My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #170-161

The ten songs I'm discussing today from the list of my 500 all-time favorite songs are all buried deep in my past with only a 12-year span separating them: 1964-76.  Yet each and every one of them has only increased its value to me over the years...if anything I didn't properly appreciate what remarkable pieces of music they were during that period.  Still, since during the same time span I was 7-19 years old, this is probably not surprising, and three of them I didn't get around to noticing until much later.  Here they are...

170 FRIENDS...Led Zeppelin
This track from the 1970 Led Zeppelin III album always struck me with how the sage advice singer Robert Plant doles out starkly contrasts with the ominous...almost threatening...melody and musical accompaniment.  Bizarre and beautiful.  I'm not surprised that when Plant and Jimmy Page finally got back together to make a collaboration album they picked out this one to highlight.  I did not know of this song until I heard the band's box set in late 1990...

169 I'VE SEEN ALL GOOD PEOPLE...Yes
At the end of 1971 I was musing on which song I would pick as my "song of the year"...there were some good candidates.  But then this song began to get radio play...it's divided into two parts, the first a more rambling piece with gentle music and Jon Anderson's falsetto-like voice. And then it suddenly breaks into one of the best guitar jam sessions ever, and this is where I really got to love this song...I detected a short tribute to Chuck Berry at one place...

168 DOCTOR JIMMY...the Who
The 1973 double Quadrophenia album, on which this epic track appears, was another rock opera composed by Pete Townshend...this one concerning a young English man caught up in drugs, sex and gang conflict as he eventually learns to see his idols as they truly are.  The songs are very introspective, none less than Doctor Jimmy, in which the singer declares in a rage his own severe shortcomings...very intense, perhaps too much so for some of the language used here.  But I always loved it although the lyrics at times are a bit over the top, to say the least...

167 LOVE AND HAPPINESS...Al Green
In early 1973 I was in the eleventh grade in high school, struggling to fit in with the track team...and thoroughly enjoying this hit back then by Al Green, one of the greatest voices ever in popular music.  I was pleasantly surprised to see it performed at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics.  The power of love is what this soulful song is all about, and nobody could sing it better than Al Green...

166 A DAY IN THE LIFE...the Beatles
No, I don't understand what the words mean in this closing track of the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Before the CD era kicked in, radio stations always played the immediately preceding Sgt. Pepper reprise track together with A Day in the Life...which is how I'm used to hearing it.  My favorite part has always been the break in the middle when Paul "woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head"...a few years ago I heard one recording session for the album back then when he totally flubbed up his lines, cursing and laughing at himself.  Ah, those were the great old days.  George Martin, the "fifth" Beatle, should have received creative credit (and royalties) for all the work he did on this song and the others on the album as its producer...

165 CIRCLE SKY...the Monkees
When the Monkees reunited in 1996 for their Justus album and tour, I first heard Michael Nesmith's Circle Sky...I wasn't impressed until I heard the original version from their 1968 Head album, which also served as the soundtrack to the same-titled movie made soon after their comedy TV series was cancelled.  There's some really heavy-duty, intense guitar strumming here as well as a strong hint of Nesmith's future country music direction.  Although the other Monkees didn't figure into its recording, Circle Sky fit in well with the other songs on Head, in my opinion a quality product for any band and the best from this often undervalued act...

164 SEND IN THE CLOWNS...Judy Collins
I first became aware of the 1976 hit Send in the Clowns when my sister Anita would practice playing it on her piano.  Collins' version also used piano, but her sad, resigned singing stole my heart with such a compelling performance...the lyrics evoke memories of an earlier Bee Gees' song, I Started a Joke: both songs speak of the frustration of relationships where one side always seems to be in a completely opposite state from the other...

163 DEAD MAN'S CURVE...Jan and Dean
One scene from The Godfather stands out to me: when Kate first notices the Don's monstrous bodyguard Luca Brasi at Michael Corleone's sister's wedding, she remarks that he is a very scary guy.  Well, Dead Man's Curve, from 1964, is a very scary song, not the least for the fact that it describes a fatal auto accident just blocks from where Jan would experience a devastating wreck just a couple of years later.  There is (or was back in 1974-75) a scary stretch of I-95 in northern Dade County where the Interstate, Turnpike and US-441 combined that I always dubbed "Dead Man's Curve" in honor of this song.  Very haunting...

162 HAVE I THE RIGHT...the Honeycombs
When I was a seven-year-old kid I had my personal awakening to the world of popular music...the Beatles were doubtless the main reason for this.  But the radio also played a variety of other music...including this thumping tune that sounds like an autoharp in the background.  Some songs seem like a living spring of energy...this one gets you going and I'm happy to see 56 years later that critics look back fondly on it: have you ever heard it?

161 RAIN DANCE...the Guess Who
Rain Dance has the sad distinction (at least for me) of being the final great single released by this remarkable Canadian band before Randy Bachman left the group, eventually to form his own band Bachman-Turner Overdrive.  It has a long chanting part at the beginning and closing that really does evoke a sense of native American culture, correctly or not...why it wasn't a monster hit I can't figure.  Rain Dance was one of those 1971 songs I juggled around in my mind back then for "song of the year" before settling on that aforementioned Yes song (at #169)...hey what do you know, it's passed it on my list!

Next week: #160-151