Today's topic was suggested by Anna Bragdon, who like me still listens to regular radio stations in the car. (I can't afford satellite radio, and my iPod is broken; I'm not sure what Anna's reasons are.)
Anyway, Anna said she'd kept her car on the other day in order to listen to the end of a song on the radio, and made her own mental list of songs she'd stay in the car for. She said that most of those songs were tracks she doesn't own.
Putting my own list together, I find that I do own most of these tracks, but will still stay to listen to them on the radio — in the same way that I'm watching Broadcast News on TV right now, even though I own the DVD. Leave your own lists in the comments section.
1. "Hey Ya," OutKast. I never got tired of this song. I thought I owned it, but can't find it in my iTunes; is it possible that an electronic music file could just disappear? How?
2. "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)," Bruce Springsteen. "Jungleland" is longer, and I'll stay for that one too, but this is the song I hear more often on the radio.
3. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," Crosby, Stills & Nash. A song you stay in the car for tends to be longer than average. This one runs 7:25.
4. "Travelin' Man/Beautiful Loser," Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band. Two songs that run together as a set, from the Live Bullet album; sometimes album-oriented radio stations play them as a single track. I love the segue, and "Beautiful Loser" is on a short list of songs that could be my personal theme song. The two tracks together run close to nine minutes.
5. "Under Pressure," Queen. The obvious choice is "Bohemian Rhapsody," but I like this song better.
5 comments:
I got that Bob Seger album in 1976 or 77 as part of my eleven records from the Columbia record club for a nickel or so. Also included was Boston by Boston, Born to Run, and oh yeah, Bat Out of Hell (the first of course!). I would stay in a car that was outfitted with a car bomb set to explode in a handful of seconds, smelling of very old Brie, and overrun with nasty varmints, until the end of Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth....
By the way, there's a decent new cover of Hey Yeah done by Booker T on his new album Potato Hole, backed by the Drive-By Truckers.
I was using a different MP3 player that, when I deleted it from the playlist, decided Steve Earle's cover of "Way Down in the Hole" was actually sung by John Entwistle. (His solo version of "My Wife," btw, is vastly superior to the one he did for The Who.) I had to dumpster dive for the file and rename it.
iTunes also tends to lose files on occasion. Usually, if you search the drive for a file with that song title, it pops right back up, then you have to edit the tag info.
The Cowboy Junkies will usually get me stick around, especially their version of 'One'. It's tough to say, it often depends on my mood, but another guaranteed singalong stickaround is 'The Buckless Yooper' by Jeff Daniels. Actually, most of his songs are pretty darn great.
Just the other day I stayed in the car for "It's a Beautiful Day" by U2. That song always lifts my mood. I also won't walk away from "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", "I Say a Little Prayer", "Prove it all Night" and pretty much any song by the Smiths and the Replacements, though those are rarer and rarer to hear on the radio.
I will sit in the car and listen to songs I rarely hear. like the Be Good Tanyas "Littlest Bird sings the Littlest song" or anything off the Leanord Cohen London Album as I don't get him, but want to... and can get him on that album.
Post a Comment