Now that he’s made it to Viagra commercials might as well hear other great ones. As much as I hate to see the commercials they do get the music out there. We shouldn’t be snobby. My son Peter was at a high school dance last night and the DJ played Smokestack Lightning and the kids danced to it. This shit is eternal, and lest I stand accused of favoring my own era the 50s are not my era. I was born in 1955. I hardly heard any 50s music until WCBS-FM in New York became an “oldies” station in 1971, which then basically meant the 50s. At that time I 15-16 years old and was way into the Stones, Beatles, Led Zep, etc. No doubt age 16 is still the formative years, so in that sense sure it’s part of my formation, but I came to realize then and since that almost everything I like is variations and developments on blues, doo wop, and rocknroll/rockabilly. And Howlin Wolf is just in a class by himself. He’s like Ty Cobb – few you CAN compare him to and those few, well, Muddy Waters is Tris Speaker.
I’m on another Raveonettes binge. One mark of a great band is that what they do sounds so obvious once you hear it, but you never heard it before and nobody else is doing it. This song is a place to take punk that no other punks thought of, at least that I know of.
The worst lyrics ever have to be “We Are The World.” As far as I remember, every line in the song is a lie. Maybe there are a couple of mere bland statements, it’s been a while and it can never be too long, but anyway it’s close. I won’t inflict it on you. All I remember at this late date is “We are the world” – no you’re not, you’re a collection of pop stars. “We are the children” – I don’t hear any kiddies in there, maybe you could have flown some in from Africa. To meet your wonderful selves, the ones who “make a brighter day.” Somehow it didn’t work out that way.
I don’t care about lyrics because wopbopalubopawopbamboom is good lyrics. But when you hear bad lyrics blaring that’s another story. Lucky for me I can’t understand a lot of them. Usually I don’t want to know what the singer is saying. I’m fine with I love you so never let you go. Please come back. Come on come on let’s do the go somewhere and fuck.
It’s not that I don’t like good lyrics, it’s that if they try to be good they must actually be good. I love the words to Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, and I would play it for you, except that the only Dylan version I can find is again too painful to dump on you, you a busy guy/gal and all. But ya know, I’ll post it to illustrate how a great lyric can be destroyed by the vocals. The wedding band behind him doesn’t help either:
Sorry. That is atrocious, from the big star Bob, who won’t allow his songs on youtube because I guess he doesn’t have enough money. Always fighting for justice that Bob.
There are some great picture-painting lyrics. Some go back a long way, like to 1936. Bryan Ferry at his best:
There, that makes up for Dylan. Sublime kitsch. Ferry covered “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” on the same album, a delicious juxtaposition with “It’s My Party” and of course “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Ferry is a great lyricist. This is a song in danger if falling down the memory hole it seems to me, one of Roxy’s best:
I know what makes a good song: something about it grabs you pleasurably. So you are grabbed, you welcome the song in, and then you make it your own. We the listeners take the meaning projected at us – not just the lyrics, they are usually secondary to the meaning projected by the music – and we create our own meaning. The more you like a song, the more meaning you put into it. Or is it the other way around: the more meaning you invest in a song, the more you like it?
It cannot be defined because the essential process is utterly subjective. But you don’t have to define something to prove it exists. You can recognize it for one thing. “I know it when I see it” has been unfairly mocked for decades – for what about when others recognize the same thing? That’s exactly what we’re doing at Rock Remnants, trying to connect others to the songs that signify for each of us. Mutual recognition.
I must disagree with Ron in that I think a great deal of the best music ever made is variations on I-IV-V. You don’t even need three chords. Here is a great song with ONE chord:
That nails me to the wall. While no one has my exact experience with Commit A Crime – I’d love it even more if I had seen it live in a bar in 1954 – many people recognize it for the smoking shit it is. Let’s graduate to two chords, with a very popular song judging by the youtube views:
Once you get to three chords the floodgates open. Musicianship per se is not important at all to the emotional experience, the musicians have to get it over that’s all. It seems to me that one key to all the great songs and pieces of music is that the player(s) have to sound like they are playing the best they can play, that they are aspiring to the song. No great song was ever mailed in. I think many people instinctively if inarticulately seek this in music. Now, guys like us always take it too far and wind up liking songs like this:
There were a lot of young bucks who were thinking just like Elvis in 1955. The Elvis look was around long before Elvis for one thing. Slicked-back pompadours with pointy shoes were all over the teenage streets of all the east coast cities, at least, in the early 50’s. Black leather jackets were all the rage in 1953. And musically, the idea of combining blues with country was literally in the air, as people heard plenty of both on the radio, especially in the South. Plus electric guitars and amps were suddenly available. It HAD to happen. So it’s not right to call Carl Perkins and Conway Twitty and Gene Vincent and even Ricky Nelson mere Elvis imitators. And who cares if they were, as long as they made great records. This guy Clint Miller was an Elvis imitator I suppose, but this is a rockin tune just the same, with proto-Shakin All Over guitar:
Conway Twitty started out with a pomp while Elvis had his fresh fish special, and if this is imitation let’s have a little more. Too bad Conway immediately dove headfirst into the schlockiest of schlock Country. He had potential:
Moyer thinks the drums on the next one “pedestrian.” I think he’s nuts. They are pumping like what it’s all about. Add Dee Dee’s incredible voice and one the best sax solos ever:
The last two songs were hits in 1960 and 1962, so again it’s not a wasteland.
Lawr mentioned some of the godawful music between 1959 and the Beatles. True, but pick any week in any year and you will see garbage. Take August 6, 1967, when “Windy” and “My Mammy” by the Happenings and “Pleasant Valley Sunday” were all in the Top 10. In 1968 that week were “Lady Willpower” (OMG) and “Turn Around, Look At Me” by the Vogues. 1969 was not bad at all but damn there are Zager & Evans, Neil Diamond was an asshole even then, and Andy Kim was #1:
1. Baby I Love You – Andy Kim
2. Honky Tonk Women
3. My Cherie Amour
4. Sweet Caroline
5. Crystal Blue Persuasion – Tommy James & the Shondells
6. Put a Little Love in Your Heart – Jackie DeShannon
7. Get Together – The Youngbloods
8. a Boy Named Sue – Johnny Cash
9. In The Year 2525 – Zager and Evans
10. My Pledge of Love – Joe Jeffrey Group
So yeah, there was more crap in 1960, but the shit is always with us. I was cherry picking some tunes from itunes tonight and gathered a few 1959-1964 gems. I started with The Regents and this slice of punk from California 1961. I know for a fact that The Ramones loved this and I’m amazed that they never covered it, although it requires a killer sax player like whoever is whaling (not “wailing”) this:
I do like my girl groups and the Chiffons were a good one. This was a follow-up song that was not as successful as their three big hits which were He’s So Fine, One Fine Day and Sweet Talking Guy. But I think it’s their best. Big beat, tear offs on the guitar, and later in the song I think what is the first time anybody played a guitar through a Leslie speaker. Used primarily for organs, these speakers have a fan in them and it creates a distinctive sound which has been used dozens if not hundreds of times since. The tune is Jeff Barry-Ellie Greenwich:
I’ll finish off with one I used to play with Nicky D’Amico when we were between bands. We just loved it and still do. Smoking rhythm section with more punk guitar, more killer sax, and up yours with an electric shaver. It got the people out on the floor:
This tune made no one’s top 10 and I’m a little ashamed of myself. I’m also ashamed of you. You psychedelic guys anyway, for this is the Stones’ crowning psychedelic moment, I mean I love it but Dandelion notwithstanding. Actually, in England We Love You was the A side and Dandelion the B. Beatles guys should also revel in John and Paul on backup vocals, which are among the best they ever did. Absolute killer piano riff which I believe is Ian Stewart but I’m not sure.
The Rolling Stones still play, I guess you can call it that, but they can’t play this now. They’re all tricks and humping the stadium for yawns. They used to rock like this:
They rock the shit out of this too, Brian’s rhythm and Bill especially:
With the Stones I want to avoid the MONSTER SONGS that everyone has heard too much, but some of the hits are too good:
This next is the first Stones song I ever heard, on the AM radio in 1964. It’s still one of their best, at the time they were first trying to bust out of the strictly I-IV-V thing, which was pretty soon actually. The Stones always followed the trends, and so much for their uncompromising vision. Who cares. Here they do the girl group thing, as did the Beatles and all the Brit groups at that time, which I think is really interesting because you didn’t see much, if any, of this crossover thing in the U.S. After the Brits did it, it became OK for American boys. A lot of this song comes from the Ronnettes:
There are at least two versions of the next song, this is the one from the Flowers album but it has a longer coda, and is much better without the orchestration and kinda bumbling classical rhythms of the other one. Asking Charlie Watts to play classical music, the very idea. You’re obsolete my baby.
Let’s get Monkey Man in here before it’s too late. The blending of guitars and Nicky Hopkins on piano in the middle part still gives me the chills:
This song has the worst video ever made so I went for the blank screen. Really, it’s painful to watch. But the song…Stanley Booth wrote the best book about the Stones (“The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones”), he put it this way: “it has the best music ever on a Rolling Stones record, but unfortunately none of the Rolling Stones is playing it.” Stanley is referring to Sonny Rollins on sax and I can’t say he’s wrong. But ya know, to my no doubt philistine ears that’s the best Sonny Rollins ever sounded too.
I haven’t touched on Exile yet and it’s hard to know what to do with it. The whole thing is like one song, a complete tour of their music. When it first came out I didn’t like it that much, although I loved Tumblin Dice. It took me that whole summer to really get into it, but then I hardly listened to anything else for months. I still love Tumblin Dice but I love this one more better, the slowest song on the album. Mick’s got those hedonist blues:
It feels weird to leave off the songs from Sticky Fingers since there isn’t a bad song on the album and there are several great ones. Many could be subbed for those that made my list. But I’m down to two and Gimme Shelter is one of them. The other is fairly obscure, from an uneven album that many believe marks the beginning of the end for the Stones. I guess so, but they still had some great ones in them and this is one, another slow one:
And now Gimme Shelter. Extra stars to Merry Clayton, who also never sounded better. The third time she says “murder” is like the smile on the Mona Lisa.
More or less in ascending order. These are the Beatles songs I most want to hear right now, so I’m listening to them and writing them down.
Everything that made the Beatles great was there on their first album. They recorded better later and developed their ideas fantastically, of course. If you ask people what makes the Beatles great, one of the first two things you hear will be “the singing.” I contend that they were a great band without any singing, and even without Ringo. I dig the shit out of this song, and if any of you musicians would care to punk it up with me I’d be delighted. This is 1962 at the Tony Sheridan session in Hamburg with Pete Best on drums, song credited Lennon/Harrison:
Fast-forward to Revolver. I believe Lawr loves this one too. The better the song, the more all of them are at their best:
They were also a smoking rocknroll band and the best cover band by a thousand miles. They made MOTOWN better, they exponentialized Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins and Larry Williams and the Shirelles, and they gave Chuck Berry and Little Richard runs for their money. This neglected aspect is worth more than two songs but I don’t want to BORE you or anything:
Love Ringo especially on that one. Speaking of Ringo, might as well continue with the first song on their first album, talking ’bout boys:
Think the New York Dolls copped any ideas from that? The Beatles copped ideas from the Everly Bros., not only the singing but the abundant use of acoustic guitars. They took it much further, especially for rhythmic twists. as on this next one. Also John’s low harmony is one of his many strokes of genius, and the way he breaks out of it is why we are here:
I like that vein let’s milk it, and if anything this is even better:
Love the way they double the piano and guitar in the solo, and once again that rhythm is so swinging/rocking, Ringo’s fills especially. So I’m thinking how I’m neglecting Paul and that made me think of George. One of the greatest albums of all time is George’s Greatest Beatles Songs, and this isn’t even my fave. But talk about your unusually compelling melodies, not to mention the harmony on the chorus, not to mention Paul’s bass.
So I might as well do my fave George tune, as it happens his first:
Actually, if you said that Don’t Bother Me is the very best Beatles’ song ever I wouldn’t argue. You can laugh at me I don’t care, I will laugh in turn when you tell me that “A Day in the Life” is greater. I put it this way: if “A Day in the Life” was the Beatles’ first record, they never would have made it. Had the latter day Beatles sprung on the world in 1967, they would have been a cult band like Love. Songs like Don’t Bother Me are what made the Beatles the phenomenon they were.
Damn, I’m not going to get a Paulie in the Top 10. It seems wrong but too bad, he’s done very well in the songs I’ve already played. I think Paul’s best songs are You Won’t See Me and What You’re Doing. On another day they would make my list. But this is now. I think I said on this blog that Anytime At All was my #1, but on this I’ll make it #2. John at his desperate best:
So for #1, I don’t know how it is possible to hear a song so many times and still get chills. How rare is that magic? The bridge of this song is too perfect for words:
So I get 30 points to divide up. How about 6 points each for No Reply and Anytime At All, 4 points for Don’t Bother Me, and 2 points each for the other seven.
