Volume 6, Track 2
“Me In Honey” by R.E.M. (1991) For as much as I love music and love talking about it (and writing about it: 164 posts and counting between this site and the Top 80 Albums site) I rarely get passionately crazy about the albums/artists that I like (at least, I like to think that I don’t [...]
Volume 6, Track 1
“All I Want Is You” by U2 (1988) “All I Want Is You” is the type of song that perfectly straddles that finest of fine lines between sappy and unexpectedly gorgeous. This is the type of song that could never be covered adequately[1]. This song is so good, even its use in a Rachel and [...]
Volume 6 Introduction
“Call me Ishmael.” —opening line of Moby-Dick “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” —opening line of Anna Karenina “Gimme Shelter” —opening track of Let It Bleed “Smells Like Teen Spirit” —opening track of Nevermind How a piece of work begins sets the tone for the whole composition, [...]
Volume 5, Track 14
“Salt Of The Earth” by The Rolling Stones (1968) Beggar’s Banquet starts out with “Sympathy For The Devil,” and how exactly does a band end an album that starts with that song, a song in which a modern day Milton-esque treatment of the Devil has been fleshed out to great effect, both lyrically and musically? [...]
Volume 5, Track 13
“We’re Going To Be Friends” by The White Stripes (2001) I am not exactly sure to what extent my wife even likes this song; she may merely think it to be okay, she may love it. Or, she may not be high on it at all. No matter. “We’re Going To Be Friends” made me [...]
Volume 5, Track 12
“After Hours” by The Velvet Underground (1969) The final song of The Velvet Underground’s third album, “After Hours” is quite possibly the most endearing song of the group’s entire catalog. Lou Reed was able to coax drummer Maureen Tucker to sing this song and the end result is a really simple but catchy track that [...]
Volume 5, Track 11
“Moonlight On Vermont” by Captain Beefheart (1969) Full disclosure: my wife actually hates this song and anything performed by Captain Beefheart[1]. My only reason for including it on this list is that Captain Beefheart represents the most loathesome artist my wife has ever heard. She truly hates this album and she has maybe only heard [...]
Volume 5, Track 10
“Mighty K.C.” by For Squirrels (1995) “Mighty K.C.” is a sneaky good song. It starts out with a kind of ominous-sounding feel—lead singer Jack Vigliatura sings the lyrics at the beginning with a lower, raspy voice; the percussion and lead guitar find themselves meshed together in a trying-to-be-dark manner—yet the chorus acts as the prelude [...]
Volume 5, Track 9
“Harvest” by Neil Young (1972) To those of us who are non-artists we have, maybe in an albeit abstract or vague sense, a notion of how artists create their work. The typical digestive cycle of an artist begins with an inspiration to create something; a foundation for which to build upon said inspiration; an exploration [...]
Volume 5, Track 8
“I’ve Seen The Land Beyond” by Beck (1994) “I’ve Seen The Land Beyond” is a great little accoustic number from Beck’s first album (One Foot In The Grave pre-dates Mellow Gold but its release was held in favor of relasing the latter first). With lyrics like “From these shores where we belong/I have seen the [...]
Volume 5, Track 7
“Bring It On Home To Me” by The Animals (1965) When a white band from England does a cover of a Sam Cooke song[1] and it does not make you run for the hills, you can safely say that said white band from England is pretty frickin’ good. Though Eric Burdon’s voice will never be [...]
Volume 5, Track 6
“Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town” by Talking Heads (1977) It is easy to think of the quirky band that Talking Heads would eventually become (most notably, David Byrne’s metamorphasis into a jack-all-of-trades-type oddity) but their debut album 77 was actually quite pop-like in nature. This is most evident with how the album starts as the [...]
Volume 5, Track 5
“007 (Shanty Town)” by Desmond Dekker (1967) Despite its serious lyrical tone—the song is about the Jamaican gangster culture—the music of “007 (Shanty Town)” paradoxically invites you to dance. Or, at the very least it asks your body to move in some way even if it is the token head sway. For people who do [...]
Volume 5, Track 4
“Astral Weeks” by Van Morrison (1968) By ranking Astral Weeks as the seventeenth best album on my other site, it is a given that I hold it up to very high acclaim. It is one of the most beautiful and surreal albums ever made and it more than holds its own against the other rock [...]
Volume 5, Track 3
“Never Going Back Again” by Lindsey Buckingham (1994) For anyone who does not know, KCRW is a radio station at Santa Monica College out in Santa Monica, California (it would be similar to WXRT in Chicago, except if XRT were part of DePaul or UIC). I was unaware of this until the summer of 1996 [...]
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