21. The Buzzcocks, “Fiction Romance”
Drummer John Maher sounds like he’s hacking a wooden door to pieces. I just imagined a roomful of insane pogoers when this came on. I’m utopian like that. By the way, the Buzzcocks were the second punk band to form their own label, which is the kind of initiative that Adam Smith used to fantasize about.
22. Caetano Veloso, “Alfomega”
According to a commenter at YouTube the first line, in Portugese, is “Alfomegabatism. Somatopsicopneumatics. I don’t know about the death.” The geniuses behind Tropicalia were not overraters of language’s powers of reference.
23. Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, “Call On Me”
This, from Safe as Milk (1967), is Cap’s best “normal” song: not pandering like his mid-70s stuff and not parodic like the same album’s “So Glad,” just a raucous ballad that stays in the same key throughout but flirts with atonality during the bridge (-to-nowhere). Lester Bangs’s contention that Don VanVliet is probably one of the greatest white blues singers of the century, not that anyone can tell, is fully borne out, and the whole thing sounds like my dream of what hippie-era radio could have sounded like if everyone had been truly adventurous, rather than just high.
CB used to frustrate me. I’d read about him and then buy the album (and to rock critics it is always the album, to paraphrase Dr. Watson) and then I would feel put on as soon as I put it on. If you’ve had this experience, what got me past it was: 1) Listen to Safe as Milk, because it’s, um, safe. 2) Get really into Tom Waits. During the same period, deprive yourself of guitar music that ever really goes crrrrunch. 3) Read Langdon Winner’s essay on Trout Mask Replica from the book Stranded, which is one of the very few essential works of pop music criticism (Langdon Winner is a poli-sci professor who blogs about technology now, by the way). 4) Wait for a really fresh spring day. Put on “Frownland.” The resistance will have melted. It also helps to think in terms of this guy’s argument that Trout Mask is essentially a children’s album, with a child’s unforced surrealism.
24. The B-52s, “Roam”
A bizarre segue, but the progression from D major to F major sounds right to my ears, and both songs have a certain belt-it-out, uvulating quality. I love this video, too, with its backprojected botique multiculturalism. And doesn’t the song express a very newlywed sentiment?
25. Gal Costa, “Vou Recomecar”
That growling …
26. Sly and the Family Stone, “Everyday People”
A million things have been said, and a million more could be said, about the greatness of this band and this single. What stands out to me is its concision. This was the era of long jazz solos, early funk, and hippie butt-rock. To achieve a sound this instantly addictive and then cut it off exactly two minutes and twelve seconds later … well, that takes a degree of self-discipline that must have seemed nearly perverse in 1968. Only humble singles bands, Motown acts and the like, would normally be so tough on themselves, not album artists with a ethos to create.
27. Freddy Fender, “Before the Next Teardrop Falls”
That link will take care of any Geocities/early-Internet-era nostalgia you’re feeling. (But if it doesn’t, the next link y estare contigo cuando trieste estas.)
28. Lucinda Williams, “Metal Firecracker”
One more for the annals of Grammy-granters’ pusillanimity: When this exemplary country album, canonized more or less instantly upon its release in 1998, went to collect its inevitable reward from the National Academy of Rec. Arts Etc. Etc., they gave it Album of the Year in the … wait for it … contemporary folk category. Grow some pairs, folks. This is a country album. Just because it would sound out of place playing behind a Lamar Alexander For America ad doesn’t make it folk. Stop protecting country fans from good music already.
29. Belle & Sebastian, “My Wandering Days are Over”
My wandering days never even had so much as a running start, but those sweeping horns at the end … you’ve gotta have ‘em.
30. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing”
I love this video: the man is a true babbling record geek, and his record player is a touch too fast, bumping the song into a dead zone between its original E flat major and a bubbly-tempoed E major. This song’s place on the playlist is a remnant of my original intention: to walk down the aisle to “You’re All I Need to Get By.” Stupid Episcopal rules.
As I recall, ‘Roam’ really filled up the dance floor. Great selection, perfectly timed.