Try NOT to listen to it. Ain't easy. And for that matter, Harry, as an object of desire, was herself impossible to ignore.

But there is something else about this song that makes it special:

Recently I was driving with my youngest son, who is 19. This song came on the radio and played through without evoking comment from him, that is, until the end, when Harry begins her rap verse, to which it might be said the title of the song, "Rapture", owes part of a double meaning.

The boy, a fan of rap and hip hop (and like many 19-year-olds, a self-styled music authority, the finest kind, in his young mind...;-), went off at what he saw as her clutzy, white girl flow - rolling his eyes, snorting, scoffing, making sarcastic fart sounds, even rapping along mockingly.

I just kept driving, let him unload, wear himself out. There was no way I could have effectively explained what it was he was listening to, how unwarranted (and/or unfair) his mockery was. I could have tried I guess, popped the balloon of his indignation with a few heavily barbed words from my own music "authority", but I have absolutely no interest in bridging the generation gap. I'm confident he will learn eventually; he does know music, knows "things" in general...he'll figure it out (once his balls drop fully...;-). Or he won't. That's okay too.

You have to put Harry's rapping in perspective. My son was judging it by the modern day rubric, which in terms of popular music has seen countless artists come and go over the last thirty-plus years, each contributing to the standards and best practices of the craft. Over time, there has been great rap music produced, and horrible rap music produced. And it's not really a race thing. There are black people who simply should not be rapping, and every once in a while, an Eminem comes along...(well, okay, just once, but still...)

But in 1980, there was none of that. There was the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" from 1979, which Deborah Harry borrows a line from in her verse ("Rapture" is notably derivative in other ways, actually, though that's another post...), and not much else. There was certainly nothing on Top 40 radio at the time that could have been considered "rap", and really no chance for such a thing in an age when Juice Newton, 38 Special, and Alabama were scoring No. 1 hits.

Is Debbie Harry's flow ice cold? (I dunno...Epic Rap Battles, I think...) Not quite. Admittedly, it's pretty lukewarm, actually, by today's standards, sounds a lot like a suburban housewife rocking mom jeans and the family karaoke machine during a Saturday afternoon cook out. This is the kind of tragically myopic thinking my son, God bless him, was pinned under as he launched his barrage of snickers, snorts, chortles and horizon-to-horizon eye rolls.

But she was one of the first to do it, one of the first to step outside the box, rethink her whole musical brand, and give this crazy new thing a try. In '80, this was ground-breaking, and I would say it's possible it excited the hell out of people, in mainstream America at the very least, to hear for the first time. It was something nobody else was doing, tacked onto a song that didn't really need it and yet strangely benefited from it.  I was eight...I don't remember the song in its day. But I'd bet that while I was lying on my bed, playing with action figures and picking my nose with Air Supply, Hall and Oates and Rick Springfield (or the Oak Ridge Boys! 8-[ ) dribbling from the little pinhole speaker of my transistor radio, in some club somewhere, some 19, 20, 21-year-old kid, standing on the cusp of discovering his or own own definition of rapture for the first time - and on his or her own terms - was probably pretty blown away.

"Cause the man from Mars stopped eating cars and eating bars and now he only eats guitars! Get up...!"





#199) "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)" by Train - This is an odd piece of music for me: breezy, upbeat and inspiring, just pleasant to listen to, like a sunny afternoon in June...and at the same time one of the saddest songs ever.

Like all of Train's music, I hated it when it was released in 2001 (Pat Monahan and crew trying too hard, in my view, to be or say something...). But like much of Train's music, it's grown on me over time, and has come to represent how things felt, generally speaking, when I was in my twenties - that sense of invincibility you don't get in any other phase of life: you're not a kid anymore, you're an adult, but you still have so much time ahead of you, all the time in the world (you think). That joyous sense of unbridled anticipation, fueled by all the wide open possibilities, can be found in "Drops of Jupiter's..." bouncing piano and windy string arrangement.

But the song also touches on one of the saddest tropes in story telling: the possibility that one person might outgrow, and thus leave behind, another. Goodbyes are a bitch in any scenario, at any age, but it's one thing if a relationship stalls out from mutual dissatisfaction, or a mutual acknowledgement that everything has changed, or (of course) if there is abuse or cheating going on.

If it's just because one person has changed while the other one hasn't, either because they can't, or they won't, that's heart-breaking. The notion of two people drifting apart, one person moving forward, the other held back, their bond corroded by the slow, unstoppable grind of time as assuredly as something left out in the rain will eventually return to dust, is discouraging, to say the least.

And from what I remember of so many moments in my twenties (not all of them, but some....a few that had nothing to do with me...), I'd say the guy in this song, the protagonist, so hopeful that he was "missed" while his girl was off on her "soul vacation", is a dead man walking.  It's been my experience that "soul vacations" are kind of like Stephen King's "Pet Sematary"....people say they'll come back, and they may actually come back, but they're never quite the same when they do.

That's just my interpretation. If nothing else, "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)" is a fantastic song to drive to.  ALSO on account of the bouncing piano and windy string arrangement.

"Tell me, did the wind sweep you off your feet, did you finally get a chance to dance along the light of day...?"




#200) "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette - Yes, I know, I've heard it many times before: there isn't really anything ironic in this song. To be honest, I don't know if that's true...at least, I'm not quite as sure as I was twenty years ago. The balloon of my indignation may have been popped by the testimony of a person much smarter than I, some on-line blogger, who suggested everything in the song actually IS ironic, if you accept a broadened definition of the word. Or if nothing else, the WHOLE of the song is ironic BECAUSE nothing in it is.

I've always understood that the song is pretty much just Morissette's list of coincidences or bad luck episodes. What WOULD have been ironic in this song, for instance, is if the man who waited his whole damn life to take that flight, started screaming (as the plane crashed down), "Okay, everyone start flapping your arms!"

Whatever, I still like it a lot. Its breezy message of hope glowed especially bright in the midst of the drearily jaded music scene of the 1990s...and I especially enjoy the video, with Alanis playing all four girls on a road trip. I'm not sure why...there's just something about it: the winter scenes, the way the washed-out sunshine crashes through the windshield as they cruise along some desolate two-lane highway, the clumps of snow and ice covering the car...it's always really pleased me. Reminds me, perhaps, of something seminal to my young life. And I suspect this is what they were going for (indirectly, at least), but I feel like I've dated some version of all four of those girls at one point or another in my life.

And IN that very car, come to think of it...gotta love the old 70s boats that got me around then. ;-)

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

#177) "Wildfire" by Michael Martin Murphey - Years ago, I was on a road trip with a friend when this song came on the radio. I had been driving for quite a while, lost in my thoughts as we cruised through the Ohio night, the miles thumping away beneath the tires. The radio was turned low, just on as background noise, and at some point started picking up a "soft rock" or "light hits" blob of gelatin broadcasting from a nearby town. I turned it up when I heard "Wildfire", because I'd always liked it, and those were the days before just about any song was readily available somewhere on-line. There were certain songs of "yesteryear" you were lucky if you happened to catch on the radio, and even by then (mid 1990s),"Wildfire" wasn't making it onto many playlists, "light" or otherwise.

When I turned up the radio, my buddy, who was slouched down in the passenger seat and hadn't said anything for a while (I'd assumed he was asleep), tilted his head toward me and groaned, "Dude, what the hell are you listening to...?"

"It's 'Wildfire', it's a classic," I replied. "Go back to sleep."

Another mile or two passed in silence. Murphey sang of "planting by moonlight", of "hoot owls outside windows" and "horses busting down stalls" on "cold Nebraska nights." My buddy outright snorted with contempt.

"Oh my God!" he cried. "How much weed did this guy smoke!?"

He was trying to be funny, but his underlying indignation was hard to miss. This was definitely not his type of music. All through Pennsylvania, while he was driving, I'd been subjected to Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and KMFDM. That was pretty much all he listened to, which meant this song's drifty, mellow essence was not only something he had no taste for, but something he could hardly have wrapped his mind around.

I couldn't really blame him. It's easy to make fun of an intimately non-threatening song like "Wildfire", even more so the era from which it came - that aesthetically laughable decade we call the 1970s, that showed up to the party dressed in pea green and burnt yellow. This is where "Wildfire" comes from, and the impulse to dismiss it as part of that time when America wasn't quite sure who it was, or where it was going, or how it really felt, is completely understandable.

But "Wildfire" isn't a cheesy 70s ballad. Unlike the cheesy 70s ballads I've placed on this list (and defended), there is a rich emotional depth and texture here that is not immediately realized. This song is not really about what the lyrics are saying at all...it's a parable, a metaphoric examination of the psychological condition we all experience as we wander the taiga of our minds, hoping to figure things out. And of all the songs I'll want along with me on 1/48/50, all the songs I've ever listened to, it probably has less to do (as in, not at all) with being high, or impaired in any way. To the contrary, "Wildfire" represents the moments in life when we are as sober and lucid and aware of everything that has ever happened, is happening now, and could possibly happen in the future, as we will ever be.

"She's coming for me, I know / And on Wildfire we're both gonna go..."

#178) "Pink Elephants on Parade" from 'Dumbo' - There are several good Disney movies, especially from the old days, but 1941's Dumbo stands out for me. It's gorgeous, simply gorgeous: beautiful animation, fun characters, a nice balance of humor and pathos. Even the scene with the crows, in spite of being maligned by some for being racist (unfairly, in my estimation), has what I believe to be a grandness to it. The entire movie swims in a certain melancholy that Disney wouldn't achieve again until 1977's The Rescuers.

It's impressive what the animators and writers were able to come up with here, considering they had been instructed at the outset of production to keep everything simple and under cost. (This, after reportedly losing their financial shirts with the release of 'Fantasia' the year before.)

What I love about "Pink Elephants..." is how musically tight it is, and this is what will actually matter on 1/48/50. From the first splattering bray of tuba to the final piccolo tremor ushering in a new day, in which Timothy mouse and Dumbo are in a tree with no idea how they got there, the piece is at once rousing, moving, fun, and funny.  Disney has had quite a few memorable musical numbers over the years, but I view "Pink Elephants..." as the first precipitous step out of the cautious "Snow White"-style golden age, straight into the silver, the moment when a certain amount of adult(ish) flash and humor became requisite in any children's movie.

That this four minutes of madness exists at all has become, like the scene with the crows, historically significant. Timothy and Dumbo accidentally getting drunk, which inspires their night of 'pink elephants', would never happen in a Disney movie today. Moreover, the entire sequence is surprisingly trippy, even kind of edgy, for 1941, ahead of its time for what it reveals. And yet for all of that, it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb; it fits well within the framework of the story.

And from what I remember of my younger days, the aforementioned madness is a pretty accurate portrayal of how a drunken night plays out. In my time, the best of them always reached a fevered pitched and then ended, like this one does, with remnants of the night - leftover flecks of the craziness - drifting down and becoming sunrise clouds.

Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.

"What'll I do, what'll I do, what an unusual view....!"

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

#42) "Summertime" by Kenny Chesney - Kenny Chesney has built his career largely around kicking back and looking back. His music for the most part avoids the piss and vinegar prevalent among many of his country music co-stars; that is, it avoids being overly 'country', 'American', or 'Southern', sentiments which can lead to a kind of exclusion unless you're determined to strike a serious, and absurd, pose.

This laid back (and truthfully no less 'country', 'American' or 'Southern') musical style and vibe appeals to me. Chesney has come to represent, for me, what being a small towner should be about...and was for me, to an extent, in days gone by (minus the cowboy hat and boots, which I would look positively horrendous in). Some of the first times and good times in his music are idealized, but really no more so than they wind up being in people's memories. Some people were lucky enough to get a taste, just a taste, of something idyllic. I was one of them. 

Summertime is an ode to the sweetest season; the only season I would ever dream of trying to pull off 1/48/50 in. It's a clarion call to the anticipation and practice of a perfect summer. Like much of Chesney's music, it just kind of feels good, and more importantly, I get the sense that everyone's invited to the party.

"The nights roll in, man, just like a long lost friend..."

#43) "Winning" by Santana - Winning was released in 1981, but I didn't realize it was Santana until 2007. I'm not sure who I thought it was all those times it droned in the background on this classic rock station or that; some one-hit wonder of the era, I guess. It's not Carlos Santana singing, it rarely (never?) is, and the singer's vocal style is a bit different from other Santana collaborations. But the guitar work is hard to mistake for anyone but Santana, and this just might be the mother of all 'never say die' survival songs. I don't like the thought of getting out of bed without this song within reach, really, much less driving 14,000 miles across the country.

"I had a dream, but it turned to dust/what I thought was love that must have been lust..."

#44) "(Sittin' on) The Dock of a Bay" by Otis Redding  - Recorded just a few days before the soul singer's untimely death in 1967, (Sittin' on) The Dock of a Bay became a huge hit in the aftermath. But to dwell on the posthumous factor is to detract, unfairly in my opinion, from the greatness of the song. Between the elegant arrangement complementing his butter smooth voice, and his butter smooth voice complementing lyrics that are as salty as they are tragic, I think even if Redding were alive today this would still be considered, and rightly so, one of the greatest recordings ever.

And if you really think about it a moment, sitting on the dock of a bay, wasting time, might just be the ultimate, ultimate state of living nebulously!

"Sitting here resting my bones, and this loneliness won't leave me alone..."

#45) "Hey, Soul Sister" by Train - Train is one of those bands people love to hate; their songs usually turn up on playlists as dirty little secrets, but this keeps the band quietly and securely living on the close periphery of stardom. They never make a huge impact; never reveal themselves as game changers, never sweep the Grammies (although they have won). But since the late 90s they've kind of always been there, doing their thing. Everybody knows the band, but nobody seems to know what the lead singer's name is offhand, and nearly everyone I've talked to over time has at least one song they like that they were surprised to learn was a Train song.

For me, Train's music is like wine. The more time goes by, the better it tastes - the richer and more complex the notes. Drops of Jupiter, Meet Virginia, Calling All Angels...songs that used to annoy me (without really knowing why) simply don't anymore (also without knowing why).

I have a special place in my heart for 2009's Hey, Soul Sister. It was released at a time of upheaval in my life. When everything was changing all at once, when it was anybody's guess how things were going to shake out, and I was faced with coming to terms with a few of the leaden realities of life, this song came along like a gasp of relief, a brightly lit reassurance that everything was going to be all right, that I was going to be all right. Music doesn't normally serve that function for me, but Hey, Soul Sister was at the right place at the right time.