Favorite Songs:#8 to #7

#8 Invisible Sun by the Police (from Ghost in the Machine, 1982)

Invisible Sun is a chilling, ominous song about an apocalyptic, nightmarish world of the future. Or is it singer/songwriter Sting’s take on today? Along with the enormous steps in technology that seem to progressively weave the world together into an tapestry of increased communication, transportation, and material abundance comes the flip side, the progressive unraveling of society, crazed mass movements of extremism, genocide and destruction, ever-spreading pollution, sporadic outbreaks of disease and famine, and most of all the suffocation and desperation arising from the overcrowding that is strangling this planet. Is that what Invisible Sun is about? That’s the reaction I get from it, at least. I first heard this disturbing song when I saw the video in 1983, and it was equally as somber as the music was. The Police only made five studio albums during their short existence together, but had an enormous impact on the rock music scene, fusing reggae and rock together with seamless ease. My favorites of theirs are It’s All Right For You, Walking On the Moon, The Bed’s Too Big Without You, Don’t Stand So Close to Me, Canary in a Coal Mine, Synchronicity I, Synchronicity II, and King of Pain. After the group’s breakup in 1984, Sting came out with solo gems like All This Time and Fields of Gold. I’ve heard they reunited this year to give some concerts, but I’m skeptical that they’ll ever recapture that tight dynamic cutting-edge sound of theirs when they were at their zenith.

#7 Dialogue (Parts I & II) by Chicago (from Chicago V, 1972)

Just listen to this 35-year old song and tell me that it doesn’t totally apply to today: “Don’t it make you angry when a war keeps draggin’ on? ---Well, I hope the President knows what he’s into, I don’t know…”. The first part of Dialogue is just what its name says: a brutally frank conversation between two very different souls. One is a gadfly who questions and provokes the other, a complacent and materialistic figure who rationalizes all matters of conscience in terms of how well he is personally feeling while turning a blind eye toward anything that doesn’t promote his personal agenda. The song’s second part is a great instrumental jam interlaced with the optimistic litany “We can make it happen”. Dialogue is, to me, the best of that era in Chicago’s long history when they took bold chances with their music for the sake of creativity. Make Me Smile, Questions 67 & 68, and Saturday In the Park are other examples of this group’s “golden age”. In later years, they would succumb to the allure of cranking out one slow, insipid, commercially-successful ballad after another, but they were an exciting band to follow in the early 1970s, with their blaring horns and electrifying drums and guitars. I first heard Dialogue in early 1973 when it was played once during my high school’s daily morning Ad-Com (short for administrative communications, you see, they never made anything easy) TV show. So, every time I hear it, I’m transported back to that time and (personal) turmoil. It’s a great, powerful piece of inspired music!

Next favorite song: #6