Well, here we are. The first in a (hopefully) long running weekly segment, we're going to call Top 5 Tuesdays. How it's going to go is that we'll have two topics a month, and then one week I'll write my Top 5, with nice little explanations, and then the next Sara will present hers. Before everyone asks; yes, we really like High Fidelity. Yes we're both geeks. Yes, we're stealing our first Top 5 list FROM High Fidelity.
This week's Top 5 topic: TOP 5 SIDE ONE - TRACK ONE's of all time.
This is the kind of question I beg for when it comes to music geekery, because I can go for the really obscure choices, or I can make the safe ones. While the obscure ones are more fun, I strangely enough found myself veering back towards a couple of the classics despite wanting to go off the deep end.
The classics tend to be classics for a reason, I found out. Anyways. On to the inaugural TOP 5 TUESDAY LIST.
#5. The Flaming Lips - "The Abandoned Hospital Ship" - Off of Clouds Taste Metallic
The song starts out sounding the like the last ever radio transmission of a spaceship, the tape starts rolling, and a distant beep is heard. Wayne Coyne's warbly voice carries over a sparse slide guitar / acoustic guitar / piano arrangement, singing, "And sure, it seems easy now, but I tell you what / We were perplexed. Finding the Needle / In the needle's disguise."
The tiredness and distance carries through Coyne's voice, not only the production makes the song sound distant, but Coyne's tone, one of the calm after the storm, the relief that comes after an endeavor. "But I'm sorta relieved / I'm getting over it now," Coyne ends with.
Ronald Jones' distant guitar funnels in, covered in a lush reverb, letting the listener float out in space for a little bit longer before Steven Drozd's drums bash in, kicking the listener in the side of the head, knocking them into seemingly a cartoon world. The skronking guitars and church bells make me imagine someone slowly sitting up, little cuckoo birds flying in circles around their heads.
All in all, the song is the perfect beginning to what I believe is The Flaming Lips' masterwork. It's the point where they balanced the Butthole Surfer acid-rock with their later more symphonic and orchestral arrangements.
#4. The Clash - "Know Your Rights" - Off of Combat Rock
"THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT *GUITAR CRUNCH* WITH GUITTAAARRR!"
Goddamnit Joe Strummer, why'd you have to be the one to die? Take Topper Headon, hell, even Mick Jones could die, I could do without a Big Audio Dynamite reunion.
Let's lay the facts down, Combat Rock is a good album. Not great, not terrible. It's not as good as London Calling (being one of the greatest albums ever made…don't fight me on this), but far better than Sandinista! (Jesus god make it end. Even Joe Strummer said it'd be better as a Double CD, or Single CD, or even an EP…). Where Combat Rock hit, it really hit, and "Know Your Rights" is one of those places.
The entire song just drives, it's as if the best parts of The Clash's influences came together for it. We have Joe Strummer's overtly political lyrics ("Murder is a crime! Unless it is done by a Policeman!"), thumpy dub bass, driving drums, and Rockabilly / Spaghetti Western guitars.
People said that The Clash were the "Only band that mattered". Those people were probably right. The Clash extended the grip of what "punk rock" could be. They didn't let themselves be put in a box, and songs like "Know Your Rights" emphasize just that point.
People live and die by the first Clash album and "London Calling", and I don't blame them. Those are the pinnacles of their discography, but Combat Rock really supports itself too for the most part. It takes the sprawl of "London Calling" and "Sandinista!" and just edits them down to their basics, and brings the rock back into them from the Dub overload of "Sandinista!"
#3. The Hold Steady - "Stuck Between Stations" - Off of Boys And Girls In America
To anyone who knows me, this isn't much of a surprise, but to those of you who don't, welcome, for one, and secondly, I've seen The Hold Steady over a dozen times live. If you haven't, I immediately recommend finding where they're touring, fly out, and see the show.
The Hold Steady took me a while to get in to. I came into hearing the band right after the release of their second album "Separation Sunday", and while Craig Finn's sing-talking isn't the easiest thing to grasp a hold of, I eventually did. As I kept on listening to Separation Sunday I realized that I had become slightly obsessed. The songs kept on repeating and repeating on my CD Player (remember those?). When The Hold Steady announced their third album, "Boys and Girls in America", I was extremely excited. Eventually, the day came around where I got to hear the album (early at that! Hooray for working in Radio at the time.) I popped the CD into my computer and fired it up.
"There are nights where I think that Sal Paradise was right, 'Boys and Girls in America, they have such a sad time together.'"
The song started with Finn's trademark drawl, backed by Tad Kubler's classic rock guitar riffing. The song is plenty catchy, and features Finn at some of his name dropping best, bringing up Minnesota's Golden Gophers and John Berryman by name, while referencing Jack Kerouac in the first line. Needless to say, it's a fantastic rock and roll track.
However,the point that really caught me was the bridge, it's the game changer. It begins with a slow Springsteen piano riff, and builds up to a proclamation of drunken desperation which is shattered with a guitar solo.
When I first put on the album I listened to "Stuck Between Stations" at least five times before FINALLY moving on to the second track, it's just that good.
#2. Bruce Springsteen - "Thunder Road" - Off of Born To Run
This is one of those classics I was talking about earlier. One of those picks that is just so rudimentary, so definite that I wanted to NOT put it on here. What can I say, I couldn't help myself. If you were born in the United States, this should be on your list of top ten songs of all time.
It's the perfect cinematic song. It's singing about the American dream, escape, freedom, and love. What more could anyone want? It's really though to think that Springsteen wasn't much older than I am when he wrote it. He was going through many of the same things that people in my current generation do, he was just able to verbalize it. Wanting to be saved from the suburbs, from wanting to see something else, go on an adventure, be free, and be sure of one thing: love will get you through.
It's the romanticized image of America and of twenty-something life that we all wish we could have. Disregard any real needs, just get on your motorcycle and get going across the country. Play some music, get the pretty girls, live without any real regrets. Hell, even if the music on the song was awful (it's not) the lyrics would make it one of the greatest songs ever written.
The fact that it starts out one of the perfect albums just helps it that much more. It's the inspirational start to a record that lives in celebration, desperation, and the wanting to be free. It's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" of Rock 'n Roll, the album that will be passed down to generations, and they'll get it. Some of the references may be lost, but they'll understand that this means something. The flow of the river under Huck's feet can be felt in the book, and the air rushing through your hair on the back of Bruce's bike can be felt in the song.
#1. Tom Waits - "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)" - Off of Small Change
Possibly one of the most beautiful songs ever written. It quite perfectly shows that feeling of complete desperation after your heart's been torn out by a woman. That feeling of unrequited lust that never really goes away, even after you've been told "no." It's the burning in your heart you feel for someone, completely doused in water afterwards, and the heartbreak that follows.
The sparse piano + strings arrangement is classic for early Tom Waits, this is the end of his troubadour days, and the beginning steps of his experimental era. We still get the ballads that Waits was known for, but also the hoarse voice that so many people are unable to get past. If only they were able to get past it for this song.
The feeling of a drunken kiss that wasn't meant to be, a hope for so much more but taken away immediately by the feeling of "that wasn't right." That is the heart of the song. That is the moral message. Trying to continue to drink your way out of the situation, then considering running away and traveling the world. But knowing that there's really no escape from yourself that will save you here. The moment happened, the action occurred, and it can't be taken back. The heartbreak is permanent.
I honestly can't choose just one lyric from the song to put up, so I'll just put the entire thing.
Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did, I've got what I paid for now
See you tomorrow, hey Frank, can I borrow a couple of bucks from you
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me
I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley
And I'm tired of all these soldiers here
No one speaks English, and everything's broken, and my Stacys are soaking wet
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me
Now the dogs are barking and the taxi cab's parking
A lot they can do for me
I begged you to stab me, you tore my shirt open,
And I'm down on my knees tonight
Old Bushmill's I staggered, you'd bury the dagger
In your silhouette window light go
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me
Now I lost my Saint Christopher now that I've kissed her
And the one-armed bandit knows
And the maverick Chinamen, and the cold-blooded signs,
And the girls down by the strip-tease shows, go
Waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me
No, I don't want your sympathy, the fugitives say
That the streets aren't for dreaming now
And manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories,
They want a piece of the action anyhow
Go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me
And you can ask any sailor, and the keys from the jailor,
And the old men in wheelchairs know
And Mathilda's the defendant, she killed about a hundred,
And she follows wherever you may go
Waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me
And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace,
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on an
Old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
And goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers
And goodnight to Mathilda, too
Proofread please.
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