Dear everyone,
Of course, there is
nothing significant about my top twenty favorite songs over my life-time. We
all have our own tastes and mine tend to feed off the preferences of those
close to me in my life. For example, I thought the Dead Heads were cult-like
and I said so, mainly out of my not being the center of attention among Dead
Heads; yet the gal at the center of that teapot trifle did introduce me to my
favorite all-time song.
Another example is the
classic blues solo by Miles Davis, introduced to me by a far-more cultivated
school-mate when I was in my forties. So there is little of intrinsic value
here, with the exception of me seizing the opportunity to show off. But then my
father’s sage words of years ago come homes to roost, “Neddy, never try to make
an impression because you never know what impression you are making.”
People’s Exhibit-1 of
pre-medicated ‘boge’, I offer the evidence that, until my Peace Corps tour, I
thought mariachi music was the singing of some big-sky, big-eyed beauty from
Italy. So why, after debunking the
content of ‘the f*ck-it list’, do I post these songs? Mainly so I can reach to
one location for some of my favorite tunes; kind of like a mini iPod. What made
this exercise interesting was the challenge of whittling the list down to just
twenty names.
That need to weigh which
songs go in and which stay out is admittedly petty. What I found to be
interesting was how the criteria for inclusion evolved over the several hours
during which I indulged this silliness. Truthfully, I have a new-found sympathy
for school admissions committees. There are twenty favorites that I have today –
more than twenty – that omit many more from the past which played significant
parts when they were preferred.
Twenty songs is not many
and so it almost needs to be a collection of ambassadors, representing the
various types of music – from top-forty to jazz to classical and even to
religious – to reflect the wide diversity of my taste. Underlying that
diversity is the wide array of needs. Different musical modes meet different
needs, profane and sacred, rooted in the past; spicing the present; and, heralding
the future.
Try this little exercise
and you will find it to be interesting. Many questions will cross your mind, including the
tension between what appeals to your personality and why versus what you want
others to know of you. Since twenty tunes is necessarily the tip of the
proverbial iceberg inside your head, what criteria do you apply in letting
those select melodies through to the list? That list vaguely outlines of the
wider body of music embodied in you.
Please let me know what
your all-time faves are; I am still malleable after all these years. And so doth
proceed my scruffy-pod.
20. Pennies from Heaven;
Jimmy Beaumont & the Skyliners (dunno)
Just a great fifties
tune, though this one (I think) originated in the forties; there are so many. Sometimes complacency with a rhythm is just what the shaman of jitterbug ordered. The Beach Boys took this happy-music into the 1960s.
19. You Are Here; John
& Yoko
Incredible love song in
which absence can make the heart grow longer. For an angry guy, John Lennon really had depth that I see in few speed-ragers...How lucky those who get to be married; their union reconciles the godliness and needfulness of humanity.
18. Day by Day; Godspell
Cannot think a song that
better evokes to simple joy of Xians with peace and humility. Privately, I have envied the evangelicals for their simplicity and enduring happiness. Fundamentalists are a different breed altogether, a type of virus everyone can live quite easily without.
17. Semper Fideles;
United States Marines Corps (John Philip Sousa)
Puts one in that
Kicking-A with the U.S.A. frame of mind, every time. While I sometimes cringe at what my country does, I do love America so.
16. Guadalajara; ELVIS (¿quién sabe?)
The newest addition to
the list, after going to Mexico; this version selected out of deference to
Elvis Presley (and, indirectly, Buddy Holly, early American rock icons)
15. Anarchy in the U.K.;
Sex Pistols
Best teeth-grinding,
flame-spitting rock and roll still out there; Neil Young’s “Hey-hey, My-my” is
quite the companion piece…
14. Naima; John Coltrane
A love song that captures the bittersweet utopia of the rapture; where one senses the infinite in a
finite, frail being…Like many other white people, when I try to explain 'soul' verbally, the description is truly pathetic. Nevertheless, a durable definition of soul whispers through it.
13. Leningrad; Dallas
Symphony Orchestra (Symphony #7 of Dmitri Shostakovich)
This long symphony sings
of resilience, not with words but brassy grit. Comrade Shostakovich apparently composed this work in the basement of the Leningrad Conservatory of Music during the Nazi bombardment of 'Petrograd' in which the living indeed envied the dead; when a communist city came to resemble the island of the gods darkly imagined by Stephen Vincent Benét just a few years before.
12. I’d have You
Anytime; George Harrison
Always feel like I am
floating in the clouds with this song; great match with “Good Night” by the
Beatles from the 'White Album' and also something of the beneficent twin of "I Am the Walrus". Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl" also fits this music of thoughtful passion.
11. Grazin’ in the
Grass; Friends of Distinction (Hugh Masekela)
As the 1960s flic says,
“What’s so Bad about Feeling Good?”; this is the tip of the iceberg (sic) of
really hot dance songs like “Louie, Louie” or “Aint No Woman Like the One I
got”; the original by Hugh Masekela pulls at the heart during ‘Bobby’.
First ‘45’ I ever bought
in early 1969; still makes me choke up at the losses of the 1960s. While Watergate certainly helped make much of the 1970s bleak, those years in many ways were the fall-out of possibilities denied ten years earlier (including the murders of Malcolm X, et al.).
9. Clair de Lune; Claude Debussy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY
Piano études, composed
and played rightly, can stir the soul at the darkest hour. Clair de Lune helped me wend my way through some unavoidable challenges. Each has his or her own way through to the other side, much the same but reverential to life itself.
8. Let it Rain; Eric
Clapton
Still gets my heart
beating hard all these years later; Clapton had soul. So many other songs by Eric Clapton -- even 'Cocaine' -- draw from something very deep within; something predisposed toward tragedy yet undefiled by adversity.
7. Opus #1; Tommy Dorsey
To me, this song expresses the quiet grandeur of Nick Carraway in the Great Gatsby -- the typical Yank who does not know a whole lot but knows how to be decent; who may not get around as much as he knows his away around.
6. Kashmir; Led Zeppelin
Led Zep had the guitars
of their era, often tapping the mysticism of the ages. Bands like Led Zeppelin, the Police and the Beatles (all British) made the counter-culture more than just a rebellion against empty consumerism, not the good fortune of comfort.
5. American Patrol;
Glenn Miller
Love to dance to this
song, too; makes patriotism fun instead of ponderous. Ironically, the lindy-hop tends to make me more jingoistic than the kulturkampf of my fellow conservatives trying to 'save' America. Other Miller greats -- "ln the Mood" or "Perfidia", for example -- cut the rug.
4. So What; Miles Davis
The King of Cool brings
the senses to us; better synesthesia than Baudelaire…like looking inward while lunging on a patio chair on a spring Saturday afternoon, after running a few miles; gratitude in the everyday takes some introspection.
3. Sophisticated Lady; Billie
Holiday (Duke Ellington)
Okay, I have always had
a crush on Billie Holiday; plan to raise some Hell with her in Heaven. Of the five or ten truly beautiful women I have met over the years, almost every one has some trace of the melancholy inherent in the incomplete.
2. Begin the Beguine;
Artie Shaw (Cole Porter)
Brings a tear to my eye
every time; more for mourning what’s lost that cannot be understood but only
felt. The tightness of the snapping rhythm is somehow stoic and has been somehow lost.
1.Eyes of the World; the DEAD
American mysticism;
Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter understood the infinity within by which even recent memories are wind-swept into the inscrutable solitude of a horizon just a few paces behind; sort-of like rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's and rendering to God what is godly.
