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

 #382) "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Crosby, Stills and Nash - Over time, I've had an unreliable relationship with Crosby, Stills and Nash. For years and years, the only song of theirs that ever wound up on any playlist of mine was "Southern Cross", a tune from later in their career - that is, after their peak in popularity - that appealed to me the first time I heard it on Top 40 radio at the age of ten, and still very much does.

Aside from that, I didn't really pay attention to CSN, and what I actually knew about them, as compared to what I knew about other acts from the late 60s/early 70s that were considered "classic" by the time I came of age, was spotty at best, factually inaccurate at worst: I always assumed David Crosby was the leader of the group, merely because his name appears first. Nowadays, I wouldn't suggest there is or ever was a leader, per se. All three members of this "supergroup", each coming from a notable band before (Crosby from The Byrds, Graham Nash from The Hollies, Stephen Stills from Buffalo Springfield), contribute something valuable to the overall sound. I knew that Neil Young (also from Buffalo Springfield) made them a foursome for a short while (CSNY!), but that it didn't last. I always thought "Teach Your Children" was lovely, an anthem for a generation and all that, but for some reason, I never wanted to listen to it all the way through. Same with "Our House".  And "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" was just a song I caught fragmented stretches of on "classic rock" radio while at work on a Tuesday morning, a tune I never bothered to listen to for more than a minute. I'm not sure why. It always seemed a little too of the 1960s to be relatable, I just can't possibly explain what I mean by that.

I do know that the fact that I felt that way is a real shame. I'd give anything to have been able to experience this song, really listen to it, make it relatable, when I was twenty. For my money, the seemingly disjointed, rambling lyrics are anything but. Rather, they so capture the rarefied torture of going through a breakup when you're young. Stills wrote the song about his imminent breakup with singer Judy Collins, whom he'd been dating for a couple of years. He was 23 or 24 at the time, and you can tell, and I mean that in a good way. The professions and confessions sprinkled throughout the seven-minute masterpiece would seem to be torn straight from the pages of every young man's romantically muddled psyche, a little bit of everything: raw and random, earnest, pathetic, poetic and potent, easily distracted, ever anguished, restless, meaningless and inspired all at once. Gorgeous and awkward. Too much, and at the same time never quite enough.

This has to be true, because it's all pretty much the same stuff I used to write in notebooks when I was an emotionally muddled young man, the very same kind of addled all-over-the-place emotional imagery I tried mightily to work into my fiction, in days when I had everything before me and a much loftier sense of relevance driving me forward.  

It's something every young person who has ever been in - and/or lost - love can relate to, hitting its mark without ever being too specific, too much about Stephan Stills and Judy Collins, and that, coupled with stellar musicianship (moments of true floral notes both in the trio's vocal harmonies and Stills' expert guitar work) makes "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" nothing short of immortal ... far outlasting the mere 1960s, or Crosby, Stills and Nash, or me.

I mean come on, "Friday evening ... Sunday in the afternoon ..."  Nothing else needs to be said, right? ;-)

"I've got an answer / I'm going to fly away / What have I got to lose?"

#383) "Stray Cat Strut" by The Stray Cats - This is one of those songs that some might be inclined to dismiss as a novelty. It's so catchy, the subject matter borderline silly, lending itself to cartoons and other pop culture fare. The Stray Cats, with their upright bass and pompadours, were themselves a "novelty" act, decidedly retro if nothing else, although I do not mean that in any disparaging way. 

How could I? Brian Setzer is a talented guy musically speaking, and if you take a moment to do so, "Stray Cat Strut" is downright beautiful to listen to. The restless lyrics, equally restless rhythms, the angsty and theatrical chord progressions, bring out silliness, longing and sass in equal measure, all dressed in Setzer's wet, wonderful guitar work.

"Howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night ..."

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

#376 -  "Arrow Through Me" by Paul McCartney and Wings - Seems every time Sir Paul winds up on this 1/48/50 list, I have the same glowing things to say, primarily about his range as an artist. There's a lot of good music out there, fine songwriters, musicians and performers, but a very short list of artists who have been able to swing so effortlessly between styles, with no awkward (read: unconvincing) overlap, and all music that they wrote themselves. 

Just within the short six years The Beatles were in America, he gave us, "Helter Skelter', and "Yesterday", "Oh Darling!" and "Let It Be", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and "Mother Nature's Son".  "Penny Lane", and "And I Love Her". Yes, I know they're all credited as "Lennon-McCartney", but any Beatles fan worth his/her salt knows that they mostly wrote their own music. To that end, Lennon certainly contributed mightily to that which made the Beatles The Beatles, but was he as far-ranging as McCartney, musically speaking? As seamlessly adept at the execution? Nah, I don't think so.

And McCartney kept up this unique musical range throughout the 1970s, with Wings: "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Let Em In".  "Silly Love Songs" and "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey".  "Jet" and "Listen to What the Man Said".  "Live and Let Die" and "My Love". 

And then there's "Arrow Through Me" (like Maude!), from 1979.  Just when you think there isn't anywhere else for the man to go musically, or perhaps more accurately, nowhere else you think he will go, along comes something almost experimental-sounding, with an undulating melody and crisp, funk-inspired rhythmic and bass hooks, a kind of a musical mélange, to which McCartney adds some sassy brass and clavinet chords being turned inside out repeatedly, like someone working a stress ball, as he alternately (and handily) shrieks and croons in his inimitable Macca style.  

It's completely different, and yet unmistakably McCartney. A perennial joy to listen to. Far and away my favorite from the Wings era, and I'd venture one of his best of all time, although when it comes to McCartney, perhaps that notion is more open to debate than your average artist.

"You wouldn't have found a more down hero ... "

#377 - "Sunday Will Never be the Same" by Spanky and Our Gang - I was lucky, I think. This and so many other songs like it from the 60s and 70s formed nothing less than the architecture of my emotional state when I was kid. My parents owned a bookstore and there was a little AM radio on the window sill behind the cash register, and whatever station they were tuned into always played "sunshine pop" and "AM gold", all of the music that to this day people are quick to scorn and/or mock, yet secretly love at the same time. I wouldn't want to be my age and only ever listening to The Carpenters, but it's not a bad serenade to being anywhere from four to ten years old. 

Some insist on dismissing this kind of music as bubblegum schlock, and maybe that's what it was at the time. Maybe it could be argued that in 1967, songs like "Sunday Will Never be the Same" paled in comparison to what innovative and ground-breaking stuff the Beatles or the Stones or the Who were putting out, and might also be argued that even today the two camps don't compare.

But perhaps they don't compare because it's apples to oranges. If you want to go apples to apples, a fair, direct comparison, you have to compare the "schlock" (the one hit wonders, fast buck feel good ditties and cheesy love songs) of the 60s and 70s to the "schlock" of 80s, 90s and beyond, and by that yardstick, I maintain that post-1980 schlock does not age as well as pre-1980. 

I think much of this has to do with the fact that songs of this type were once built upon melody, rather than rhythm, and more so the fact that the whole process of writing popular music and either performing it yourself or finding someone else to perform it, did not take a pre-fab concept of "celebrity" into consideration so readily.  Nowadays, some form of a slick, glittery celebrity aesthetic is never too far removed from popular music of any kind or quality.  Artists need to look a certain way, comport themselves just so, say the right things at the right time (and lately, take caution never to say the wrong thing, while praying nobody discovers the "wrong" things they may have said 15 years ago). It's all slick and polished, carefully prescribed, produced, and more importantly, presented to a painstakingly scrutinizing audience who know nothing else other than the brightly but artificially colored, hi def world they grew up in, in which image isn't everything, it's the only thing. And that's not even to say that the music is better or worse, necessarily, just different. There are talented artists now, and good music being made, but it is roundly less organic, less accessible, less viscerally felt, I'd say, because the emphasis, the driving force, is always on the artist before the listener. 

"Sunday Will Never be the Same" wasn't about Spanky and our Gang as a group, as entertainers, so much as simply about the Sunday it speaks of, the park, the dying embers of love as clouds roll in. The listener could relate without any need to see Spanky and Our Gang, or care whether they were cool enough to be celebrities. This is a tricky and subtle point I'm making, open to debate surely, but definitely worthy of debate. 

Er, right? 😉

"Nobody waiting for me / Sunday's just another day..."

Road Rage

The other day I was waiting in the drive-thru at the bank, and in a fairly pissy mood. The weather had been shit all day, I'd been stuck in the line for over twenty minutes, and when the vehicle ahead of me didn't move on quick enough so that I could finally get up to the window, make my deposit, and go home, I blew my horn as a means of nudging it along. I didn't lay on the horn, but didn't merely tap it either. It was about a one-second yawp in the Key of F to express my impatience with this driver, and yes, also my general aggravation with an entirely unconcerned world.

The gentlemen driving the vehicle had just started to pull away, but when I blew my horn he braked, put it back in park, and climbed out. He took two steps toward me, spread his hands out and said, "Is there something wrong with me?"

Yes, there is, I thought. You sat there diddling on your phone with your foot holding the brake for a full 45 seconds before moving forward, demonstrating a gross lack of courtesy, a total disregard for the preciousness of anyone's time other than your own.

I didn't say that though. Instead, I passively swiped my hand in front of me, shook my head, and said, "Naw, we're good."

He was not a physically imposing individual; that wasn't the issue. He was short, and thin, and in his early 60s, if not older. Whether I could "take" him in a physical fight didn't matter, just as whether he should have immediately moved his ass after the bank teller completed his transaction didn't ultimately matter, no matter how much I thought it should in the moment. I'd inadvertently baited him, he was outraged, and it was incumbent upon me to suck up my pride and keep the situation from escalating. I had no way of knowing how pissed off he was (read: what he might have been capable of), and no way of telling if he might have had a gun in his vehicle, or on his person, in this state, which allows permitted concealed carry, so I "squashed it" (to borrow a line from Beverly Hills 90210 a hundred years ago), and it was the right call. I cooled my own jets, and he cooled his, got back in his car and drove off.

But the near-incident illustrated how low the flashpoint of people's rage is. It really doesn't take much to get someone flying off the handle, and that's got me reconsidering my own behavior when I'm driving around, especially on any extended trip. I'm not a hot head, exactly, I don't freak out over every little slight that comes my way (in a reversed situation, my response to him blowing his horn would have been to mutter, "yeah, okay, calm down, asshole..." to myself, before moving on...), but I can't say I've never laid on the horn, can't say I've never flipped anyone the bird, although it's almost always been in response to the other person doing it first. What can I say? I'm human. I fuck up sometimes, don't always have the right answer. But I will say that the older I get, the less often it happens. Thank God for that.

Road rage isn't really a new phenomenon. There were TV news stories about it when I was growing up in the 80s. Back then it was presented as a new, burgeoning phenomenon, and largely centered around urban areas, where traffic congestion tweaked the nerves of drivers on a daily basis. I seem to recall a kind of, "What's happening to our nation's urban freeways...?" theme. 

That, of course, is no longer true, if it ever really was. Road rage happens everywhere now, on all types of roads, in all types of places, involving all types of people of all ages, and YouTube provides a harrowing glimpse into how frequently it happens, how easily it can escalate, and indeed, just what people are capable of when it does. You watch enough of those videos depicting intersection screaming matches, angry tapping on driver-side glass or punching of hoods, the aggressive, multi-lane maneuvers, the occasional brandishing of firearms, it's hard to keep faith that anyone "squashes" anything anymore, hard to believe that we're not going (or gone) off the rails as a society.

I have a couple of completely unscientific theories as to why road rage happens (that is, frequently enough to qualify as a phenomenon):  

1) We're in motion when we're in a car, but we're not in control of that motion really, or at least always on the precipice of losing it. Instinctively, we know that something catastrophic could happen in a split second to wrest it from our grasp, and even if it's not something we consciously think about all the time, we're not at all okay with that notion. It makes us anxious ... puts us on guard.

2) Our feet aren't touching the ground, which further makes us feel vulnerable, and we're sitting down to boot, so when someone gets too close, or almost sideswipes us, or cuts us off, our kneejerk response is amplified.

I don't know if there's any warrant to either of those points, but they make sense, don't they?

Road rage is, in any case, a pretty horrible part of modern American life, and something to consider when I take this long road trip. On one hand, 1/48/50 will be an epically restorative experience. There will be something grand about having nowhere to be for an extended period of time, just tooling around here and there, wherever the wind (or the road) takes me, going places I've never been and will be unlikely to ever visit again.

But there will be a lot of driving, a lot of time stuck in my vehicle - that is, sitting down with my feet off the ground - and I wouldn't want a situation like what began to boil at my bank the other day to escalate when I'm in an unfamiliar town, or a thousand miles from nowhere (or anywhere ever, actually).  I can't really control how anyone else responds or reacts, but I can do my part, by keeping off the horn and keeping my middle finger in its holster. 

Also just by keeping my own anger in check, and the best way to do this is by keeping perspective: about how insignificant I am in the great cosmic all, and how unconcerned the world really is whether I get angry or not. It's not worth the elevated blood pressure, much less (God forbid) facing what may lie in wait at the end of an escalation. 

Just shake it off, reset, and drive on.

"Squash it!" ;-) 

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

 #374) "My City Was Gone" by The Pretenders - It's probably not possible there exists any American who has ever ridden in a car in the middle of the day with the AM radio playing for so much as ten minutes - any time in the last 30 years - who wouldn't associate this lush, satisfying, bass-driven jam with The Rush Limbaugh radio show, for which it has served as the opening theme for three decades.

I do not like that fact at all ... but not because it's Rush Limbaugh. I don't like the thought of it being turned into a theme song, a jingle, for anyone, or anything. In fact, if it were my song - if any of the songs on this list were mine - I would guard jealousy (that is, Prince-like...) the context in which I'd created it. I would not want Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow appropriating it for their own purposes, turning it into something it's not. Likewise, I'd do everything I could to keep Pepsi, Budweiser, McDonalds and Depends undergarments from turning it into something it's not. Sure, I like soda, beer Big Macs, and yeah, someday I just might need those padded undies, but I would not want my music to have anything to do with any of that. (Even in jest, even if one day I'm "also a client.") This might sound funny, would surely provoke eye rolls if I said it out loud at a dinner party, but whatever it consists of, whatever it sounds, smells or tastes like, and however many people enjoy it or think I'm a talentless hack, my art is my art, and it's not - not - to be used by pundits for political purposes or Pepsi to push product.

As an aside, I'm actually really glad I'm not a musical artist. I wouldn't want to have to be forced to accept the rampant misuse / misappropriation of my work on YouTube and social media by people who think copying and pasting is part of the creative process.  

The story of how Limbaugh came to use the song is tainted by politics. The conservative Limbaugh's attempt to identify/brand himself with a song written by Pretenders frontlady Chrissie Hynde, a liberal environmentalist, did cause a stir at one point. But the two sides reportedly reached some kind of détente over the issue in the mid-1990s, and Limbaugh was given official permission to continue using it. 

That's all six degrees of what-the-fuck-ever in my mind. "My City Was Gone" has nothing to do with politics, or shouldn't, and is instead (should be) of universal relatability: libs, conservatives, Dems, Republicans, white, black ... who among us hasn't returned to their hometown after many years to find things lamentably changed?  Whatever your political stripes, nobody should be just okay with any world they once knew being "reduced to parking spaces." 

I love that the song never gets too overwrought in delivering its message. It skillfully makes a larger point, an important one, without having to force it home. This is perhaps due in part to the fact that, musically speaking, "My City was Gone" doesn't really go anywhere, simply trades on the sturdy bass line to carry it through to the end. But that bass line it's so appealing, so pleasant to nod your head to, and the lyrics so simple yet potent, I find myself not expecting or needing anything to happen. It's all good just the way it is, just the way it plays out ... this time, and when I play it again right after. Which I almost always do.

And then usually once more, because the song is just fun to listen to. It's not a song so much as a groove ... which doubtless is why (for better or worse) it works so well as radio bumper music.

"I  was stunned and amazed / My childhood memories, slowly swirled past / Like the wind through the trees..."

#375) "Let Her Cry" by Hootie and the Blowfish - This is one of the songs that has stuck to my heart like paste as the years have passed, evoking an emotional chill nowadays just like it did back in what have lamentably become the proverbial old days.  The song breezed quietly and unassumingly through the year 1995, as I dated and wasted time and tried to be the best 22-year-old father I could be. It was the crest of Hootie's popularity, and this anguished melody and arrangement were well suited to Darius Rucker's low, gritty vocals.  

I have two specific memories associated with this song. The first involves hearing the 40-something mother of a girl I was dating at the time cry out "Hootie!" with an exuberant pump of her fist when it started playing, and me and the girl shrinking down and rolling our eyes like the snarky shits we were (not realizing, of course, that before we knew it, we would be older than her mother was at the time).

The second memory is inextricably linked to the attendant (and inevitable) drama that arises when you're young, early 20s, and trying to hack out a serious relationship with someone who is just as young and unreliable as you. In the days of our lives when for most of us it's largely about going out and meeting people and partying and all of that, when restlessness saturates the air of any given day, and everything that happens - good, bad, or indifferent - is something to be stored away for some later use (as a memory, a lesson learned, whatever....), there arises two types: people who can handle their shit, handle "partying", and people who can't. 

"Let Her Cry" tells the story of a couple being torn apart because one of them can't. I've been in those kinds of relationships, seen substance abuse first hand, and it sucks. But what's interesting about "Let Her Cry" is that it digs a deeper emotional trench than other songs of similar subject matter.  For me, the heartbreak intrinsic to the song (and still causing that chill) isn't the substance abuse per se, but the futility that follows it wherever it goes, seeping into everyone's lives, leading to alienation, then eventually distance. In other words, it's not that someone in this relationship has a substance problem, it's more the note standing by the phone (as the lyrics go) saying, "Maybe I'll be back someday...".

Words as futile as they are sad.

"I wanted to look for you, you walked in, I didn't know just what I should do / So I sat back down and had a beer and felt sorry for myself ... "

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

#372) "Here Comes the Rain Again" by The Eurythmics - I didn't truly appreciate the Eurythmics when I was young (navigating my 5th grade playground dressed in camouflage pants and matching hat), primarily because Annie Lennox didn't appeal to me on the brink of puberty. I never liked the short orange hair, or (at the time) the whole androgenous look (give me a break, I was a kid...). Couple that with the fact that the music was (perhaps) a bit too sophisticated for me at age eleven. Although, maybe "sophisticated" isn't the right word. It just seemed unrelatable, in a way that other music of the time, from the likes of Madonna, Huey Lewis and Culture Club didn't.

Of course, I'm long past all of that. It's all about the music now - good, bad or indifferent - as opposed to anything even remotely visual or style-based, and insomuch as it matters (which it really doesn't), Annie Lennox was actually quite beautiful, and the Eurythmics'  heavily-laden synth-pop sound has stood the test of time, proven itself to be durable by only getting better with age.

Whereas there is a certain hostility prevalent in their other notable hit, "Sweet Dreams", "Here Comes the Rain Again" is more winsome; indeed, rainier. It was, and is, one of those songs that sent my mind off shore. Still does ... just a few hundred yards, not so far as I can no longer see land, just far enough to dose me with anxiety that the land could disappear ... but probably won't. 

"Here comes the rain again / Raining in my head like a tragedy..."

#373) "Ebony and Ivory" by Paul McCartney - Oh yes, I've said it numerous times in this space: Paul McCartney is, for my money and roundly speaking, the greatest performer of the last hundred years. No, he's not the only great songwriter out there, nor the greatest vocalist (although he's crazy stellar in both those departments), but with Macca, it's more a matter of sheer artistic range - his ability to shriek convincingly in songs like "Helter Skelter", then equally as convincingly croon out "Yesterday". It's about that way he had of whipping his voice into a creamy froth for "Oh Darling!", then engage a seamless transition into, say, "Mother Nature's Son" with completely convincing tenderness. He has been churning out sets of songs sporting these wildly disparate styles for almost 60 years, first with The Beatles, then Wings, then as a solo artist from the 80s on ... whatever he was singing, it never seemed like something he shouldn't be trying to sing, and what I've actually said numerous times in this space is that for a self-proclaimed singer of silly love songs, when he does want to make a point, he makes it well. 

Nowhere is this more true than with "Ebony and Ivory", a kind of last word on race relations, which McCartney thought to share, appropriately enough, with Stevie Wonder. The lyrics are simple in what they are saying, the business about the black and white keys on the piano working in harmony ("why don't we...?" indeed), and vocally, Wonder and McCartney each brings something pretty amazing to the party, their voices ideally suited to their parts. The music is, well, light and refreshing, like any good McCartney song, but also an oddly potent joy to listen to.  

No it's not rock and roll, not music to fall in or out of love to, or music to cobble together a mood or vibe with ... it is merely light and refreshing, and the charge that it was some sad attempt by McCartney to stay relevant when the the luster of his career had started to fade by the dawn of the 1980s might have had some truth to it.

But on the other hand, it's not true at all. Come on, he's fuckin' Paul McCartney. If he's going to write a song about racial harmony, "Ebony and Ivory" is kind of exactly the way he's going to go about it.  And I sort of wish we still lived in a world where a song like this could possibly chart the way it did in 1982.

"Why don't we...?"

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

#364) "You Are Everything" by The Stylistics - Philadelphia soul in the 1970s was primarily about production. The composite sound I have simply adored since first hearing it dribble out of an AM radio somewhere in the sunny spaces of my parents' bookstore in the days when my favorite TV show was CHIPs, was created by writers/producers like Thom Bell skillfully joining just the right vocals to an even righter musical arrangement, which was usually spartan, but completely satisfying to listen to.

Like its musical cousin Motown, I think there is a purity to this kind of music, an emotional timbre that is raw and vulnerable, strangely haunting and hopeful all at once. Philly soul is a bit more polished for its heightened production value, but that's not a bad thing. Yes, Russell Thompkins Jr's vocals are impressive, low and sturdy one moment, then crisp, clear and sky-bound the next, but it's really the accompaniment that holds the Philly sound together. It's a delicate discipline lacing together drums and strings and other assorted instrumentation (a kind of musical flea market...in a good way) and having it complement rather than overwhelm, share space rather than conquer land.

Also like Motown, I think Philadelphia soul is timeless, comprised of songs that exist forever in the secluded corners of our minds, where - forever - they administer measured doses of their austere but monumental beauty to the memories collected there.

"I just can't go on living life as I do, comparing each girl to you, knowing they just won't do / They're not you..."

✅ And there are other gems courtesy of the Stylistics that not only deserve to be remembered, but recognized. I think The Stylistics were in a class by themselves.  

#365) "You Make Me Feel Brand New" by The Stylistics - See above.

#366) "Betcha By Golly, Wow" by The Stylistics - See above.

----- 

 #367) "How Deep is Your Love" by The Bee Gees - You know, the real tragedy is that when all the dust has settled, and these times of ours are just another footnote in the annals of history, the Bee Gees are most likely going to be remembered for "Stayin' Alive". That's all anybody I knew (and myself) ever gave them credit for back in the day, and usually in a mocking way. I remember being in high school, and everyone, everyone, making fun of the tight pants, big hair, silly-sounding falsetto and contrived swagger; it was SOP when "Stayin' Alive" played or the Bee Gees were so much as brought up in conversation, to start doing the John Travolta apple-picking dance and squealing "aah aah aah aah stayin' alive...!!!!!!!!!" , safe in the knowledge that you'd get a laugh from someone, and it was a good bet they'd join in. "Stayin' Alive" was barely ten years old at the time, but it seemed much older, and so lame, so of the 1970s, that decade with all the ugly clothing, cars and décor. 

But seriously, what the fuck did I know? 

First off, for the record, I don't think there is anything wrong with "Stayin' Alive". It's a disco song, yes, but so what? It's not a bad disco song. Great bass line, and the "swagger" actually reads more legitimate when it's confined to the song itself...same goes for the lyrics. At the end of the day, it was just a sell-out move for the otherwise uber-talented Brothers Gibb, who'd been around since the mid-1960s, and whose command of melody, harmony and message when it comes to songwriting rivaled, in my opinion, many universally recognized greats of the 20th century.  

I'm willing to back that up, too. As a pop ballad, I'd put "How Deep is Your Love" up against just about any other song for comparison, any song enjoying a fully secure spot in those annals of history - "Something" by the Beatles, anything by The Beatles, or Fleetwood Mac or the Stones or Billy Joel or Elton John or a Motown luminary like Smokey Robinson. A lot of great music, ballads and otherwise, came out of the 60s and 70s, but so many people are quick to laud the genius of The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac or Smokey Robinson (as well they should), while just continuing to the do the apple picking dance whenever someone mentions the Bee Gees. 

"How Deep is Your Love" takes the Bee Gees' distinctive harmonies and turns them breathy and hypnotic. This song comes to me on a summer breeze, man, no joke. It was among the first songs I ever heard on the radio, when I was very, very young, the first to make me feel things, that is, my first exposure to music that moved me emotionally, but in an ill-defined kind of way. I was seven once, I know I was, riding in the back seat of my parents station wagon, hearing this song and feeling an emotional mélange - one part sorrow, one part intoxicated love, one part loneliness, and one and a quarter parts anxiety.  

Forty years later, it still has the exact same effect.

"'Cause we're living in a world of fools, breaking us down, when they all should let us be / We belong to you and me..."

✅ And there are other gems courtesy of The Bee Gees that not only deserve to be remembered, but recognized. Turns out, The Bee Gees were in a class by themselves.  

#368) "Too Much Heaven" by The Bee Gees - See above.

#369) "To Love Somebody" by The Bee Gees - See above.

#370) "I Started a Joke" by The Bee Gees - See above.

#371) "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" by The Bee Gees - See above.

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

 #361) "Rich Girl" by Hall and Oates - Ahh, blue-eyed soul with a little bit of that sublime Philadelphia sound thrown in...or is it that sublime Philadelphia sound with a little blue-eyed soul thrown in? 

Either way, it's sublime. Maybe this is one of those situations where labels have no meaning (and really, should they ever...?), but they're kind of hard to avoid. In true "Philadelphia sound" style, "Rich Girl" is a richly-textured blend of production and vocal prowess, so what's not to love, no matter what you call it?  When the strings and horns spiral upwards and climax in the spaces above the clouds and all the voices sing as one, nothing less than a sense of utter daylight is produced, a headspace where it's always either Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon and everything is just fine, even if it isn't. 

"Rich Girl" may be from the "blue-eyed soul" camp, but is no less worthy for this. No less exhilarating. Solid is solid, no matter the color or creed.

"You can rely on the old man's money, you can rely on the old man's money..."

#362) "Times of Your Life" by Paul Anka - This is one of those songs that - by now - only shows up on the "old time" radio station nobody listens to anymore, the one with the "beautiful music" format, wholesome beacon to the most recent geriatric crowd, a station whose hey day was when Bush 41 was president (and maybe even earlier), broadcasting at 25,000 watts from a lonely corner of the FM (or worse, AM) dial, right on the edge of town there, at that intersection where, say, Sycamore Road meets up with County Trunk H. 

There it sits, in a world that no longer really needs it, a world where everyone can be his own dee jay and listen to whatever he wants whenever he wants to, just running out the clock until its license expires with minimal staff: a nice lady named Kay, let's say, working the front desk, who knits the majority of her work day away, and ol' Bucky, the engineer, never around but always on call, and maybe one other person, a Skip or a Don perhaps, who was there in the old days, when the station was more relevant than it is today, and now finds himself finishing out his career doing sales, traffic, and production for the few commercials that need to be done. The station has no live on-air talent whatsoever, just a musical cavalcade of moldy oldies beamed in via satellite, broken up four times an hour by a computer-generated voice burbling, "It's 62 degrees at ... 8:45." 

Following that auditory sedative, also known as the station ident, you're likely to hear "Times of Your Life" by Paul Anka, a song perfectly suited to the Kodak commercial it appeared in back in the 1970s. This might be called, "blue-eyed marshmallow fluff", but I've always enjoyed it. In a different way, or for different reasons perhaps, it also generates its own daylight as it plays. Maybe it's later in the day, maybe the sun's beginning to set, shadows growing long, and it's possible everything might not be okay, so you better start taking a look at the things around you and deciding what really matters. 

Man, it's really true, the older I get, the more so many of these songs start making sense in a way they never did (could) before. 

"Good morning, yesterday / You wake up and time has slipped away..."

 

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#359) "A Country Boy Can Survive" by Hank Williams Jr. - Although I've always liked it, lately, I've started having mixed emotions about this song, and its message.  Don't get me wrong, it's not necessarily a bad message, at once a cautionary tale and affirmation of something seminal to our species which, while I can't relate to it entirely, I certainly acknowledge as truth. There's no denying that it's going to be "a country boy" who will survive when/if the shit hits the fan.  

But of course, this, like every other facet of American society, has become starkly politicized in recent years, thanks to our current president and those Americans who support him. "A country boy", and all that that implies and entails, has become this politically motivated (and painfully binary) red state v. blue state caricature in the 21st century. Less a matter of knowledge, vigilance and adaptability trumping (no pun intended) softness and entitlement, more something completely dumbed down, to the point of being silly and superficial: Toyota Prius drivers vs. Dodge Ram drivers. Wal-Mart shoppers vs. food co-op shoppers. Conservatives vs. 'libtards'. Recently, country music as a whole seems to have engaged and perpetuated this big time.

It shouldn't be this way. Nothing about our modern lives, nothing so serious in our lives, should be dumbed down to such depressingly one-dimensional terms, particularly in an age when we can't really trust what's being presented as unbiased facts - true hard news, devoid of spin - from any side.  But that's where we're at, and now, when I listen to this song, and for that matter, hear Williams' own public rhetoric over the years (which has become increasingly divisive...not for being conservative, but conspiratorial; real "Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim extremist"-type horseshit, which I have no patience for), it reads a lot more self-righteous than it used to, and I just want to say, dude, simmer down, okay? Nobody wants to take away your Christmas tree.

And yet, again, there's no denying the song's truth.  I hope it doesn't come to this, pray the proverbial shit doesn't hit the proverbial fan, but if this big bloated technological house of cards, which keeps us fat and anything-but-happy on a gluttonous diet of wet-mashed glitter and sparkles ever collapses, really lurches straight down into its own footprint to the point where we've got a Walking Dead scenario on our hands (minus the zombies) ... a country boy will survive. And were that to happen, any individual with the ability to draw from the land and live without E! Hollywood True Story-style luxuries (or even Real Housewives of Canton, Ohio-style...) will simply have a better chance of surviving and adapting to long-term changes in our way of life, even the vanishing of our way of life. 

"A Country Boy Can Survive" has gone through some renovations over the years. Originally released in 1982 (making it a fairly prescient song, I'd say), it was covered by country artist Chad Brock in 1999 with altered lyrics to reflect the perceived threat of Y2K potentially rendering the entire world nothing but country boys, then again in 2001, by Hank Jr. himself in the aftermath of 9/11. Doubtless many fans (and Hank Jr.) would disagree, but I'm not down with that; not only because I've never been down with cover versions (even covers by the original artist), but also because the song stood on its own originally, answering something larger than mere politics and priorities of the moment, and should still stand, without having to be reconstituted.

"But he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife / For 43 dollars my friend lost his life..."

#360) "Turn to Stone" by Electric Light Orchestra - According to Jeff Lynne, the purpose of Electric Light Orchestra was to "pick up where the Beatles left off". A lofty goal, to say the least, but sometime before he was assassinated ten years after The Beatles left off, John Lennon completely validated this by calling ELO the "Sons of the Beatles", meaning, presumably, the heir apparent to the Fab Four's musical legacy. 

To be perfectly honest, I don't know that I would go that far. I think in their time they were innovative and harmony-rich enough to get Lennon's attention, however (and as always, it's just my opinion) whether a lot of ELO's music holds up 40 years later is open to debate.

And yet, "Turn to Stone" is one of those songs on this road trip list that seems to grab people's attention today just as it did in 1977. I've witnessed this first-hand, Millennials and Gen Y'ers at work responding to this song when it plays, asking me to turn it up. And I completely get why. With it's anxious-sounding harmonies, and subject matter, it's kind of timeless. 

"The dying embers of the night (a fire that slowly fades 'til dawn) / Still glow upon the wall so bright (turning, turning, turning)..."

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#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..."

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 #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..."

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 #353) "Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed - One of those songs that's probably been stylish to say you like (even if you don't) since its release, I must state that until recently, I wasn't a fan. I appreciated it objectively, recognized how significant it was that a song like this, giving voice to something completely unknown or stubbornly unrecognized at the time, got recorded and released and made it all the way to #16 on the American charts in 1972, the year I was born. It was way ahead of its time, and pretty edgy, I'd imagine (in a year when The Brady Bunch was part of ABC's prime time lineup), without being repulsive.

And that's its greatest weapon, I'd say: the mysterious serum created with just a few musical ingredients: a spartan arrangement of alienated-sounding bass, horns and lightly brushed percussion paired with tired vocals that have trouble standing on their own (in critical need of help from the "colored girls", who totally step up). It just sounds like the streets, I think, sounds like everything it's talking about and everything going on around what it's talking about. I remember listening to this song years ago and hearing, but not really listening.  Now - I don't really know why - it's hypnotic, to the point of being a little unsettling. 

Doubtless, as intended. 

"Plucked her eyebrows on the way, shaved her legs and then he was a she..."

#354) "Against all Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" by Phil Collins - It's not often that a song written specifically for a movie soundtrack is...well, any good at all, much less superb. Written (by Collins) and named for the 1984 flick starring Rachel Ward and Jeff Bridges, "Against All Odds" ebbs and flows seamlessly between tender ballad and blustery power ballad, with Collins' vocals seaming to tie it all together for his ability to sing tenderly then, on a dime, pour it all out.  Heavy and brooding from the outset, it explodes suddenly with a clap of Collins' thunderous drumming (which I often think is overstated in his music, but not here...), then snaps back.  It explodes again...then snaps back, leaving a sense of uncertainty, of questions waiting to be answered. It's a really unusual experience when I listen to this song. Definitely not a garden variety soft rock 80s hit, "Against All Odds" is musical craftsmanship.

"You're the only one who really knew me at all..."

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#349) "I Let Her Lie" by Daryle Singletary - The best country songs are the ones that don't spew redneck braggadocio, or self-righteous nonsense about bad behavior and good times being strung together by the uber patriotic act of keeping a job and raising kids, but instead paint a reliable portrait of rural or small town life as it actually exists. Make no mistake, this doesn't always have to be a portrait of misery and sorrow, in other words, the woman doesn't always have to be leaving and taking the kids and the dog with her, but life is a shit sandwich sometimes, and I know from experience there is a unique flavor to the main ingredient of that sandwich when you live in a small town, which is not always captured by every country ballad that comes down the pike. I've said it many times: the best country ballads, the ones that really get at the heart of a matter, tell truth in a moving, memorable way, are as much folk songs as anything.

There's no braggadocio in "I Let Her Lie", not much of anything deserving to be called drama, for that matter. Just an anguish as intimately dull as a cloudy Wednesday afternoon on Main Street, where traffic is never anything more than light and the local gift shop didn't have a single customer all morning. It is here, in the town where the pace is a little slower because not much ever happens, where a romantic relationship that has started to show signs of its death throes bears its sharpest claws.

There are lots of songs about breakups and failed relationships, particularly in country music, but "I Let Her Lie" has always struck an especially potent chord with me. Maybe because it concerns itself with the response, rather than what is happening. In the song, the woman is cheating, the man is suffering - all too easy in this bad ol' world to shrug and say, "Natch." - but in this instance, the man's response isn't all that decisive, because in real life it wouldn't be. It would be informed - distracted - by a host of complex and contradictory emotions, and it's this balk that has created the heartache, the regret, the confusion. There comes the inevitable gossip, because it's a small town after all, and the more talk there is floating around a small town, in and out of bars and work places and that Main Street gift shop, the owner of which almost certainly knows someone who knows someone who knows you, the harder it is to make the move you know you will eventually have to make.

I get it. In some measure, to some extent, long ago, I was there. "I Let Her Lie" will always serve as a totem to that specific time in my life.

And isn't that what songs are meant for? ;-)

"We were that small town scandal, but she was my only world..."


#350) "Goin' Up the Country" by Canned Heat - It's all in the voice, I'd say. The late but fairly great Alan Wilson lent his distinctive vocal style to the two Canned Heat songs most people remember. Wilson overdosed in 1970 (a member of that lamentable "27" club, actually), but left behind the quintessential counterculture anthem, although in actuality, the song has a deep musical history dating back to the 1920s. But this version, with updated lyrics that reflect the times in which it was recorded, has other nifty things going on - a spunky bass line and spritely flute line are held together by the tautest drum line, all of which weirdly (but splendidly) complement Wilson's froggy vocals. Fifty years on, "Goin' Up the Country" is simply fun to listen to, and though on one hand it's pretty dated, from another point of view it's entirely timeless.

"We might even leave the USA / 'Cause there's a brand new game that I don't want to play...."

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#347) "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour - Our uber-PC world might not accept talk like this today, but back in the late 1980s, a black rock or heavy metal band was a novel concept, something most of the people I knew at the time, among family, the underclassman sweat sock gang at school, and even those on MTV, were talking about before talking about the song itself.

Of course, we were also jamming, because "Cult of Personality" is killer. To me, this was positively electrifying in 1988, and 30+ years on, I think it sounds just as fresh and urgent and of the moment as it did when I was fifteen. And what it's saying about the world we live in, our relationship with our leaders, our influencers, our movers and shakers, is no different today than it was back then. In fact, it's probably three times more relevant today.  "I've been everything you want to be...", indeed.

Great song.

"I tell you one and one makes three..."

#348) "All Through the Night" by Cyndi Lauper - Ask ten people what their favorite Cyndi Lauper song is, most them will say "Time After Time", and that's fine as far as it goes, but I've always been partial to "All Through the Night", and while most of the reason for this has to do with specific memories in childhood, like "Cult of Personality", I think it could also be said that it still sounds fresh, has managed to last all through the night, as it were.

It's one of those sublime blends of instrumentation, rhythm and vocals that can't really not hold up over time, it's just so well done, and therefore naturally preserved. Although it's a beautiful melody in any context, Lauper's re-stylized version greatly eclipses the original by singer/songwriter Jules Shear (always noteworthy to me, when a cover manages to pull this off), and I was pleased to learn recently that the magnificent falsetto at the end, one of hallmarks of Lauper's version (and always the element, outside of perhaps the lyrics, which has provoked the longest thoughts in me), is Shear himself.

"Until it ends, there is no end..."

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#345) "Rattlesnake" by Live - They've been around for a long time, but I barely noticed Live back in the day. In no way is that meant as a dig at them, more an acknowledgement of their surprisingly long carrer spent flying just under the radar, never taking their place among the more prominent bands of the 90s, even though their body of work is pretty rock solid. They are that band, where you hear a song, you remember it, remember loving it even at some point in your past, but you're not sure whose song it is.

In fact, were it not for a buddy, I'd never have heard "Rattlesnake", from 1997s Secret Samadhi, though when I did, it quickly became, and has remained, a seminal song for me, a dark and cryptic but completely accurate portrayal of my existence when I was in my twenties, I guess everyone's existence in their twenties - that lull in the action, when you're no longer a kid, but not doing anything particularly interesting or dynamic, when, without fail, the party starts becoming a little lamer with each passing week, month and year.

"The rack is full, and so are we, of laughing gas, and ennui..."

But it's more than that. "Rattlesnake" has always made me think of the tenuous grasp we have over what we know as reality, how fleeting our sense of place in that reality actually is. I think a lot about that these days, as I've aged, faced mortality in a steadily dwindling sphere of time, but even twenty years ago, when it was still all before me and I couldn't see the top, bottom or sides of the sphere, this song inspired those thoughts. There but for the gentle breath of a butterfly's wings go I...as I think I know myself.

"In another place, in another time, I'd be driving trucks my dear / I'd be skinning hunted deer..."

#346) "Wrack my Brain" by Ringo Starr - Far and away, my favorite post-Beatles Beatle song, "Wrack my Brain" was written by George Harrison, and if you know anything about such things, you won't be surprised by this. The album, 1981's Stop and Smell the Roses, is further evidence that in a way, the Beatles never really broke up, or at least almost certainly would have reunited at some point, were it not for Lennon's assassination. Each of the other three lads either contributed to, played on or produced at least one song for Ringo, and that was the case with many of their solo albums throughout the 70s, and 80s. Each was a lingering presence in the others' solo careers, sporadically, over time.

"Wrack my Brain" is great, if for no other reason than being unmistakably a George Harrison song. Not quite as spell-binding as "Something" or "Here Comes the Sun", it nevertheless sports that light breath of transcendentalism paired with equally gentle humor that so often found its way into Harrison's lyrics, wrapped in a winsome melody constructed on the bedrock of exquisitely anguished-sounding chord progressions, which were also hallmarks of the "quiet Beatle". Almost makes me wish George Harrison had recorded it, rather than Ringo. Although at the same time, Ringo's "aw shucks" persona lends something to the song, so I guess everything happens for a reason.

"With a will, there's a way, but there's no way I can see, coming up with something you'd enjoy as much as TV..."

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#343) "I Feel for You" by Chaka Khan - I've talked frequently here about my first experience(s) with rap music growing up in what could be called the "great white north" for reasons other than long winters. My embrace of rap and hip hop was centered primarily around Run-DMC at the time, and the fact that my brother went away to college in New York City and took to sending me recorded tapes of New York radio, notably Kiss FM (I'm pretty sure a box of those cassettes are still floating around somewhere...I'll have to dig them out someday...then find a way to play them); there was also, as I've mentioned, LL Cool J, and various soundtracks like Beat Street, and Breakin', which I got heavily into, mostly by thrashing about like a short-circuiting robot on a buddy's front lawn and thinking that I, too, was "breakin'".

But my first exposure to rapping that totally blew me away, for its precision, its flawlessly excitable flow, for being something completely new and out of the box, enough so to prompt me to take on the very tall order of emulation, was the first thirty seconds of Chaka Khan's "I Feel for You", a rap performed by Melle Mel, that prologues this Prince cover. It was released in 1984, and turned my FM / MTV world, which at the time was a lot of "Sister Christian", "Like a Virgin" and "I Can't Fight this Feeling", on its ear, and I was hooked.

I can still do the rap, my flow's still pretty tight (er….right? 😎 ), although now I'm not just conspicuously white, but also almost 50, so I don't trot this out of mothballs much anymore (and haven't since Reagan was president). I love the song, though. It's Prince, after all, and that fact coupled with Chaka Khan's smooth vocals and Stevie Wonder's matching ultra-slick harmonica, makes "I Feel for You" impossible not to feel.

"I feel for you / I think I love you..."

#344) "Nasty" by Janet Jackson - Janet Jackson's "Nasty" was much more pop-oriented, more mainstream and less "street" (such as that phrase was, or could ever be, in my 13-year-old eyes) than Chaka Khan, but it was nevertheless something new that I was being introduced to, something important. On account of "Nasty", and each successive single from the Control album for that matter, Janet Jackson was my first inter-racial crush, my inaugural departure from the brick house blondes - the Farrah Fawcetts, Heather Locklears and Victoria Principals (okay, blondes and redheads...) that populated my pre-pubescent fantasies. This might seem silly, but it really wasn't at the time - it was actually a pivotal moment in my youth when a racial and cultural bridge was crossed.

And almost forty years later (is...that...possible...??), "Nasty" is still a nasty jam.

"No my first name ain't baby, it's Janet / Miss Jackson is you're nasty..."

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#341) "One Night in Bangkok" by Murray Head - I can't say this song holds up for me, exactly, any more than the stage musical it's from holds up. Although, I can't say I know much about Chess, other than the fact that the guys from Abba, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, were among the creative force behind it, along with Tim Rice, and "One Night in Bangkok" is the only song on the soundtrack that doesn't have that overly mushy, "theater" sound.

"One Night..." was released as a pop single, doubtless to drum up interest in the musical itself, and I must say, there was a time when it was all pretty electrifying to me, when its sound, its chorus, the lines, "I can feel the devil walking next to me", and "not much between despair and ecstasy", all struck an evocative chord. There was a time, just before I discovered Run DMC, and the Breakin' and Beat Street soundtracks, and took to "break dancing" (well, gesticulating spastically) across the grass in a buddy's front yard, when to my ears, "One Night in Bangkok" was "rapping" in its coolest form, and performing it for the playground set, getting through it without missing a word or beat, was a pretty big deal. This, for about 21.5 seconds sometime in late summer of '85.

Nowadays, for whatever reason - maturity, burgeoning immaturity as I age, who knows... - I just don't buy into whatever Chess or "One Night in Bangkok" presents.  It's not Benny, Bjorn, or Tim's fault really, I've simply lost my taste for theater in general. Whether Oklahoma, South Pacific, West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, or Hamilton....ugh, it's just not my cup of tea anymore, and that's significant only in that it wasn't always the case. I grew up more or less a "drama kid", appreciating and taking part in local musical theater on a regular basis, actually used to jam out to the L'il Abner soundtrack in my bedroom when I was eleven (always thought it'd be fun to play the part of Marryin' Sam!), but time can be a mysteriously corrosive agent, and when it comes to musical theater, I just can't get there like I used to.

But "One Night in Bangkok" is still listenable, and unique in its way, it might be said, for being a (sort of) "white guy rap", if nothing else.  And I still think the lines "I can feel the devil walking next to me" and "not much between despair and ecstasy" are evocative, which perhaps means I haven't become completely jaded, I guess.

"Can't be too careful with your company..."


#342) "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes - This is definitely from the "shit your parents listened to" vault, a song I never noticed or appreciated as a kid, but have come to love as an adult. The elements I might once have thought were cheesy, the heavily synthesized drum beat and electronic chords, are a big part of its charm now.  The lyrics are fairly poetic, and although nothing can really ever replace Eddie Murphy's performance of it on Saturday Night Live back in the 1980s (Buckwheat sings all your favorites!), there could not have been a better choice of vocals than Kim Carnes' raspy pipes, which blend with the music so seamlessly, her voice seems almost electronically generated itself. (But isn't, of course, as this was long before Auto-Tune.)

And no question, Bette Davis' eyes deserve their own song, so it's win-win-win, all around!

"Her hair is Harlow gold / Her lips sweet surprise..."

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#339) "Off to the Races" by Lana Del Rey - On the surface, "Off to the Races" is kind of ridiculous, because Lana Del Rey is kind of ridiculous, just not necessarily in a bad way. Throughout its five minutes, the song, about a Lolita-style love affair in which there does not appear to be any winners, teeters on the edge of self-indulgence, always seeming about to collapse under the weight of its own overkill, but it also seems aware of this fact...almost self-aware. There is a cinematic luster at play, as the song phases between a fiercely guarded (and potentially dangerous) emotional mystery and a kind of hedonistic, deliberately "fuck you" exhibitionism, during the chorus especially, which I find immensely stirring, without knowing exactly why.

"You are my one true love / you are my one true love..."


#340) "Only Women Bleed" by Alice Cooper - According to Wikipedia (and as always, take it for what you will), there are people in this world who hear this song and assume it's about menstruation.

No joke. This "fact" (and let's hope the dismissive quotations really are warranted) is not only hilarious, but also kind of depressing. To think that anyone out there reads this uniquely lovely, Beatles-esque ballad, among the first of its kind from a hard rock artist, as nothing more than a 9th grade Health class lecture, rather than a surprisingly sensitive portrayal of a put-upon woman in an abusive relationship/marriage, is something I don't want to dwell on.  Only women bleed, indeed.

"Next, kids, we learn about a young man's changing body..."

This is one instance where I pray Wikipedia is as unreliable as people say it is.

"Man makes your hair gray, he's your life's mistake / All you're really looking for is an even break..."

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

#337) "Key Largo" Bertie Higgins - Man, when I was a kid, about ten or eleven, and this song came on the radio, I had a hell of a raucous time singing out loud what I thought were the actual lyrics. Having no knowledge whatsoever of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall or the movie being referenced, I thought the line was, "We had it all, just like boogie in the corn", and thought that was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.

For the most part, the song didn't do much for me, even though it could be said I was plugged into sappy ditties - the "shit your parents listened to" - more than other kids. All I ever felt moved to do was make fun of this one, and I totally did (while not knowing what the hell I was talking about). But "Key Largo" is one of those songs that gets better with age, the passage of time, and perhaps requires a next level of maturity to appreciate. If you park your snark for five minutes (and maybe don't watch the video), you'll likely come to realize that there is an oddly dim beauty to the musicality of this song. Although it still doesn't move me to want to fall in love or fuck, its soft edges are hard not to get caught on, and swept away by...just a little.

"Starring in our own late, late show / Sailing away to Key Largo..."

#338) "Sailing" by Christopher Cross - Now this is a song I could get on board with when I was ten, and it remains so to this day.  So subtly rendered, without ever becoming overwrought or too sappy, it's the music of a soft, bright day dream, any pleasant afternoon-turned-evening, of, indeed, the very azure sky and calm blue-green seas it speaks of. It's the progenitor of that subgenre known as yacht rock, but I think it works if you're just sailing through the rich blue waters of your mind, and I would say it qualifies for "they just don't right 'em like this anymore" designation. Surely, it would not wind up on pop radio these days, as it did, reaching No. 1 in August 1980.

"Oh, the canvas can do miracles, just you wait and see..."

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

#335) "Sad Eyes" by Robert John - For the longest time, I thought (assumed) this song was a Bee Gees song; it would seem to fit perfectly in their wheelhouse, right down to the high vocals. But it was released in 1979, around the height of the Bee Gees' fame, and by then the brothers Gibb had long forsaken the likes of "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" and "I Started a Joke" for trendier, and radio friendlier, hits like "Tragedy" and "Stayin' Alive".

I also thought for a long time that Robert John was British, doubtless a Bee Gees-related assumption, but he's American, Brooklyn born, and also, with "Sad Eyes", as much a one-hit wonder as there has ever been.

"Sad Eyes" was his only song to hit #1, and this comes as no surprise to me because it's pretty lovely, as ballads go. It drapes over everything, in a good way. I like that it's not an anguished break-up song, at least not for the guy. He's been having an affair with someone, and now his girlfriend or wife is coming back and he's looking for as clean an "out" as is possible. I'm not saying he's not a cad, but I enjoy the emotional timbre of the song, its note of hope for the future, the suggestion that every exit is also an entrance to someplace else, and you can never really go wrong with that slow, horse-trot beat. I like the guitar solo as well; it's simple, but sometimes simple sings the best.

"I never used you, you knew I really cared..."

#336) "'65 Love Affair" by Paul Davis - I was 11 when this song was released. I remember vividly it spilling out of tiny radios and mini-boom boxes all over the neighborhood for a few months, along with Eddie Rabbit and Alabama and Juice Newton, and I remember feeling its melancholy, its longing for days past, even though I didn't have a lot of my own "days past" at the time. I felt it not because I was a super sensitive sage at 11 (I wasn't), but because the song so vividly captures what it's looking to capture in its lyrics and melody: being young and being in love for the first time, in a world that will one day be looked back on as much smaller than it felt at the time, in the days when "rock and roll was simple and free."

Moreover, "'65 Love Affair" always struck me as historically accurate. 1965, maybe '66, might very well have been the last time rock and roll could be considered simple and free, right before the Sixties, as we remember them, exploded.  To that end, no joke: I think, "Doo wop, diddy wop, diddy wop, doo", as it's presented in "'65 Love Affair", is one of the greatest lines in any pop song ever.

"Well I acted like a dumb-dumb / you were bad with your pom-poms..."

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

#333) "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin - This, perhaps more than any other song, is a love/hate relationship for me. Anybody who has followed this page over the years knows that I'm an unapologetic fan of 70s AM Gold-type music. Some of it I love because I maintain it's authentically beautiful, and/or musically sound (if not cool), like The Carpenters, or Bread, and some of it I love just because it reminds me of my childhood, the first days of my life I can remember, like Barry Manilow, etc., because it's what my parents listened to.

But "Cat's in the Cradle" is a weird one for me.  As much as I enjoy listening to it, it also annoys me in a way others of its kind don't. I'm not sure why. Harry Chapin's 1981 death was untimely, and I don't really know anything else about him or his music, don't know any other songs of his (meaning: have no memories from childhood), so maybe that unfamiliarity ignites some kind of unconscious aversion. The song is repetitive, doesn't really go anywhere musically, and yet, the story it tells is ultimately so profound, so relevant to most people's existence (to some extent), that it's okay. I listen anyway. Feel compelled to listen.

I can't honestly say I relate to it. I was lucky. I had an attentive father, and in turn, like to think I was attentive to my sons as they grew up. And yet, Life still feels this way sometimes, as I age. There just isn't enough time for anything, and before you know it, your opportunities vanish, and even before they do, you're stuck having to prioritize them, because there are always "planes to catch, and bills to pay..."

"And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me, he'd grown up just like me / My boy was just like me..."

#334) "Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas - With a mad laboratory assemblage of musical hooks and harmonies pieced together in the name of weird and funky musical science, "Carry on Wayward Son" takes really sharp corners on two wheels, all the while offering heady lyrics worthy of 1970s airwaves and the prog rock giants who inhabited that reach in the days when Carter was president (worthy of the band that gave us "Dust in the Wind").

But also, this song is - for my money - among the first arena rock anthems, and I never really thought of it that way until viewing the video below for the first time, which I only did recently. It's a live performance that reveals, if only just a naughty glimpse of ankle, that in 1976, Kansas was, in terms of visuals, of general vibe, of basic energy, closer to a hair band (as opposed to prog rock) than I ever would have imagined listening to this song and putting my own spin on it all these decades.

And I'm not complaining. :-) There's nothing, musically or visually, I don't love about this, to be honest. At the end of the day, I guess it's kind of exactly the way I always pictured it, without realizing what it was I was seeing. 

"And if I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I don't know...."