Post by Rit on Jan 8, 2006 15:09:04 GMT -5
ODES TO TEN OF THE GREATEST SONGS EVER, imo:
(clearly reflecting my flagrant and possibly obnoxious garage rawk tastes and inclinations, so forgive the huge biases
Sister Ray (the Velvet Underground)
Besides being the most physically demanding song i've ever heard in my life, it also hits me with a force that appeals to my intellect and (umm) dumbness simultaneously. Just when my mind thinks i've anticipated every curveball, my body loses its legs out from under me, and likewise just when my body is toughened enough to stand up to it, my mind splits open, so i just can't win with this song. For going toe to toe with me and winning every time, it is the song of my life, all 16 minutes of it.
Tarotplane (Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band)
This song i don't mention as much as i do "Sister Ray", but its no less affected me over the years, so much so that it singlehandedly would make me put the album that it comes from on my Top Ten Albums lists although the rest of the album isn't as strong as this 19 minute song. Where to begin? Beefheart effectively amalgamates Robert Johnson style delta blues (the title of the song is a pun on a Johnson song), with Ornette Coleman free jazz bursts of music from his wierd "shenai" instrument on the verse turnarounds, and the backing band plays up a mofo of a storm for 19 minutes and yet never getting boring. It's hard to convey the power this song commands if you haven't listened to it. Talking about it does it no justice. It's immediate and visceral, it opens up space and time in front of you, channelling nothing but bare-bones delta blues music refashioned into all manner of Gnostic undercurrents and psychic exorcism.
Interstellar Overdrive (stictly the MONO Piper version) (The Pink Floyd)
This is antipodal to Beefheartian psychedelia. I like the noise, the energy of it, the instability of it. But rather than originate from Beefheart's mix of free jazz /delta blues metaphysics, it comes out of a more inexperienced mindset, virginal even, the kind that envisions the future as a Jetsons landscape of flying cars and robot maids. Beefheart himself would have no time for this, i suspect. On first listen, it may seem like there is no shred of coherence to it, but there is. It's subtle, and you must have an open mind. The narrative theme is 'CONFIDENCE'. Brash, young, unabashed confidence. Confidence enough to re-mold the world as you see fit. Confidence enough to dismiss verse-chorus-verse theatrics. Confidence in recognizing you're young and alive and that life is a series of put-ons and come-ons. Psychedelia done right must necessarily be a confidence trick... It is never a repository for "wisdom of the ancients" or any garbage like that (such as inferior bands were prone to do). There's no profundity in "Interstellar Overdrive", no answers to life. It's like a Teflon slab of noise, exciting, robust, like jumping off a cliff and freefalling for 9 minutes (before pulling your parachute open). Or like playing with matches on an idle summer’s day by the seashore. Why? Just because you feel like it. That’s the thing of it: it feels simultaneously disposable AND enthralling. How such an (admittedly) untalented backing band put this together is beyond me.. it rocks harder and prettier and more maniacally than like-minded (often uber-intellectuals) such as CAN or the Soft Machine... The Pink Floyd did have Syd Barrett afterall: he who was beholden to no ideology, who was just young and naive and enough of a prick as to think he could make avant-garde and Top Forty pop music combine like there was no boundaries to navigate. And so he did, aaand promptly went completely barking mad. Such is the price to pay, it seems....
Subterranean Homesick Blues (Bob Dylan)
Bob's best tune: bold, self-possessed, brash, intelligent, rawking, groovy, toe-tapping, and all round terrific. Bob’s messianic judgementalism is in full force on this song, but it comes across in a much more winsome manner than usual. This is Dylan in full-comic mode, attempting to speak in parables, but unable to take it seriously in the slightest. His disgust with earnest bland poseurs posing as rockstars at the time must have been off the scale, because it compelled him to produce this. A more devastating atomic bomb in the face of the marketable and processed parade of shiny synthetic objects which passed for pop music in the mid-1960s I can’t imagine.
Eight Miles High (the Byrds)
The finest single to come out of the 1960s. It represents to me all the best of the 60s - rock and roll, the free jazz INSANE guitar solos, the head-rush of the verse parts, the easy cool of the chorus parts, the smooth vocals, the sunny-disposition-meets-dark-star-universe which kinda captures something transcendant. The song is damn-near untouchable.
Jumping Jack Flash (the Rolling Stones)
The most primal riff of the Stones, which means that it runs a good chance of being the most primal riff ever. AC/DC had quite a few to rival the Stones, but "Jumping Jack Flash" trumps them all with the lo-fi intro, the pumping bass, and the incredible CharlieWatts drum stomp. The riff is superb. Unfuckwithable. The essence of the Stones in 3 minutes and 44 seconds. It literally leaps off the CD like a rapidly uncoiling steel spring, and maintains a breathless pace till the end. That's all you need. And yes, this song dates from the Brian Jones era (technically speaking, if you want to be anal about it) which pleases me greatly, as a matter of due reverence paid at the right feet.
The Passenger (Iggy Pop)
Iggy is a dirty white-trash fuck-up. Trailer park refuse. A sad-sack who got hooked on smack, kept a crack-whore’s physique throughout most of the 70s, & wrote music for losers and punks. Yet he also wrote Fun House, “Shake Appeal” and most especially “The Passenger". Now who looks like a loser, eh? You, that's who. Stand back and step down. Iggy’s vocal sounds jaded, supposedly evoking Jim Morrison’s sardonic tone, and the lyrics on this song are the weakest link. Lots of mindlessly clinical talk about driving around a city in the backseat of a car, possibly coked up and/or smacked out. Is there anything redeeming here? Yes. The combined effect of the tour-de-force music arrangements and Iggy’s commanding vocal presence is akin to watching someone walk on water, or setting fire to wherever it steps or touches because of the sheer awful naked flame of the soul bursting out of seams of the body.
St. Elmo's Fire (Brian Eno)
The most cerebral song here. Incandescent, elusive, utterly devastating in its quiet dementia. The hyperkinetic mobility of all the various instrumental parts is a key part of the magic. Eno’s haunted vocals sounds disembodied and dispassionate, but aching with longing on the doo-wop chorus parts. And then the guitar enters into the fray. Robert Fripp's guitar screams and orgasms and draws rings around the sun. It’s the most remarkable series of guitar solos I’ve ever heard. Like tremendous waves feeding back on itself, rising and cresting and subsiding with magisterial impudence.
Temptation (New Order)
The most perfect 80s song ever, which I suppose is a category unto itself. I don't care if you're talking about the 1982 original art-metalik sound or the 1987 nouveau-soul version... both are extraordinarily great. Ecstatic heart-thumping stuff, which gets your veins surging, your serotonin flowing, and your eyes smiling (even if your lips say no). A few more words about the 1982 version: Arising from the ashes of a recent suicide, floundering in a sea of uncertainty about the future, locked into a dark time with the potential to self-destruct or fall apart in all manner of worst case scenarios…. basically having EVERY reason to feel like jaded cynical misanthropes, the ex-members of Joy Division collectively crafted and put out this ode to visionary redemption on a dancefloor (or in your own bedroom). This song is the literal definition of CATHARIS in pop culture. A fitting tribute and lasting memory to a bunch of youngsters from working-class backgrounds who could have lost everything, but instead decided to stick around, doing something extraordinary to redeem their bleak futures.
The Caterpillar (the Cure)
A love song. The most headscratching song that Robert Smith ever wrote. It defies analysis. It's got a heart so wide open, and so earnest, that it can move mountains, and change the course of civilization as we know it. It's a one man revolution. Where this revolution of the heart leads, i can't say. But it knocks 99% of other love songs out cold for lack of trying.. A song so in love with life (and the eponymous girl who is the song’s focus) that it re-renders the whole messy business of Love as the holiest of undertakings.
(clearly reflecting my flagrant and possibly obnoxious garage rawk tastes and inclinations, so forgive the huge biases
Sister Ray (the Velvet Underground)
Besides being the most physically demanding song i've ever heard in my life, it also hits me with a force that appeals to my intellect and (umm) dumbness simultaneously. Just when my mind thinks i've anticipated every curveball, my body loses its legs out from under me, and likewise just when my body is toughened enough to stand up to it, my mind splits open, so i just can't win with this song. For going toe to toe with me and winning every time, it is the song of my life, all 16 minutes of it.
Tarotplane (Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band)
This song i don't mention as much as i do "Sister Ray", but its no less affected me over the years, so much so that it singlehandedly would make me put the album that it comes from on my Top Ten Albums lists although the rest of the album isn't as strong as this 19 minute song. Where to begin? Beefheart effectively amalgamates Robert Johnson style delta blues (the title of the song is a pun on a Johnson song), with Ornette Coleman free jazz bursts of music from his wierd "shenai" instrument on the verse turnarounds, and the backing band plays up a mofo of a storm for 19 minutes and yet never getting boring. It's hard to convey the power this song commands if you haven't listened to it. Talking about it does it no justice. It's immediate and visceral, it opens up space and time in front of you, channelling nothing but bare-bones delta blues music refashioned into all manner of Gnostic undercurrents and psychic exorcism.
Interstellar Overdrive (stictly the MONO Piper version) (The Pink Floyd)
This is antipodal to Beefheartian psychedelia. I like the noise, the energy of it, the instability of it. But rather than originate from Beefheart's mix of free jazz /delta blues metaphysics, it comes out of a more inexperienced mindset, virginal even, the kind that envisions the future as a Jetsons landscape of flying cars and robot maids. Beefheart himself would have no time for this, i suspect. On first listen, it may seem like there is no shred of coherence to it, but there is. It's subtle, and you must have an open mind. The narrative theme is 'CONFIDENCE'. Brash, young, unabashed confidence. Confidence enough to re-mold the world as you see fit. Confidence enough to dismiss verse-chorus-verse theatrics. Confidence in recognizing you're young and alive and that life is a series of put-ons and come-ons. Psychedelia done right must necessarily be a confidence trick... It is never a repository for "wisdom of the ancients" or any garbage like that (such as inferior bands were prone to do). There's no profundity in "Interstellar Overdrive", no answers to life. It's like a Teflon slab of noise, exciting, robust, like jumping off a cliff and freefalling for 9 minutes (before pulling your parachute open). Or like playing with matches on an idle summer’s day by the seashore. Why? Just because you feel like it. That’s the thing of it: it feels simultaneously disposable AND enthralling. How such an (admittedly) untalented backing band put this together is beyond me.. it rocks harder and prettier and more maniacally than like-minded (often uber-intellectuals) such as CAN or the Soft Machine... The Pink Floyd did have Syd Barrett afterall: he who was beholden to no ideology, who was just young and naive and enough of a prick as to think he could make avant-garde and Top Forty pop music combine like there was no boundaries to navigate. And so he did, aaand promptly went completely barking mad. Such is the price to pay, it seems....
Subterranean Homesick Blues (Bob Dylan)
Bob's best tune: bold, self-possessed, brash, intelligent, rawking, groovy, toe-tapping, and all round terrific. Bob’s messianic judgementalism is in full force on this song, but it comes across in a much more winsome manner than usual. This is Dylan in full-comic mode, attempting to speak in parables, but unable to take it seriously in the slightest. His disgust with earnest bland poseurs posing as rockstars at the time must have been off the scale, because it compelled him to produce this. A more devastating atomic bomb in the face of the marketable and processed parade of shiny synthetic objects which passed for pop music in the mid-1960s I can’t imagine.
Eight Miles High (the Byrds)
The finest single to come out of the 1960s. It represents to me all the best of the 60s - rock and roll, the free jazz INSANE guitar solos, the head-rush of the verse parts, the easy cool of the chorus parts, the smooth vocals, the sunny-disposition-meets-dark-star-universe which kinda captures something transcendant. The song is damn-near untouchable.
Jumping Jack Flash (the Rolling Stones)
The most primal riff of the Stones, which means that it runs a good chance of being the most primal riff ever. AC/DC had quite a few to rival the Stones, but "Jumping Jack Flash" trumps them all with the lo-fi intro, the pumping bass, and the incredible CharlieWatts drum stomp. The riff is superb. Unfuckwithable. The essence of the Stones in 3 minutes and 44 seconds. It literally leaps off the CD like a rapidly uncoiling steel spring, and maintains a breathless pace till the end. That's all you need. And yes, this song dates from the Brian Jones era (technically speaking, if you want to be anal about it) which pleases me greatly, as a matter of due reverence paid at the right feet.
The Passenger (Iggy Pop)
Iggy is a dirty white-trash fuck-up. Trailer park refuse. A sad-sack who got hooked on smack, kept a crack-whore’s physique throughout most of the 70s, & wrote music for losers and punks. Yet he also wrote Fun House, “Shake Appeal” and most especially “The Passenger". Now who looks like a loser, eh? You, that's who. Stand back and step down. Iggy’s vocal sounds jaded, supposedly evoking Jim Morrison’s sardonic tone, and the lyrics on this song are the weakest link. Lots of mindlessly clinical talk about driving around a city in the backseat of a car, possibly coked up and/or smacked out. Is there anything redeeming here? Yes. The combined effect of the tour-de-force music arrangements and Iggy’s commanding vocal presence is akin to watching someone walk on water, or setting fire to wherever it steps or touches because of the sheer awful naked flame of the soul bursting out of seams of the body.
St. Elmo's Fire (Brian Eno)
The most cerebral song here. Incandescent, elusive, utterly devastating in its quiet dementia. The hyperkinetic mobility of all the various instrumental parts is a key part of the magic. Eno’s haunted vocals sounds disembodied and dispassionate, but aching with longing on the doo-wop chorus parts. And then the guitar enters into the fray. Robert Fripp's guitar screams and orgasms and draws rings around the sun. It’s the most remarkable series of guitar solos I’ve ever heard. Like tremendous waves feeding back on itself, rising and cresting and subsiding with magisterial impudence.
Temptation (New Order)
The most perfect 80s song ever, which I suppose is a category unto itself. I don't care if you're talking about the 1982 original art-metalik sound or the 1987 nouveau-soul version... both are extraordinarily great. Ecstatic heart-thumping stuff, which gets your veins surging, your serotonin flowing, and your eyes smiling (even if your lips say no). A few more words about the 1982 version: Arising from the ashes of a recent suicide, floundering in a sea of uncertainty about the future, locked into a dark time with the potential to self-destruct or fall apart in all manner of worst case scenarios…. basically having EVERY reason to feel like jaded cynical misanthropes, the ex-members of Joy Division collectively crafted and put out this ode to visionary redemption on a dancefloor (or in your own bedroom). This song is the literal definition of CATHARIS in pop culture. A fitting tribute and lasting memory to a bunch of youngsters from working-class backgrounds who could have lost everything, but instead decided to stick around, doing something extraordinary to redeem their bleak futures.
The Caterpillar (the Cure)
A love song. The most headscratching song that Robert Smith ever wrote. It defies analysis. It's got a heart so wide open, and so earnest, that it can move mountains, and change the course of civilization as we know it. It's a one man revolution. Where this revolution of the heart leads, i can't say. But it knocks 99% of other love songs out cold for lack of trying.. A song so in love with life (and the eponymous girl who is the song’s focus) that it re-renders the whole messy business of Love as the holiest of undertakings.
