Just Finished Reading How Music Works by John Powell

John Powell is something of a Renaissance man, with his online bio showing him to be a scientist...in particular a physicist with a "focus" on lasers, an entrepreneur with his laser firm, a musical composer, and of course a writer.  The Englishman's 2010 book How Music Works gives an overview on many different levels about the nature of music, including the science of acoustics as they pertain to pitch and loudness and how different musical instruments accomplish their production of music and differ from one another.  I was surprised to read that musical notes did not actually become universally standardized until the mid-twentieth century.  He also delves into how people perceive pitch (including the notion of "perfect pitch"), and how a heard note's pitch is often simply a recognition of its base note even though higher-octave versions of it are present (and sometimes that base note isn't).  Although these things were all interesting, in my opinion the book took off when Powell began discussing the history of music, especially as it pertained to the development of different types.  Although we in the West are used to the Major and Minor scales, it is the five-note Pentatonic scale that has prevailed over much of the world, in very disparate and diverse cultures over the course of time.  And besides the Major and Minor scales there are others that in centuries past were more commonly used...even recently the Dorian scale was employed in songs like Scarborough Fair and Eleanor Rigby.  Most of all, the author stressed that in all music the composer and performer have as one of their main goals the aim of keeping the audience interested in what is going on...to that end much of the structure of songs (including key changes and note diversions) and classical music has evolved into more or less standardized forms: just to keep folks from zoning out.  Toward the end of the book he discussed the various pros and cons of learning to play different musical instruments: for beginners, guitar and piano are good and violin and trombone, the latter two without specific note settings, are much more difficult to start with.  Yet he also pointed out that violins can play only one note at a time while piano learning can get pretty complex, what with all the chords and the ability to simultaneously hit a number of keys...so down the line it all evens out.  And some composers...at least the good ones...will write their music for different instruments with the recognition that some keys are easier to play on them than others.  Powell went deeply into how music evokes different feelings, such as ascending notes, loudness, and the type of key.  Yet he also disputed the claim that one of the twelve keys within a Major or Minor system is essentially different in imparting emotion than another, a belief that even greats like Beethoven subscribed to.  I've only scratched the surface with this amazing book that does a great job of introducing someone like me to music: I've always loved listening to it, but in the production end of the art such as playing an instrument, singing or composing I've never truly engaged.  John Powell asserts that most of us can learn to play an instrument to basic competency level...it's those extra ten years + natural talent which exceptional musicians require that often intimidate the rest of us into never starting...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #80-76

Here are my reactions to five more songs from my 500 all-time favorites list.  As with other segments, there is a diversity of musical styles here...one of them is actually an arrangement of a classical work.  I naturally recommend them all, although one of them I'm reasonably sure you've never heard, two you might have heard, and two were big singles hits in their time...

80 CASIMIR PULASKI DAY...Sufjan Stevens
Have you ever heard of Sufjan Stevens?  Probably not, so in all likelihood you don't know of this very talented and inspired artist's outstanding 2005 album Illinois, ostensibly a tribute to this midwestern state in which he lived for a time but actually a much more introspective and spiritual work. Casimir Pulaski Day exemplifies this: the title refers to an Illinois state holiday at the beginning of March commemorating the Polish military officer who joined the American Revolutionary War efforts against the Brits.  But the song's narrative is really about a teenage girl who is dying of bone cancer, and the struggles with faith that Stevens, overtly Christian in his beliefs and songwriting, undergoes here.  My favorite song of 2009 when I first heard it, this is real Christian music that you'll never hear played on "Christian" radio because, well, as I said before it deals frankly with real struggles that Christians go through regarding their faith...

79 FLY AWAY...Lenny Kravitz
For most of 1998 I thought it was a very good year in music, with many great songs to choose from to crown my "song of the year"...and then Fly Away came along in the fall and blew them all away with its energy and wistfulness.  This song makes me want to yell along with Lenny, pump my fist into the air, and slam into that air guitar of mine...and fly away, too...don't forget that.  "Let's go and see the stars, the Milky Way or even Mars...where it could just be ours"...YEAH!  I think that, along with the other Fly Away on this favorites list of mine (by John Denver and Olivia Newton John) you couldn't come up with two more different-sounding songs with the same title and same general theme, each beautiful in its own way...

78 TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS...the Beatles
When my parents heard this closing track from the Beatles' greatest (in my opinion) album, their 1966 Revolver, I think that was when they began to drift away from being fans of the Fab Four (the Strawberry Fields Forever video on the Ed Sullivan Show didn't help either)...Tomorrow Never Knows is about as spacey as it gets.  I, on the other hand, couldn't get enough of listening to it, funny bird/animal sounds notwithstanding.  And the opening words..."Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying" through "But listen to the color of your dreams, it is not living" reveal some pretty deep, cryptically expressed philosophical stuff...not my parents' "cup of tea" but definitely mine...

77 DEBUSSY'S ARABESQUE NO. 1...Isao Tomita
Back in late 1974 my local Ft. Lauderdale progressive rock station, WSHE/103.5, began regularly playing this track from Isao Tomita's Snowflakes Are Dancing album, comprised of a number of instrumental songs written by French classical composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and arranged and produced completely electronically.  I bought the album and for weeks was entranced by its music...Arabesque No. 1, which in Tomita's version (not the original Debussy score) contains segments of eerie, bizarre "whistling" and "singing", you may recognize as the long-time theme music for the late Jack Horkheimer's weekly five-minute PBS Star Hustler TV show that provided timely skygazing information and brief teachings on astronomy. But listen to Isao's whole album...it's stupendous!

76 SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS...John Denver
This is one of those songs that I associate with a specific personal memory...in this case one morning in February, 1974 I decided to leave the house early and walk the 5½ miles through back roads to my high school.  I had been listening to this then-new release by John Denver and played it in my mind the whole way...ever since then whenever I hear it I recall the very pleasant experience and wish I had walked to and from school more often: the distance wasn't that far and I'd already run much longer distances.  I think this song was Denver's best singing performance...it always amazes me whenever a singer can hold notes as long as he repeatedly did with this hit.  He referred back to Sunshine on My Shoulders in a later song, Back Home Again...

Next week: #75-71...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #90-86

As I continue gradually getting closer and closer to the top of my 500 all-time favorite songs list, the songs I review provide for me old memories I've associated with each of them.  Does old music do that for you as well?  Anyway, here are the next five songs...

90 ELI'S COMING...Three Dog Night
From 1969, this was one of Three Dog Night's earliest hits, initially popular during a year when I didn't follow popular music very much, for some reason.  Later on I grew to love the passionate, urgent singing and flow of the song...and the introduction is brilliant.  Three Dog Night, like some other bands, suffered under the eyes of many critics because they used others' compositions instead of writing their own songs: Eli's Coming was by Laura Nyro...

89 LIVIN' THING...Electric Light Orchestra
Back at the close of 1976 I would deem this hit by ELO to be my song of the year...it came off their greatest album, A New World Record, and was played a lot on the radio during the fall of 1976...the last fall I ever spent in my childhood town of (West) Hollywood, Florida.  Listening to Livin' Thing also brings back memories of the then-ongoing presidential campaign between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter...and how my mother got so excited about finally going to vote (as did I, both of us for the smiling peanut farmer/nuclear engineer)...

88 SOFT ROCK STAR...Metric
I often like to compare Metric with Blondie from the '80s New Wave movement...with Emily Haines' more current band usually winning out.  Soft Rock Star comes off their 2007 release Grow Up and Blow Away album...originally recorded in 2001...that features two versions of this song.  There's the main track, which I prefer, and then the acoustic "Jimmy vs. Joe Mix" version...listen to both and see which one you like, they're both good.  I remember seeing the late Phil Hartman on Saturday Night Live doing a skit on "sassy"...this song takes sassiness to a high art form...

87 SHOCK THE MONKEY...Peter Gabriel
I heard 1982's Shock the Monkey by the former Genesis front man for about a year on the radio before I first viewed the shocking and haunting video...the song seems to describe a man in desperation, fleeing from something pursuing him or maybe something he has hidden within himself.  So much cryptic symbolism...yeah, I like my music full of that kind of stuff.  The video is fantastic, but you probably want to hear the full, uncut version, too...

86 SHAPES OF THINGS...the Yardbirds
Two seminal psychedelic rock songs came out in early 1966, just weeks apart: Eight Miles High by the Byrds and Shapes of Things by the Yardbirds.  Where I lived in south Florida (I was nine at the time) the former got more radio play and dang it, although I loved this Yardbirds song back then I never could find out its name or who did it until years later...I always called it "Come Tomorrow" for that recurring line.  Shapes of Things is not only worthy due to the guitar and drum work, but is also a great piece of introspection, with lyrics like "Fallin' into your passing hands, please don't destroy these lands, don't make them desert sands"...

Next week: #85-81...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #110-101

I imagine you've probably heard most of the ten songs on this list if you've been around as long as me...I'm not so sure about # 105 and 106, though.  The songs span many years and diverse genres...a piece of music done well in any genre can become one of my favorites if it resonates with me.  I think next week, as I begin to go through my top 100 songs, I'll be discussing five songs at a time instead of ten...maybe I'll thus be able to drag out this enjoyable blog project of mine a little longer...

110 CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT?...Elton John
This 1994 theme from the Disney animated movie The Lion King was, to me, the final great Elton John song of his career...may he continue to live long and prosper.  I never did care all that much for the movie, but was quickly swept away by this song, to me maybe his greatest single singing accomplishment.  Elton's got a couple more masterpieces higher up on my list...

109 GOOD NIGHT...the Beatles
After the nightmarish...but strangely compelling...chaos of the 1968 White Album's penultimate track Revolution 9 comes this mellow, very sweet closing piece, sung by Ringo as one of the greatest all-time rock n' roll lullabies. It wasn't until much later, though, when I heard it for the first time...in September 1972 along with the associated personal memories of what was going on in my life at the time...

108 THAT'S MY JOB...Conway Twitty
When I first got on at the Gainesville post office in 1987 as a letter-sorting machine clerk, they allowed us to bring headset radios for listening while we worked...my first one was a cheap brand that only picked up the very powerful local country station GC-101.  Hence for a few months I was strongly into the ongoing country and western scene, and they often played this hit song by Conway Twitty from that year.  It's about growing up and the bond between a father and his son...if this song doesn't make you shed a few tears, then you just ain't got no heart...

107 DAZED AND CONFUSED...Led Zeppelin
I remember hating this song for years whenever my local album rock radio station played it, and then in late 1990 everything changed and I began to listen to this classic British hard rock band through a different filter.  Eventually I would make Dazed and Confused my favorite song of 1992 as I lived through it...even though it's originally from 1968.  The entire song is great, one of Robert Plant's best singing performances, but my favorite section is the middle where it all breaks down into a psychedelic desolation and wild Jimmy Page guitar jam...

106 TO BINGE...Gorillaz
Plastic Beach, from 2010, was in my opinion the alternative act Gorillaz's best album, a great collaborative effort between songwriter and singer Damon Albarn and animator Jamie Hewlett, along with many contributing artists.  To Binge is a duet between Albarn and Yukimi Nagano as the two alternately bemoan a romance gone astray...it's sad but at the same time very catchy and danceable.  There was a period during the summer of 2011 when I focused on Gorillaz, listening to a shuffle of their tracks from their first four albums on my MP3 while on training runs around the neighborhood in the heat of day.  Try them out if you haven't yet...although you might find a lot to dislike you'll also get to know a few songs that work well for you...

105 ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?...the Moody Blues
The Moody Blues' 1969 On the Threshold of a Dream album is one of my favorites, especially Side Two on which the songs merge together...Are You Sitting Comfortably? is a wistful, mystical piece, a collaboration of singer John Lodge and flutist Ray Thomas, that harkens back to the mythical time of Camelot and Merlin and leads into the album's climactic finale.  This song stands well on its own but comes off better if you listen to the surrounding tracks together...

104 RUN LIKE HELL...Pink Floyd
Sounding a bit like a dystopian nightmare future, Run Like Hell was my favorite track off their 1979 The Wall double album.  While more of a "run from your pursuers" than a "run for self-fulfillment and exercise" kind of song, I still naturally tie it to my own running...although frankly, its ending sounds more like an indoor basketball game in progress.  Roger Waters wrote the lyrics and sang lead here while David Gilmour wrote the music and did backup vocals.  It's a scary-but-energizing song, always one of my favorites...

103 THE ONE THING...INXS
It was early 1983 when I first heard this debut hit from Australian rockers INXS...a strong recurring guitar riff, keyboards, saxophone, and the soulful singing of Michael Hutchence dominate this song that I regarded for months as my favorite for that year.  INXS was one of many acts felled by the death of one of its members, in this case Hutchence in 1997...such a recurring tragedy, be it by drug overdose, or, in the talented INXS singer/lyricist's case, suicide.  Makes part of me wish they had never achieved their fame and fortune...some people just can't handle it all, including the almost inevitable decline in mass popularity...

102 PLEASANT VALLEY SUNDAY...the Monkees
A big summer hit at the peak of "Monkeemania" here in the USA during the so-called Summer of Love in 1967, back then it was just one of many Monkees tunes I loved, being a big fan of their ongoing comedy television series and even a Monkees card collector (hey, I was just a kid at the time).  In subsequent years I grew to feel that Pleasant Valley Sunday may have been one of the underappreciated instigators of the Counterculture Movement with its rejection of rat race values prevalent in suburban America: "Creature comfort goals, they only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see".  Gerry Coffin and Carole King cowrote this iconic song that Mickey Dolenz nailed with his singing...

101 ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST...Queen
The story I heard is that the members of British rock group Queen in 1980 wanted to know which track from their new album The Game they should release and promote as the next single...Michael Jackson dropped by, listened to it, and picked Another One Bites the Dust.  And the rest is history, a great, funky, fun song that makes you want to get up and start moving when you hear it.  At that year's end I picked it as my "song of the year" over some other considerably high-quality songs.  I still love it...

Next week: #100-96...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #130-121

Here's another segment of my all-time 500 favorite songs list that spans several decades...most of the songs are pretty well known but a couple are hidden treasures on their respective albums.  I naturally think they're all fantastic and urge you to give them a listen.  And now, the next ten...

130 PRODIGAL SON...the Rolling Stones
Although the album Beggars Banquet, on which this track appeared, came out in 1968, I didn't hear it until the mid-nineties when I examined the Stones' collected works. Prodigal Son was originally composed by blues artist Reverend Richard Wilkins some forty-odd years earlier. It would be a great song to play on Christian radio stations, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen since the singer is, after all, Mick Jagger.  I loved Jagger's subdued, blues-soaked style here...my estimation of this song has only increased over the years...

129 SPACE ODDITY...David Bowie
To me, for most of David Bowie's career Space Oddity was his great, defining song with its cosmic overtones and sense of alienation and isolation...then I realized that I liked another of his early works more.  Although Space Oddity was first released in 1969 and I heard it while straining my ears one night to hear it played on a weak AM station that was fading in and out, for some reason it was rereleased as a single in early 1973 and my local station WQAM/560 played it in their regular rotation.  It's very loosely based, in my opinion, on the celebrated 1967 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey as astronaut David Bowman finds himself on his own special trip out in the cosmos, cut off from humanity...

128 LAZY EYE...Silversun Pickups
I liked this 2006 indie hit back then when it was played on my local Gainesville alternative rock station, but years later...in 2018...for some reason I really picked up on it and would make it my favorite song of that year.  Lead singer Brian Aubert sounds like he's trying to imitate the Smashing Pumpkins' front man Billy Corgan, and that can get to be a little irritating.  But he delivers a great performance here...and the guitar play is outstanding on a number of levels.  It's really quite a brilliant song...

127 SUICIDE BLONDE....INXS
This song by the Australian band came out in 1990 and was a moderate hit...to me this lead song from their X album was superior to any of the hits they had produced from their previous breakthrough album Kick.  This is a great, hard-rocking piece with a piercing riff and singer Michael Hutchence, one of the great voices of his age, more than able to keep up with the torrid guitar pace.  I was also pretty impressed with the video...

126 IMITATION OF LIFE...R.E.M.
From their 2001 surprisingly good Reveal album, Imitation of Life was its initial singles release.  It has a somber, yet whimsical mood to it as the band by this time has clearly moved away from guitar-based alternative rock to a more studio-arranged sound.  Michael Stipe's lyrics are typical of his nonsensical stream-of-consciousness style: "Charades pop skill, water hyacinth, named by a poet imitation of life" yet he sings it as if it were the most important message he could relate.  The verse section's melody is compelling...the chorus, which dominates the song's second half, has a children's sing-song aspect to it that bothered me a little at first, but I came to like it as well...

125 I WILL FOLLOW...U2
This song kicked off the Irish rock band's 1980 debut album Boy and is U2 at its best...sometimes that's the way it is: an act starts out with an artistic rawness to it that over the years gets compromised bit by little bit.  Lead guitarist The Edge dominates I Will Follow with his relentless trademark riff from the very beginning and Bono has maybe his best singing performance in a song full of spiritual overtones.  It didn't become known in America until 1983 when their hit song New Year's Day introduced this iconic band to the country...

124 GOING TO CALIFORNIA...Led Zeppelin
Possibly the greatest album side of all time...Led Zeppelin "IV" Side Two, when there actually used to be album sides...Going to California is Robert Plant's plaintive ballad about looking for a love that he can't find...and then realizes probably never ever existed.  Jimmy Page offers my favorite acoustic guitar accompaniment to a Led Zeppelin song, although Friends from their previous album was pretty awesome as well.  Every song on this album side is on my "top 500" list, two already covered and two more to go...

123 THE TWO OF US...the Beatles
The leadoff track on the Beatles' final studio album Let It Be, which was ironically described on its jacket as "a new phase Beatles album", The Two of Us was one of my favorites during my angst-ridden existence as a thirteen-year-old eighth-grader early in 1970.  A further irony is that this song features Paul and John in one of their greatest performing collaborations while in reality "the two of them" were bitterly feuding with each other over the band's management and musical direction.  I wish they'd come up with a few more like this folksy tune reminiscent of their earlier Rubber Soul period...

122 NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN...the Moody Blues
This closing track from the revamped Moody Blues' 1967 Days of Future Passed album was unknown to me until album rock radio began playing it in conjunction with the release of their 1972 Seventh Sojourn album...it's a fitting close to an album guiding the listener through the various parts of the day.  The "night" here is gloomy and somber as the singer expresses his inner troubles...the concluding spoken poem, composed and read by drummer Graham Nash, is often cut from radio play but is the best part of the song, in my opinion: "Breathe deep the gathering gloom, watch lights fade from every room.  Bedsitter people look back and lament another day's useless energy spent".  It was a favorite of mine during a period of deep introspection I was going through at the time...

121 JACKSONVILLE...Sufjan Stevens
On his tremendous 2005 Illinois album, Stevens included this slow-moving ode to the Underground Railroad of the mid-1800s that aided blacks from the South escaping slavery to their eventual freedom in Canada...Jacksonville, Illinois was a "way station" in this secret network.  I loved the entire album, but Jacksonville stands out with Stevens' understated singing, banjo picking and strong presence of strings in the background orchestration.  It irks me that a great song like this one doesn't even rate a separate Wikipedia article...I'd like to read how the artist put everything together to come out with such a singular product.  Although it was released in '05 I didn't first hear it until four years later when I discovered Sufjan Stevens while listening to an online alternative music channel...

Next week: #120-111...

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

TV's Music Choice Offers Better Options than Broadcast Radio

I've spent so much time with this blog project of mine listing and reviewing my 500 all-time favorite songs that I just realized that I can't think of any definitively-2020 song that I've heard, much less like.  I've been disappointed that the only broadcast radio station in my area that purports to play alternative rock, WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz", seem to either play hits from years gone by or pick for its current rotation of songs acts that sound more like they should be on Top Forty radio...if I want to listen to that kind of music I'll tune in to WYKS/"Kiss-105", which I don't.  I did notice, though, the other night while surfing around the Music Choice channels, which my cable TV service provides, that the "Indie" and "Alternative" channels were playing some really good, up-to-date music that wasn't getting any radio play.  I'm thinking of devoting a little time each day to listening to my television set for my music...a sad commentary on the sorry-ass state of radio programming nowadays in Gainesville.  Also, I might as well check out some online music channels...eventually I should come up with some future "memories" to add to my all-time favorites list...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #180-171

Well, it's Monday again and you know what that means: ten more songs on my ascending list of my 500 all-time favorite songs.  Here they are...

180 MESSAGE OF LOVE...the Pretenders
I came to like this 1983 song via its video.  If memory serves me correctly, it was one shown in regular rotation during WTBS's short-lived weekend all-night video TV show that year.  Singer Chrissie Hynde delivers a compelling performance in this, a very positive-spirited, great old love song...

179 SABOTAGE...the Beastie Boys
I wonder how many people first heard Sabotage, from 1994, from the desert scene at the beginning of the 2009 movie Star Trek where James T. Kirk is a rebellious boy driving a car (not his own) over a cliff...with the Beastie Boys tune playing full blast.  My own encounter with it is closely tied to the amazingly funny video the Boys made with them parodying TV cop shows as they enforce the law...with the customary doughnut break thrown in.  It's screaming hard rock...I wish they'd produced more songs like this...

178 12:51...the Strokes
In 2004 I immersed myself in the current alternative rock hits being played on my local station WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz"...they kept playing this song without identifying it or its artist.  Later on I discovered that the Strokes did it...they quickly became one of my favorite bands of that era: a very professional, skilled guitar band with a charismatic singer in Julian Casablancas.  Not the last from them on this list...

177 FOLLOW ME...John Denver
In the 1970s during his peak popularity everyone in my family was a John Denver fan, with his albums played a lot at my house.  Follow Me was a track from his 1973 Greatest Hits album and I've always felt a special affection for it...if you listen to it in a certain way there is an added spiritual dimension in the lyrics...

176 IT'S MY LIFE...the Animals
I was a big Animals fan during 1964-65...I'd listen to their ongoing hits on the radio, and every few weeks they'd appear on the Sunday evening Ed Sullivan Show.  Ed Burdon, to me, had the best voice in blues-based rock n' roll and the organ accompaniment added an extra dimension to their sound.  It's My Life is Burdon at his best, singing his defiance at life's challenges...

175 I MIGHT BE WRONG...Radiohead
During the fall of 2010 I collected the then-seven studio albums of this British alternative band and shuffled them on my MP3 player for my long distance training runs.  Consequently I associate various songs with different sections on my course.  Whenever I hear I Might be Wrong, from their 2001 Amnesiac album, I'm transported to the trail heading north along NW 43rd Street past 53rd Avenue, past the electric substation and Talbot Elementary and toward the Cox Communications and WCJB offices.  This song is slow-moving with a wall of electronic sounds, a thumping beat and Thom Yorke's typically wailing style of singing...

174 RAY OF LIGHT...Madonna
In 1998 Madonna surprised me, along with probably a lot of others, with this more esoteric, mystical song...I thought then that yes, the serious artist within her I always knew existed was finally coming out.  Unfortunately, it seemed to be just a phase and her music largely went back to churning out suggestive singles hits and videos.  But that summer at least I had Ray of Light to brighten things up...

173 OLD BROWN SHOE...the Beatles
When Old Brown Shoe came out as the flip side to the Beatles' Ballad of John and Yoko single in 1969, I didn't know of it until a couple of years later after the band had broken up and I had bought their Hey Jude compilation album, with George Harrison's song as one of its tracks.  Both piano and guitar figure heavily in it with an unusual beat and Harrison's cryptic lyrics full of riddles...like this opening line: "I want a love that's right, but right is only half of what's wrong".  This should have been the A-Side of the single...

172 SOUR GIRL...Stone Temple Pilots
From the Pilots' 1999 No. 4 Album, Sour Girl was a moderate hit on rock radio...it's one of those songs that I was okay with from the start but kept growing on me until it became one of my favorites.  It's a different STP song in that they didn't go into the heavy guitar sound on it, nor did they try to create a psychedelic kind of song...instead, it's simple and beautiful.  And when I finally got around to seeing the bizarre accompanying video, a semi-nightmarish vista of monstrous Teletubby-like mutants while Buffy actress Sarah Michelle Geller performs a graceful, passionate dance with front man Scott Weiland, that made it even better...

171 JUMPIN' JACK FLASH...the Rolling Stones
Not one of my favorites when it came out in 1968, Jumpin' Jack Flash was the direction-changing signal to the world of the type of music the Rolling Stones would be focusing on for the rest of their years.  The beat and riffs are mesmerizing and Mick Jagger is up to his trademark cynical, rough-edged and hyperbole-riddled singing: perfect, I never get tired of hearing it these days...

Next week: #170-161...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #200-191

With today I begin to explore the top 200 of my list of all-time favorite songs...you can reference the previous (lower-ranked) entries by skipping back to previous Mondays on this blog.  All of the ten songs I'm discussing today are super-oldies, the most recent one coming out more than 37 years ago...

200 TANGLED UP IN BLUE...Bob Dylan
The notion that some people just stumble through their lives, bouncing off experiences and relationships, is a hidden theme of this narrative by the Bard of Our Time as he relates in epic fashion his on-again, off-again friendship over the years with a woman unnamed.  My favorite line: "All the people we used to know, they're an illusion to me now. Some are mathematicians, some are carpenters' wives...don't know how it all got started, don't know what they're doin' with their lives".  Tangled Up in Blue is from Dylan's Blood on the Tracks LP and was a hit in early 1975...but I didn't get to really liking it until years later: sometimes you just have to grow into a song...

199 P.S. I LOVE YOU...the Beatles
I've loved this very early (and very short) Beatles song since early 1964 when it was played a lot on Miami's 560/WQAM, along with much of the backlog of Beatles hits that had already been released in England the year before.  It's a "Paul" song and is one of the greatest love songs of all time "as he writes this letter"...

198 ROUNDABOUT...Yes
Among other things there are two distinct memories I have from the spring of 1972 as I wound down my sophomore year in high school: it never stopped raining and my favorite song was Roundabout by Yes. I'd sit evenings on the back porch or do homework in the utility room my sister converted to a study area and who let me use it, with the radio going strong.  And this was the one of the best songs back then, in my opinion...but there always seemed to be that background sound of rain pounding down on everything.  Ironically, during the previous spring South Florida was in the throes of a severe drought with a smoky, stinking haze blowing in from Everglades wildfires. Roundabout, from the English progressive rock group's great Fragile album, dazzled me with its insane keyboards...more from Yes to come...

197 THE DAY WE MEET AGAIN...the Moody Blues
I discovered this jewel from the band's 1977 Octave album during the mid-1990s when I was investigating their catalogue of works.  I didn't care for the album as a whole, but those last two tracks were incredible...this one is the finale and the other is higher on this list.  The Day We Meet Again is dominated by the organ, and imparts a sad, dreamy feeling as singer/songwriter Justin Haywood delivers a possibly unintentional prophetic message about his band's future. Octave is a peculiar album, recorded after the Moody Blues had broken up four years earlier and four years before they would resume recording together.  In our times that would seem to be a normal break between albums, but not then: everybody was churning 'em out at a much higher rate in the sixties and seventies...

196 AMERICA...Keith Emerson and the Nice
For some reason the memory keeps coming back to me of sitting in the seventh grade at Nova High (no middle school back in 1968) during morning announcements (which for some reason they called Ad-Com, short for administrative communications) and they played this song over the air...I had already been enjoying it from the radio.  America is an organ/guitar-based instrumental rock adaptation of Leonard Bernstein's same-titled piece from his musical West Side Story...with a tribute to Antonin Dvorak's Ninth "New World" Symphony thrown in for good measure.  Bernstein was reportedly miffed at Emerson's presentation of his work as an antiwar protest song, but I thought then and still do think that it was a masterpiece...my favorite song of 1968 as I lived through it...

195 DESIDERATA...Les Crane
Disc jockey Les Crane turned Max Erhmann's prose poem into a hit single in 1972...he delivers the great wisdom of this piece in a calm, plain voice with a female chorus for the line "You are a child of the universe..." Have you ever read or heard Desiderata?  Pretty much everything in it is useful for framing one's own attitudes about life and others....here's one verse: "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself"....

194 FLY AWAY...John Denver and Olivia Newton-John
Fly Away was a 1975 hit...I first heard it on TV as Denver and Newton-John performed it.  I thought then that there was a future in these two collaborating on more songs as they both seemed to project the same kind of popular music with country leanings and their voices dovetailed beautifully, but apparently they didn't agree and went their own ways.  This one at least I'm grateful for...

193 IT'S RAINING AGAIN...Supertramp
Supertramp had a good run in the late 1970s, which would end in the early 80s when singer/composer Roger Hodgson regrettably left the group for solo stardom that would elude him.  From late 1982, It's Raining Again is self-evidently a melancholic song with Hodgson's plaintive singing and the band's seamless accompaniment, including piano, synthesizer and saxophone...it ends with an old nursery rhyme.  It's the last song they did together that I liked...

192 PRESSURE...Billy Joel
Back in 2007 when I compiled my all-time favorite songs list on this blog, Pressure, from Joel's 1982 Nylon Curtain album, came in at a lofty #23, but its subsequent drop on my list over the years isn't so much due to me liking it less as it is that I took a better look at all the rest of the songs I liked, including many recent ones.  It has some of the most clever lyrics I've heard, my favorite line being "But here you are with your faith and your Peter Pan advice, you have no scars on your face and you cannot handle pressure"...

191 WORDS OF LOVE...the Beatles
When the Beatles album Beatles VI came out in the summer of 1964 my parents, both hardline Beatles fans back then, duly went out and purchased the album...it quickly became one of my all-time favorites of that group.  I was seven at the time, on summer vacation between the second and third grades at Boulevard Heights Elementary in what was still called West Hollywood...good times, good times.  Words of Love, the closing track on side one, features George deftly displaying his guitar picking skills as he sings this brief cover of an old Buddy Holly song...not that I knew of Holly back then.  Along with Slow Down, this was one of my top favorite Fab Four songs during that season...

Next week: #190-181...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #290-281

Eight of the ten songs on today's list go back to the period from 1964 through 1975, another from 1983...and the most recent, from 2010, actually has significant roots going back to the sixties.  So this is necessarily an old list...I wonder what today's generation of young adults think about the music from decades ago.  I know when I was young, the comparable time was the swing/big band era of the 1930s and 40s and the music from that time was pretty much forgettable, as far as I was concerned.  Ironically, that's pretty much what I think about a lot of the "top 40" hits being pushed on the radio nowadays, music which the younger crowd are bonding to and think is so great...

290 LONELY DAYS...the Bee Gees
Lonely Days is one of those songs that just didn't quite fit my musical tastes when it came out in early 1971, but the march of time has only increased my liking of it...to the point now where I think it was one of the greatest products of that year in music.  It alternates between sections of mystical eeriness and simple, pounding rock n' roll, places that the brothers Gibb would have been well-advised to remain...although you might be among the many who believe that their heyday was six-seven years later during the disco era (but not me)...

289 SHAMBALA...Three Dog Night
Three Dog Night was one of if not the greatest American singles band from 1969 to 1973...this was the last of their releases that I liked a lot.  From the spring of '73...a very good year in my life...it is a happy tune with a spiritual bent.  Three Dog Night had a gospel-like vocal presentation in their music, especially when they went through a song's chorus...not that the lyrics in themselves were necessarily religious.  Their music helped me through my often turbulent teen years, a sweet-spirited group that has long deserved induction into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, which has snubbed them for decades mainly, I think, because they tended to record others' compositions instead of creating their own...

288 LAWYERS IN LOVE...Jackson Browne
One of the most sarcastic and funniest songs that I have ever heard, this 1983 hit by Jackson Browne dovetailed nicely with the newly-exploding popularity of music videos...its video perfectly reflected the lyrics, the closing stanza being "Last night I watched the news from Washington the Capital, the Russians escaped while we weren't watching them like Russians do, now we've got all this room, we've even got the moon, and I hear the USSR will be open soon as vacation land for lawyers in love"...

287 BRON-YR-AUR...Led Zeppelin
I originally bought the 1975 Led Zeppelin double album Physical Graffiti for their lengthy epic track Kashmir, but following it is this short, purely instrumental showcase of Jimmy Page's acoustic guitar playing abilities.  The title refers to a place in Wales that the band retreated to for songwriting and rest.  I think I'd like to visit it sometime if I ever travel there, along with Portmeirion, aka "The Village" from the sixties TV series The Prisoner.  Bron-Yr-Aur is the song you want if you're tired of Robert Plant's sometimes overbearing vocals but still appreciate this legendary band's music...

286 INNER CITY BLUES...Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye's landmark 1971 album What's Going On was a sharp turn for the late, great rhythm and blues artist toward politics and social commentary, and there was a lot to discuss with racial discord and injustice, the ecology, economic urban decay and a distant, never-ending war "going on".  Inner City Blues gives Gaye's repeated, frustrated response to all of it: "Yea, it makes me wanna holler and throw up both my hands".  As I recall, Inner City Blues was the album's third release after What's Going On and Mercy Mercy Me, a minor singles hit in the fall of '71. An enduring message, although the lyrics pinpointed its era...

285 SHE'S A WOMAN...the Beatles
The story I heard here is that late in 1964 the Beatles worked long and hard crafting their next singles release I Feel Fine, but still had to come up with the flip B-side song.  Paul McCartney quickly whipped up She's a Woman out of thin air and the band rushed through its recording...which later caused some consternation with John Lennon when they discovered that many fans preferred She's a Woman to their featured song for which they had devoted so much effort.  I happen to be one of those fans...some of the best rock n' roll is also the simplest.  I also totally dig George Harrison's guitar work here, especially during the mid-song break...

284 HOT FUN IN THE SUMMERTIME...Sly and the Family Stone
This song came out in 1969, during a time in which, for some reason, I had dropped out of regular pop music listening and had lost touch with it.  I do remember disliking Hot Fun in the Summertime back then...by 1971, though, I had reversed course and grown to appreciate it a lot as well as this group's other works.  It's one of the great anthems of summer, and I ended up buying the single.  Unlike Three Dog Night, Sly and the Family Stone deservedly did make it to the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, in 1993...it pays to write your own music, no doubt about it...

283 STYLO...Gorillaz
Gorillaz has been described as a "virtual' band, represented on their videos by animated characters and inviting a multitude of guest vocalists on their album tracks.  It is a collaboration of Damon Albarn (from the British band Blur) and animator Jamie Hewlett.  Albarn does vocals on most of Gorillaz's songs, including Stylo from their 2010 Plastic Beach album.  But the featured vocalist on this track hearkens back many decades: Bobby Womack delivers an unforgettable, impromptu performance on this "electric" song.  Womack, by the way, originally wrote and recorded It's All Over Now, which the Rolling Stones made into a big early hit in 1964...sadly he passed away five years ago...

282 TOP OF THE WORLD...Lynn Anderson
If my memory serves me correctly, I think it was the Miami FM station "A1A" that played this Lynn Anderson hit during the summer of 1973...I loved her sweet, emotion-laden singing on it and it quickly became my favorite song during that time.  Later that summer the Carpenters released their own singles version of Top of the World and I was angry that they were more successful with it than Lynn and were just capitalizing on her success...until I discovered that she had covered their original composition.  Still, I think Lynn Anderson's version is much, much better...

281 HELLO, GOODBYE...the Beatles
I've always liked this 1967 Beatles song...you have to watch the original video of the band, dressed out in ridiculous costumes with a campy psychedelic stage design, performing the song: I believe that they showed it back then on the Ed Sullivan show.  My parents had given up on the band a few months earlier after they all grew moustaches and made that insane Strawberry Fields Forever video...by this time, though, Paul and John had shaved off theirs but clearly weren't about to perform any more concerts.  I tend to associate this song, about two parties undergoing difficulty communicating with one another, with the band's earlier hit We Can Work It Out...

Next week: songs #280-271...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #330-321

There's a couple of songs on this week's entry of my 500 all-time favorite songs you may never have heard of, a few you have...and maybe some you just might have forgotten.  I got a big kick out of hearing all of them again during the past week...they're all winners to me...

330 PITTSFIELD...Sufjan Stevens
This song is from Sufjan Stevens' 2006 album The Avalanche, which was basically an "extras" LP of songs he had recorded while making his acclaimed Illinois album the previous year.  Yet the songs on it are pretty extraordinary in their own right...I'd even say it's the best album of "rejects" ever made.  Pittsfield is a bittersweet reflection of the singer's rough childhood in this Illinois (not Massachusetts) town, an open letter to possibly his own mother as he and his sister struggle to make it through their daily lives.  Very touching, and a very emotional final crescendo...

329 SOUL MAKOSSA...Manu Dibango
Manu Dibango is a Cameroun musical artist...now 86...whose main claim to fame, at least in America, is his 1973 song Soul Makossa, the music written by him and recorded and originally released the previous year.  It is a standout piece, with its funky beat and sharp saxophone (played by Dibango).  As for the song's lyrics, other than the word "soul", they are all in Cameroun's Duala language...reportedly composed by one of that west-central African nation's poets: "makossa" means "dance", which is self-evident if you've ever heard it.  Of course, at the time in 1973 I knew none of this and just thought it was all extremely cool...here is finally a song that I might actually dig performing on karaoke...it's happy and very intense...

328 NO QUARTER...Led Zeppelin
Definitely not a karaoke piece, this soulful exploration into melancholy is the kind of song that I would reach out to in times when my mood would plummet downward...so it's a cathartic, misery-loves-company kind of listening experience.  No Quarter is from the band's 1972 Houses of the Holy album, unusual to me in that I thoroughly liked every single track on it: one of my all-time favorite albums, to be sure.  But it took a while for me to get there...it wasn't until Led Zeppelin's box set was released in 1990 and my local rock radio station played it that I realized all that I had been missing with this great band over the years...

327 BIG TIME...Peter Gabriel
Big Time is one of two songs on today's "list of ten" that I took an initial aversion toward because I so disliked the accompanying video...once I shed it and simply listened to the music I realized what a funny, funky piece of brilliant satire this was.  One of my favorite lines: "The place where I come from is a small town...they think so small they use small words.  But not me, I'm smarter than that, I've worked it out, I've been stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out."...

326 PARANOID ANDROID...Radiohead
I've always been impressed by singers who can hold a single note and strongly belt it out for a protracted time...Radiohead's Thom Yorke gave such a demonstration with this track from their 1997 O.K. Computer album.  I'm not sure exactly what the lyrics are meant to convey, but Yorke's cynical style and the band's tremendous instrumentation made this one of my favorites years later when I first heard it and enjoyed listening to it on my extended training runs in 2010...

325 THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD...the Beatles
When this song was released as a single in the late spring of 1970, it was called the "final Beatles song", for Paul McCartney has just announced his departure from the band.  Like Paul...who later complained about it in his lawsuit against the other three Beatles...I was initially taken aback at co-producer Phil Spector's lush orchestration and female chorus. Later, though, I came to like it and the song became more of a philosophical piece about the different long and winding roads we find ourselves journeying down at various stages of life...

324 THINK I'M IN LOVE...Beck
The Information...from 2006...may well be my favorite Beck album, and Think I'm In Love is one of my favorite tracks from it.  It's a sweet, simple love song with a catchy beat and crisp, sharply delineated instrumental roles.  I could see the Beatles in their heyday dreaming up a pop tune like this, with Paul on lead vocals and George and John harmonizing in the background.  My favorite line: "Probably lay my head on a wooden floor, tell her I was tired from working the store, counting all the cash from an old shoe box, saving up to buy her something she wants"...

323 TIME AFTER TIME...Cyndi Lauper
This is the other song that I first became acquainted with (and disliked) by watching its video...a really forgettable, maudlin viewing experience.  Not that 1984's  Time After Time on its own doesn't prey on the emotions as well...it's just that there's such a thing as overkill and the song works very well without any "help".  Just listening to it amplified the beautiful arrangement, including that background ticking that made this more serious follow-up single to Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun so appropriate.  As it was, Time After Time turned out to be one of my favorite songs of 1984 as I lived through that year...

322 LAYLA...Derek and the Dominos
I'm not referring here to Eric Clapton's later jazzed-up acoustic Layla that only encompassed the vocal first half of this classic he recorded while fronting Derek and the Dominoes...it's the instrumental last half of the earlier version, recorded in 1970 and complete with piano and virtuoso rock guitar, that endeared me to it so much during the summer of 1972 (a very good time in my life) and sold me on it as my favorite song of that year.  Legendary guitarist Duane Allman, who died in 1971 in a motorcycle accident, provided much of the guitar "beauty" for this enchanting work...

321 I WALK THE LINE...Johnny Cash
What can I say about the Man in Black except that whenever I'm dressed in black I invariably think about the late Johnny Cash...what a great, class act!  I remember he once had his own TV variety show in the 1970s...one of the features was "Ride This Train" where he would musically treat an important time in America's popular history...I Walk the Line to many was Cash's first and biggest hit.  I love the way he would change the pitch of his voice with each succeeding stanza...reminds me of the old "limbo" line: how low can you go?

Next week: songs #320-321...

Quote of the Week...from Frank Zappa

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.     ---Frank Zappa

I've seen comic Bill Maher get on his HBO show and often joke about how much he likes to smoke pot (years before eight of our states legalized casual use) and has had guests on the air who seemed to be stoned...and then I look at the statistic of over 600,000 people arrested for simple marijuana possession last year. Not that I'm a fan of marijuana: I've never used it and never will...and am skeptical of those who practically idolize the weed. Still, I have to disagree with the substance of late avant-garde rock musician Frank Zappa's above quote although I agree with its spirit: our laws are not randomly enforced...if they were, things would be fairer.  For Kamala Harris, current U.S. senator from California and that state's former prosecutor, to kid around about having smoked pot after she prosecuted others for the same offense isn't random enforcement, either: it's elitism, saying that some people in society are to be judged by different standards under the law than others.  And when you see this circus of result-oriented Federal and Supreme Court judge nominations that has been going on during different administrations during the last couple of decades at least (from both political parties), it becomes apparent that "justice" and the "law" are now being interpreted in a very political and ideological way that diminishes fairness and elevates agendas...

I don't think that police treat the upper class in our society like those in low-income areas...that's not random enforcement in the strict meaning of the word "random".  And in the courts the rich can afford better attorneys...along with private investigators...than the poor, who often must resort to whatever pro bono legal assistance the court provides them...that's not random justice.  The randomness in law enforcement is real, though, when laws are on the books that are violated so much by people at large that the police cannot possibly catch everyone and must then take violators in a more randomized fashion...traffic speed traps are a good example of this strategy.  But, of course, if profiling is going on in the mind of the stationed law enforcement officer, even that isn't truly random, either...

As for the first part of Zappa's quote stating that laws are badly written, just keep in mind that when a politician is elected to a legislature, be it local, state, or national in scope, he or she will naturally feel the pressure to "do" something...and that means becoming an active part of lawmaking.  Like the Geico commercial, it's "what you do" when you're a politician.  So a legislative body will brag about all the bills they submitted or passed and politicians will run for reelection touting their list of accomplishments.  And sometimes they'll pass laws just to say they passed them...after all, one of the most common election-season rallying points is that the other party is a bunch of  "do-nothings".  So as a result we often end up saddled with some pretty crappy laws as our elected officials struggle to justify themselves to the next round of voters...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #440-431

It's Monday once again, time for me to list the next ten songs, in ascending order, from my personal all-time top 500 list.  Here they are...

440 AROUND THE WORLD...the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis and his old friend, bass guitarist Michael "Flea" Balzary, to me have always seemed like a couple of jerks, especially the latter who used to be a lowlife high school bully... a category of subhuman that I have little tolerance for.  Still, after filtering out my personal animosity I have to admit that this is a superb rock n' roll band that has done a masterful job over the years fusing different musical styles. In Around the World, from 1998, we get a mixture of rap, ballad, and hard rock that works well...and I dug their video, too: they are excellent showmen as well as accomplished musical artists...

439 THE CRUNGE...Led Zeppelin
A few years ago I ranked Led Zeppelin's songs from top to bottom on this blog and a dear old friend from high school strongly objected to The Crunge being so high on it.  I answered that it was a tribute to James Brown, the late "Godfather of Soul"...and a worthy one in my estimation, with Robert Plant delivering one of his best singing performances.  It's from their 1973 Houses of the Holy, one of my favorite rock albums ever. My only problem with this song was its confused ending about finding "the bridge", which really wasn't all that funny as it was intended to be...

438 DOG DAYS ARE OVER...Florence and the Machine
Although their original version of this song came out in 2010, I didn't hear it until 2014 after my local alternative radio station, WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz" returned to actually playing alternative rock...enough of Nickelback, thank you.  Besides Florence's powerful singing, the overwhelmingly optimistic mood of this song...celebrating the end of a personal storm and a return to better times...is infectious.  Give it a listen and see if it doesn't raise your spirits...

437 NOBODY TOLD ME...John Lennon
Nobody Told Me came out as a singles release from John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono's Milk and Honey album more than three years after his murder in December, 1980...it was recorded shortly before that tragic event.  I've since read that Lennon wrote it for Ringo Starr but he didn't use it after his former Beatles bandmate's death...Yoko completed work on John's 1980 recording and it was released early in '84 along with a video showing compelling clips of John and Yoko. That's the backstory to this song, but I liked it for both its catchy music and the lyrics, displaying Lennon's often perplexed and witty take on what was going on in the world around him...as he sang, "strange days indeed, most peculiar, Mama"...

436 ONLY IN YOUR HEART...America
I associate this especially good song from the band America with going through an introspective and uncertain period in my life late during my junior year in high school in May, 1973.  Watergate was going full force with the televised Senate Judiciary hearings chaired by Sam Ervin, it looked as if we had given up on ever going back to the moon (which turned out to be true), and I had my own issues to deal with at the time...and here comes yet another song that transports me back to a special time and place whenever I hear it.  It's a sweet song of an offered hand of compassion to someone with their own seemingly insurmountable problems...

435 MY MATHEMATICAL MIND...Spoon
The title of this deep track from Texas alternative band Spoon's 2005 Gimme Fiction album intrigued me enough, and then I listened to this jazzy singular song with lyrics of someone who has caught on to all the self-deception and manipulation going on from people around him and has something to say about what he's going to do about it.  Pretty blunt words without adornment...like he has a "mathematical mind" that is "gonna see mistakes" and no longer sugarcoat life.  Are any of us that strong? An interesting message and great music...

434 GIVE IT TO ME...the J. Geils Band
A lengthy song with two vastly different-sounding sections, it's another one that hit the airwaves...mainly on album rock radio...in the spring of 1973.  Part 1, as singer Peter Wolf cajoles for some romance, has a catchy reggae sound while Part 2 springs into a long, savage instrumental jam session.  Back in '73 I would only listen to the singing/reggae part, but now I prefer the insanity at the end...I'm not sure what that says about me.  To me this was the J. Geils Band's best song, years before they achieved pop celebrity with hits like Centerfold and Freeze Frame...

433 SLEDGEHAMMER...Peter Gabriel
This is one of those songs that defy my ability to explain exactly why I like it.  Originally I would always hear it while watching the extraordinary 1986 video with Gabriel in claymation settings and photographic trickery...that scene at the end with the dancing chicken carcasses forever changed how I view grocery shopping in the meat department.  The song stands well on its own merits, though...I simply like Peter Gabriel's vocal style and the song's generally happy, bouncy...and funny...ambiance.  And yet I can't get my mind away from that video, one of the best of all time...

432 SUFFER WELL...Depeche Mode
I can't say I've liked everything this often dreary-sounding band from England has produced over the decades, but some of their stuff is pretty fantastic.  They've been around nearly forty years now, although here in the United States few know of them other than minor 1980s hit singles like People are People and Enjoy the Silence...they are much more popular across the Atlantic.  Suffer Well was played often on my local alternative radio station 100.5/"The Buzz" in 2005-06, and I think it's one of this band's better songs.  David Gahan is the morose singer and Martin Gore composes most of their music...although he didn't with this one.  Expect to see more from Depeche Mode on this list...

431 CAPTAIN JACK...Billy Joel
Captain Jack was Billy Joel's breakthrough song that first catapulted him to radio play and ultimate fame after his debut album Cold Spring Harbor was mixed wrong and came out as a disaster...his second LP, Piano Man, was a blockbuster hit in 1974...I didn't hear the entire album, including Captain Jack as the closing track, until four years later, though.  Joel speaks through most of the song to an unnamed spoiled young man whose narcissism, hedonism and immaturity obviously disgust him as he bluntly lays out what he has let his life degenerate into...the line "well, you're 21 and still your mother makes your bed, and that's too long" pretty much says it all.  This song is anti-drugs (although Joel himself partook of them) and an "in-your-face" plea for people to stand up and take responsibility for their own lives...about as intense as it gets...

Next week: #430-421...