My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #65-61

Here are my reactions to the next five songs on my 500 all-time favorites list.  You probably know two of them very well and never heard of the other three...why not give them all a listen, you never know: one or two of them might eventually find their way onto your own "list"...

65 STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN by Led Zeppelin
Stairway to Heaven, which was released in November, 1971 along with the rest of the band's untitled fourth album, was being heavily played on my favorite Miami rock station in October, 1973 when I underwent my only open surgery to date at age 17...a hernia correction.  I remember a lot about that Hollywood Memorial Hospital experience: maybe too much, and it did little to improve my opinion of human nature...I think I might write about that some other time.  But I was able to listen to the radio during my stay and loved hearing this fantastic song.  My favorite part, aside from the instrumental acoustic guitar/flute opening fanfare, is singer Robert Plant's line "There's a feeling I get when I turn to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving"...

64 RED BARCHETTA by Rush
Back in 1993 we in Gainesville were blessed with a great alternative rock station on 97.7...late Saturday nights they had a show called "Saturday Night Six-Pack" on which they'd play six complete CDs one-by-one, on into the early morning hours.  This is how I was introduced to the Canadian band Rush's 1981 masterpiece Moving Pictures, on which Red Barchetta is the second track.  Great guitar riffs by Alex Lifeson accompany drummer Neil Peart's compelling lyrics...sung by Geddy Lee...about his youth experience driving his uncle's antique Italian sports car in the countryside at breathtaking speed. Peart, both a terrific drummer and songwriter, sadly passed away this past January, I'll miss him...

63 UNDER PRESSURE by Queen with David Bowie
Also sadly, neither David Bowie nor Queen front man Freddie Mercury are with us any longer, but this collaboration from 1981 was special...the video contained classic silent screen film clips.  And the background bass beat was shamelessly exploited by dubious rapper Vanilla Ice, which more than anything probably made the original more popular.  Under Pressure's lyrics are great...such as "Turned away from it all like a blind man, sat on a fence but it don't work, keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn".  Yeah, that pretty much expressed how I felt about it all.  This was a song that I ignored when it first came out but which grew on me over the decades...

62 IN LIMBO by Radiohead
One of the most mind-blowing pieces produced by a band already widely acknowledged for its creativity and innovation in the studio, In Limbo is from Radiohead's terrific 2000 album Kid A...with another track from it ranked even higher up on my list of all-time favorites.  It's a drifting, very dreamy and sometimes jazzy mood piece that bears little comparison to anything else I've heard.  And the lyrics are a haunting jump down the rabbit hole: "I'm on your side, nowhere to hide, trap doors that open...I spiral down".  Beats anything I ever heard from the sixties' psychedelic era.  Sometimes In Limbo is played together with its preceding track, Optimistic, another great song...

61 TREAT by Kasabian
The British alternative rock group Kasabian's 2015 album 48:13...named after its duration...was generally a disappointment to me, especially in comparison to their first four albums.  But one track, the 8-minute Treat, stood out and would became my 2015 "song of the year".  I still like it a lot...it has that old Beatles kick to it with a little Led Zeppelin/Jimmy Page kind of guitar riff thrown in for good measure.  And on top of that, it sounds pretty danceable...if you're into that type of thing, which I'm not. Unfortunately, I recently discovered that the band just fired their lead singer Tom Meighan, who got into hot water over a domestic assault against his fiancée.  I felt a bit betrayed by Meighan upon hearing that because I'd become a big fan of his singing and the band as a whole.  But Treat is still great...

Next week: #60-56...