Phil Christman

51. William Bell, “Every Day Will Be Like a Holiday”

A Stax/Volt guy who doesn’t get nearly the deserved level of attention. Luckily, it appears he’s still with us, rockin’ one of those splashy/undercopyedited web sites you often see attached to mid-level music stars and to evangelical megachurches.* May he collect massive royalties for much longer than the biblical threescore and ten. This song is golden.

*Not that I can complain, what with my wanky-ass blog.

52. Camper Van Beethoven, “Sweethearts”

This song has that nice late-in-the-dance, tired-people-draped-woozily-around-someone-they-just-met vibe, and it totally disses Ronald Reagan. Put that in my celebration of love, please.

53. Television Personalities, “World of Pauline Lewis”

I remember being like fourteen and reading about this band in an issue of Spin or RayGun or … what was that other thing called … Spectrum? Orbit? Something vaguely scientific, and it wasn’t Magnet, because that didn’t exist yet, and neither (so far as the general public was concerned) did the Internet. Whatever magazine it was, it was no hipper than the hippest thing you’d find at the imaginatively-named Book Shoppe in Alma, Michigan, which is pretty non-hip. And, even at that level of non-hipness, I’m sure my parents didn’t want me reading it. Anyway, they sounded like a fascinating band, but I wasn’t able to follow up until last year. This song is bouncy, tuneful punk rock with a strong undertow of melancholy. Really great.

54. Tom Zé, “Ui! (Voce inventa)”

TZ is Brazillian, he pissed off the military dictatorship during the ’70s, he used to hang out with Caetano Veloso and Os Mutantes, he once made an album where the cover looked like a person’s eye but it was actually a butt with a marble in the middle of it (take that, US-backed thug government!). He writes operettas and mock advertising jingles and songs based on instruction manuals. He is, in short, at least a minor subdeity. Imagine Captain Beefheart crossed with a really great disco band and then pasted with scraps of old newspaper everywhere.

55. The Cure, “Just Like Heaven”

Well, duh.

56. Tom Waits, “I Don’t Want to Grow Up”

For my nephews, especially. Ian has loved this one from the age of six. I feel like I’ve done a good thing there.

57. Yo La Tengo, “You Can Have it All”

That’s one of my favorite album covers of all time, which is a good thing, because that’s pretty much all this person’s homemade video has got.

58. Annie, “Heartbeat”

I feel like I have to explain how I even know this song, because it seems incongruous for someone so square/stuck in the ’80s/not that into illegal downloading/too poor to buy recent CDs. My friend Andrew put it on a mix for me in 2005 and it got lodged in my heart (no pun intended). I was gonna point at Andrew in a jocky “It’s-all-you-bro” kind of gesture when this song came on, but it never got played, and Andrew lost his wedding invitation, and so much for that.

59. Michael Jackson, “Girlfriend”

This is the blazingly talented Michael Jackson I was sad to lose, and not the Howard Hughes-meets-Humbert Humbert model we all grew so dismayingly familiar with over the past fifteen years. When I first listened to Off the Wall straight through (which took me an embarrassingly long time; I wasn’t allowed to listen to rock as a child, remember, and in my teenage years it was all punk/new wave, to the point where I was totally shocked to realize that Talking Heads were essentially a disco group with guitars and glasses), I thought it was possibly the greatest album of the 1970s. I still think maybe so.

60. The Bats, “Treason”

If I believed in Jung’s concept of daimons, I might say that mine would be a Criminally-Underheard-Poppy-New-Zealand-Postpunk-Performer daimon.

61. The Smashing Pumpkins, “1979″

By the time Melon Collie came along, I had come to royally hate alterna-radio. (Too much canned rage; not enough melody.) The first single was “Bat Out of My Bullet Brain” or “Carrot With Bulletin Wings” or “Man, I Am Angsty,” or whatever the fuck it was called: “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a caaaaaayyyyge.” That just made me hate Smashing Pumpkins too. But the next single was “Tonight Tonight,” which had that Victorian-storybook quality (and how many pop singles are in F-sharp-major?), and then they brought out this, and I could not even pretend to be above them anymore. To paraphrase what Pauline Kael said about the country music in Nashville, this song makes me nostalgic for experiences I never actually had. I think that feeling may not be terribly far from the sehnsucht that the German Romantics (and C.S. Lewis) talked about. Or maye it’s a commercialized bastardization of same, damned if I can tell. But it sure is intense.

62. Chico Buarque, “Caçada”

Yeah, sit there and try to sit still. I dare you.

63. The Pogues, “The Broad Majestic Shannon”

Now it can be told: I am the one who illicitly borrowed the mixtape from my sister’s tape case in 1991 that had this song on it and whose crappy tape player then broke the tape. I am also the one who clumsily spooled the evidence back into its Memorex casing and replaced the tape, surreptitiously, in the case next to my sister’s bed. I am sorry. But man, that tape was crucial to my education: it got me into this, the Clash, Yaz, INXS, English Beat, the Specials and Vince Clarke-era Depeche Mode.

Passing thought: It’s really sad nowadays that when Shane MacGowan laughs his teeth and gullet are so messed up that he goes gkhee-khee-khee-khee-khee like Ernie.

64. Gladys Knight and the Pips, “It’s Time to Go Now”

Get it? See, ’cause, the dance was going to be ending, and—well, you know, the song says “It’s time to go now.” It’s funny because it’s true.

65. Big Star, “September Gurls”

PS: There was also a gonna be a brunch playlist. It had the Go-Betweens, Antonin Dvorak, Sarah Vaughan, john r. williamson, Television, the JPS Experience, a jazz cover of Tears For Fears, and my wife performing a really funny Georgian drinking song with the Yale Russian Chorus. And Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, trying to teach Gussie Fink-Nottle to sing.

41. The Mekons, “If They Hang You”

A sprightly country-punk number, from the Mekons’ absolutely essential 1987 album Honky Tonkin’, about how cool it was that Dashiell Hammett refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Commission. This album is the third in a trio of increasing countrification, which starts with the legendary (but comparatively weak) Fear and Whiskey, peaks with Edge of the World (Sally Timms’s debut and one of the greatest albums ever made), and ends with great dignity. It helped me through a bad time in the summer of 1998.

42. Elvis Costello and the Attractions, “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding”

Don’t worry, I used the real version, from Armed Forces (1979). “Elvis Costello and the Imposters” is right. Yeesh.

43. The Crystals, “Uptown”

Listening to Phil Spector-produced records now requires the same mental discipline/willed denial as does listening to Michael Jackson. (Oh, and we’ll get to him presently.) But, well, Gesualdo strangled his wife, and he still owns at Renaissance polyphony. Great artists aren’t always nice people, blah blah blah, and anyway … those clacky drum things they use!

44. Over the Rhine, “Sea and Sky”

Sigh.

That’s the Over the Rhine I fell in love with: a kind of intensely sensual, mysterious, contemplative early-’90s college rock that actually still remembers how to rock. Like T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” as fluently translated into melodic Lanois/Eno-style postpunk by Emmylou Harris, with an assist by REM. Also, “You and me and a couple of dusty volumes,” and “You and me a strong sense of forever” is pretty much the marriage I hope Ashley and I will have, reduced to two phrases.

45. The Verlaines, “Take Good Care of It”

The xylophone break at the end of this song is everything I love about the Verlaines in a single moment. I’m coming to think that Bird Dog (1987), from which this song is taken, is the high point of ’80s Kiwi Rock. I hope someday Communion or Flying Nun or whichever label is sitting on this gem rereleases it, at least electronically, so that I don’t have to be recommending an album only available via quasi-legal download to like everybody I know.

46. Echo and the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”

A bit of an ’80s block begins here, with the exception of the Hon. Mr. Wright and his Orchestra. All of these songs were ones I’d liked well enough, till a quasi-indie film brought out the dramatic/theatrical qualities that were probably always there. This song makes me think of Donnie Darko racing on his bicycle to his doom, with his face “set like flint” (Christ reference intended), in the ravishingly strange movie of the same name (and no, Richard Kelly’s subsequent work has done nothing to reduce my awe of Donnie Darko).

47. Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, “Express Yourself”

It’s not what you look like when you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s what you’re doing when you’re doing what you look like you’re doing.

48. INXS, “Don’t Change”

Poor Michael Hutchence. This song still has the lushness of early INXS: a bar band that can’t quite believe their luck.

I was always more of a “The One Thing”/”What You Need”/”Listen Like Thieves” guy, and I can’t say I really heard this song till Greg Mottola dusted it off for the end credits of Adventureland, a film I loved. Now, of course, thanks to Calvin the Crazy Sexton and his you-have-fifteen-minutes-to-get-your-ass-out-of-this-reception-hall meltdown, I’ll always remember it as what played over our end-credits montage: it was the last item on the playlist that I heard as we walked out.

49. Tears For Fears, “Head Over Heels”

Which means that if Calvin the Sexton could’ve just held his water for five more minutes, my sister and I could’ve had the dancing-to-Tears-For-Fears moment we’ve been waiting since like 1992 for. DAMMIT!  At least we’ll always have Roland Orzabal’s mullet to savor.

St. Phillip’s Durham is a really pretty church, and the rector and flower lady turned out to be wonderful, but you have to deal with some crazy-ass people if you want to get married there. Last-minute threatened fee changes (till the rector stepped in), a choirmaster who condescended to our soloist, a sexton who was so rude, and demanded so much extra money just to do his job, that I’m still finding words for the angry letter I intend to write … I can’t recommend it.

50. Cat Power, “Living Proof”

Chan Marshall Goes To Memphis, Gets Awesomeness Injection.

31. The Chills, “Singing in My Sleep”

If you like Kiwi Rock, I was always told, you simply must listen to the Chills’ 1990 album Submarine Bells. Well, I like Kiwi Rock well enough: The Verlaines have recently become an incredibly important group for me, The Clean make me dance in the privacy of my bedroom, and (it all started here) the JPS Experience were one of the things that got me through a hard first year of college. (If the world is as full of things as strange and charming as “I Like Rain,” I figured, life would probably end up being worth sticking around for if only for surprise value.) But I listened to Submarine Bells several times and it just never clicked. All these bands have in common (besides New Zealand-issued drivers’ licenses) is a sort of sonic texture that causes writers like me to resort to the adjectives “shimmery” and “dreamy” entirely too much. (Just dig up some of the music and hear what I mean; God knows there are downloads of dubious legality to be found everywhere on the Internet.) In the case of the Chills, I think their stuff is too quiet and subtle for the in-store CD player stations (do they still have those?) or brief online snippets that I tried to use to familiarize myself. In any case, this song is a bit of floating gorgeousness; I thought it’d provide a nice in-between-dances naptime feeling (or something for my indie-rock-loving friends to sort of shrug rhythmically along to, perhaps in pairs).

32. The Church, “Under the Milky Way”

See, not really danceable. I think the back-to-back placement of these songs (plus the next one) was a product of Ashley telling me, two days before the wedding, “IT’S DONE ENOUGH! And you’re the only one who’ll be paying this level of attention anyway!” Still, this is a classic, the kind of song that the word “atmospheric” was coined for.

33. Neko Case, “This Tornado Loves You”

I waited to read One Hundred Years of Solitude forever because, I figured, anything that snugly canonized and beloved of most of my friends could safely be saved for a moment when I wasn’t in mid-careen from one interest to another. For the same reason I didn’t get into Neko Case until my homegirl Ali started playing her on the way to the neo-evangelical church I attended with her for solidarity’s sake (me, I’m into the bells and smells and female priests). I knew I’d get around to falling in love with Neko Case; no need for urgency. Except, of course—as I learned in Garcia Marquez’s case and learned again now—with great art, it’s always urgent.

34. Kool Blues, “I’m Gonna Keep On Loving You”

Someone else has a song by this name. KB’s is much older, and awesome. I found it on one of those wonderful Eccentric Soul compilations that Numero Group puts out.

35. The Brilliant Corners, “Teenage”

I am obsessed with this group, none of whose music was in print when I stumbled on them last summer. (The Growing Up Absurd and What’s in a Word mini-albums are now for sale on eMusic, and I’m counting the minutes till my dowloads refresh. I want this band’s ex-members to get whatever money’s coming to ‘em.) I have no idea how this wasn’t a hit in the summer of 1987. It’s like a more pub-rock/R&B-influenced version of the Smiths, and that basically sounds like listener heaven. Certainly this song’s hormone-addled, bored-to-distraction lyrics remind me of where I was emotionally when Ashley and I met in high school.

36. Gilberto Gil, “Procissao”

I wanted to see some serious dancing to this one. There were enough Tropicalia fans in attendance that I would’ve, if it weren’t for you, Calvin the Sexton.

37. De La Soul, “Eye Know”

As romantic as rap gets. Check out also this ukelele cover:

38. Love Theme from The Breakfast Club

Did you even know The Breakfast Club has a love theme? I didn’t, until Ashley started raving about it one night: “You know, it’s when Ally Sheedy gets all cleaned up for her big moment with Emilio Estevez, and Molly Ringwald throws herself at Judd Nelson, it goes kinda like, DA-da-da-da, da-da-da, DA-da-da-da, da-da …”

“Not ringing a bell,” I said, so she produced the CD from somewhere on her person. With a little digging, I found out this is actually the composition of a former Psychedelic Furs keyboardist. John Hughes made slightly racist films about teenagers too pretty and too wealthy to actually be the misfits he wanted us to think they were, but man, did he have taste in music.

39. Nelcy Sedibe, “Holotelani (Daughter-in-Law)”

The Indestructible Beat of Soweto is one of the most influential various-artists compilations ever made, both for musical and political reasons (this was late in the apartheid era), but the listener doesn’t have to be burdened by any of that knowledge to see the instant significance of these songs: that is, delight.

40. The Clean, “Thumbs Off”

Another happy punk-rock blast.

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.