Today I begin my "top 100" countdown within my greater list of 500 all-time favorite songs. For the next few weeks I'll be taking on five at a time...toward the end I'll probably reduce that number further. Here are this week's five...
100 MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES...Regina Spektor
From her Far album in 2009, this is a song about a person who takes his own path to personal enlightenment. It's a sweet, mystical, melodic song that I quickly grew to like and regard as one of my favorites. Silent screen actor Lon Chaney was dubbed the "man of a thousand faces" after the same-titled 1957 biographical movie about him starring James Cagney, but Regina's song is on a different theme. I don't think anyone in the music business today is better than Regina Spektor for combining lyrical and melodic creativity, piano virtuosity and a wide-ranging vocal style in her music...
99 CANARY IN A COAL MINE...the Police
This to me was the Police's standout track on their 1981 Zenyatta Mondata album. It's a very fast-paced, brief reggae-rock piece. You're bound to start hopping around upon listening to it...better tie yourself down first. Once again, I lament the way-too early breaking up of this band in 1984 after only five studio albums...I'm not at all finished with them on this list of mine. If they had only made Canary in a Coal Mine a couple of minutes longer...
98 OCEANS...Pearl Jam
I didn't hear this deep track from the Seattle band's 1992 debut Ten album until I picked it up some three years later...in my humble opinion it should have easily been one of the featured releases, a lot better to me than Black or Alive. Just sit back and close your eyes to the beautiful instrumental arrangement with singer Eddie Vedder evoking images of a sea in the middle of a raging storm with the rising waves and darkening skies...along with the aftermath: Debussy wishes he'd written something like this...
97 BLUE SKY MINE...Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil was an Australian rock band that focused on their country's social problems...Blue Sky Mine apparently was one of these kinds of songs, criticizing the excesses of a large sugar company. The passionate and unique voice of Peter Garrett, along with his unmatched virtuoso harmonica playing, elevated this song in my estimation to the point where I made it my favorite of the year 1990. The group is better known for its single Beds are Burning, but to me Blue Sky Mine was their masterpiece. And here I am speaking of them in the past: they're still together...
96 I CAN'T EXPLAIN...the Who
When I was eight in early 1965 and my local singles rock station in Miami, WQAM/560/"Tiger Radio" began playing this song, I immediately thought it was another Beatles hit and quite possibly their greatest song to date. Eventually I found out that a different group, The Who, did it: no matter, I Can't Explain would be my favorite song of that year as I lived through it. They made quite a few good albums during the sixties that didn't get the deserved airplay and respect in America that they received overseas...most of us know hits like My Generation, I Can See for Miles, and Magic Bus...but the deep tracks on the albums these songs came from were also consistently high-quality. I Can't Explain predated their first studio album by a couple of years...
Next week: #95-91...
Showing posts with label Music. Quote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Quote. Show all posts
Monday, June 1, 2020
Monday, March 9, 2020
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #220-211
This week's ten songs from my 500 all-time favorites is a little different from previous ones in that they contain four songs from this century...all from the alternative/indie genre and none of which were general popular hits. I strongly suggest you check out these artists...who knows, you may grow to enjoy their music as I have. Here are my reactions to the next ten on the list...
220 L.S.F. (LOST SOULS FOREVER)...Kasabian
In 2004 I first heard the British rock band Kasabian through their debut hit single Club Foot, which was played a lot on my local alternative rock radio station WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz". I didn't like it and thought "that was that" with this group until I saw the video to their next song from their self-titled album. L.S.F.'s U.S.-released video (the initial British version was reportedly banned) is a beautiful collage of the cosmos, weather, zodiac symbols, wolves, an eagle...and the band performing. But although I think it's one of the best music videos ever made, the song stands well on its own, with a subtle Middle Eastern flavor to it (which I would learn is one of Kasabian's trademark sounds) and the inimitable singing voice of Tom Meighan. Kasabian is one of my very favorite acts of the past fifteen years, more from them to come with higher-ranked songs...
219 THEME FROM SHAFT...Isaac Hayes
In the fall of 1971, around the time I turned 15, this was easily my favorite hit song on the radio. Associations with music can be funny and unexplainable: somehow I associate this song with going to the beach, which during this era was Sheridan Beach in northern Hollywood. The music is funky and majestic with a lengthy instrumental lead...Hayes breaks in later to sing his description of the detective/protagonist (played by Richard Roundtree) in this then-popular movie, which I never did get around to seeing...
218 THE WHEEL...PJ Harvey
The lead and background guitar in this 2016 song sounds like the Rolling Stones...especially their classic song Street Fighting Man. PJ (Polly Jean) Harvey is an alternative/indie solo artist from England, another great talent whose music is largely ignored on broadcast radio. The somber and somewhat spooky lyrics speak of thousands of disappearing children...after looking it up it seems Harvey was referring to the terrible 1999 Kosovo (formerly of Yugoslavia) war that caused such suffering and displacement...
217 THE LIGHT...Regina Spektor
In my opinion the greatest popular music artist of this century so far...a brilliant pianist with a beautiful singing voice and so wonderfully creative with her compositions, Regina Spektor has produced a string of excellent songs including this slow, introspective piece from her 2016 Remember Us to Life album. Okay, Regina, it's going on four years now...how about recording and releasing your next album, please?
216 THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGIN)...Sly and the Family Stone
During the springtime of 1970 I kept hearing this song on the radio...my response would be to change the station. But in a year or two I had totally reversed myself and grew to really like it...and then realized that this inspired band had other great earlier songs I hadn't appreciated enough. The written title is deliberately misspelled and funny. The lyrics are a sign of the counterculture times, knocking down hate and bigotry while lifting up the love and change that the new youth culture was supposed to bring the world, oh well...I still like the notion the song promotes that being oneself is a pretty good idea...
215 HOME BY THE SEA...Genesis
This was the track from the British band's 1984 self-titled album that got a lot of album rock radio play...that's how I first heard it in 1987 and got blown away...actually, there are two tracks running together, Home By the Sea and Second Home By the Sea. But I think just listening to the first, which reportedly is about a group of ghosts haunting a seaside resort, is enough to hook you on liking it. The intended meaning of the lyrics aside, they reminded me of every time in my life some overbearing person would try to rivet me in place and talk in my face: "Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down...as we relive our lives in what we tell you"...
214 SHANGHAI BREEZES...John Denver
This 1982 song came out after Denver had begun his long decline from the great popularity he had enjoyed in the 1970s. I wasn't aware of it at the time...it was only during the last few years that I've heard it and grown to greatly appreciate a song that belongs with the best works from this modern day troubadour of the great outdoors and romance. The tragedy of his fatal private plane crash in 1997 still resounds with me...
213 COME ON! FEEL THE ILLINOISE!...Sufjan Stevens
The title is a play of words on the 1983 Quiet Riot hit Cum On Feel the Noize, but the song couldn't be more different. It's from Stevens' 2005 Illinois album, the tracks on which are part autobiographical, part historical/geographical, and part spiritual in nature. The first section of this song is an upbeat portrayal of the bustling city of Chicago and then it slows down and evolves into a whimsical piece about the poet and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg. Illinois is my favorite Sufjan Stevens album...this extraordinary musical talent plays several instruments and writes, records and performs in several different genres, a real blessing to the musical scene and yet another artist who does not get the radio recognition he deserves...
212 GIVE A LITTLE BIT...Supertramp
The saxophone and acoustic guitar dominate this partially upbeat, partially pleading song...you can take the lyrics either narrowly as the singer's imploring to his love or...like me...more broadly as urging each of us to do a little extra, though acts of kindness and generosity, to make our world a better place. Either way, this British group's 1977 hit record was a welcome respite from the barrage of disco songs on the radio then...somehow I don't remember hearing it, though, until a couple of years later...
211 PAPA WAS A ROLLING STONE...the Temptations
A very emotionally intense song, Papa Was a Rolling Stone climbed up the charts in late 1972...its tone, albeit not its message, matched my feelings at the time (I was 16 and a mess). The various singers in this legendary group take turns playing the role of lamenting the passing of their father, whose past they increasingly discover to their dismay is very, very disturbing. The instrumental buildup at the song's beginning is impressive, too...I have always found listening to it cathartic...thankfully, my own dear, beloved father, who passed away six years ago, was nothing like the character in the song...
Next week: #210-201...
220 L.S.F. (LOST SOULS FOREVER)...Kasabian
In 2004 I first heard the British rock band Kasabian through their debut hit single Club Foot, which was played a lot on my local alternative rock radio station WHHZ/100.5/"The Buzz". I didn't like it and thought "that was that" with this group until I saw the video to their next song from their self-titled album. L.S.F.'s U.S.-released video (the initial British version was reportedly banned) is a beautiful collage of the cosmos, weather, zodiac symbols, wolves, an eagle...and the band performing. But although I think it's one of the best music videos ever made, the song stands well on its own, with a subtle Middle Eastern flavor to it (which I would learn is one of Kasabian's trademark sounds) and the inimitable singing voice of Tom Meighan. Kasabian is one of my very favorite acts of the past fifteen years, more from them to come with higher-ranked songs...
219 THEME FROM SHAFT...Isaac Hayes
In the fall of 1971, around the time I turned 15, this was easily my favorite hit song on the radio. Associations with music can be funny and unexplainable: somehow I associate this song with going to the beach, which during this era was Sheridan Beach in northern Hollywood. The music is funky and majestic with a lengthy instrumental lead...Hayes breaks in later to sing his description of the detective/protagonist (played by Richard Roundtree) in this then-popular movie, which I never did get around to seeing...
218 THE WHEEL...PJ Harvey
The lead and background guitar in this 2016 song sounds like the Rolling Stones...especially their classic song Street Fighting Man. PJ (Polly Jean) Harvey is an alternative/indie solo artist from England, another great talent whose music is largely ignored on broadcast radio. The somber and somewhat spooky lyrics speak of thousands of disappearing children...after looking it up it seems Harvey was referring to the terrible 1999 Kosovo (formerly of Yugoslavia) war that caused such suffering and displacement...
217 THE LIGHT...Regina Spektor
In my opinion the greatest popular music artist of this century so far...a brilliant pianist with a beautiful singing voice and so wonderfully creative with her compositions, Regina Spektor has produced a string of excellent songs including this slow, introspective piece from her 2016 Remember Us to Life album. Okay, Regina, it's going on four years now...how about recording and releasing your next album, please?
216 THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGIN)...Sly and the Family Stone
During the springtime of 1970 I kept hearing this song on the radio...my response would be to change the station. But in a year or two I had totally reversed myself and grew to really like it...and then realized that this inspired band had other great earlier songs I hadn't appreciated enough. The written title is deliberately misspelled and funny. The lyrics are a sign of the counterculture times, knocking down hate and bigotry while lifting up the love and change that the new youth culture was supposed to bring the world, oh well...I still like the notion the song promotes that being oneself is a pretty good idea...
215 HOME BY THE SEA...Genesis
This was the track from the British band's 1984 self-titled album that got a lot of album rock radio play...that's how I first heard it in 1987 and got blown away...actually, there are two tracks running together, Home By the Sea and Second Home By the Sea. But I think just listening to the first, which reportedly is about a group of ghosts haunting a seaside resort, is enough to hook you on liking it. The intended meaning of the lyrics aside, they reminded me of every time in my life some overbearing person would try to rivet me in place and talk in my face: "Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down...as we relive our lives in what we tell you"...
214 SHANGHAI BREEZES...John Denver
This 1982 song came out after Denver had begun his long decline from the great popularity he had enjoyed in the 1970s. I wasn't aware of it at the time...it was only during the last few years that I've heard it and grown to greatly appreciate a song that belongs with the best works from this modern day troubadour of the great outdoors and romance. The tragedy of his fatal private plane crash in 1997 still resounds with me...
213 COME ON! FEEL THE ILLINOISE!...Sufjan Stevens
The title is a play of words on the 1983 Quiet Riot hit Cum On Feel the Noize, but the song couldn't be more different. It's from Stevens' 2005 Illinois album, the tracks on which are part autobiographical, part historical/geographical, and part spiritual in nature. The first section of this song is an upbeat portrayal of the bustling city of Chicago and then it slows down and evolves into a whimsical piece about the poet and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg. Illinois is my favorite Sufjan Stevens album...this extraordinary musical talent plays several instruments and writes, records and performs in several different genres, a real blessing to the musical scene and yet another artist who does not get the radio recognition he deserves...
212 GIVE A LITTLE BIT...Supertramp
The saxophone and acoustic guitar dominate this partially upbeat, partially pleading song...you can take the lyrics either narrowly as the singer's imploring to his love or...like me...more broadly as urging each of us to do a little extra, though acts of kindness and generosity, to make our world a better place. Either way, this British group's 1977 hit record was a welcome respite from the barrage of disco songs on the radio then...somehow I don't remember hearing it, though, until a couple of years later...
211 PAPA WAS A ROLLING STONE...the Temptations
A very emotionally intense song, Papa Was a Rolling Stone climbed up the charts in late 1972...its tone, albeit not its message, matched my feelings at the time (I was 16 and a mess). The various singers in this legendary group take turns playing the role of lamenting the passing of their father, whose past they increasingly discover to their dismay is very, very disturbing. The instrumental buildup at the song's beginning is impressive, too...I have always found listening to it cathartic...thankfully, my own dear, beloved father, who passed away six years ago, was nothing like the character in the song...
Next week: #210-201...
Monday, March 2, 2020
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #230-221
Here's my take on ten more songs off my ascending personal list of 500 all-time favorite songs. With today's list they're all "old"...the latest one came out twenty years ago. So without further ado, here they are...
230 SOWING THE SEEDS OF LOVE...Tears for Fears
I tend to associate this 1989 radio hit from the British duo with working at the downtown Gainesville post office late nights, keying letters on their letter sorting machine hour after hour...I got a lot of music listening in there with my Sony Walkman headset radio masking the surrounding noise. I miss Tears for Fears...their music was always innovative and interesting, and their lyrics were more philosophical and cerebral than the usual songs on the radio. The concept video for this song is one of the best ever made...it borrows a little from another one, Paul Simon's 1987 Boy in the Bubble...
229 BACK HOME AGAIN...John Denver
Back Home Again was released as a single from the same-titled album late in 1974...my father, who at the time regularly listened to Miami's country station WWOK/1260, liked it a lot. This was a time when there was a lot of crossover success from regular pop music stars into the country charts and vice versa...things have sadly drastically changed since. Home as a sanctuary and a place of rest and nurturing to return to after being away is the theme in this song...I hope you see it that way as well although...also sadly...this isn't true for some. I know I've always loved coming home, be it from school or work...or even a fun vacation trip...so John Denver's heartfelt tribute to the home life resonates with me...
228 MUSIC...Madonna
I've always thought that Madonna was an extraordinarily talented and creative musical artist but that her appetite for notoriety and celebrityhood overshadowed and ultimately stunted what might have been a greater legacy. She's had her ups and downs in the business...the period 1998-2001, to me, was her peak and this intense, brash dance song is one of her best. I associate it, strangely, with being at a theme park in early 2003 and watching my two brave children beginning their climb on a huge rickety, steep wooden rollercoaster there while this song was playing on the public address system...we got it all on video (and audio)...
227 SLOW DOWN...the Beatles
During mid-1964 when I was seven and Beatlemania had swept the country and fans were flocking to the theaters to watch their movie A Hard Day's Night, Slow Down was a minor singles hit but a major song to me. Sadly, my local radio stations WQAM and WFUN didn't play it much and it was on the album my parents didn't buy: Something New. It's a great rocker with John bellowing out the vocals and George excelling at guitar, especially during the mid-song instrumental break...
226 OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA...the Beatles
This track from the Beatles' 1968 White Album has a chipper, reggae feel to it as Paul sings the saga of Desmond and Molly while John grinds it out on piano...I remember first hearing it one evening at home in south Florida listening to a radio station in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles...they had a relay from Radio Nederland and played it on their "Happy Station" broadcast. In the final verse Paul inadvertently mixes up the roles of Desmond and Molly...he's been known to flub up his lines before but this time they ran with it and the rest is history...
225 BOY BLUE...Electric Light Orchestra
A couple of years ago I set out as a project to listen to the collected works of Electric Light Orchestra...this track from their 1974 Eldorado album stood out and it's been one of my favorites ever since. Typical of their other pre-disco works, the band blended rock n' roll and symphonic music, with Jeff Lynne's gruff voice topping it off. Lots of interesting instrumental forays in this song...
224 HANDLE WITH CARE...the Traveling Wilburys
The story has it that when George Harrison was in Los Angeles following the release of his successful 1987 comeback album Cloud Nine, he wanted to release one of its tracks, This is Love, as a single but wanted to use this new song he had written for the B-Side...collaborating with Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, they added Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan and instead embarked on a two-album project called the Traveling Wilburys. Handle With Care was my favorite of their songs and also my favorite from 1989 as I lived through it...
223 MMM MMM MMM MMM...the Crash Test Dummies
Considered by many to be one of the worst songs ever recorded, I found myself enchanted by the narrative in this 1993 tale of three different children who each undergo a traumatic experience...while the first two will overcome their physical ordeals, it's the final one, though, who suffers the most...on the inside. The singer's extremely low-pitched voice probably greatly contributed to the song's notoriety. I've found that people who have heard it either loved or hated it...very little middle ground here...
222 CRY ME A RIVER...Joe Cocker
When Joe Cocker came out in 1970 with his Mad Dogs and Englishmen concert album, some tracks...like The Letter and She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, covers of songs originally recorded by the Box Tops and Beatles, respectively...became radio hits. And then they released late that year Cry Me a River, another cover, but this one from long before: Julie London did it in 1955. Cocker's version, though, is so different from the original that it is essentially an entirely new song, fast-paced, rocking and electrifying...an unforgettable blending of Joe's raspy voice and the accompanying piano, organ, and horns. I had just turned 14 when it came out and considered it to be my favorite song at the time...
221 UNDERCOVER OF THE NIGHT...the Rolling Stones
I moderately liked this 1983 Stones single when it came out in late 1983...but in retrospect I probably would have liked it more had I not been depending primarily on videos for my music then...this one's was pretty awful. But once I began to just sit back and listen to the music for its own sake, I realized what a treat it was. The lyrics, to be sure, are disturbing as Mick Jagger paints a gloomy, horrific picture of human rights abuse and civil war in some nations south of our border back then...I thought it was pretty gutsy of them to do that. The lead guitar riff is mesmerizing...
Next week: songs #220-211...
230 SOWING THE SEEDS OF LOVE...Tears for Fears
I tend to associate this 1989 radio hit from the British duo with working at the downtown Gainesville post office late nights, keying letters on their letter sorting machine hour after hour...I got a lot of music listening in there with my Sony Walkman headset radio masking the surrounding noise. I miss Tears for Fears...their music was always innovative and interesting, and their lyrics were more philosophical and cerebral than the usual songs on the radio. The concept video for this song is one of the best ever made...it borrows a little from another one, Paul Simon's 1987 Boy in the Bubble...
229 BACK HOME AGAIN...John Denver
Back Home Again was released as a single from the same-titled album late in 1974...my father, who at the time regularly listened to Miami's country station WWOK/1260, liked it a lot. This was a time when there was a lot of crossover success from regular pop music stars into the country charts and vice versa...things have sadly drastically changed since. Home as a sanctuary and a place of rest and nurturing to return to after being away is the theme in this song...I hope you see it that way as well although...also sadly...this isn't true for some. I know I've always loved coming home, be it from school or work...or even a fun vacation trip...so John Denver's heartfelt tribute to the home life resonates with me...
228 MUSIC...Madonna
I've always thought that Madonna was an extraordinarily talented and creative musical artist but that her appetite for notoriety and celebrityhood overshadowed and ultimately stunted what might have been a greater legacy. She's had her ups and downs in the business...the period 1998-2001, to me, was her peak and this intense, brash dance song is one of her best. I associate it, strangely, with being at a theme park in early 2003 and watching my two brave children beginning their climb on a huge rickety, steep wooden rollercoaster there while this song was playing on the public address system...we got it all on video (and audio)...
227 SLOW DOWN...the Beatles
During mid-1964 when I was seven and Beatlemania had swept the country and fans were flocking to the theaters to watch their movie A Hard Day's Night, Slow Down was a minor singles hit but a major song to me. Sadly, my local radio stations WQAM and WFUN didn't play it much and it was on the album my parents didn't buy: Something New. It's a great rocker with John bellowing out the vocals and George excelling at guitar, especially during the mid-song instrumental break...
226 OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA...the Beatles
This track from the Beatles' 1968 White Album has a chipper, reggae feel to it as Paul sings the saga of Desmond and Molly while John grinds it out on piano...I remember first hearing it one evening at home in south Florida listening to a radio station in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles...they had a relay from Radio Nederland and played it on their "Happy Station" broadcast. In the final verse Paul inadvertently mixes up the roles of Desmond and Molly...he's been known to flub up his lines before but this time they ran with it and the rest is history...
225 BOY BLUE...Electric Light Orchestra
A couple of years ago I set out as a project to listen to the collected works of Electric Light Orchestra...this track from their 1974 Eldorado album stood out and it's been one of my favorites ever since. Typical of their other pre-disco works, the band blended rock n' roll and symphonic music, with Jeff Lynne's gruff voice topping it off. Lots of interesting instrumental forays in this song...
224 HANDLE WITH CARE...the Traveling Wilburys
The story has it that when George Harrison was in Los Angeles following the release of his successful 1987 comeback album Cloud Nine, he wanted to release one of its tracks, This is Love, as a single but wanted to use this new song he had written for the B-Side...collaborating with Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, they added Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan and instead embarked on a two-album project called the Traveling Wilburys. Handle With Care was my favorite of their songs and also my favorite from 1989 as I lived through it...
223 MMM MMM MMM MMM...the Crash Test Dummies
Considered by many to be one of the worst songs ever recorded, I found myself enchanted by the narrative in this 1993 tale of three different children who each undergo a traumatic experience...while the first two will overcome their physical ordeals, it's the final one, though, who suffers the most...on the inside. The singer's extremely low-pitched voice probably greatly contributed to the song's notoriety. I've found that people who have heard it either loved or hated it...very little middle ground here...
222 CRY ME A RIVER...Joe Cocker
When Joe Cocker came out in 1970 with his Mad Dogs and Englishmen concert album, some tracks...like The Letter and She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, covers of songs originally recorded by the Box Tops and Beatles, respectively...became radio hits. And then they released late that year Cry Me a River, another cover, but this one from long before: Julie London did it in 1955. Cocker's version, though, is so different from the original that it is essentially an entirely new song, fast-paced, rocking and electrifying...an unforgettable blending of Joe's raspy voice and the accompanying piano, organ, and horns. I had just turned 14 when it came out and considered it to be my favorite song at the time...
221 UNDERCOVER OF THE NIGHT...the Rolling Stones
I moderately liked this 1983 Stones single when it came out in late 1983...but in retrospect I probably would have liked it more had I not been depending primarily on videos for my music then...this one's was pretty awful. But once I began to just sit back and listen to the music for its own sake, I realized what a treat it was. The lyrics, to be sure, are disturbing as Mick Jagger paints a gloomy, horrific picture of human rights abuse and civil war in some nations south of our border back then...I thought it was pretty gutsy of them to do that. The lead guitar riff is mesmerizing...
Next week: songs #220-211...
Thursday, February 20, 2020
The First Half of My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs List
This past Monday I just finished the first half of my weekly examination of my 500 all-time favorite songs, ten at a time. Since it's a bit tedious going back to look at earlier articles of the list, which I've gradually been revealing in ascending order starting with #500, I decided to present links to them below...since I'm now at the halfway point. Hope they're useful...
500-491
490-481
480-471
470-461
460-451
450-441
440-431
430-421
420-411
410-401
400-391
390-381
380-371
370-361
360-351
350-341
340-331
330-321
320-311
310-301
300-291
290-281
280-271
270-261
260-251
500-491
490-481
480-471
470-461
460-451
450-441
440-431
430-421
420-411
410-401
400-391
390-381
380-371
370-361
360-351
350-341
340-331
330-321
320-311
310-301
300-291
290-281
280-271
270-261
260-251
Monday, December 9, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #350-341
What a joy it is listening to these great old songs...and old most of them are. Even the two most recent ones from todays' entries are 14-15 years old...man, does time pass quickly or what? Well, here are my comments about the next ten from my top 500 favorites..
350 MY WIFE...the Who
The Who's bass guitarist John Entwistle usually contributed a song or two for each of their albums...in this respect he was like the Beatles' George Harrison, although Harrison's music was by far consistently better. Entwistle's songs usually had lyrical themes that were a little off-center, like for example Boris the Spider and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In My Wife the singer finds himself in trouble with his better half after he drank too much one night and got thrown into jail...and now she's coming after him! A little sad and very funny...Entwistle not only played bass and sang on it but also performed the piano and horn parts: definitely his best work ever...you can hear it on their 1971 Who's Next album. Sadly, John passed away in 2002...
349 ROCKIN' IN THE FREE WORLD... Neil Young
This was one of my favorite songs in 1989, the year after George Bush (before needing to add "H.W." to his name) won a bitterly fought election for president against Michael Dukakis. I think the dirtiness of the campaign must have angered Young, who co-opted two of Bush's campaign slogans as well as his war service record in the song's line, "We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man, we got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand". Since I had wanted Dukakis to win, I flowed with the lyrics...later I discovered that, at least in the media, America only seemed to have a terrible homeless problem whenever a "heartless" Republican happened to be president...
348 WALKING WITH A GHOST...Tegan and Sara
In 2004 my music listening was narrowly defined and clear: alternative rock, for which I got my share by listening to my local station WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz". Strong in its rotation during this time was Walking With a Ghost, a very catchy tune with limited lyrics and a strong feeling of abruptness about it ...Tegan and Sara are identical twins who made a string of successful albums together. Their songs seem to be largely about relationships and the problems arising from them...this song was about one that went to "ghost" stage...
347 SOMEONE SAVED MY LIFE TONIGHT...Elton John
It takes a great deal of skill to record a very slow song and get away with it...perhaps the slowest one of all time (that was worth listening to, that is) was Led Zeppelin's The Rain Song. Elton John put a lot of feeling into this piece, which came out in 1975 but which for some reason I didn't really get into until the following year...so I tend to associate it with what was going on with my life down in South Florida during 1976, mostly pretty good stuff...
346 I CAN'T GO FOR THAT...Hall and Oates
Without getting into the details, I was in a very positive, constructive stage of my life during the closing months of 1981 and when this awesome song by Hall and Oates was released as a single during that period I quickly bonded with it...it's a song about boundaries and being reasonable with others without letting them walk all over you. The whole song, with the instrumentation, lyrics, and lead and backup singing clicks together as a masterpiece of pop music production. I still dig it 38 years later...
345 THE BOXER...Simon and Garfunkel
Although The Boxer, from Simon and Garfunkel's great and final album Bridge Over Troubled Waters, came out in 1969, it was the following year when I grew to fully appreciate what a beautiful song it was...the summer of 1970 always brings sweet memories and feelings to me and since we owned the album it was easy to just slide it out of its sleeve and lay the phonograph needle on this wonderful track over and over again. My favorite line? "Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"...
344 DECATUR...Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens' 2005 album Illinois is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest albums of the 21st century...heck, let's just say of all time. It was the follow-up to his excellent 2003 Michigan album...Stevens had resided in both states and decided to pay tribute to them with songs about their locales and history while filtering through them autobiographical and spiritual themes. Decatur is about a city in Illinois and you get a little history lesson listening to it...but it's also about the singer's childhood and serves at the end as a praise song. Sufjan Stevens is a multi-instrumentalist and featured banjo and harmonica on this folksy, clever song...
343 I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM BY FRIENDS...the Beatles
I got used to listening to this second track from the Fab Four's 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album as combined with the opening song, titled after the album...it's logical since that track's ending introduces this song, with Ringo Starr as "the one and only Billy Shears". Starr then delivers a stunning lead vocal, alternating his lines with the other Beatles harmonically posing him questions: "Do you need anybody? I need somebody to love. Could it be anybody? I want somebody to love." Although Ringo sang less on the Beatles' songs than the other three, I find that his voice tended to more resemble other rock singers than did Paul, John, or George...
342 THE GREEN DOOR...Jim Lowe
Although The Green Door was originally a hit back in my birth year of 1956, its popularity endured and I often heard it played in the 1960s on my local Miami rock station 560/WQAM. The piano work on it is upbeat, jazzy, and a little ragtime...apparently meant to mimic the music played in the illegal "speakeasies" during the Prohibition era where alcohol...and partying...was furnished but only to those who could gain admission. The singer here is annoyed by all the noise going on next to his room, but when he bangs on their "green" door, they won't let him in. Good, we got a great song out of his rejection. Jim Lowe probably had a lot of good music in his catalog...maybe I should check it out...
341 WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES...the Doobie Brothers
This song was a big hit throughout 1979 and rightfully won the Grammy Award for best song the following year...and it was my own personal "song of the year" for 1979 as I lived through it, not one of the most pleasant of years for me, to put it lightly. Since by this time Michael McDonald had pretty much transformed this resilient and talented band, it's hard to connect his songs with their output from the early-to-mid 1970s. But to me they're all good, and while enjoying McDonald's singing on What a Fool Believes I also dug the lyrics: "What a fool believes, the wise man has the power to reason away" is brilliant...
Next week: #340-331...
350 MY WIFE...the Who
The Who's bass guitarist John Entwistle usually contributed a song or two for each of their albums...in this respect he was like the Beatles' George Harrison, although Harrison's music was by far consistently better. Entwistle's songs usually had lyrical themes that were a little off-center, like for example Boris the Spider and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In My Wife the singer finds himself in trouble with his better half after he drank too much one night and got thrown into jail...and now she's coming after him! A little sad and very funny...Entwistle not only played bass and sang on it but also performed the piano and horn parts: definitely his best work ever...you can hear it on their 1971 Who's Next album. Sadly, John passed away in 2002...
349 ROCKIN' IN THE FREE WORLD... Neil Young
This was one of my favorite songs in 1989, the year after George Bush (before needing to add "H.W." to his name) won a bitterly fought election for president against Michael Dukakis. I think the dirtiness of the campaign must have angered Young, who co-opted two of Bush's campaign slogans as well as his war service record in the song's line, "We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man, we got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand". Since I had wanted Dukakis to win, I flowed with the lyrics...later I discovered that, at least in the media, America only seemed to have a terrible homeless problem whenever a "heartless" Republican happened to be president...
348 WALKING WITH A GHOST...Tegan and Sara
In 2004 my music listening was narrowly defined and clear: alternative rock, for which I got my share by listening to my local station WHHZ/100.5 "The Buzz". Strong in its rotation during this time was Walking With a Ghost, a very catchy tune with limited lyrics and a strong feeling of abruptness about it ...Tegan and Sara are identical twins who made a string of successful albums together. Their songs seem to be largely about relationships and the problems arising from them...this song was about one that went to "ghost" stage...
347 SOMEONE SAVED MY LIFE TONIGHT...Elton John
It takes a great deal of skill to record a very slow song and get away with it...perhaps the slowest one of all time (that was worth listening to, that is) was Led Zeppelin's The Rain Song. Elton John put a lot of feeling into this piece, which came out in 1975 but which for some reason I didn't really get into until the following year...so I tend to associate it with what was going on with my life down in South Florida during 1976, mostly pretty good stuff...
346 I CAN'T GO FOR THAT...Hall and Oates
Without getting into the details, I was in a very positive, constructive stage of my life during the closing months of 1981 and when this awesome song by Hall and Oates was released as a single during that period I quickly bonded with it...it's a song about boundaries and being reasonable with others without letting them walk all over you. The whole song, with the instrumentation, lyrics, and lead and backup singing clicks together as a masterpiece of pop music production. I still dig it 38 years later...
345 THE BOXER...Simon and Garfunkel
Although The Boxer, from Simon and Garfunkel's great and final album Bridge Over Troubled Waters, came out in 1969, it was the following year when I grew to fully appreciate what a beautiful song it was...the summer of 1970 always brings sweet memories and feelings to me and since we owned the album it was easy to just slide it out of its sleeve and lay the phonograph needle on this wonderful track over and over again. My favorite line? "Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"...
344 DECATUR...Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens' 2005 album Illinois is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest albums of the 21st century...heck, let's just say of all time. It was the follow-up to his excellent 2003 Michigan album...Stevens had resided in both states and decided to pay tribute to them with songs about their locales and history while filtering through them autobiographical and spiritual themes. Decatur is about a city in Illinois and you get a little history lesson listening to it...but it's also about the singer's childhood and serves at the end as a praise song. Sufjan Stevens is a multi-instrumentalist and featured banjo and harmonica on this folksy, clever song...
343 I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM BY FRIENDS...the Beatles
I got used to listening to this second track from the Fab Four's 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album as combined with the opening song, titled after the album...it's logical since that track's ending introduces this song, with Ringo Starr as "the one and only Billy Shears". Starr then delivers a stunning lead vocal, alternating his lines with the other Beatles harmonically posing him questions: "Do you need anybody? I need somebody to love. Could it be anybody? I want somebody to love." Although Ringo sang less on the Beatles' songs than the other three, I find that his voice tended to more resemble other rock singers than did Paul, John, or George...
342 THE GREEN DOOR...Jim Lowe
Although The Green Door was originally a hit back in my birth year of 1956, its popularity endured and I often heard it played in the 1960s on my local Miami rock station 560/WQAM. The piano work on it is upbeat, jazzy, and a little ragtime...apparently meant to mimic the music played in the illegal "speakeasies" during the Prohibition era where alcohol...and partying...was furnished but only to those who could gain admission. The singer here is annoyed by all the noise going on next to his room, but when he bangs on their "green" door, they won't let him in. Good, we got a great song out of his rejection. Jim Lowe probably had a lot of good music in his catalog...maybe I should check it out...
341 WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES...the Doobie Brothers
This song was a big hit throughout 1979 and rightfully won the Grammy Award for best song the following year...and it was my own personal "song of the year" for 1979 as I lived through it, not one of the most pleasant of years for me, to put it lightly. Since by this time Michael McDonald had pretty much transformed this resilient and talented band, it's hard to connect his songs with their output from the early-to-mid 1970s. But to me they're all good, and while enjoying McDonald's singing on What a Fool Believes I also dug the lyrics: "What a fool believes, the wise man has the power to reason away" is brilliant...
Next week: #340-331...
Monday, December 2, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #360-351
As I continue unraveling my list of my 500 all-time favorite songs...from bottom to top in groups of ten...I think it's important to say that before writing my reviews I listen once again to each and every one of them. One of the great blessings of having grown up during the years that I did was to be exposed to some incredibly wonderful music...and it's still being produced, if you know where to look...
360 THE WAYWARD WIND....Gogi Grant
Nostalgia radio is something that began in the 1970s, and it was on one of those stations that I first heard...and instantly fell in love with...Gogi Grant's epic, mournful ballad The Wayward Wind. It was a huge hit in 1956 and reportedly knocked Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel off the top of the charts...yet my local rock stations in the 1960s, WQAM and WFUN, apparently didn't think it qualified to be on their playlist of "golden oldies" alongside Presley's classic hits. Now, well over forty years after I first heard it, I still think very highly of this song...Gogi Grant passed away three years ago at age 91...
359 ROAD TO NOWHERE...Talking Heads
The rat-a-tat-tat percussion beat defines this song of cynicism, as usual...like other Talking Heads songs...delivered with a strongly humorous bent by their lead vocalist and creative force David Byrne. The video is also something you don't want to miss...very, very imaginative and funny. The opening chorus-sung lyrics express people's ideals and rationales, which Byrne then proceeds to utterly deflate. It came out in 1985 and is yet another song that makes me wonder why it didn't become a major top ten hit: maybe it was just a little too cerebral...
358 MERCHANTS OF SOUL...Spoon
Speaking of songs with a rat-a-tat-tat beat, here's another, and this one actually makes a non-dancer like myself want to get up and move around on the floor...it's that catchy. Merchants of Soul is from the Austin, Texas alternative rock band's remarkable 2005 Gimme Fiction album, maybe their best. Spoon is one of the more creative and listenable musical acts today, headlined by singer/songwriter Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno...I'm not usually interested in attending concerts but I'd like to see Spoon perform live: now that's an endorsement!
357 BICYCLE RACE...Queen
The line "Jaws was never my thing and I don't like Star Wars!" deeply endeared me to this counter-mass-culture anthem by Queen...I never was a big fan of either movie and couldn't see what the big fuss was about them. Also, from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s I was pretty heavily into (cheap) bicycle riding (not racing) as an alternative to motoring, something that I think provided me with a healthy perspective on mass conformity and the rat race...Bicycle Race celebrates more than anything the notion of individuality and that it's totally cool to find oneself out of step with the "times"...
356 ALLENTOWN...Billy Joel
Allentown, from what I deem to be Billy Joel's final masterpiece album, 1982's Nylon Curtain, is a searing, gut-wrenching song of the times, back during the time of its release when a deep recession, coupled with competition from abroad, saw many great factories of America's midwestern and eastern manufacturing base closing down one after another, devastating local economies and putting untold numbers of career workers on unemployment while painting a bleak future for the aspiring young in those areas. Although the economy was once again "booming" by 1984, I don't think the U.S. ever got completely over those traumatic years of the early 80s...the "Big Company" used to be seen as one of our nation's features of stability: now you never know what they'll do from one year to the next...
355 MAGIC...Olivia Newton-John
Although technically a "disco" song from the soundtrack of a roller-skate-disco movie (Xanadu), 1980's Magic to me was simply a great ballad beautifully sung by Olivia Newton-John, one of my favorite singers of the 1970s and early 80s...it has a kind of mesmerizing effect. It also has an empowering nature to it: "You have to believe we are magic, nothing can stand in our way"...
354 I AM THE WALRUS...the Beatles
Back in July I read John Lennon's 1964 book In His Own Write, in which he did a lot of play on words, often to comedic effect. The Beatles' great continued his verbal antics on this song with lines like "Semolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower, elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna, man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe". The closing track on their wonderful Magical Mystery Tour album, it's also a piece that figured in the fabricated "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory that erupted in late 1969 and is still believed in some quarters to this day. Naturally, I had to listen to it repeatedly back then for the "clue" near its end...
353 SAILING...Christopher Cross
Hitting the airwaves during the summer of 1980, about the same time as song #355, I loved the overall peacefulness of Sailing...a real tension dissipater. Cross had such a promising beginning to his career...I wonder why it dropped off after his Theme from Arthur. I don't know if the actual process of sailing a boat is all that peaceful, though...looks like a lot of stress and hard work if you ask me...
352 INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY...the Beastie Boys
I'll say it up front: I'm not a fan of hip-hip/rap music, but this summer-of-1998 hit by the rap trio Beastie Boys...originally a standard rock act with a female member...stands out because it's so humorously campy about its science fiction message and uses some unusual instrumental accompaniment as well as a strange key change about two thirds of the way through it. I associate it with where I was at the time on my job and what I was doing then...
351 WONDERWALL...Oasis
Another song I associate with where I was at work when it was popular in 1996, this is a somber, reflective song that combines lead singer Liam Gallagher's plaintive delivery (his brother Noel wrote it) with brilliant acoustic guitar, piano, and strings accompaniment. From it the recurring line "I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now" resounds. Oasis was a promising 1990s British band that unfortunately seemed to spend more time and effort fighting among themselves and insulting others than focusing on putting out the music that I believe they were capable of...
Next week: songs #350-341...
360 THE WAYWARD WIND....Gogi Grant
Nostalgia radio is something that began in the 1970s, and it was on one of those stations that I first heard...and instantly fell in love with...Gogi Grant's epic, mournful ballad The Wayward Wind. It was a huge hit in 1956 and reportedly knocked Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel off the top of the charts...yet my local rock stations in the 1960s, WQAM and WFUN, apparently didn't think it qualified to be on their playlist of "golden oldies" alongside Presley's classic hits. Now, well over forty years after I first heard it, I still think very highly of this song...Gogi Grant passed away three years ago at age 91...
359 ROAD TO NOWHERE...Talking Heads
The rat-a-tat-tat percussion beat defines this song of cynicism, as usual...like other Talking Heads songs...delivered with a strongly humorous bent by their lead vocalist and creative force David Byrne. The video is also something you don't want to miss...very, very imaginative and funny. The opening chorus-sung lyrics express people's ideals and rationales, which Byrne then proceeds to utterly deflate. It came out in 1985 and is yet another song that makes me wonder why it didn't become a major top ten hit: maybe it was just a little too cerebral...
358 MERCHANTS OF SOUL...Spoon
Speaking of songs with a rat-a-tat-tat beat, here's another, and this one actually makes a non-dancer like myself want to get up and move around on the floor...it's that catchy. Merchants of Soul is from the Austin, Texas alternative rock band's remarkable 2005 Gimme Fiction album, maybe their best. Spoon is one of the more creative and listenable musical acts today, headlined by singer/songwriter Britt Daniel and drummer Jim Eno...I'm not usually interested in attending concerts but I'd like to see Spoon perform live: now that's an endorsement!
357 BICYCLE RACE...Queen
The line "Jaws was never my thing and I don't like Star Wars!" deeply endeared me to this counter-mass-culture anthem by Queen...I never was a big fan of either movie and couldn't see what the big fuss was about them. Also, from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s I was pretty heavily into (cheap) bicycle riding (not racing) as an alternative to motoring, something that I think provided me with a healthy perspective on mass conformity and the rat race...Bicycle Race celebrates more than anything the notion of individuality and that it's totally cool to find oneself out of step with the "times"...
356 ALLENTOWN...Billy Joel
Allentown, from what I deem to be Billy Joel's final masterpiece album, 1982's Nylon Curtain, is a searing, gut-wrenching song of the times, back during the time of its release when a deep recession, coupled with competition from abroad, saw many great factories of America's midwestern and eastern manufacturing base closing down one after another, devastating local economies and putting untold numbers of career workers on unemployment while painting a bleak future for the aspiring young in those areas. Although the economy was once again "booming" by 1984, I don't think the U.S. ever got completely over those traumatic years of the early 80s...the "Big Company" used to be seen as one of our nation's features of stability: now you never know what they'll do from one year to the next...
355 MAGIC...Olivia Newton-John
Although technically a "disco" song from the soundtrack of a roller-skate-disco movie (Xanadu), 1980's Magic to me was simply a great ballad beautifully sung by Olivia Newton-John, one of my favorite singers of the 1970s and early 80s...it has a kind of mesmerizing effect. It also has an empowering nature to it: "You have to believe we are magic, nothing can stand in our way"...
354 I AM THE WALRUS...the Beatles
Back in July I read John Lennon's 1964 book In His Own Write, in which he did a lot of play on words, often to comedic effect. The Beatles' great continued his verbal antics on this song with lines like "Semolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower, elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna, man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe". The closing track on their wonderful Magical Mystery Tour album, it's also a piece that figured in the fabricated "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory that erupted in late 1969 and is still believed in some quarters to this day. Naturally, I had to listen to it repeatedly back then for the "clue" near its end...
353 SAILING...Christopher Cross
Hitting the airwaves during the summer of 1980, about the same time as song #355, I loved the overall peacefulness of Sailing...a real tension dissipater. Cross had such a promising beginning to his career...I wonder why it dropped off after his Theme from Arthur. I don't know if the actual process of sailing a boat is all that peaceful, though...looks like a lot of stress and hard work if you ask me...
352 INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY...the Beastie Boys
I'll say it up front: I'm not a fan of hip-hip/rap music, but this summer-of-1998 hit by the rap trio Beastie Boys...originally a standard rock act with a female member...stands out because it's so humorously campy about its science fiction message and uses some unusual instrumental accompaniment as well as a strange key change about two thirds of the way through it. I associate it with where I was at the time on my job and what I was doing then...
351 WONDERWALL...Oasis
Another song I associate with where I was at work when it was popular in 1996, this is a somber, reflective song that combines lead singer Liam Gallagher's plaintive delivery (his brother Noel wrote it) with brilliant acoustic guitar, piano, and strings accompaniment. From it the recurring line "I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now" resounds. Oasis was a promising 1990s British band that unfortunately seemed to spend more time and effort fighting among themselves and insulting others than focusing on putting out the music that I believe they were capable of...
Next week: songs #350-341...
Monday, November 18, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: 380-371
Most of the songs on this week's list are distinguished not only for the great music in them, but also for their lyrics, some of which I've indicated. Here's the next ten selections and my reactions...
380 TURN IT ON AGAIN...Genesis
The first Genesis song I ever liked, Turn It On Again first came out in 1980 but I only first heard it two years later when Gainesville's Rock-104 played it a lot. A great collaborative effort between Phil Collins doing lead singing and drums, Mike Rutherford as guitarist/lyricist, and Tony Banks doing his magic on the keyboards. I loved the instrumental buildup at the song's beginning...
379 INSTANT KARMA...John Lennon
In early 1970 when it was a hit, I didn't like this clashing, angry song by John Lennon but in subsequent years grew to greatly appreciate it...Instant Karma, looking back on it, might just well be the musical ancestor of the Grunge movement in later years. Paul McCartney reportedly was very impressed with it as well...here's one of my favorite lines: "Instant Karma's gonna get you, gonna look you right in the face, better get yourself together darlin', join the human race"...
378 DREAMER...Supertramp
Dreamer was originally a 1974 British singles hit that became popular years later in the U.S. following the band's wildly successful Breakfast in America album...I recall it getting a lot of radio play in 1980. Supertramp was a quality collaborative musical act...sadly one of many...that eventually broke up because its lead singer came to believe that he was bigger than the rest of the band. Too bad, I thought their work was top-notch when they were all together: you'll be seeing them again on this list...
377 APPLE SCRUFFS...George Harrison
In 1971 I bought the George Harrison single What is Life, one of my favorite songs from that year. The flip side is Apple Scruffs, a paean for the fans who hung around the Beatles when they were at their Apple recording studios...the harmonica reigns supreme in this underappreciated, sweet song. Sometimes the B-side on those old singles turns out to be as good as the more promoted song on the other...
376 CECELIA...Simon and Garfunkel
In the spring of 1970 while my personal life as an angst-ridden thirteen-year-old was in turmoil, this singular track from the duo's final album Bridge Over Troubled Waters was released as a single. It has very strange beat and what seemed to me a Caribbean flavor combined with some racy lyrics to present a standout, unforgettable tune...I was crazy about it back in '70...
375 MARTHA MY DEAR...the Beatles
This was one of Paul McCartney's songs off the band's White Album with extensive background arrangement by producer George Martin. I first heard it in 1972...four years after the album's initial release. It's one of this double album's best tracks in spite of the fact that the "Martha" old Paul seemed to be singing so romantically about turned out to be his own pet sheepdog...
374 THE RUNNER...Manfred Mann's Earth Band
With all the songs on this list that I associate with running, it's ironic that Manfred Mann's Earth Band's early 1980s song The Runner didn't appeal to me for that reason...I wasn't running then and hadn't been for years. No, the lyrics had a broader meaning to me of striving hard for any worthwhile, challenging goal no matter what obstacles or opposition from others may arise...pretty inspiring...
373 NEW FRONTIER...Donald Fagen
This song should have been a monster hit in 1982...such a classy mix of nostalgic lyrics and jazzy rock. Fagen's Steely Dan had split for a while back then and the band's lead singer scored big with this single...and the video is hilarious and romantic, one of the best I've seen. The setting is the early years of the Kennedy administration in the early '60s when nuclear Armageddon at the height of the Cold War between America and the USSR hung menacingly over everyone but people still went about their lives without freaking out over the threat. Still, a lot of folks had built family bomb shelters out back...
372 STUPIFY...Disturbed
This 2000 hard rock song is a mood piece, expressing the singer's abject frustration at every turn of his situation until the point where he's "stupefied". It's marked by a sharp, regular barking out of words, some of them unprintable. My favorite part is the solemnity of the music and singer David Draiman slowly chanting in a Middle Eastern-style break toward the song's end the Hebrew "tefached", meaning "you will be afraid". I also loved his spoken introductory words: "Yeah, bringing you another disturbing creation from the mind of one sick animal who can't tell the difference and gets stupefied"...
371 MOVIN' OUT (ANTHONY'S SONG)...Billy Joel
I've written before about a couple of songs that put down the rat race, claiming that spending that much time and energy for marginal material gain just isn't worth it...Movin' Out is the undisputed king of such songs. Joel bluntly and sardonically lays it out on the line about a policeman moonlighting as a bartender: "Yeah, and he's tradin' in his Chevy for a Cadillac, you oughta know by now, and if he can't drive with a broken back, at least he can polish the fenders". This was the opening track in Billy Joel's stupendous The Stranger album from 1977...the pinnacle of his creative output, in my opinion. I'm totally in sync with his message on Movin' Out, although in real life Joel himself seemed totally immersed in the rat race...
Next week: #370-361...
380 TURN IT ON AGAIN...Genesis
The first Genesis song I ever liked, Turn It On Again first came out in 1980 but I only first heard it two years later when Gainesville's Rock-104 played it a lot. A great collaborative effort between Phil Collins doing lead singing and drums, Mike Rutherford as guitarist/lyricist, and Tony Banks doing his magic on the keyboards. I loved the instrumental buildup at the song's beginning...
379 INSTANT KARMA...John Lennon
In early 1970 when it was a hit, I didn't like this clashing, angry song by John Lennon but in subsequent years grew to greatly appreciate it...Instant Karma, looking back on it, might just well be the musical ancestor of the Grunge movement in later years. Paul McCartney reportedly was very impressed with it as well...here's one of my favorite lines: "Instant Karma's gonna get you, gonna look you right in the face, better get yourself together darlin', join the human race"...
378 DREAMER...Supertramp
Dreamer was originally a 1974 British singles hit that became popular years later in the U.S. following the band's wildly successful Breakfast in America album...I recall it getting a lot of radio play in 1980. Supertramp was a quality collaborative musical act...sadly one of many...that eventually broke up because its lead singer came to believe that he was bigger than the rest of the band. Too bad, I thought their work was top-notch when they were all together: you'll be seeing them again on this list...
377 APPLE SCRUFFS...George Harrison
In 1971 I bought the George Harrison single What is Life, one of my favorite songs from that year. The flip side is Apple Scruffs, a paean for the fans who hung around the Beatles when they were at their Apple recording studios...the harmonica reigns supreme in this underappreciated, sweet song. Sometimes the B-side on those old singles turns out to be as good as the more promoted song on the other...
376 CECELIA...Simon and Garfunkel
In the spring of 1970 while my personal life as an angst-ridden thirteen-year-old was in turmoil, this singular track from the duo's final album Bridge Over Troubled Waters was released as a single. It has very strange beat and what seemed to me a Caribbean flavor combined with some racy lyrics to present a standout, unforgettable tune...I was crazy about it back in '70...
375 MARTHA MY DEAR...the Beatles
This was one of Paul McCartney's songs off the band's White Album with extensive background arrangement by producer George Martin. I first heard it in 1972...four years after the album's initial release. It's one of this double album's best tracks in spite of the fact that the "Martha" old Paul seemed to be singing so romantically about turned out to be his own pet sheepdog...
374 THE RUNNER...Manfred Mann's Earth Band
With all the songs on this list that I associate with running, it's ironic that Manfred Mann's Earth Band's early 1980s song The Runner didn't appeal to me for that reason...I wasn't running then and hadn't been for years. No, the lyrics had a broader meaning to me of striving hard for any worthwhile, challenging goal no matter what obstacles or opposition from others may arise...pretty inspiring...
373 NEW FRONTIER...Donald Fagen
This song should have been a monster hit in 1982...such a classy mix of nostalgic lyrics and jazzy rock. Fagen's Steely Dan had split for a while back then and the band's lead singer scored big with this single...and the video is hilarious and romantic, one of the best I've seen. The setting is the early years of the Kennedy administration in the early '60s when nuclear Armageddon at the height of the Cold War between America and the USSR hung menacingly over everyone but people still went about their lives without freaking out over the threat. Still, a lot of folks had built family bomb shelters out back...
372 STUPIFY...Disturbed
This 2000 hard rock song is a mood piece, expressing the singer's abject frustration at every turn of his situation until the point where he's "stupefied". It's marked by a sharp, regular barking out of words, some of them unprintable. My favorite part is the solemnity of the music and singer David Draiman slowly chanting in a Middle Eastern-style break toward the song's end the Hebrew "tefached", meaning "you will be afraid". I also loved his spoken introductory words: "Yeah, bringing you another disturbing creation from the mind of one sick animal who can't tell the difference and gets stupefied"...
371 MOVIN' OUT (ANTHONY'S SONG)...Billy Joel
I've written before about a couple of songs that put down the rat race, claiming that spending that much time and energy for marginal material gain just isn't worth it...Movin' Out is the undisputed king of such songs. Joel bluntly and sardonically lays it out on the line about a policeman moonlighting as a bartender: "Yeah, and he's tradin' in his Chevy for a Cadillac, you oughta know by now, and if he can't drive with a broken back, at least he can polish the fenders". This was the opening track in Billy Joel's stupendous The Stranger album from 1977...the pinnacle of his creative output, in my opinion. I'm totally in sync with his message on Movin' Out, although in real life Joel himself seemed totally immersed in the rat race...
Next week: #370-361...
Friday, November 8, 2019
Quote of the Week...from Billy Joel
Though we choose between reality and madness it's either sadness or euphoria. ---Billy Joel
The above quote is a line from Billy Joel's 1976 Summer, Highland Falls, a track from his 1976 Turnstiles album. This song's lyrics are a cognitive reverie in philosophy...I encourage you to listen it, which I just posted this past Monday as #393 on my all-time favorites list. Before I go into what this quote meant for me, let me share that once in my eleventh-grade English class back in late 1972 we had a guest speaker, a poet of renown, to sit in on the class and discuss his craft. I remember him stating that oftentimes he would get feedback from people who credited him with all sorts of revelations in his poems that enlightened them...but that he himself hadn't been thinking at all along those lines when composing them. And then he said that the work stands on its own once it's out there and that even unintended interpretations are legitimate, as far as he was concerned. So with that in mind I acknowledge that I may or may not be in total sync with Billy Joel's intended message here, but I'll give my own "feedback" anyway, for what it's worth...
If there's one word that I believe adequately describes these times we live in and the social attitudes epitomizing it, it is "narrative". Art Linkletter may have said that "kids say the darndest things", but people in general believe the darndest things as long as they fit within their own personal adopted narratives about the nature of the world around them and their own perceived lives. These narratives, which include past personal history, religion, politics, socioeconomic class, identity categories, economic status, consumption patterns (including that of drugs), and entertainment preferences, tend to reinforce themselves in their holders' minds through supporting input...be it true or false...while they tend to reject any contradictory information regardless of its truth value...to believe something patently false just because it fits your narrative to me is a feature of madness. And behind each person's personally and tenaciously held narrative...each with its peculiar mixture of reality and fantasy...is the unrecognized cause for it: the narrative makes them feel better...
One thing that social media like Facebook and Twitter do very well is to reveal and encourage people's personally held narratives. These forums feed into narrative bias by giving users access to just about any opinion source that supplies catchy slogans or "news" items propping them up. I believe folks in general want to have a sense of order about their lives and what's going on around them, and since it comforts them more they will be willing to throw away any objective, respectful and skeptical treatment of the news or the diversity of viewpoints about a particular point and instead boil it all down to the good guys (who possess all of the truth) versus the bad guys (born liars, all of them). It's frustrating for me to see this in others, along with their tendency to only reference the news sources that resonate with their narratives, yet in all honesty as a human being here along with the rest of us I'm also plodding along through my own life with my own tightly-held, cherished narrative...after all, it's either sadness or euphoria. But I've noticed one thing ever since I began this blog more than twelve years ago: when I write about a particular subject I often finding myself taking on both its pros and cons and on a number of occasions end up with a message that I hadn't previously intended...and I watch and read all kinds of perspectives on what's going around us. Why don't you start your own writing blog and share your views with the world as well? I'd be interested in reading it, plus it may benefit you as it has done me by helping you to sort out your own narratives. Wordpress or Google's Blogger (which I use) are good places to start...
The above quote is a line from Billy Joel's 1976 Summer, Highland Falls, a track from his 1976 Turnstiles album. This song's lyrics are a cognitive reverie in philosophy...I encourage you to listen it, which I just posted this past Monday as #393 on my all-time favorites list. Before I go into what this quote meant for me, let me share that once in my eleventh-grade English class back in late 1972 we had a guest speaker, a poet of renown, to sit in on the class and discuss his craft. I remember him stating that oftentimes he would get feedback from people who credited him with all sorts of revelations in his poems that enlightened them...but that he himself hadn't been thinking at all along those lines when composing them. And then he said that the work stands on its own once it's out there and that even unintended interpretations are legitimate, as far as he was concerned. So with that in mind I acknowledge that I may or may not be in total sync with Billy Joel's intended message here, but I'll give my own "feedback" anyway, for what it's worth...
If there's one word that I believe adequately describes these times we live in and the social attitudes epitomizing it, it is "narrative". Art Linkletter may have said that "kids say the darndest things", but people in general believe the darndest things as long as they fit within their own personal adopted narratives about the nature of the world around them and their own perceived lives. These narratives, which include past personal history, religion, politics, socioeconomic class, identity categories, economic status, consumption patterns (including that of drugs), and entertainment preferences, tend to reinforce themselves in their holders' minds through supporting input...be it true or false...while they tend to reject any contradictory information regardless of its truth value...to believe something patently false just because it fits your narrative to me is a feature of madness. And behind each person's personally and tenaciously held narrative...each with its peculiar mixture of reality and fantasy...is the unrecognized cause for it: the narrative makes them feel better...
One thing that social media like Facebook and Twitter do very well is to reveal and encourage people's personally held narratives. These forums feed into narrative bias by giving users access to just about any opinion source that supplies catchy slogans or "news" items propping them up. I believe folks in general want to have a sense of order about their lives and what's going on around them, and since it comforts them more they will be willing to throw away any objective, respectful and skeptical treatment of the news or the diversity of viewpoints about a particular point and instead boil it all down to the good guys (who possess all of the truth) versus the bad guys (born liars, all of them). It's frustrating for me to see this in others, along with their tendency to only reference the news sources that resonate with their narratives, yet in all honesty as a human being here along with the rest of us I'm also plodding along through my own life with my own tightly-held, cherished narrative...after all, it's either sadness or euphoria. But I've noticed one thing ever since I began this blog more than twelve years ago: when I write about a particular subject I often finding myself taking on both its pros and cons and on a number of occasions end up with a message that I hadn't previously intended...and I watch and read all kinds of perspectives on what's going around us. Why don't you start your own writing blog and share your views with the world as well? I'd be interested in reading it, plus it may benefit you as it has done me by helping you to sort out your own narratives. Wordpress or Google's Blogger (which I use) are good places to start...
Monday, September 23, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #460-451
This week's selected songs span the early 1970s to the late 1980s...keep in mind that I'm in my early sixties! Yet further down the line as this ascending personal top 500 list progresses you'll notice quite a few songs that are relatively recent. But not this week...here's the next ten on the list...
460 I KNEW YOU WERE WAITING FOR ME...Aretha Franklin and George Michael
Back in the late 1980s Aretha Franklin was making a career comeback (remember Freeway of Love?) and George Michael had catapulted into superstardom after a string of hits with Wham and then as a solo artist. I wouldn't have paired these two together with a song, but as it turned out their collaboration was perfect...simply beautiful with Aretha wailing her best at the end. I recognized each of their individual musical talents but still never took to their songs...until this one came out. It saddens me that both giants in the industry have passed on...George in 2016 and Aretha just last year...
459 THE BED'S TOO BIG WITHOUT YOU...The Police
More than anything, the Police...who produced five excellent albums from 1979 through 1983 and then broke up...were a reggae rock band, with the emphasis on "reggae". This deep track from their second album Regatta de Blanc is perhaps their most reggae song...as well as being very relentless. Slow-paced and dreamy, I detect a little of frontman Sting's jazz origins in his singing as well. Definitely a great mood piece...
458 CHEESEBURGER IN PARADISE...Jimmy Buffett
A very happy 1978 tune during the summer of that year, Cheeseburger in Paradise is a celebration of dietary political incorrectness as Jimmy lays out the lyrics describing his big love..."I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French fried potatoes, big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer, well good God almighty which way do I steer?". I love cheeseburgers, too...the funny thing is I remember when I was about five and my grandmother visited us from Georgia. We sat at the local Walgreens diner on Taft Street in Hollywood and she ordered a cheeseburger...I was revolted: how could she ruin a perfectly good hamburger put putting cheese on it?
457 W-O-L-D...Harry Chapin
This is one of those common examples of a song from my past conjuring up a vivid, associated memory that has nothing to with the song itself. Chapin was a masterful storyteller with his songs...you may have heard Cat's in the Cradle or Taxi. W-O-L-D was a minor radio hit late in 1973, but for some inexplicable reason I associate it with running the elevated dirt path, designed for horse riding, stretching west of my high school's (Nova in Davie) track alongside SW 39th Street for a few hundred feet. So I'm listening to this tune about a has-been middle-age disc jockey and I'm transported to my old running course...go try to figure the sometimes odd workings of the mind...
456 RAEL...the Who
Sometime back in the mid-1990s I visited Hyde and Zeke Records across from UF on University and found the Who's first four albums in vinyl...and bought them all at a steal. Rael is the final track on their third, titled The Who Sell Out (and one of their very best albums) and is a precursor to the Tommy era with the actual Underture theme from that rock opera dominating the song's second part. When I first heard the abrupt transformation midway through Rael I was impressed...still am. There's another version of this song floating around, but my favorite is from the original album...
455 WE CAN WORK IT OUT...the Beatles
Reconciliation and working out problems together stand as the message of this Beatles singles song from the mid-sixties, the flip side of their hit Daytripper. Unfortunately, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who composed it, ultimately didn't take their own words to heart and the band bitterly dissolved in 1970. I always thought that they had a way out of their disagreements, but when you're in the middle of all the turmoil it's sometimes difficult to see that while you're holding on to your positions and "rights" as tightly as possible and looking upon the others as the "enemy". Still, I always liked the song's message and the music, another example of Lennon and McCartney each giving their creative input in a collaborative spirit...
454 BULLET THE BLUE SKY...U2
There are two versions of this song...I much prefer the original studio recording from U2's 1987 Joshua Tree album over their live Rattle and Hum version. It's a different kind of U2 song, painting a trance-like dystopian tour of a wild, out-of-control America as singer Bono tended to see our country at that time...before 9/11 and his subsequent embrace of the Bush administration. I tended to disagree with his politics back then...including his support of the Sandinistas...but this song is simply mesmerizing and I also believe that expressing one's criticisms of the United States doesn't necessarily mean that they hate my country...on the contrary I think folks like Bono and his band loved America and were fascinated by it...
453 CONVOY...C.W. McCall
Citizens band radio, originally designed for licensed operators acting in the public service especially for times of emergency, exploded on the popular scene in the mid-1970s as just about everyone had to get a CB radio in their car or truck as well as invent their own special "handle" and subscribe to the activity's special lingo. McCall glorifies it all in Convoy, the movement's unofficial anthem, spouting out one incomprehensible term after another while playing the role of a truck driver in a massive convoy determined to get past the "Smokeys". I wonder whether Burt Reynold's Smokey and the Bandit movie series would have ever happened had this song never come about...
452 MY SHARONA...the Knack
I really disliked this song when it began as a monster number #1 radio hit during the summer of 1979, but later came to realize that it played a positive role in helping to push back the suffocating presence of disco that had dominated radio for years and restore good ol' rock n' roll music to supremacy. The guitar riff is unique and unforgettable...I'm not so keen on the lyrics, which to me border on the misogynistic, but the music grew on me through the years. The Knack is an example of a band that laid out one great tune and weren't able to successfully follow up on it. Still, God bless 'em for helping to bring down disco...
451 STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU...Stealers Wheel
I'm standing there after school one late afternoon in April 1973 during high school track practice and somebody's got a radio there...loudly playing this song by Stealers Wheel. It's another example of a song that immediately provokes a specific, vivid memory. Gerry Rafferty, who passed away eight years ago, was the lead singer in this band and later went on to solo success with Baker Street and a couple other singles. I've always felt that he had the potential to become a major superstar but circumstances apparently conspired against this along with Rafferty's aversion to performing live. In the mid-nineties Sheryl Crow had a hit in All I Wanna Do, which brazenly ripped off Stuck in the Middle With You...
Next week: #450-441...
460 I KNEW YOU WERE WAITING FOR ME...Aretha Franklin and George Michael
Back in the late 1980s Aretha Franklin was making a career comeback (remember Freeway of Love?) and George Michael had catapulted into superstardom after a string of hits with Wham and then as a solo artist. I wouldn't have paired these two together with a song, but as it turned out their collaboration was perfect...simply beautiful with Aretha wailing her best at the end. I recognized each of their individual musical talents but still never took to their songs...until this one came out. It saddens me that both giants in the industry have passed on...George in 2016 and Aretha just last year...
459 THE BED'S TOO BIG WITHOUT YOU...The Police
More than anything, the Police...who produced five excellent albums from 1979 through 1983 and then broke up...were a reggae rock band, with the emphasis on "reggae". This deep track from their second album Regatta de Blanc is perhaps their most reggae song...as well as being very relentless. Slow-paced and dreamy, I detect a little of frontman Sting's jazz origins in his singing as well. Definitely a great mood piece...
458 CHEESEBURGER IN PARADISE...Jimmy Buffett
A very happy 1978 tune during the summer of that year, Cheeseburger in Paradise is a celebration of dietary political incorrectness as Jimmy lays out the lyrics describing his big love..."I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French fried potatoes, big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer, well good God almighty which way do I steer?". I love cheeseburgers, too...the funny thing is I remember when I was about five and my grandmother visited us from Georgia. We sat at the local Walgreens diner on Taft Street in Hollywood and she ordered a cheeseburger...I was revolted: how could she ruin a perfectly good hamburger put putting cheese on it?
457 W-O-L-D...Harry Chapin
This is one of those common examples of a song from my past conjuring up a vivid, associated memory that has nothing to with the song itself. Chapin was a masterful storyteller with his songs...you may have heard Cat's in the Cradle or Taxi. W-O-L-D was a minor radio hit late in 1973, but for some inexplicable reason I associate it with running the elevated dirt path, designed for horse riding, stretching west of my high school's (Nova in Davie) track alongside SW 39th Street for a few hundred feet. So I'm listening to this tune about a has-been middle-age disc jockey and I'm transported to my old running course...go try to figure the sometimes odd workings of the mind...
456 RAEL...the Who
Sometime back in the mid-1990s I visited Hyde and Zeke Records across from UF on University and found the Who's first four albums in vinyl...and bought them all at a steal. Rael is the final track on their third, titled The Who Sell Out (and one of their very best albums) and is a precursor to the Tommy era with the actual Underture theme from that rock opera dominating the song's second part. When I first heard the abrupt transformation midway through Rael I was impressed...still am. There's another version of this song floating around, but my favorite is from the original album...
455 WE CAN WORK IT OUT...the Beatles
Reconciliation and working out problems together stand as the message of this Beatles singles song from the mid-sixties, the flip side of their hit Daytripper. Unfortunately, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who composed it, ultimately didn't take their own words to heart and the band bitterly dissolved in 1970. I always thought that they had a way out of their disagreements, but when you're in the middle of all the turmoil it's sometimes difficult to see that while you're holding on to your positions and "rights" as tightly as possible and looking upon the others as the "enemy". Still, I always liked the song's message and the music, another example of Lennon and McCartney each giving their creative input in a collaborative spirit...
454 BULLET THE BLUE SKY...U2
There are two versions of this song...I much prefer the original studio recording from U2's 1987 Joshua Tree album over their live Rattle and Hum version. It's a different kind of U2 song, painting a trance-like dystopian tour of a wild, out-of-control America as singer Bono tended to see our country at that time...before 9/11 and his subsequent embrace of the Bush administration. I tended to disagree with his politics back then...including his support of the Sandinistas...but this song is simply mesmerizing and I also believe that expressing one's criticisms of the United States doesn't necessarily mean that they hate my country...on the contrary I think folks like Bono and his band loved America and were fascinated by it...
453 CONVOY...C.W. McCall
Citizens band radio, originally designed for licensed operators acting in the public service especially for times of emergency, exploded on the popular scene in the mid-1970s as just about everyone had to get a CB radio in their car or truck as well as invent their own special "handle" and subscribe to the activity's special lingo. McCall glorifies it all in Convoy, the movement's unofficial anthem, spouting out one incomprehensible term after another while playing the role of a truck driver in a massive convoy determined to get past the "Smokeys". I wonder whether Burt Reynold's Smokey and the Bandit movie series would have ever happened had this song never come about...
452 MY SHARONA...the Knack
I really disliked this song when it began as a monster number #1 radio hit during the summer of 1979, but later came to realize that it played a positive role in helping to push back the suffocating presence of disco that had dominated radio for years and restore good ol' rock n' roll music to supremacy. The guitar riff is unique and unforgettable...I'm not so keen on the lyrics, which to me border on the misogynistic, but the music grew on me through the years. The Knack is an example of a band that laid out one great tune and weren't able to successfully follow up on it. Still, God bless 'em for helping to bring down disco...
451 STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU...Stealers Wheel
I'm standing there after school one late afternoon in April 1973 during high school track practice and somebody's got a radio there...loudly playing this song by Stealers Wheel. It's another example of a song that immediately provokes a specific, vivid memory. Gerry Rafferty, who passed away eight years ago, was the lead singer in this band and later went on to solo success with Baker Street and a couple other singles. I've always felt that he had the potential to become a major superstar but circumstances apparently conspired against this along with Rafferty's aversion to performing live. In the mid-nineties Sheryl Crow had a hit in All I Wanna Do, which brazenly ripped off Stuck in the Middle With You...
Next week: #450-441...
Monday, August 26, 2019
My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #500-491
As promised a few weeks ago, today I am beginning my list, from "worst" to best, of my top 500 favorite songs of all-time. Now keep in mind that I'm not rating these for their artistry or general historical significance but rather am applying very, very personal, subjective standards. Chances are that you've already heard many of them...for the ones you haven't, I suggest you do an online search and listen to them: I think they're worth it. By the way, I found myself painfully having to omit many wonderful pieces of music that just didn't make the "cut"...so even these songs at the "bottom" of my list are pretty special to me. Well, here they are, starting with #500...
500 YESTERDAY...the Beatles
Not one of my very most-liked Beatles songs, but as a slow ballad...and I generally dislike slow ballads...this would easily be near the top of that list. Paul McCartney aced his solo performance of it in '65 on Ed Sullivan. Be prepared to encounter many more Beatles songs later on...
499 100 OTHER LOVERS...DeVotchKa
I'm not sure how I came across this Colorado-based indie group, but this title song of their 2011 album had a chilling, mysterious effect on me that year (and still does). I bet you've never heard of it...
498 WESTERN UNION...the Five Americans
I moderately liked this 1967 hit when it came out...in later years I grew to appreciate it as a well-packaged piece of popular musical art...
497 GREEN TAMBOURINE...the Lemon Pipers
I had the same reaction with this one as with #497...it's from 1968 and I bought the single nine years later while browsing through Peaches on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale...
496 TWO TIMING TOUCH AND BROKEN BONES...the Hives
Combining brash, screaming punklike vocals and intense guitar virtuosity into a two minute experience...the Hives are an underrated Swedish alternative rock band. I first heard this song on my local alternative rock station 100.5/"The Buzz" back in 2005...
495 STUPID GIRL...Garbage
Rock 104, my radio station of choice when I was working the long hours on the letter-sorting machine back in 1995-96, played this song a lot and, the song's misogynous-sounding title notwithstanding, Garbage singer Shirley Manson made me one of their fans with her brilliant performance...
494 NEIGHBORHOOD #3 (POWER OUT)...Arcade Fire
Another song I first heard played on "the Buzz" several times around 2006-07, but without knowing who did it or even what the title was. I later became interested in this band and was surprised to hear it on their Funeral album...
493 THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME...Led Zeppelin
Although I had loved their epic Stairway to Heaven since the early 1970s, I didn't know much of Led Zeppelin's catalog until the first box set came out in 1990...that's when I first heard this song featuring Jimmy Page's incredible guitar talent and singer Robert Plant struggling to keep up...
492 I FOUGHT THE LAW...the Bobby Fuller Four
When this tune hit the airwaves (over local Miami station WQAM "Tiger Radio") in 1966, I generally either ignored it or switched over to WFUN. Now I think it's one of the best songs to come out that year...tragically, Fuller mysteriously died in his parked car the same year, along with his promising musical career...
491 OH VERY YOUNG...Cat Stevens
Cat Stevens during the early 1970s composed and performed many sensitive and emotionally-gripping songs...this one was an ongoing radio hit at the time of my high school graduation in May, 1974...how appropriate a song to this era in my life...
Next Monday I'll cover #490-481...
500 YESTERDAY...the Beatles
Not one of my very most-liked Beatles songs, but as a slow ballad...and I generally dislike slow ballads...this would easily be near the top of that list. Paul McCartney aced his solo performance of it in '65 on Ed Sullivan. Be prepared to encounter many more Beatles songs later on...
499 100 OTHER LOVERS...DeVotchKa
I'm not sure how I came across this Colorado-based indie group, but this title song of their 2011 album had a chilling, mysterious effect on me that year (and still does). I bet you've never heard of it...
498 WESTERN UNION...the Five Americans
I moderately liked this 1967 hit when it came out...in later years I grew to appreciate it as a well-packaged piece of popular musical art...
497 GREEN TAMBOURINE...the Lemon Pipers
I had the same reaction with this one as with #497...it's from 1968 and I bought the single nine years later while browsing through Peaches on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale...
496 TWO TIMING TOUCH AND BROKEN BONES...the Hives
Combining brash, screaming punklike vocals and intense guitar virtuosity into a two minute experience...the Hives are an underrated Swedish alternative rock band. I first heard this song on my local alternative rock station 100.5/"The Buzz" back in 2005...
495 STUPID GIRL...Garbage
Rock 104, my radio station of choice when I was working the long hours on the letter-sorting machine back in 1995-96, played this song a lot and, the song's misogynous-sounding title notwithstanding, Garbage singer Shirley Manson made me one of their fans with her brilliant performance...
494 NEIGHBORHOOD #3 (POWER OUT)...Arcade Fire
Another song I first heard played on "the Buzz" several times around 2006-07, but without knowing who did it or even what the title was. I later became interested in this band and was surprised to hear it on their Funeral album...
493 THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME...Led Zeppelin
Although I had loved their epic Stairway to Heaven since the early 1970s, I didn't know much of Led Zeppelin's catalog until the first box set came out in 1990...that's when I first heard this song featuring Jimmy Page's incredible guitar talent and singer Robert Plant struggling to keep up...
492 I FOUGHT THE LAW...the Bobby Fuller Four
When this tune hit the airwaves (over local Miami station WQAM "Tiger Radio") in 1966, I generally either ignored it or switched over to WFUN. Now I think it's one of the best songs to come out that year...tragically, Fuller mysteriously died in his parked car the same year, along with his promising musical career...
491 OH VERY YOUNG...Cat Stevens
Cat Stevens during the early 1970s composed and performed many sensitive and emotionally-gripping songs...this one was an ongoing radio hit at the time of my high school graduation in May, 1974...how appropriate a song to this era in my life...
Next Monday I'll cover #490-481...
Friday, July 19, 2019
Quote of the Week...from George McGovern
The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plain. ---George McGovern
In this era when civility has so disintegrated that crowds of people rise up at a Trump rally to chant "Send her back!" regarding one of his political opponents whom he has just spoken against, the late Senator McGovern's above quote is worth taking into account. Now I understand that those who defend our country in the military...sometimes laying their lives down in times and places of international conflict...do have to strictly follow orders and believe in their missions as it all goes down the chain of command. But that's not what McGovern, himself a decorated fighter pilot in World War II (35 missions, Distinguished Flying Cross), was talking about. For it's those brave soldiers who do what they do not only to defend the "homeland", but also our precious freedoms we hold so dear here. And of them all, perhaps the most valuable is our freedom to express our opinions openly without the fear of persecution. That does not imply, of course, that what we say or write won't have consequences...but the state should not be in the business of shaming and intimidating people it disagrees with, and the president is the personification of the state in our country. The great late conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia once remarked that he never put down other people...just their ideas. And that's what's so disturbingly wrong with the atmosphere pervading our political world today. A lot of Trump fans accuse his opponents of hating on him but they need to acknowledge that he set the pattern with his continual insults against anyone he regarded as a critic or adversary. I do not like the attitude of the four freshman representatives dubbed "The Squad" because they also tend to personify their criticisms of others instead of focusing on their ideas and philosophies. One of these stated recently that if your skin color is like hers and you don't support her agenda, then you need to shut up. Another claimed in essence that criticizing any of them amounted to racism. And I am getting so tired of politicians and supposedly unbiased media figures hanging the terms "racist" or "bigot" so freely on people who are expressing a different opinion on one of the many important issues facing us. It's getting so bad now that politicians who are not saying anything are being so accused by their silence. I did not like Donald Trump's recent tweets suggesting the four maverick representatives go back to their old countries and believe they displayed his ignorance to the world: one of them is the descendant of American slaves, one has Puerto Rican ancestry...which means she and her family as American citizens go back further than Trump's family, one...of Palestinian parentage...was born in the USA, and the other is a naturalized citizen from Somalia. ALL are American citizens and were duly elected by their constituents to represent them. I don't agree with a lot of what they have to say, but let's concentrate on their ideas and not them as people, please. And it would help for them to do likewise...
In this era when civility has so disintegrated that crowds of people rise up at a Trump rally to chant "Send her back!" regarding one of his political opponents whom he has just spoken against, the late Senator McGovern's above quote is worth taking into account. Now I understand that those who defend our country in the military...sometimes laying their lives down in times and places of international conflict...do have to strictly follow orders and believe in their missions as it all goes down the chain of command. But that's not what McGovern, himself a decorated fighter pilot in World War II (35 missions, Distinguished Flying Cross), was talking about. For it's those brave soldiers who do what they do not only to defend the "homeland", but also our precious freedoms we hold so dear here. And of them all, perhaps the most valuable is our freedom to express our opinions openly without the fear of persecution. That does not imply, of course, that what we say or write won't have consequences...but the state should not be in the business of shaming and intimidating people it disagrees with, and the president is the personification of the state in our country. The great late conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia once remarked that he never put down other people...just their ideas. And that's what's so disturbingly wrong with the atmosphere pervading our political world today. A lot of Trump fans accuse his opponents of hating on him but they need to acknowledge that he set the pattern with his continual insults against anyone he regarded as a critic or adversary. I do not like the attitude of the four freshman representatives dubbed "The Squad" because they also tend to personify their criticisms of others instead of focusing on their ideas and philosophies. One of these stated recently that if your skin color is like hers and you don't support her agenda, then you need to shut up. Another claimed in essence that criticizing any of them amounted to racism. And I am getting so tired of politicians and supposedly unbiased media figures hanging the terms "racist" or "bigot" so freely on people who are expressing a different opinion on one of the many important issues facing us. It's getting so bad now that politicians who are not saying anything are being so accused by their silence. I did not like Donald Trump's recent tweets suggesting the four maverick representatives go back to their old countries and believe they displayed his ignorance to the world: one of them is the descendant of American slaves, one has Puerto Rican ancestry...which means she and her family as American citizens go back further than Trump's family, one...of Palestinian parentage...was born in the USA, and the other is a naturalized citizen from Somalia. ALL are American citizens and were duly elected by their constituents to represent them. I don't agree with a lot of what they have to say, but let's concentrate on their ideas and not them as people, please. And it would help for them to do likewise...
Friday, May 31, 2019
Quote of the Week...from Mitch McConnell
The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice.
---Mitch McConnell
The United States Senate's majority party has been Republican for the last two years of the Obama presidency and for all of Trump's so far. Kentucky's Mitch McConnell has been majority leader the entire period and has ruled his caucus with a tight rein, demanding strict party loyalty on the vast majority of votes. And "his" senators have by-and-large meekly complied like sheep with his whims, basically turning the Senate into a one-man legislative body. In February of 2016, United States Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a strong conservative, unexpectedly passed away, leaving a vacancy. Within three hours of the announcement, before President Obama could even talk with him about it, McConnell issued a press release stating that he would not consider any Obama appointment to fill the seat and that it would be filled by the winner of the coming November election after he or she took office. The above quote was made during this period...Barack Obama, who actually WAS the American people's duly-elected president at the time, still submitted federal judge Merrick Garland as his nominee. But McConnell snubbed Garland's attempts to meet with him and Charles Grassley, the Senate Judiciary chairman, refused to hold confirmation hearings. The rest is history: Republican Donald Trump won the election, the Republicans retained control over the Senate, and Neil Gorsuch filled Scalia's seat instead of Garland. Now fast forward to today in 2019 with the 2020 campaign and election looming ahead. I've previously suggested on this blog that should another vacancy occur on the Supreme Court during 2020, Mitch McConnell would weasel out of his so-called "principled" rationale for blocking Obama's 2016 nominee and instead push through a Trump replacement nominee. So when he was questioned about this last week in Paducah, Kentucky, he confirmed my suspicions by stating precisely that...
I know that many, many people keep political score on the United States Supreme Court composition and how the tally of conservatives vs. liberals will tilt the balance regarding strongly divisive issues, some of which carry enormous weight with different people and their associated interest groups My problem is that on some things I'm on the conservative side and on others I'm more to the left. I don't have any phobia about an "unbalanced" Court wrecking our country and our rights, but I do believe that when the political leaders responsible for processing its nominees are only interested in playing that numbers game for their own "side" and switch from principle to expediency whenever it suits them, then the system becomes corrupted and everybody eventually loses out when they lose respect for the process...and consequently the Court rulings when they are issued. I never did like McConnell because of his naked hypocrisy on this and other issues...can't the Republicans come up with anyone better to lead them? I can think of several in the Senate who would do a better job. As far as I can tell, conservatives and liberals alike despise him...Rush Limbaugh even derisively refers to him as "the Turtle"....
---Mitch McConnell
The United States Senate's majority party has been Republican for the last two years of the Obama presidency and for all of Trump's so far. Kentucky's Mitch McConnell has been majority leader the entire period and has ruled his caucus with a tight rein, demanding strict party loyalty on the vast majority of votes. And "his" senators have by-and-large meekly complied like sheep with his whims, basically turning the Senate into a one-man legislative body. In February of 2016, United States Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a strong conservative, unexpectedly passed away, leaving a vacancy. Within three hours of the announcement, before President Obama could even talk with him about it, McConnell issued a press release stating that he would not consider any Obama appointment to fill the seat and that it would be filled by the winner of the coming November election after he or she took office. The above quote was made during this period...Barack Obama, who actually WAS the American people's duly-elected president at the time, still submitted federal judge Merrick Garland as his nominee. But McConnell snubbed Garland's attempts to meet with him and Charles Grassley, the Senate Judiciary chairman, refused to hold confirmation hearings. The rest is history: Republican Donald Trump won the election, the Republicans retained control over the Senate, and Neil Gorsuch filled Scalia's seat instead of Garland. Now fast forward to today in 2019 with the 2020 campaign and election looming ahead. I've previously suggested on this blog that should another vacancy occur on the Supreme Court during 2020, Mitch McConnell would weasel out of his so-called "principled" rationale for blocking Obama's 2016 nominee and instead push through a Trump replacement nominee. So when he was questioned about this last week in Paducah, Kentucky, he confirmed my suspicions by stating precisely that...
I know that many, many people keep political score on the United States Supreme Court composition and how the tally of conservatives vs. liberals will tilt the balance regarding strongly divisive issues, some of which carry enormous weight with different people and their associated interest groups My problem is that on some things I'm on the conservative side and on others I'm more to the left. I don't have any phobia about an "unbalanced" Court wrecking our country and our rights, but I do believe that when the political leaders responsible for processing its nominees are only interested in playing that numbers game for their own "side" and switch from principle to expediency whenever it suits them, then the system becomes corrupted and everybody eventually loses out when they lose respect for the process...and consequently the Court rulings when they are issued. I never did like McConnell because of his naked hypocrisy on this and other issues...can't the Republicans come up with anyone better to lead them? I can think of several in the Senate who would do a better job. As far as I can tell, conservatives and liberals alike despise him...Rush Limbaugh even derisively refers to him as "the Turtle"....
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Music As I See It in 2019 So Far
I was planning to devote this article to listing various upcoming album releases this year from different acts I've come to like and follow. Unfortunately, the only album I could identify is Beck's Hyperspace: he just released a single from it, while at the same time announcing the new album...and I don't know when it's coming out. That's okay, there is so much old music I haven't heard from my favorite bands and solo artists that I can occupy my listening time with them. I just checked out Simon and Garfunkel's penultimate album Bookends...it's long been my favorite of this duo from the 60s, containing brilliant songs like America, Bookends, Hazy Shade of Winter, and Fakin' It. I've also been listening a bit to the great 1968 Rolling Stones album Beggars Banquet, featuring my own personal favorites Street Fighting Man and Prodigal Son. And, of course, I do very much like Paul McCartney's 2018 album Egypt Station, the track Caesar Rock still my favorite song of 2019 so far with his Happy With You a solid second. And I'm also listening to Antonin Dvorak's 9th "New World" Symphony in E-Minor...the second "Largo" movement is very compelling, but the whole thing is incredible, quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite classical works...
It's a shame, I suppose, that I never did get to care very much for either country or hip-hop music, since especially here in northern Florida these two genres dominate the popular music scene. This past weekend C&W icon Garth Brooks gave a concert at the University of Florida football stadium and you would have thought it was the Second Coming by how folks reacted to it on Facebook...I never did care for Brooks and this adulation hit me hard that the kind of music I like is no longer widely followed by the population at large. Well, they can have theirs and I'll enjoy mine...as long as they don't impose their tastes on me, that's all I ask: it's bad enough to hear crap that now passes as "popular" music on so many commercials nowadays...
It's a shame, I suppose, that I never did get to care very much for either country or hip-hop music, since especially here in northern Florida these two genres dominate the popular music scene. This past weekend C&W icon Garth Brooks gave a concert at the University of Florida football stadium and you would have thought it was the Second Coming by how folks reacted to it on Facebook...I never did care for Brooks and this adulation hit me hard that the kind of music I like is no longer widely followed by the population at large. Well, they can have theirs and I'll enjoy mine...as long as they don't impose their tastes on me, that's all I ask: it's bad enough to hear crap that now passes as "popular" music on so many commercials nowadays...
Friday, April 5, 2019
Quote of the Week...from Max Ehrmann
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. --Max Ehrmann, Desiderata
I first heard the prose poem Desiderata, composed nearly a century ago by writer Max Ehrmann, on the radio in 1972. Disc jockey Les Crane, with a instrumental and choral background, recorded and released then a popular single (which I own) on which he recited the entire piece...it made a deep impression on me then and throughout the subsequent years. The above excerpt is perhaps the most powerful part of Desiderata as it gives very practical advice for dealing with potentially adversarial and destructive relationships...both to see trouble coming and to avoid becoming complicit in it. As for the first part about loud and aggressive persons, I tend to avoid them like the plague, recognizing in the process that perhaps there is a useful place in the world for this personality type...but not around me. If you're pushing a point for me to consider and being forceful about it, you've lost the argument before you've even made it...maybe that's not one of my "good" points, but there you are. As for comparing myself with others, I've found that my problem hasn't been so much me doing the comparing about them but rather them doing the comparing about me...and then letting me know (sometimes in a loud and/or aggressive manner) their "verdicts". As I tend to be singular and task-oriented about how I structure my activities, work, and goals and am not excessively concerned about how I stack up about what I do (or am) in others' estimations, I'm sure that quite a few folks come to the conclusion that I don't care about their opinions of me. But like just about everyone else on this planet, I want to be accepted and esteemed by others...but only up to a point. Spending my time obsessing on how I stand in someone else's evaluation of me seems like a monumental waste of a perfectly good life, and I've seen enough in the media over the years of great achievers, be it in entertainment, government, the intellect, adventures, athletics, amassing wealth, or any other area our society places value on, whose lives apart from their area of accomplishment are complete shambles...I'm content with being the person I am, thank you...
I first heard the prose poem Desiderata, composed nearly a century ago by writer Max Ehrmann, on the radio in 1972. Disc jockey Les Crane, with a instrumental and choral background, recorded and released then a popular single (which I own) on which he recited the entire piece...it made a deep impression on me then and throughout the subsequent years. The above excerpt is perhaps the most powerful part of Desiderata as it gives very practical advice for dealing with potentially adversarial and destructive relationships...both to see trouble coming and to avoid becoming complicit in it. As for the first part about loud and aggressive persons, I tend to avoid them like the plague, recognizing in the process that perhaps there is a useful place in the world for this personality type...but not around me. If you're pushing a point for me to consider and being forceful about it, you've lost the argument before you've even made it...maybe that's not one of my "good" points, but there you are. As for comparing myself with others, I've found that my problem hasn't been so much me doing the comparing about them but rather them doing the comparing about me...and then letting me know (sometimes in a loud and/or aggressive manner) their "verdicts". As I tend to be singular and task-oriented about how I structure my activities, work, and goals and am not excessively concerned about how I stack up about what I do (or am) in others' estimations, I'm sure that quite a few folks come to the conclusion that I don't care about their opinions of me. But like just about everyone else on this planet, I want to be accepted and esteemed by others...but only up to a point. Spending my time obsessing on how I stand in someone else's evaluation of me seems like a monumental waste of a perfectly good life, and I've seen enough in the media over the years of great achievers, be it in entertainment, government, the intellect, adventures, athletics, amassing wealth, or any other area our society places value on, whose lives apart from their area of accomplishment are complete shambles...I'm content with being the person I am, thank you...
Friday, March 22, 2019
Quote of the Week...from Elton John
Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours.
---Elton John
I was fourteen when I first heard British rock/pop musician Elton John very late in the year 1970 just after his debut hit single Your Song was released in America. In the following years...which corresponded to my adolescence and early adulthood...he (along with lyricist Bernie Taupin) was responsible for many great songs that I loved like Tiny Dancer, Friends, Daniel, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Blues for Baby and Me, The Bitch is Back, Saturday Night's Alright, Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, and Someone Saved My Life Tonight...to name a few. His mass popularity took a dip in the late 70s but he has been producing music steadily up to the present day, with 33 total studio albums so far. So I guess this classically-trained pianist, composer, and classic rock star has a few credentials on his side when he discusses music, doesn't he?
I totally agree with Elton's quote, and it's significant that he tied together the concepts of healing and taking people out of themselves. I think a lot of our inner struggles are caused...well, by our inner struggling: sometimes you have to just let things go, or at least interrupt the pattern of self-imposed turmoil by focusing your attention on something else. While engaging in my daily work or socially-driven activities, my attention is rightfully focused on what I'm doing at the moment. But during other, less structured times I enjoy listening to my music...including that from the inimitable Elton John. I also find activities like reading, studying foreign languages, writing, and running to be therapeutic...even watching television, too, if it is done purposefully and not to the point where I'm just sitting there in a half-stupor flipping channels...
On a final note, if you're like me and somewhat disaffected by the current popular music being promoted by broadcast radio but are also tired of hearing the same old "classic rock" songs over and over again, there is a third choice: listen to those "classic" musicians (like Elton John) in their later works...many are still producing high-quality, compelling songs, the concept of retirement apparently not in their personal vocabulary. But you're probably not going to hear any of them by listening to your radio...
---Elton John
I was fourteen when I first heard British rock/pop musician Elton John very late in the year 1970 just after his debut hit single Your Song was released in America. In the following years...which corresponded to my adolescence and early adulthood...he (along with lyricist Bernie Taupin) was responsible for many great songs that I loved like Tiny Dancer, Friends, Daniel, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Blues for Baby and Me, The Bitch is Back, Saturday Night's Alright, Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, and Someone Saved My Life Tonight...to name a few. His mass popularity took a dip in the late 70s but he has been producing music steadily up to the present day, with 33 total studio albums so far. So I guess this classically-trained pianist, composer, and classic rock star has a few credentials on his side when he discusses music, doesn't he?
I totally agree with Elton's quote, and it's significant that he tied together the concepts of healing and taking people out of themselves. I think a lot of our inner struggles are caused...well, by our inner struggling: sometimes you have to just let things go, or at least interrupt the pattern of self-imposed turmoil by focusing your attention on something else. While engaging in my daily work or socially-driven activities, my attention is rightfully focused on what I'm doing at the moment. But during other, less structured times I enjoy listening to my music...including that from the inimitable Elton John. I also find activities like reading, studying foreign languages, writing, and running to be therapeutic...even watching television, too, if it is done purposefully and not to the point where I'm just sitting there in a half-stupor flipping channels...
On a final note, if you're like me and somewhat disaffected by the current popular music being promoted by broadcast radio but are also tired of hearing the same old "classic rock" songs over and over again, there is a third choice: listen to those "classic" musicians (like Elton John) in their later works...many are still producing high-quality, compelling songs, the concept of retirement apparently not in their personal vocabulary. But you're probably not going to hear any of them by listening to your radio...
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Paul McCartney's 2018 Egypt Station Album One of His Best
When I heard back in January 2016 of David Bowie's death from cancer, I was at the same time stunned to discover that he had just released a breakthrough album titled Blackstar, along with the incredible ten-minute-long title track and bizarre accompanying video. It gave me pause as I had assumed he was just another aging former rock star with an occasional mediocre album release...hardly the case as I went through his catalogue of great albums, many produced in his later years. Well, I think I'm discovering the same about Beatles great Paul McCartney, although thankfully he's still going strong at age 76. Late last year Paul released his latest album, Egypt Station, and it's full of wonderful music, evoking my memories of him as a Beatle and in his first two solo releases with his penchant for rich melodic ballads and a few rockers as well. His voice seems not to have changed one iota over the years...the lyrics on this album are personal and honest, sung with great feeling. Not that I liked every track...that's a rare feat for any album...but there are six that I like so much that, at this early stage of 2019, I have to regard them as my top six favorite songs of 2019. Here they are in order of my liking:
1 CAESAR ROCK
2 I DON'T KNOW
3 HAND IN HAND
4 HAPPY WITH YOU
5 DOMINOES
6 HUNT YOU DOWN/NAKED/C-LINK
If you miss the old melodic genius of Paul McCartney when he was decades younger, I think you're in for a pleasant surprise if you check out this latest album...it's definitely one of his best. Now, I think I'll check out some of his other later releases. The dude's still got that musical magic...
1 CAESAR ROCK
2 I DON'T KNOW
3 HAND IN HAND
4 HAPPY WITH YOU
5 DOMINOES
6 HUNT YOU DOWN/NAKED/C-LINK
If you miss the old melodic genius of Paul McCartney when he was decades younger, I think you're in for a pleasant surprise if you check out this latest album...it's definitely one of his best. Now, I think I'll check out some of his other later releases. The dude's still got that musical magic...
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Just Finished Reading Beatlebone by Kevin Barry
In 2015 Irish fiction writer Kevin Barry came out with the novel Beatlebone, in which ex-Beatle John Lennon, in 1978, temporarily flees his domesticated lifestyle he has been living in New York City with wife Yoko and son Sean...he feels the desperate need to find and then stay for three days on a remote little Irish island he had bought eleven years earlier. He plans to just sit there and scream and scream...a reference back to the Janov Primal Scream Therapy he had famously undergone with Yoko at the close of the Beatles era. The problem John has...and one that dominates the flow of the story...is that although he had visited this island before in 1969, now he can't remember exactly which one it is of the hundreds out there. He has an Irish character named Cornelius drive him around, steering away the clamoring press, finding lodgings, and introducing him to other usually very annoying characters. The language in the story is stream-of-consciousness and difficult to follow as John lets out his thoughts and interacts with others. There is actually very little said here about either the Beatles, John Lennon's former bandmates, or Yoko One and very much about not only his early childhood and his parents...but even his parents' lives before he was born. One thing that struck me in Barry's fictionalized account was that folks in that part of the world believed in haunted places that sometimes distorted reality, even to the point of taking people to other places and/or times...I've read of this phenomenon before in other books. And the notion that Lennon would just suddenly take off to a remote spot from his home has a factual basis: during his 1976-79 "retirement" from music-making while raising his little boy, Yoko and John immersed themselves in a kind of astrology in which she would abruptly assign him the task of briefly traveling to another part of the world and coming back...Barry referenced such a trip to Japan in this story. But the author laid forth the proposition that John was suffering from musical writer's block and wanted to produce new material, hence this trip to his island. The book's title Beatlebone reveals its meaning toward the story's end, which as usual I will refrain from giving away. Later I read some very glowing, positive reviews of Beatlebone, but I have to admit that it came across to me like another self-indulgent version of the Beatles' critically-panned Magical Mystery Tour movie. Although I think that the music of the Beatles was terrific and groundbreaking, I never got into the personality cult mentality surrounding them. That John Lennon was such a special, elevated person that his experiences and opinions transcended those of "ordinary" folks was never something I believed, but as a reader I felt I had to "play along" just to get through the story. I didn't like it as much as others did, but if you like artsy, stream-of-consciousness types of literature, then this one's for you...
Friday, May 11, 2018
Quote of the Week...from Viggo Mortensen
There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever. ---Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen is the actor, in case you didn't know it, who so brilliantly played the character of Aragorn, or "Strider", in the wonderful film adaptation to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings a few years ago. I don't know much about him or his opinions...I haven't even seen him in any other movies...but this quote of his I just found happens to strongly resonate with me. And you know what? It's the kind of thing I would have expected Strider to say...
I was doing some Internet research on the word "excuse" being used in quotes. Most of them seemed to tie in the making of excuses with being a failure...sorry, but I'm not totally convinced of this "lift yourself by your own bootstraps" pop philosophy. There are many factors that can impede people from living the kinds of fulfilling lives they would like to, including disabilities, persecution because of race, gender, physical appearance, religion, having to grow up in an abusive family and/or in extreme poverty or in violent environments, and so on. If folks are just supposed to shrug off their own negative experiences and plow on, then that sounds to me as if the many problems plaguing human society will never be adequately addressed and solved. On the other hand, in order to function as an independent adult, one must come to the conclusion that, legitimate excuses notwithstanding, they can still make choices to improve their lives and those of whom they love. But as Viggo stated, whenever I hear someone come out with the plaintive whine "I'm bored", I wonder what the heck is wrong with them...
There is so much of interest in this limited time that we are accorded in our mortal lives that it simply astounds me that there are people...apparently many, many people...who are incapable of experiencing any wonder at all of the amazing and interesting things around them. To appropriate a tired old cliché, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to be entranced by space travel, as well as by the wonders in our vast universe. Look at all the varieties of life on Earth, the different kinds of terrain there are, the different countries and their absorbing histories, the biographies of countless people, the almost endless number of stories...real and fictional...available to us, music in all its forms, and that's just scratching the surface. No it's absurd to ever be bored...but I think the main reason some like to roll out this lament is that they are so into themselves that the idea of thinking about anything that doesn't directly factor into their own inflated egos is something to be avoided. So maybe the main cause of this boredom isn't as much a lack of imagination as it is a sense of personal insecurity. Letting go of oneself for a few minutes and getting into something that doesn't necessarily prop up their self-image apparently is a pretty scary thing for a lot of people, so they end up "bored"...
Viggo Mortensen is the actor, in case you didn't know it, who so brilliantly played the character of Aragorn, or "Strider", in the wonderful film adaptation to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings a few years ago. I don't know much about him or his opinions...I haven't even seen him in any other movies...but this quote of his I just found happens to strongly resonate with me. And you know what? It's the kind of thing I would have expected Strider to say...
I was doing some Internet research on the word "excuse" being used in quotes. Most of them seemed to tie in the making of excuses with being a failure...sorry, but I'm not totally convinced of this "lift yourself by your own bootstraps" pop philosophy. There are many factors that can impede people from living the kinds of fulfilling lives they would like to, including disabilities, persecution because of race, gender, physical appearance, religion, having to grow up in an abusive family and/or in extreme poverty or in violent environments, and so on. If folks are just supposed to shrug off their own negative experiences and plow on, then that sounds to me as if the many problems plaguing human society will never be adequately addressed and solved. On the other hand, in order to function as an independent adult, one must come to the conclusion that, legitimate excuses notwithstanding, they can still make choices to improve their lives and those of whom they love. But as Viggo stated, whenever I hear someone come out with the plaintive whine "I'm bored", I wonder what the heck is wrong with them...
There is so much of interest in this limited time that we are accorded in our mortal lives that it simply astounds me that there are people...apparently many, many people...who are incapable of experiencing any wonder at all of the amazing and interesting things around them. To appropriate a tired old cliché, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to be entranced by space travel, as well as by the wonders in our vast universe. Look at all the varieties of life on Earth, the different kinds of terrain there are, the different countries and their absorbing histories, the biographies of countless people, the almost endless number of stories...real and fictional...available to us, music in all its forms, and that's just scratching the surface. No it's absurd to ever be bored...but I think the main reason some like to roll out this lament is that they are so into themselves that the idea of thinking about anything that doesn't directly factor into their own inflated egos is something to be avoided. So maybe the main cause of this boredom isn't as much a lack of imagination as it is a sense of personal insecurity. Letting go of oneself for a few minutes and getting into something that doesn't necessarily prop up their self-image apparently is a pretty scary thing for a lot of people, so they end up "bored"...
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
Tuesday's List: My Top Three Songs of Various Musical Acts, Pt. 5
Well, seeing that it's Tuesday again I guess I'll continue with this series of listing my personal top three favorite songs from different musical acts. I know I left out quite a few of the more popular artists, probably some that you like. For many of these, I may like one or two songs over the course of their careers...but three? Maybe if I were to listen to all of the tracks on all of their albums I'd like more...but I neither have the time nor desire to do this. The following list breaks down this way: other than the first entry, which I should have included a couple of weeks ago, the artists are generally known from the 1990's up to this day. My musical interests during the nineties and up through 2002 were mainly in the genre of hard rock...from 2003 onward it changed to alternative rock/indie music...it's been a very long time since I've followed "top 40" pop music. This list reflects that shift...why not try listening to some of the acts on it you might not have heard?
MELANIE
1 RING THE LIVING BELL
2 LAY DOWN (CANDLES IN THE RAIN)
3 BRAND NEW KEY
THE PRETENDERS
1 MESSAGE OF LOVE
2 MY CITY WAS GONE
3 BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG
THE B-52'S
1 ROAM
2 LEGAL TENDER
3 ROCK LOBSTER
METALLICA
1 SAD BUT TRUE
2 ONE
3 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
1 RENEGADES OF FUNK
2 KILLING IN THE NAME
3 BULLS ON PARADE
SUGAR RAY
1 SOMEDAY
2 FLY (with Super Cat)
3 EVERY MORNING
KORN
1 HERE TO STAY
2 MAKE ME BAD
3 GOT THE LIFE
FOO FIGHTERS
1 EVERLONG
2 SOMETHING FROM NOTHING
2 I'LL STICK AROUND
INCUBUS
1 STELLAR
2 DRIVE
3 TALK SHOWS ON MUTE
DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
1 SOUL MEETS BODY
2 CATH...
3 I WILL POSSESS YOUR HEART
TOOL
1 VICARIOUS
2 SCHISM
3 STINKFIST
SYSTEM OF A DOWN
1 SUGAR
2 ARIELS
3 CHOP SUEY!
COLDPLAY
1 MOSES
2 CLOCKS
3 ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME
FRANZ FERDINAND
1 TWILIGHT OMENS
2 ELEANOR PUT YOUR BOOTS ON
3 THIS FIRE
THE KILLERS
1 ALL THESE THINGS THAT I'VE DONE
2 THE MAN
3 HUMAN
SUFJAN STEVENS
1 DETROIT, LIFT UP YOUR WEARY HEAD
2 CASIMIR PULASKI DAY
3 JACKSONVILLE
REGINA SPEKTOR
1 US
2 FIREWOOD
3 MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES
ARCADE FIRE
1 NEON BIBLE
2 WINDOWSILL
3 ROCOCO
KASABIAN
1 SWITCHBLADE SMILES
2 REASON IS TREASON
3 TREAT
GORILLAZ
1 TO BINGE
2 STYLO
3 REVOLVING DOORS
METRIC
1 CALCULATION THEME
2 SOFT ROCK STAR
3 LOVE IS A PLACE
ANDREW BIRD
1 FIERY CRASH
2 FITZ AND THE DIZZYSPELLS
3 FAKE PALINDROMES
PJ HARVEY
1 THE WHEEL
2 THE ORANGE MONKEY
3 THE COMMUNITY OF HOPE
THE STROKES
1 12:51
2 REPTILIA
3 THE END HAS NO END
SPOON
1 THE GHOST OF YOU LINGERS
2 MERCHANTS OF SOUL
3 GOODNIGHT LAURA
LINKIN PARK
1 BLACKOUT
2 BLEED IT OUT
3 FAINT
CAGE THE ELEPHANT
1 COME A LITTLE BIT CLOSER
2 SHAKE ME DOWN
3 WHOLE WIDE WORLD
MGMT
1 TIME TO PRETEND
2 KIDS
3 ELECTRIC FEEL
TWENTY ONE PILOTS
1 RIDE
2 HEAVYDIRTYSOUL
3 HEATHENS
MELANIE
1 RING THE LIVING BELL
2 LAY DOWN (CANDLES IN THE RAIN)
3 BRAND NEW KEY
THE PRETENDERS
1 MESSAGE OF LOVE
2 MY CITY WAS GONE
3 BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG
THE B-52'S
1 ROAM
2 LEGAL TENDER
3 ROCK LOBSTER
METALLICA
1 SAD BUT TRUE
2 ONE
3 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
1 RENEGADES OF FUNK
2 KILLING IN THE NAME
3 BULLS ON PARADE
SUGAR RAY
1 SOMEDAY
2 FLY (with Super Cat)
3 EVERY MORNING
KORN
1 HERE TO STAY
2 MAKE ME BAD
3 GOT THE LIFE
FOO FIGHTERS
1 EVERLONG
2 SOMETHING FROM NOTHING
2 I'LL STICK AROUND
INCUBUS
1 STELLAR
2 DRIVE
3 TALK SHOWS ON MUTE
DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
1 SOUL MEETS BODY
2 CATH...
3 I WILL POSSESS YOUR HEART
TOOL
1 VICARIOUS
2 SCHISM
3 STINKFIST
SYSTEM OF A DOWN
1 SUGAR
2 ARIELS
3 CHOP SUEY!
COLDPLAY
1 MOSES
2 CLOCKS
3 ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME
FRANZ FERDINAND
1 TWILIGHT OMENS
2 ELEANOR PUT YOUR BOOTS ON
3 THIS FIRE
THE KILLERS
1 ALL THESE THINGS THAT I'VE DONE
2 THE MAN
3 HUMAN
SUFJAN STEVENS
1 DETROIT, LIFT UP YOUR WEARY HEAD
2 CASIMIR PULASKI DAY
3 JACKSONVILLE
REGINA SPEKTOR
1 US
2 FIREWOOD
3 MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES
ARCADE FIRE
1 NEON BIBLE
2 WINDOWSILL
3 ROCOCO
KASABIAN
1 SWITCHBLADE SMILES
2 REASON IS TREASON
3 TREAT
GORILLAZ
1 TO BINGE
2 STYLO
3 REVOLVING DOORS
METRIC
1 CALCULATION THEME
2 SOFT ROCK STAR
3 LOVE IS A PLACE
ANDREW BIRD
1 FIERY CRASH
2 FITZ AND THE DIZZYSPELLS
3 FAKE PALINDROMES
PJ HARVEY
1 THE WHEEL
2 THE ORANGE MONKEY
3 THE COMMUNITY OF HOPE
THE STROKES
1 12:51
2 REPTILIA
3 THE END HAS NO END
SPOON
1 THE GHOST OF YOU LINGERS
2 MERCHANTS OF SOUL
3 GOODNIGHT LAURA
LINKIN PARK
1 BLACKOUT
2 BLEED IT OUT
3 FAINT
CAGE THE ELEPHANT
1 COME A LITTLE BIT CLOSER
2 SHAKE ME DOWN
3 WHOLE WIDE WORLD
MGMT
1 TIME TO PRETEND
2 KIDS
3 ELECTRIC FEEL
TWENTY ONE PILOTS
1 RIDE
2 HEAVYDIRTYSOUL
3 HEATHENS
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Tuesday's List: My Top Three Songs from Various Musical Acts, Pt. 4
Here are a few more musical acts with my top three favorite songs from each of them...I continue to plod along chronologically in very rough fashion as I go from the 1980s into the 1990s, although many of the songs are from outside that range. I considered some artists who had one or two songs I really liked...but dang it, I couldn't find a third song that appealed to me so I left them off the list. And don't forget: I'm not necessarily listing the "greatest" songs...only the ones that have personally stuck with me. Here goes...
WHITNEY HOUSTON
1 SO EMOTIONAL
2 THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL
2 HOW WILL I KNOW
VAN HALEN
1 HUMANS BEING
2 FEELS SO GOOD
3 AND THE CRADLE WILL ROCK...
PET SHOP BOYS
1 WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS (with Dusty Springfield)
2 WEST END GIRLS
3 ALWAYS ON MY MIND
THE BEASTIE BOYS
1 SABOTAGE
2 INTERGALACTIC
3 BRASS MONKEY
BILLY IDOL
1 CRADLE OF LOVE
2 EYES WITHOUT A FACE
3 DANCING WITH MYSELF
DEF LEPPARD
1 ROCK OF AGES
2 HYSTERIA
3 ANIMAL
EURYTHMICS
1 LOVE IS A STRANGER
2 WOULD I LIE TO YOU?
3 HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN
MISSING PERSONS
1 DESTINATION UNKNOWN
2 WORDS
3 MENTAL HOPSCOTCH
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE/STARSHIP
1 WHITE RABBIT
2 MIRACLES
3 WE BUILT THIS CITY
JANET JACKSON
1 MISS YOU MUCH
2 ESCAPADE
3 RUNAWAY
ZZ TOP
1 VELCRO FLY
2 SLEEPING BAG
3 SHARP DRESSED MAN
JOHN (COUGAR) MELLENCAMP
1 CHECK IT OUT
2 CHERRY BOMB
3 PINK HOUSES
SHEENA EASTON
1 YOU COULD HAVE BEEN WITH ME
2 WE'VE GOT TONIGHT (with Kenny Rogers)
3 9 TO 5 (MORNING TRAIN)
NIRVANA
1 SCENTLESS APPRENTICE
2 DUMB
3 COME AS YOU ARE
PEARL JAM
1 OCEANS
2 CORDUROY
3 EVEN FLOW
SOUNDGARDEN
1 MY WAVE
2 FACE POLLUTION
3 FRESH TENDRILS
ALICE IN CHAINS
1 AGAIN
2 GRIND
3 HEAD CREEPS
STONE TEMPLE PILOTS
1 SOUR GIRL
2 BIG BANG BABY
3 VASELINE
TRAVELIN' WILBURYS
1 HANDLE WITH CARE
2 MARGARITA
3 END OF THE LINE
COUNTING CROWS
1 MR. JONES
2 A LONG DECEMBER
3 ROUND HERE
DAVE MATTHEWS BAND
1 THE SPACE BETWEEN
2 CRASH INTO ME
3 ANTS MARCHING
COLLECTIVE SOUL
1 WHERE THE RIVER FLOWS
2 PRECIOUS DECLARATION
3 GIVING
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
1 TONIGHT TONIGHT
2 BULLET WITH BUTTERFLY WINGS
3 TODAY
SARAH MCLACHLAN
1 BUILDING A MYSTERY
2 SWEET SURRENDER
3 FALLEN
STEVE WINWOOD
1 BACK IN THE HIGH LIFE AGAIN
2 HOLDING ON
3 THE LOW SPARK OF HIGH-HEELED BOYS (with Traffic)
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
1 GIVE IT AWAY
2 TELL ME BABY
3 SCAR TISSUE
GEORGE THOROUGHGOOD (and the Destroyers)
1 WHO DO YOU LOVE?
2 MOVE IT ON OVER
3 BAD TO THE BONE
BLACK CROWES
1 REMEDY
2 HOTEL ILLNESS
3 HARD TO HANDLE
DEPECHE MODE
1 ENJOY THE SILENCE
2 EVERYTHING COUNTS
3 POLICY OF TRUTH
GREEN DAY
1 GOOD RIDDANCE (TIME OF YOUR LIFE)
2 HOLIDAY
3 BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS
GARBAGE
1 STUPID GIRL
2 PUSH IT
3 SPECIAL
WHITNEY HOUSTON
1 SO EMOTIONAL
2 THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL
2 HOW WILL I KNOW
VAN HALEN
1 HUMANS BEING
2 FEELS SO GOOD
3 AND THE CRADLE WILL ROCK...
PET SHOP BOYS
1 WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS (with Dusty Springfield)
2 WEST END GIRLS
3 ALWAYS ON MY MIND
THE BEASTIE BOYS
1 SABOTAGE
2 INTERGALACTIC
3 BRASS MONKEY
BILLY IDOL
1 CRADLE OF LOVE
2 EYES WITHOUT A FACE
3 DANCING WITH MYSELF
DEF LEPPARD
1 ROCK OF AGES
2 HYSTERIA
3 ANIMAL
EURYTHMICS
1 LOVE IS A STRANGER
2 WOULD I LIE TO YOU?
3 HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN
MISSING PERSONS
1 DESTINATION UNKNOWN
2 WORDS
3 MENTAL HOPSCOTCH
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE/STARSHIP
1 WHITE RABBIT
2 MIRACLES
3 WE BUILT THIS CITY
JANET JACKSON
1 MISS YOU MUCH
2 ESCAPADE
3 RUNAWAY
ZZ TOP
1 VELCRO FLY
2 SLEEPING BAG
3 SHARP DRESSED MAN
JOHN (COUGAR) MELLENCAMP
1 CHECK IT OUT
2 CHERRY BOMB
3 PINK HOUSES
SHEENA EASTON
1 YOU COULD HAVE BEEN WITH ME
2 WE'VE GOT TONIGHT (with Kenny Rogers)
3 9 TO 5 (MORNING TRAIN)
NIRVANA
1 SCENTLESS APPRENTICE
2 DUMB
3 COME AS YOU ARE
PEARL JAM
1 OCEANS
2 CORDUROY
3 EVEN FLOW
SOUNDGARDEN
1 MY WAVE
2 FACE POLLUTION
3 FRESH TENDRILS
ALICE IN CHAINS
1 AGAIN
2 GRIND
3 HEAD CREEPS
STONE TEMPLE PILOTS
1 SOUR GIRL
2 BIG BANG BABY
3 VASELINE
TRAVELIN' WILBURYS
1 HANDLE WITH CARE
2 MARGARITA
3 END OF THE LINE
COUNTING CROWS
1 MR. JONES
2 A LONG DECEMBER
3 ROUND HERE
DAVE MATTHEWS BAND
1 THE SPACE BETWEEN
2 CRASH INTO ME
3 ANTS MARCHING
COLLECTIVE SOUL
1 WHERE THE RIVER FLOWS
2 PRECIOUS DECLARATION
3 GIVING
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
1 TONIGHT TONIGHT
2 BULLET WITH BUTTERFLY WINGS
3 TODAY
SARAH MCLACHLAN
1 BUILDING A MYSTERY
2 SWEET SURRENDER
3 FALLEN
STEVE WINWOOD
1 BACK IN THE HIGH LIFE AGAIN
2 HOLDING ON
3 THE LOW SPARK OF HIGH-HEELED BOYS (with Traffic)
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
1 GIVE IT AWAY
2 TELL ME BABY
3 SCAR TISSUE
GEORGE THOROUGHGOOD (and the Destroyers)
1 WHO DO YOU LOVE?
2 MOVE IT ON OVER
3 BAD TO THE BONE
BLACK CROWES
1 REMEDY
2 HOTEL ILLNESS
3 HARD TO HANDLE
DEPECHE MODE
1 ENJOY THE SILENCE
2 EVERYTHING COUNTS
3 POLICY OF TRUTH
GREEN DAY
1 GOOD RIDDANCE (TIME OF YOUR LIFE)
2 HOLIDAY
3 BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS
GARBAGE
1 STUPID GIRL
2 PUSH IT
3 SPECIAL
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