My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #470-461

Once again Monday has rolled around, meaning that it's time to me to list the next ten of my all-time favorite songs, in ascending order, starting from #470.  Today's songs are interesting in that, aside from #464, they are all from the period 1966-73...which not so coincidentally corresponds to when I was 9-16 years old.  I notice the musical tastes of some of my millennial friends around me and see that they're probably rooted in the same impressionable periods of their own lives.  Whether you're a millennial or younger, an old fogey like myself, or somewhere in between, if you see a song below and haven't yet heard it, why not give it a try...usually you can pick up a version on YouTube or another site...

470 GOODBYE...Mary Hopkin
Paul McCartney played an important role in Mary Hopkin's musical stardom, having produced her two biggest hits Those Were the Days and the much shorter Goodbye, which he actually wrote.  I much prefer the latter, from 1969.  She has such a sweet, plaintive voice...the only other song I heard from her was her cover of Que Sera, Sera, which was played on Miami's 940/WINZ in their song rotation during the summer of 1970...

469 EVERY NIGHT...Paul McCartney
This is my favorite track from McCartney's self-titled debut album in 1970, on which he announced his departure from the Beatles.  A lot of folks got angry at him for that...including the other Beatles...and probably as a result didn't cut any slack in criticizing his LP.  I liked Every Night...it's a simple song that would fit well on any Beatles album...plus, we don't hear his wife Linda's off-key attempts at harmonizing anywhere on it as she did on so many of his other songs...

468 HAPPY JACK...the Who
Although the Who broke through into U.S. stardom in the early 1970s with their Tommy, Who's Next, and Quadrophenia albums, I think some of their best works were in the mid-to-late sixties.  For some reason their singles success then just didn't carry over from England to America...Happy Jack is a great example, with Keith Moon taking over the song with his typically dominant drumming...

467 GOD ONLY KNOWS...the Beach Boys
I was never that much of a Beach Boys fan, but when this minor singles hit came out in '66 I instantly knew it was part of a new direction the band was taking.  Much later I found out that it was from their Pet Sounds album, which reportedly inspired the Beatles to take their own creative risks and make Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  The beautiful harmonics reminded me of Simon and Garfunkel's masterpiece Scarborough Fair...

466 BALLAD OF THE UNEASY RIDER...Charlie Daniels Band
This song puts a big grin on my face every time I hear it...you have to listen to the full-length version to get it all.  A long-haired traveler with a peace sign decal on his car gets a flat and has to wait at a Jackson, Mississippi bar to get it fixed.  Meanwhile he has a run-in with the local drunken roughs and quickly concocts an escape strategy.  My favorite line?  The guy he calls to repair the tire tells him to "just stay where yer at" and Charlie says "and I didn't bother to tell the durn fool that I sure as hell didn't have anyplace else to go"...

465 RAINY NIGHT IN GEORGIA...Brook Benton
Some songs evoke strong mental imagery and this slow, gripping hit, performed by the incomparable Brook Benton, always brought back memories I had of times that it never seemed to stop raining.  Although this sad song came out in 1970, I began to relish it a couple of years later...during a forlorn time in my youth...when during the spring of 1972 the rain began and didn't seem to let up for weeks. I'd sit out evenings on our back porch and watch our backyard gradually transform itself into a rain forest...

464 HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY...Radiohead
Another wonderful track from Radiohead's greatest work, their 2000 Kid A album, but I think it's one that you have to develop a taste for.  Singer Thom Yorke repeats "I'm not here, this isn't happening" as if to mentally remove himself from a very difficult place and time he finds himself in.  Don't we all feel that way sometimes? This is a great "running zone" song when covering the long distances...

463 PICTURES OF MATCHSTICK MEN...the Status Quo
The Status Quo are an English rock band which had only one American hit but have been very popular and prolific in their home country, still producing albums to this day.  That one U.S. hit, Pictures of Matchstick Men, came out in 1968 and was one that I quickly took a liking to, with its psychedelic sound and pioneering use of the process of phasing.  I honestly don't have a clue to what the lyrics mean, but like man, I dug the sound...and still do...

462 CLASSICAL GAS...Mason Williams
It was in 1968, on the Sunday night Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS, that Mason Williams' one hit, the guitar/orchestrated instrumental Classical Gas, was played to a succession of rapidly-changing images depicting the difficult times the country was passing though back then.  Just recently I found out that Williams was a comedy writer on the show and later went on to write for Saturday Night Live.  This serious, brilliant piece seems as incongruous with comedy writing as Al Franken's stint as U.S. senator seemed with his...or Jim Nabors' operatic baritone singing voice contrasted with his hokey comedic Gomer Pyle character.  Classical Gas will always stand to me as one of the greatest "air guitar" songs...

461 GARDEN PARTY...Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band
I'm not sure of the exact nature of former Ozzie and Harriet Show teen heartthrob Ricky Nelson's gripe that inspired him to write this 1972 song, but I knew it had to do with a performance of his at New York's Madison Square Garden.  He "played them all the old songs, thought that's why they came, but no one heard the music, we didn't look the same." My favorite line from this big country-flavored hit from the fall of that year? "You see you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself"...

Next week I'll write about songs #460-451...