Favorite Songs: #27 to #25

Continuing along the list of my personal favorites:

#27 The Little Black Egg by the Nightcrawlers, (Single, 1967)

The Little Black Egg, when I was growing up in 1967, was the song of the year as far as I was concerned. It also received an enormous amount of play on the radio in South Florida. So, imagine my surprise a few years ago when I discovered that it never even made the Billboard Top 40 nationwide! Apparently, this tune did catch on across the country, but at different times for different places, so the cumulative effect was that it had too low of a ranking at any one time to make the chart. So Little Black Egg fell off of the radar screen for a lot of people and stayed off playlists for oldies stations. For me, its lyrics are cryptic (to say the least) but the guitar, melody, and singing are great. This is one of those songs that I instantly associate with what was going on in my life at the time. I see myself with my mother and sister walking our half-blind dog Michelle (named after the Beatles song) around our Hollywood neighborhood around twilight and early evening in the late spring and summer with the stink (or fragrance, depending on your reaction) of jasmine permeating the humid air. Along our walk, we would usually be joined and escorted by as many as four or five dogs that just ran around loose. Of course, stray dogs nowadays just aren't tolerated like they used to be, but back then they were everywhere. When Little Black Egg faded from radio play, I didn't hear it again until I found it on the Internet recently. It sounds as good as ever.

#26 Oceans by Pearl Jam (from Ten, 1992)

In the early 90's we had in Gainesville a good rock station on 97.7 which played a lot of alternative songs that I liked. Late Saturday night/Sunday morning they had a feature they called "Saturday Night Six-Pack" when they would play six different CD's in their entirety. One night, they played Pearl Jam's Ten CD (this was right after their first hit single Even Flow). The songs impressed me to varying degrees, but the one that impressed me the most was Oceans, which appeared about halfway through. I would have titled it "Stormy Oceans", because the song sounds like an ominous storm brewing over rough seas. At the end, the storm breaks, the sun emerges, and all is calm again. I don't know if that is what singer/songwriter Eddie Vedder intended, but that's the effect it had on me. Pearl Jam has come out with many songs I like such as Corduroy, I Got Id, and I am Mine, but Oceans is the best. Also, like Little Black Egg, not hearing it played too much over the years helped me to avoid getting tired of it.

#25 For No One by the Beatles (from Revolver, 1966)

If I made a list of my favorite albums of all time, the Beatles' Revolver (UK edition) would easily be #1. Revolver is thoroughly listenable and I like all fourteen tracks on it. Songs like Doctor Robert, Eleanor Rigby, Here There and Everywhere, I'm Only Sleeping, and Tomorrow Never Knows are among my favorites, but one I like the most is For No One, a melancholy Paul McCartney piece backed up by piano and an inspired French horn performance. The words, though sad, are beautiful. I've always liked For No One, even back when I was ten years old. I'd have to say that the Beatles have always been the most consistently listenable band I've heard. While other artists came out with an outstanding song or two in their repertoire (this favorites list of mine is full of them), there are usually quite a few songs they did that I really don't like. But not the Beatles, at least while they were together!

My next favorites post will be for #24 to #22.