Saturday, June 14, 2003
1312 Hrs. Brooklyn.
Harmony in my Head. This week, I burned a 2-disk set called 26 All-Time Favorite Songs. Here are the liner notes.
The songs on these disks are sequenced alphabetically, and not in any kind of numeric, or countdown order. I went by song title because, for some reason, it felt too messy to go by group name. Maybe it was what having two Nirvana songs back to back might imply to the casual listener.
After compiling this list – so slowly – over the course of eight or nine months until I burned it to disk in June 2003, I was actually surprised by it. Those two songs again – Nirvana is not my favorite group, but they show up here twice. Meanwhile, bands that have been so important to me (Black Flag, Replacements, Luna, Stones) aren’t even represented. (I’ve convinced myself that they must all be “bubbling under” as Billboard calls it; that, if I looked into it, I’d find those groups have a death grip on my favorite songs #27 – 100.)
I was surprised, as well, that favorite albums didn’t necessarily deliver favorite songs. While the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks have songs here, Imperial Bedroom (Elvis Costello and the Attractions) and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (Lucinda Williams) do not. Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville – yes; but the classic album upon which it was long-rumored to be based (a hoax!), the Stones’ Exile on Main Street – no.
So, what’s here, and why?
For a lot of people, favorite songs mean good memories. I’m nostalgic about songs that can recall particular moments and people, or entire seasons. The winter of 1972 was an amazingly fun stew of a long drive to Florida, a family vacation in Miami Beach, and an awesome song called “You’re So Vain.” I didn’t know or care if this Carly Simon was singing about any of the guys everyone said she was: James Taylor, Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, or all three. I just loved the song and, even at age 5, was positively sure “clouds in my coffee” was the coolest phrase in the history of recorded music.
I could tell you what song was playing the first time I made out (“Hit Me With Your Best Shot”), the first time I drove a car all alone (“This is Radio Clash”), and the first time I got my pre-teen heart broken. (Well, the TV was on when it happened; but I rode my bike home and probably listened to the J. Geils Band or Stray Cats.) That’s nostalgia, and nostalgia is nice, but none of those songs are, or ever will be, my favorites.
Mostly, the songs here don’t have sense memories attached to them. I love them simply because I love them, not because they remind me of anything. For me, a favorite song is defined by what I’ve begun calling a “shiver factor.” I think what I really want out of music is to be touched. To have my brain translate the literal meaning of the song, while some subconscious connection is made. Every single song on this list has a moment (or several) that gives me goose flesh. Many of them have even brought me to tears. When the kick drum and angry verses violate the tender waltz of “A Better Son/Daughter,” or three and a half minutes into “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” I’m a goner. In both cases, you realize that the singer here means it. (And, yes, the “WDYSLN” is a cover. I’ve heard the Leadbelly original, and Nirvana does this better for me.)
This wasn’t something I even realized I was seeking out in my music, this “shiver factor.” Before starting this list, I wasn’t tacitly aware that all my favorite songs had moments that touched me on some sublime level. It’s something author Nick Hornby equates with religious experience: “I try not to believe in God, but sometimes things happen in music, in songs, that bring me up short, make me do a double-take. When things add up to more than the sum of their parts, when the effects achieved are inexplicable, then atheists like me get into difficult territory.”
It’s the double-take of a song like “Mighty KC.” One of the most haunting songs I’ve ever heard, the “K.C.” in the title is, loosely, Kurt Cobain. But the tragedy that unfolded around the song, as much as within it, is equally startling. (A month before For Squirrels released their first major label CD, the lead singer and bassist were killed when their tour van overturned on the way back to Florida from their “big break” – a showcase gig at NY’s CBGB.) I’ve listening to this song almost continually since 1995, but I heard it for the first time all over again in the days after 9/11. Chilling.
But all these songs hold something like that, something powerful, for me. Whether lyrical (“The license said you had to stick around until I was dead/But if you’re tired of looking at my face/I guess I already am”), harmonic (Kirstie MacColl and Shane MacGowan’s amazing duet on “Fairytale of New York” is the sound of the gutter meeting the tabernacle), or visceral (“Chinese Rock”), each of these songs punches me in the heart and makes me feel so ridiculously, so beautifully, human.
As I wrote earlier, where there is a cover version included here, as hard as it may be to believe – I like the cover better than the original. Lou Reed once told an interviewer that the Cowboy Junkies took his “Sweet Jane” back to the form it was meant to be when he wrote it. If this can be true, then I think Jeff Buckley did Leonard Cohen the same favor with “Hallelujah.”
I took great care to include the version of the song I like best. The acoustic “Would?” on Unplugged is amazing, and the studio version of “Pennroyal Tea” is great, but....
So here are the 26. Twenty-five would have been a more traditional cut-off, but I just couldn’t do it.
disk one
1. A Better Son/Daughter – Rilo Kiley
2. Chinese Rock – Ramones
3. Church Not Made With Hands – The Waterboys
4. Clare Island – Saw Doctors
5. Creep – Radiohead
6. Divorce Song – Liz Phair
7. Fairytale of New York – The Pogues
8. God Only Knows – The Beach Boys
9. Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley
10. In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning – Frank Sinatra
11. Joey – Concrete Blonde
12. Many Rivers To Cross – Jimmy Cliff
13. Martha – Tom Waits
14. Mighty KC – For Squirrels
15. Misery Galore – Bettie Serveert
16. Never Understand – Jesus and Mary Chain
17. Only Happy When It Rains – Garbage
18. Pennyroyal Tea – Nirvana
disk two
1. Philosophy – Ben Folds Five
2. Respect – Aretha Franklin
3. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath – Black Sabbath
4. Shine – Rollins Band
5. Tangled Up In Blue – Bob Dylan
6. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? – Nirvana
7. White Man In Hammersmith Palais – The Clash
8. Would – Alice In Chains
Harmony in my Head. This week, I burned a 2-disk set called 26 All-Time Favorite Songs. Here are the liner notes.
The songs on these disks are sequenced alphabetically, and not in any kind of numeric, or countdown order. I went by song title because, for some reason, it felt too messy to go by group name. Maybe it was what having two Nirvana songs back to back might imply to the casual listener.
After compiling this list – so slowly – over the course of eight or nine months until I burned it to disk in June 2003, I was actually surprised by it. Those two songs again – Nirvana is not my favorite group, but they show up here twice. Meanwhile, bands that have been so important to me (Black Flag, Replacements, Luna, Stones) aren’t even represented. (I’ve convinced myself that they must all be “bubbling under” as Billboard calls it; that, if I looked into it, I’d find those groups have a death grip on my favorite songs #27 – 100.)
I was surprised, as well, that favorite albums didn’t necessarily deliver favorite songs. While the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks have songs here, Imperial Bedroom (Elvis Costello and the Attractions) and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (Lucinda Williams) do not. Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville – yes; but the classic album upon which it was long-rumored to be based (a hoax!), the Stones’ Exile on Main Street – no.
So, what’s here, and why?
For a lot of people, favorite songs mean good memories. I’m nostalgic about songs that can recall particular moments and people, or entire seasons. The winter of 1972 was an amazingly fun stew of a long drive to Florida, a family vacation in Miami Beach, and an awesome song called “You’re So Vain.” I didn’t know or care if this Carly Simon was singing about any of the guys everyone said she was: James Taylor, Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, or all three. I just loved the song and, even at age 5, was positively sure “clouds in my coffee” was the coolest phrase in the history of recorded music.
I could tell you what song was playing the first time I made out (“Hit Me With Your Best Shot”), the first time I drove a car all alone (“This is Radio Clash”), and the first time I got my pre-teen heart broken. (Well, the TV was on when it happened; but I rode my bike home and probably listened to the J. Geils Band or Stray Cats.) That’s nostalgia, and nostalgia is nice, but none of those songs are, or ever will be, my favorites.
Mostly, the songs here don’t have sense memories attached to them. I love them simply because I love them, not because they remind me of anything. For me, a favorite song is defined by what I’ve begun calling a “shiver factor.” I think what I really want out of music is to be touched. To have my brain translate the literal meaning of the song, while some subconscious connection is made. Every single song on this list has a moment (or several) that gives me goose flesh. Many of them have even brought me to tears. When the kick drum and angry verses violate the tender waltz of “A Better Son/Daughter,” or three and a half minutes into “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” I’m a goner. In both cases, you realize that the singer here means it. (And, yes, the “WDYSLN” is a cover. I’ve heard the Leadbelly original, and Nirvana does this better for me.)
This wasn’t something I even realized I was seeking out in my music, this “shiver factor.” Before starting this list, I wasn’t tacitly aware that all my favorite songs had moments that touched me on some sublime level. It’s something author Nick Hornby equates with religious experience: “I try not to believe in God, but sometimes things happen in music, in songs, that bring me up short, make me do a double-take. When things add up to more than the sum of their parts, when the effects achieved are inexplicable, then atheists like me get into difficult territory.”
It’s the double-take of a song like “Mighty KC.” One of the most haunting songs I’ve ever heard, the “K.C.” in the title is, loosely, Kurt Cobain. But the tragedy that unfolded around the song, as much as within it, is equally startling. (A month before For Squirrels released their first major label CD, the lead singer and bassist were killed when their tour van overturned on the way back to Florida from their “big break” – a showcase gig at NY’s CBGB.) I’ve listening to this song almost continually since 1995, but I heard it for the first time all over again in the days after 9/11. Chilling.
But all these songs hold something like that, something powerful, for me. Whether lyrical (“The license said you had to stick around until I was dead/But if you’re tired of looking at my face/I guess I already am”), harmonic (Kirstie MacColl and Shane MacGowan’s amazing duet on “Fairytale of New York” is the sound of the gutter meeting the tabernacle), or visceral (“Chinese Rock”), each of these songs punches me in the heart and makes me feel so ridiculously, so beautifully, human.
As I wrote earlier, where there is a cover version included here, as hard as it may be to believe – I like the cover better than the original. Lou Reed once told an interviewer that the Cowboy Junkies took his “Sweet Jane” back to the form it was meant to be when he wrote it. If this can be true, then I think Jeff Buckley did Leonard Cohen the same favor with “Hallelujah.”
I took great care to include the version of the song I like best. The acoustic “Would?” on Unplugged is amazing, and the studio version of “Pennroyal Tea” is great, but....
So here are the 26. Twenty-five would have been a more traditional cut-off, but I just couldn’t do it.
disk one
1. A Better Son/Daughter – Rilo Kiley
2. Chinese Rock – Ramones
3. Church Not Made With Hands – The Waterboys
4. Clare Island – Saw Doctors
5. Creep – Radiohead
6. Divorce Song – Liz Phair
7. Fairytale of New York – The Pogues
8. God Only Knows – The Beach Boys
9. Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley
10. In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning – Frank Sinatra
11. Joey – Concrete Blonde
12. Many Rivers To Cross – Jimmy Cliff
13. Martha – Tom Waits
14. Mighty KC – For Squirrels
15. Misery Galore – Bettie Serveert
16. Never Understand – Jesus and Mary Chain
17. Only Happy When It Rains – Garbage
18. Pennyroyal Tea – Nirvana
disk two
1. Philosophy – Ben Folds Five
2. Respect – Aretha Franklin
3. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath – Black Sabbath
4. Shine – Rollins Band
5. Tangled Up In Blue – Bob Dylan
6. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? – Nirvana
7. White Man In Hammersmith Palais – The Clash
8. Would – Alice In Chains
