Don't Play That Song! Classic Rock Edition

We went to a local “bistro” (you know the kind, interesting sounding food, small portions, no tablecloth, too expensive).  In such a straight neighborhood, it was a relief to find something even slightly funky, though.

The service was friendly, and the atmosphere laid back. We were having a good time until we noticed how disappointing the music was. It wasn’t the awful Easy Listening a la Air Supply, etc., but it was a litany of the most overplayed hits of the seventies. Why, after all this time, are we still hearing this shit?

So I say that it’s time we made a list – the Don’t Play That Song list - and send it to every radio station on earth. Let’s start with Classic Rock, because it's been around so long now that the overplayed songs are especially grievous offenders. (Plus, I don’t know the names of the ones that aren’t Classic Rock.)

And lest you feel I’m picking on some otherwise worthy artists, allow me to explain that overplaying their hits is actually unfair to them. Every time you hear one of these songs you’re missing an equally good other song by that very same artist. Let’s not even get into other artists who deserved some of the limelight but never got it because the radio station was too busy playing... well, any of these songs for the 10,000th time.

Of course, there are some artists who sucked from the get-go and they're overplayed songs are the best they can manage.  They’re like your talkative aunt or strange uncle. We’re stuck with them, but we don’t go out of our way to see them.

The songs below are so well known I won’t even name the bands. And I offer some alternatives by those same artists. I’m NOT saying the alternatives are better (although in some cases they are), nor am I saying that the songs are bad (although some are).

C'mon, if you give this even two minute's thought, you could come up with your own list. Here’s mine:


The Obvious:

“Stairway to Heaven”:
No surprise here, really.  I’ve done such a good job of ignoring this song over the years, that it almost sounds okay again now.  But not quite.
Instead, try this one: “That’s the Way”

“Margaritaville”
I like Jimmy Buffett almost as much as the next drunk, but this well-written song is every sixty-something's excuse to not seek out a thousand other equally good songs.
Almost anything else by Jimmy deserves your attention.

“Free Bird”
This one is just too freaking long, especially the live version, the ending of which is ridiculous. If you’ve just got to request a song at a concert, show some imagination. Make it “Whippin’ Post”.
But if it’s got to be Skynyrd, make it “Whiskey Rock n Roller” or “Tuesday’s Gone”.


Less Obvious, Just as Annoying:

“Listen to the Music”
Please don’t.  It was 1972 and already a long way from the sixties. Ushering in an age of lowered expectations four years before Jimmy Carter. Not bad. Just a grim reminder of how uninteresting things can get.
“Without You” rocks a lot more, even if they were still waiting for a good singer to show up.

“Summer Breeze”
This one is so overplayed it literally hurts when it comes on. I still like the bridge, but the verse, chorus and guitar-riff take up too much collective space in our brains. Anyone who voluntarily plays it should be flogged.
“Ridin Thumb” is a weird little alternative.

By the way, these last two songs were played back to back at an otherwise wonderful seafood place in the Village recently.  (Yes, all my traumatic musical episodes occur while eating out.) Yet more crap followed so I came to suspect they were being ironic. We visited their sister restaurant a few years ago, where they had a knockout playlist of 60s music. What the hell happened?!

“Heart of Gold”
Et tu, Neil? How about “New Mama” from Harvest’s polar opposite Tonight’s the Night.

“I Wanna Be Sedated”
Yeah, it’s great, but as their commercial break through it allowed normal people to feel cool by liking them. There are dozens of other equally brilliant Ramones songs, and I can guarantee you won’t hear them at a wedding, like “Cretin Hop”. But just about anything from the first four albums would do.
But this relatively anti-social "Beat on the Brat" will do. (Don't worry, I played it around the kids and they turned out fine. Sort of.)

“Sultans of Swing”
Really? Again?
“Water of Love”

“You Better You Bet”
Come on.  This song kind of sucks. You know it. I know it.  The only reason we even know this song exists is because the Who did it.  It would never pass the If Someone Unknown Did It test.
Try just about anything before Tommy, Like “Relax”, from The Who Sell Out, which is, by the way, the greatest album of all time.  (Yeah, I said it.)

“Against the Wind”
Also, “Like a Rock”, or anything involving nature. Bob's a city boy, so let's go with his best song ever.
“Main Street”

“Refugee”
It sounded good the first time I heard it, okay the next second time. But that was it. The next 10,000 times occurred in the 80s, and it epitomizes all that’s wrong with Tom Petty.  He thinks he’s better than he is. He invests a lot of feeling in a pretty unoriginal song.
Go with most of “Full Moon Fever” or my favorite, “Shadow of a Doubt (Complex Kid)”

“Tempted”
Not anymore.
Try “Up the Junction”, which will rip your heart out.

“Tainted Love”
I'm breaking my rule here. This song sucked from the get-go, and the idea that anyone could extract any joy from it is beyond my comprehension. This is what they mean when they say that white guys have no rhythm. And I oughtta know.
The original - sung by a female - has more balls.


Repeat Offenders:

Billy Joel:
BJ manages a Trifecta here:
“Piano Man” - I can still get through it with the help of the words, but JESUS.
“It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me” - Pure BS (again, I ought to know) from someone who didn’t get punk/new wave.  He should stick to pop, which he’s actually good at.
“You May Be Right” – This one makes me sick.  I hate self-described “crazy” people. If you think you are, you’re not.  You're boring.
I could go on about “Just the Way You Are”, “Big Shot”, “Movin’ Out”. It just goes on and on.
Instead, try "Summer, Highland Falls", "And So It Goes", “James”, “I’ve Loved These Days” or this great one from Streetlife Serenade.

The Eagles:
Really, the entire Eagles oeuvre is pretty tired, except for some overlooked gems on the first three albums.  But the dead horses are:
“Take It Easy” - Good at the time, but I just can’t take it anymore.  I feel like I’m listening to the skeleton of a song.
“Lyin Eyes” - Basta!
“Life In the Fast Lane” - The only difference between Fast Laners and Low Lifes is money.
“Hotel California” I can admit now, after all these years, that this is not a bad song, but it isn’t nearly as good as it thinks it is.
I much prefer "Nightingale", "Tryin'" and "Bitter Creek".

Evil Jaybee says that any DJ who consciously puts on one of these songs really should be shot. The kinder, gentler Jaybee just wishes they’d find another line of work.

In looking at the above it’s amazing that there are no Beatles songs on it. I was about to say there are no Stones songs either, but I just thought of a few:
“Angie”
“Start Me Up”
“It’s Only Rock n Roll”
Which just goes to show it can happen to the almost best.

Instead, try anything before Beggar’s Banquet, like all of Aftermath. But there's also “Moonlight Mile”, “Lovin’ Cup”, “You’ve Got the Silver”, "Before They Make Me Run", and what may be the greatest rock and roll song ever “Soul Survivor”.

So my advice Mr. DJ - if you still exist (probably not, so okay Mr. Radio Programmer) is that every time you want to play one of the above songs, take the fucking hint, okay?

Secret History: 1976

If you ask me about 1975, I can tell you a hundred different great things that happened (and some that didn’t, since I put the Ramones, Eno and the Wild Tchapatoulas there instead of here where they belonged). When you ask me about 1976 I’m likely to give you a blank stare.

It was kind of a crappy year. Punk hadn’t quite exploded yet, Steely Dan and Dylan had peaked the year before, and singer songwriters were getting positively annoying.

So where did that leave us?


Rock and Roll:

Well, there was Graham Parker. Jaybee Sister One is a big fan who by now could run circles around me regarding Parker's later career. My preference is for his earliest stuff, which somehow got mixed up with/lost amongst punk. He also lost a close election that year for Angriest Young Man to Elvis Costello.

It's too bad because he's not a punk at all. He comes out of the English pub rock tradition and has an approach very similar to Bruce Springsteen. His first record, Howlin Wind is a bit more soulful, with horns being pretty prominent. His second, Heat Treatment pushed the guitar and organ up front. The production is clearer too, so even though it's only got ten songs, I prefer it to Howlin’ Wind. But both are great.

Jonathan Richman has had a long strange career, but The Modern Lovers is where it all starts. This is the one with “Roadrunner”, one of the all time great rock and roll songs. Also, he rhymes Picasso with asshole. You won't find that in a Rhyming Dictionary.


Songs:

I'd like to say that Have Moicy! by Michael Hurley, The Unholy Modal Rounders and Jeffrey Fredericks and the Clamtones (whew!) is simply a bunch of great songs. But I'd be a liar if I left out all the twists and turns, like Peter Stampfel's funny voice and the human digestive tract as subject matter. But I’ll take it over The Pretender any day. I made a point of buying this record when some idiot radio DJ criticized Robert Christgau’s “Best of the 70s” choices, singling this out because she never heard of it. This same idiot DJ (Carol Miller, actually) is still playing the same lame classic rock songs, doing her part to make sure you never hear anything interesting ever again.

Don't hate Kate and Anna Mcgarrigle just because every critic on earth loves them. You really can't blame them because their first record is one of the great singer-songwriter records of the decade. Take that James Taylor, Jackson Browne, etc.

Almost as good is Warren Zevon’s first record - another in the ongoing Chronicles of Albums Jaybee's Brother hated. “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” is a great rock and roll song (and a ding to the abovementioned singer-songwriters to boot) done a disservice by Linda Rondstadt. The real version is here.


Pop:

David Bowie was always at least one step everyone (and two ahead of me) but on Station to Station he makes it easy to like him. No obvious androgyny to make male teens like me uncomfortable. No fey/fake soul music. Just pop. “TVC15” is one of his best ever.


Guilty Pleasure:

Turnstiles is probably my favorite Billy Joel record. He’s not quite a superstar yet, but he’s coming back home anyway. It’s easy to hate the guy, and sometimes I do. I prefer guitars to pianos and strings, but below all that bs, I think his heart’s in the right place. And for a time he was the greatest pop melodist since Paul McCartney.


Wait'll Next Year:

So, my faulty memory makes it kind of a sucky year. My fact checking proves that it wasn’t so bad. But hold onto your hats. The times, as they say, were a-changin’.

Secret History: 1974

My doubts about the mainstream are only growing by now. Good music is officially “hard to find”, at least for me, a seventeen year old. By which I mean I can no longer simply turn the radio on and expect to hear something I really like.

Forget AM radio. Never being fond of brass or strings, I only liked Motown from a distance. So I missed out on the pleasures of much ‘70s soul.

And FM? I could get by but not without constantly changing the station. So there’s very little below that I actually heard there and enjoyed at the time. So with very few exceptions, it would only be later that I’d find the records below.



The following, is more or less in descending order of quality:

The one true masterpiece is Richard and Linda Thompson’s “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight” which reminds me of the first Paul Simon album - simple arrangements and great songs. But Richard's also got his guitar and wife Linda singing along, making this one of the very best of the decade.

Randy Newman seemed to be on a mission to piss off the world - something he wouldn't quite accomplish until a few years later with "Short People". He started with his very weird first solo record, moved onto “Twelve Songs”, where phrases like “yellow man” and “darkies” popped up all over the place. “Sail Away” was a bit of a relief, but on “Good Old Boys”, he goes all out with the strings and tells stories of the American South, now using the N word.

What Randy's got going for him, though, is brilliant songwriting. "Marie" is one of the greatest love songs ever (but only when sung by Randy himself). “Louisiana 1928” would be merely moving if it didn't also remind you of Louisiana 2005. This one's my favorite by him.

If you like to read about music, you’ve already heard about Big Star’s “Radio City”. So all I’m going to say is that what you’ve heard is true. On first listen you might not think much of it because the Beatles were better. Just remember that the Beatles were better than everybody.

“Feats Don't Fail Me Now” was the Little Feat album that made me a fan. Little Feat remind me of beer – the first one you have is always the best.

I'm still waiting for someone to turn “Between Today and Yesterday” into a Broadway musical. Alan Price proves that he's got it with this take on his childhood in the coal towns of England. There are moments on this record that elicit such an emotional response in me (something that I’ll explain at a later time) that I am certain most people will think I'm nuts. I’d like a second opinion.

Neil Young was well into his blue period by now, and people (including me) were beginning to wonder about him, but only after first actually purchasing his records. At first, I was disappointed by “On the Beach”. Side one could be better. I heard a better “See the Sky About to Rain” on a live bootleg with just Neil on the piano. And “Vampire Blues” just isn't funny enough. Ah, but side two! This isn't mood music. It's trance music. And it probably sent most people scurrying back to side one. But it was where I wanted to live. “Motion Pictures” is one of his great depressing songs, but it's the finale "Ambulance Blues" that’s a masterpiece. You're all just pissin in the wind….

I've come to distrust those albums with too serious a theme. But Al Stewart is very likable, so his take on history - “Past Present and Future” - is enjoyable anyway. And like me, you don’t have to believe the Nostradamus stuff to love the last song. This one’s just before Al hits the big time.

You’d think a white British guy trying to sing New Orleans-style and basically stealing Little Feat’s sound, would piss me off a little more. But Robert Palmer’s “Sneakin Sally Through the Alley” ends up sounding better than it sounds, maybe because he used Little Feat as his band. This one bought him a lot of good will from me. And it would only be when he started wearing a suit that I began to find him unbearable.

Most Billy Joel fans love “Turnstiles” or “The Stranger” the best. But don’t overlook “Streetlife Serenader”. It’s a little calmer than his major label debut, and less supercilious (it’s really a word, I swear. Someone called me it once.) There’s some filler on it, but the ones that aren’t, like “Roberta” are quietly wonderful.


And although the following records technically came out in 1973, I’m putting them into 1974, because the artists had already released something else in ’73. That, and ‘cause I felt like it:
It took until “Europe 72” for me to like the Grateful Dead. I then went back to rehear what I had been missing. So the subsequent “Bear’s Choice” almost slipped through the cracks. Plus, I preferred their harmonies to Pigpen’s blues. But side one is gentle and side two is almost hypnotic. Thank you, Pigpen!

One of the highlights of my musical life was that Saturday morning in my room doing homework when I first heard “Incident on 52nd St”. Another was that Sunday afternoon, again in my room, hearing “Rosalita” followed by “NYC Serenade”. I would have sworn that Bruce Springsteen was black or Puerto Rican. I found his mix of rock and roll, latin horns, semi-soul music, and female background choruses intoxicating. Then, when I actually bought “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle” and found that these three songs took up side two, running seven, seven and ten minutes respectively. One of the great, and most audacious, sides in all of rock and roll. Side one’s a bit tame in comparison, but quite good under any other circumstances.



In sum, like the year before, I’m spending more and more time in my room listening to music, instead of hanging with friends doing so. That’s because my friends and I didn’t share the same tastes. That splintering of taste I referred to in prior posts is continuing unabated.

In retrospect, 1974 was not a bad year. The problem is that you should not have to wait for “in retrospect” to know.

The Evil That Men Do, Part 3 - Drive Bys

During the coldest days of January, the prospect of summer will elicit a momentary nostalgia for open windows and soft breezes, but I am rudely disabused from any such reverie - usually in late March - by a much grimmer reality: drive bys. You know what I mean - the practice of blasting one’s car stereo, for the supposed benefit of home owners and passer-bys. It’s the equivalent of me living in my car, and driving through your neighborhood all the time.

Now my neighborhood is more likely to build a statue venerating, say, Franki Valli rather than John Lennon. Over time this preference has evolved to the current dance music, and the drive-bys here tend to reflect that.

The problem was recently exacerbated with the installation of a traffic light at the corner nearest to my house. I should be thankful that the neighborhood children are safer, but then again, aren’t they the ones who will just grow up to do the driving by in a few years? The true impact of this (meaning how it affects me personally) is that now the cars are no longer just driving by. They are stopping to wait for the light to change. I suppose that the increased amount of exhaust fumes ought to be of concern to me, but I’ll leave that to someone whose priorities are straight. I now get to hear entire verses of the hits of the day, right through my front window. I’m missing the upside to this.

And yet, there’s an even worse variation on this theme. Some of my fellow fifty year olds – with their tastes frozen in time – are now participating in this practice. I recently had the misfortune of sharing the road with the driver of a 1985 Cadillac with Jersey plates. He was tailgating and blasting his radio even more than I usually do. Rather than retaliate in some way, I felt the need to learn more about this man, so I tried to keep up. About an hour later, I finally got a glimpse and a listen. He was about my age, with his graying hair combed into a pompadour, and the song was Billy Joel’s “Movin’ Out”. I concluded that he was still living with his mom. (Shouldn’t you only play “Movin’ Out” if you’ve actually moved out?)

Of course, there are those who still play Barry Manilow or Celine Dion in this manner, but let’s face it - they’re beyond our help right now.

In my neighborhood’s first bid for cultural diversity, the guy across the street has started to blast his radio when working on his motorbike. It’s usually “Take it Easy” or “China Grove”. I tell myself that it could be worse. It could be “Free Bird”. (Oh wait, there it is…)

Of course, when I’m out there driving myself, I feel I must do my part to offset the bad affects of what I’ve had to hear, by adding my own preferred music to the mix. I realize that this might appear hypocritical of me, bur really, the only other alternative would be for me to build an automatic egg-thrower that targets sources of noise near the house - itself a toned down version of another revenge fantasy deemed even more anti-social by family members who’d like me to stay out of jail.

So when you see me driving by, blasting some ungodly noise that I feel you need to hear, just think about all the eggs I’m saving.