music thoughts

Today’s lesson: The Perfect Song.

My iTunes is shuffling away as I type this. Doesn’t it piss you off when a song has everything going for it—engrossing lyrics, atmosphere/ambience, hooks, inspired musicianship—and then makes an inexplicable left turn into some bullshit? Here’s a few culprits:

a) Steppenwolf—“Magic Carpet Ride.” The first two minutes are pretty rad. It’s overplayed, sure, and now sounds more than a little stale to these seasoned ears, but there’s no denying it’s a decent radio track in its own right. The crime? Stepp’s interminable Quaalude jam, which lumbers in around 1:53 and steals two minutes and change from my life. They noodle about like a buncha imbeciles who just discovered the delay pedal, impressing us all with their cosmic girth. Then, unbelievably, they resuscitate the intro and staple it to the dying embers of their stoner whiz, passing it off as an appropriate outro. To cop an overused phrase from the golfing community, that's whipped cream on shit. Not cool.

b) E.L.O.—“Showdown.” Not sure who selected this track for the Kingpin montage (below), but he done did himself a fine job. The true shits here are Jeff Lynne (speaking of Jeff Lynne, my favorite “feeler” music trivia question is fairly straightforward: name the five core Traveling Wilburys. knowitalls always get Dylan and Harrison and Petty and Orbison, but almost no one seems to remember Lynne by name) and his cohorts. They ruined the Greatest Song Of All Time by offering up some atonal droggy synth guitar hemorrhage thing at 2:05. Kingpin thankfully omitted the digressions.



c) Iggy Pop—“Lust for Life” and “The Passenger.” Great, great tunes. Super solid. That said, both should have been at least a full minute shorter and would have benefitted greatly from the White Stripes treatment a la “Fell In Love With A Girl.” Get in, get out, move on. The urgency and energy are lost somewhere in minute three.

d) Gary Wright—“Love is Alive.” Everyone and their dog knows that Gary Wright is a colossal pussy. “Dream Weaver” was mildly intriguing, I suppose, but then there’s those other seventy overproduced bedtime stories that constitute his catalogue. “Love is Alive,” like the E.L.O. track, barrels out of the gate like a motherfucker. Catchy beat with a lot of cock and mustard. Sure, the lyrics suck, but you’re not listening to them anyway. It’s that beat. Now we get to :49 on the dash and he pulls the rug out from under us, ditches the groovy thump for an awful, super-wimpy chorus of—I wish I was making this up—“my heart is on fire/my soul’s like a wheel that’s turning/my love is alive/my love is alive, oh yeah yeah yeah.” Beneath contempt.

Ed. 8/4: Ok, then I saw the attached video. I take back anything negative I've ever said about Gary Wright. This is hilarious.



Those are songs that could have been. Here are songs that are. I’ve eyeballed all 6,196 tunes on my computer and rounded up the best of the best, neglecting tuneage scarred by superfluos filler and/or mindless soloing.

Ladies and Gentlepeople, 26 perfect songs:

a) Howlin’ Wolf—“Spoonful”
b) The Smiths—“Bigmouth Strikes Again”
c) Miles Davis—“Pharaoh’s Dance”
d) Nina Simone—“Sinnerman”
e) The Who—“Eminence Front”
f) The Clientele—“Joseph Cornell”
g) Bauhaus—“Bela Lugosi’s Dead”
h) Aliotta, Haynes and Jeremiah—“Lake Shore Drive”
i) Beirut—“Mount Roclai”
j) Bob Dylan—“It’s Alright, Ma”
k) Portishead—“Roads”
l) T Rex—“Mambo Sun”
m) The Cramps—“Human Fly”
n) David Bowie—“Lady Grinning Soul”
o) The Dead Kennedys—“Holiday in Cambodia”
p) Johnny Cash—“Cat’s in the Cradle”
q) The Modern Lovers—“I’m Straight”
r) Joy Division—“Heart and Soul”
s) The Velvet Underground—“White Light/White Heat”
t) George Thorogood—“Who Do You Love”
u) The Police—“Canary in a Coalmine”
v) Radiohead—“Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box”
w) The Stooges—“I Need Somebody”
x) Talking Heads—“Houses in Motion”
y) Massive Attack—“Live With Me”
z) The Stray Cats—“Stray Cat Strut”

There it is. A—Z.
...