"I'm Walkin'" (Fats Domino)

I remember I was in kindergarten, and one of the first grade teachers had his students put on this little show for the fall PTA meeting called something like "Flashback to the 50s."  Actually, the whole school got into it: girls wore poodle skirts and bobby socks, and the boys had their hair greased back.  Well, most of the boys anyway.  My hair was too short to grease back.  So I went with the "Richie Cunningham" look: a plaid shirt, cuffed jeans, and a letter sweater (which my mom somehow crafted from an old pair of my pajamas).
Anyway, it was a great little show.  The teacher had his students singing and doing choreography to stuff like Danny & The Juniors' "At the Hop" and Bill Haley's "Shake, Rattle, and Roll."  It also was the first time I ever heard Antoine "Fats" Domino's "I'm Walkin'," and I couldn't get enough.  I think I walked around for a solid month, singing the first few lines (I'm walkin' / yes, indeed / I'm talkin'), because that's all I knew.  Drove my parents nuts.
Sidebar: I ended up having that same teacher the following year for first grade.  But, to my disappointment, we didn't get to do a show for the PTA; our new principal didn't really see the point in "50s Day," so she shut it down.  Oh, and the teacher turned out to be a lunatic, too.  Exhibit A: dude had very expensive, collectors' edition teddy bears, lining the walls of his classroom.  I made the mistake one day of giving one a hug named "Humphrey Beargart," which was dressed in a mini fedora and tan raincoat, and ended up on the receiving end of the biggest conniption fits I've ever witnessed from a grown man.  (I mean, you put a bunch of six-year-olds in a small room, lined with plush toys.  Do you really think they're going to give two poops and Popsicle that "Scarlett O'Beara" recently fetched $900 at auction?)
But, I digress.
I still love the song "I'm Walkin'" (1957) because it's two minutes of pure joy.
The New Orleans native's warm, ebullient delivery and simmering boogie-woogie piano reach right through the speakers and coax you out of any kind of funk you're in.  And that backbeat and heavy bassline (and it's no coincidence that it's a walking bassline) are steeped in the Crescent City second-line tradition, where straight 4/4 time always gets subdivided into funky polyrhythms.  It is music designed to make you move, and you can sense the music is coming right from the man's very soul.
Actually, I think this quote from around 1960 (later reprinted in Rolling Stone) sums it up pretty well: "I don't know what all the trouble is about us being a bad influence on teenagers.  I'm just playing the same music I played all my life."

"Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" (Robert Plant & Alison Krauss)

I didn't quite know what to make of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's collaboration when I first read about it back in 2007.  Don't get me wrong; I was a fan of Plant and Krauss, individually.  But together?  (I imagined a combination along the lines of cappuccino-flavored potato chips—a crime against nature if there ever was one.)

Thankfully, I was wrong about my assumptions.  In fact, I still marvel at how naturally and effortlessly their voices mesh on Raising Sand, an album featuring beguiling covers of Americana, blues, and roots rock tunes.

My favorite cut from the album is "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)," a true-to-the-original cover of a 1964 single by the Everly Brothers that captures all of the nuance of Phil and Don's close harmonies.  Krauss's voice is as pure and smooth as clover honey against Plant's bluesy, whiskey tenor.

The reason the blend works so well, though, is T. Bone Burnett's tasteful production and arrangement of the song.  It retains the same rumba/rock drum groove of the original and adds some tasty tremolo guitar, amplifying the rockabilly quotient a bit.  Quite simply, Burnett creates the perfect backdrop: it rocks and rumbles like the engine of a rod hod yet doesn't outcompete the raw horsepower of the duo's vocals.

"Rumble" (Link Wray)

Menacing.  It's the only adjective that fits Dunn, NC-born guitarist Link Wray's "Rumble" (1958).
The sense of tension in this single, named for gang fights in 50s greaser slang, simmers for 2:30, like two rivals sizing each other up.  In fact, some parents' groups got the song banned from radio because they thought it might incite "youth violence."  Still didn't stop the single from selling a million copies. (The publicity probably helped it, actually.)
Like so many other landmark tunes in rock history, "Rumble" came about during a jam at a live show.  Wray and his band were playing a sock hop in Fredericksburg, VA, when the show's organizer, Washington, DC-based DJ Milt Grant, asked Wray to play a "stroll" (a slow, swinging number that was accompanied by a line dance, appropriately called "The Stroll").  Thing was, Wray didn't have a stroll in his arsenal of songs.  So he just turned up his amp and started improvising some chords.  The crowd loved it so much that they requested the song (which was called "Oddball" before it found its final moniker) four more times that night.
I'd never heard the song until I saw the movie Pulp Fiction (1994); it plays behind the "uncomfortable silences" scene in Jackrabbit Slims, perfectly capturing the tension (of a different sort) between "Vincent Vega" and "Mia Wallace."
I think what struck me about the tune was that it kind of doesn't fit any specific genre of 50s rock.  I mean, there are tinges of rockabilly and surf music, but the track doesn't slip snugly into either category.  In some ways, it's like the precursor of the precursor to punk: minimal chords, maximum attitude, and grungy guitar—a sound Wray achieved by jamming sharpened pencils into the cone of his amplifier.  (If that's not punk, I don't know what is.)

"Green Onions" (Booker T. & The MG's)

"Green Onions" (1962) is a soulful, deceptively simple groover and probably one of the most famous instrumentals of the 20th century.
It also was something of a throwaway tune.
Stax Records' house band (consisting of keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, drummer Al Jackson, Jr., and bassist Lewie Steinberg) were scheduled to play on a session for rockabilly musician Billy Lee Riley.  But Riley never showed.  Because producer Jim Stewart already had the session time booked and tape ready to roll, he just recorded the musicians jamming on a sultry blues tune called "Behave Yourself."  Listening to the playback, Stewart liked what he heard and decided it should be released as a single.  
Only they needed a song for the flip side.
Putting their heads together, Cropper reminded Jones about a bluesy little piano riff he'd been noodling around with a few weeks before and suggested they might do something with that.
NPR's David Dye interviewed Cropper in 2005, who had this to say: "So (Jones) goes out on the organ and starts playing this riff.  Two cuts later, we had the 'Green Onions' that you know about today."
The single, which Stewart credited to Booker T. & The MG's (which stands for "Memphis Group"), famously got flipped by DJs to its B-side, and "Green Onions" became a massive hit—something the then 17-year-old Jones was only peripherally aware of.
"I started getting ready to go to Indiana University," Jones told NPR's Dye in 2009.  "I didn’t pay too much attention to (the record)—I liked the way it sounded.  But I was focused on being a freshman at Indiana at the time."

"I'm a Man" (The Spencer Davis Group)

If there's one song that might make you think Steve Winwood was born on Chicago's South Side and raised in Memphis (he actually hails from Birmingham, England), it's "I'm a Man," the 1967 Spencer Davis Group single he wrote with Jimmy Miller, the producer extraordinaire who helped The Rolling Stones craft their strongest, greasiest work between 1968 and 1973.
The track is three minutes of pure groove, steeped in rhythm and infused with blues.  The dissonant guitar licks and blasts of Hammond B-3 organ against the backdrop of syncopated drums and cowbell make the song feel like it was cut at Chess or Stax.  Winwood's vocal (which is heavily indebted to Ray Charles) also adds to the American R&B vibe of the tune.  Granted, it's not exactly easy to discern what he's singing about because the words fly by at a breakneck pace, but a read of the lyrics reveal that it's actually a clever take on misconceptions about stardom.  The gist: just because he's famous doesn't mean he's not the same guy he always was.  My favorite stanza:

I got to keep my image
While suspended from a throne
That looks out upon a kingdom
Full of people all unknown
Who imagine I'm not human
And my heart is made of stone
I never had no problems
And my toilet's trimmed with chrome

"Baby, Please Don't Go" (Them)

The blues standard "Baby, Please Don't Go" is a surprisingly old song.  We're talking late 1800s here.
Originating in the Deep South, it seems to have come from the prison work song "Another Man Done Gone," which tells the story of a man dying while toiling on a chain gang (which explains the line in "Baby, Please Don't Go" about Left the county farm / Had the shackles on).
The first recording of "Baby, Please Don't Go" was in 1935 by Mississippi's Big Joe Williams, who—as an anomaly of live fast, drink hard, and die young bluesmen of the era—ended up enjoying a decades-long career as a folk blues artist, influencing artists from Muddy Waters to Bob Dylan along the way.
But my personal favorite recording of the song is the 1965 version by the Belfast-based Them, featuring a spry, young Van Morrison on lead vocal.  From moment one, the song threatens with its rumbling bassline and piercing lead guitar, which (depending upon which website you want to believe) was either played by Them's guitarist Billy Harrison or future Led Zeppelin pilot Jimmy Page, who was doing session work for artists like Them around this time.  The sense of menace and danger in the song escalates as it rolls along, punctuated by Morrison's bluesy yawps and blasts of harmonica.
The whole affair sounds like a speeding car that's about to careen out of control, yet just keeps defying fate and hugging the road at every turn.  (Which is exactly what makes it the perfect/worst song for driving ever.)

"Good Lovin'" (The Young Rascals)

The Rascals (or "The Young Rascals" as they were known for a few years for legal reasons) pretty much defined the genre of "blue-eyed soul."  The New York-based band had a sound that was equal parts R&B and garage rock, with even a touch of jazz.
Perfect specimen is "Good Lovin' (1966)," which actually is a cover of a 1965 tune by The Olympics, a doo-wop/R&B group best known for novelty songs (like 1958's "Western Movies," which is replete with campy gunshot sound effects).
Story goes, keyboardist/vocalist Felix Cavaliere heard The Olympics' Latin-tinged version on R&B radio in New York and immediately decided that The Rascals had to cover it in their live shows.  
Then, when the band landed its recording contract with Atlantic Records, they cut the song in the studio for their covers-heavy first album, The Young Rascals.  Although the band members weren't too pleased with the results, feeling the final product sounded sloppy, the experts behind the mixing board, producers Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin, convinced them that it had the tight-but-loose sound that would make it an instant hit.  (It went to #1 on the Billboard charts in April 1966.)
Being a keyboardist myself, I always gravitate to Cavaliere's Hammond B-3 solo after the second chorus.  Honestly, there's nothing complicated about it: a few sustained notes over some block chords; he's basically just replaying the horn break from The Olympics' original.  But there's something soul stirring about the resonating, church-y sound he conjures from that electric organ.  It brings to mind jazz organist, Jimmy Smith, who definitely influenced Cavaliere's sound.
And, although it's gimmicky, I still love that false stop at the end of the song, where you get that little bonus reprise of the chorus and Cavaliere sounding like he's having a religious experience.  

"Revolution" (The Beatles)

Frankly, it's a pain in the ass to write about The Beatles.  Everything they ever performed, wrote, said, wore, etc. has been scrutinized and analyzed to the point of oblivion.
And it's infinitely frustrating to scan the Web and find the same, rehashed information (or misinformation), over and over.  So I'll keep my rehashing brief.
It's 1968.  John Lennon is feeling pressure from various factions to support their radical agendas, including anarchy and overthrow.  Also, the Vietnam War is escalating, and Lennon wants to publicly address the topic—something the band's former manager, the late Brian Epstein, had prevented him and the others from doing.
So Lennon writes "Revolution," which is distinctly anti-revolutionary.  His message to the world: we all want change, but violence is not the answer.
The band records a semi-acoustic, bluesy version in May/June of 1968, which comes to be known as "Revolution 1."  Paul McCartney and George Harrison feel it's "too slow" to be released as a single.  So they head back into the studio in July to create a blistering version with Nicky Hopkins on electric piano, which ultimately is released as the B-side to McCartney's "Hey Jude."
So, there it is.
I hate to admit I first heard "Revolution" on a 1987 Nike commercial.  (Yes, that one, which resulted in the surviving Beatles suing the shoe company, its ad agency, and EMI/Capitol Records.)  And I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I think Yoko Ono was right—the commercial had the effect of introducing Lennon's song to a new generation.  Personally, I couldn't have cared less about the commercial or what it was selling; I just liked the song.
Although, I was sporting a pair of Nikes by Christmas that year.  Hmm...
Anyway, between Ringo Starr's compressed drums and Lennon/Harrison's overdriven guitars (fed directly into the mixing console to get that raunchy, fuzzed-out sound), I'd venture that no other song about pacifism has rocked quite as hard, before or since.

"I Love Rock and Roll" (Joan Jett & The Blackhearts)

I'll never forget seeing the video for "I Love Rock and Roll" for the first time as a kid.  I thought Joan Jett was the coolest person on earth.  Although, to be honest, my 4-year-old brain couldn't process that she was not, in fact, the same person as Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days.  (In hindsight, I think it was pretty astute of a 4-year-old to make a connection between Jett and Suzi Quatro.)
Anyway, for years, I never realized the song was a cover because Jett completely owns the song.  But the original version was written/performed by the British band Arrows, a short-lived pop-rock band that had its own television show on Britain's ITV network from 1976-1977.  Story goes, Jett was on tour in the UK with her original band, The Runaways, and happened to catch Arrows performing its 1975 single "I Love Rock and Roll" on the program.  She immediately liked the song and proposed that The Runaways cover it.
Her bandmates' response: go soak your head.
So she kept the song in her back pocket till she went solo.
Her first—and somewhat rare—version was recorded in 1979 with what was left of The Sex Pistols (Steve Jones on guitar and Paul Cook on drums).  Then, after the success of her first solo album, Joan Jett/Bad Reputation, and landing a record distribution deal with Boardwalk Records for her own label, Blackheart Records, she re-recorded the song in 1981 with The Blackhearts and turned it into a massive hit.
(Sort of an interesting sidebar: in poking around the web, looking for stuff about "I Love Rock and Roll's" original performer, I found an interview with former Arrows frontman/songwriter, Alan Merrill.  I'd never given much thought to song's lyrics before, but Merrill comments that everyone just assumes that the song's protagonist is the one singing I love rock and roll / So put another dime in the jukebox, baby to the love interest.  But that's not the case.  It's really a song within a song: the verses are the guy and girl checking each other out, whereas the chorus is the hit song they're listening to on the jukebox.)

"Needles in the Camel's Eye" (Brian Eno)

"Needles in the Camel's Eye" is a song about nothing.  Really.  Brian Eno strung a bunch of words together because he liked the way their vowels sounded.
For anyone looking for deeper meaning, Eno had this to say: "I regard [the song] as an instrumental with singing on it."  (FYI: That quote's pulled from Eric Tamm's 1995 book Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound.  It's one of the most academic, utterly boring books about a rock musician I've ever encountered.  So, if you're having trouble sleeping...)

Sonically, it's an electronic tidal wave of noise that rocks like a Carl Perkins song as reimagined by a Martian garage band.  The guitars crank away, creating a metallic mist.  Synths sizzle and hum in the background.  And the drumming is like a junior high marching band trying desperately to count to "four."
In other words, gloriously sloppy and invigorating as hell.

"Suffragette City" (David Bowie)

So David Bowie got his big break in 1972 with the album that launched glam rock: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.  It's a concept album about an androgynous/pan-sexual alien who comes to earth to bring one last message of hope as the planet is dying.  This story, which is set in the not-too-distant dystopian future, basically gave Bowie a motive to dye his hair bright red, splash on some makeup, and rock out with hedonistic abandon at live shows that had Britain's parents (and to some extent America's parents) quaking in their square-toed shoes.
As Bowie notes in a Blank on Blank interview (which is a great podcast series from PBS Digital Studios that combines archival interviews with animation), he basically crafted the Ziggy Stardust character because he had difficulty writing music for himself as David Bowie; however, the moment he started writing for a fictitious character with its own outlandish backstory, it opened up new possibilities and creative avenues.
The song "Suffragette City," the next-to-last track on the album, is a crass little rocker that sort of does/doesn't fit in the whole narrative of the album.  By that, I mean pretty much every other song specifically mentions Ziggy or his band, The Spiders from Mars, by name, whereas "Suffragette City" just paints a scene of teenage carnality on the edge of apocalypse.  (In the song, its protagonist is kicking a friend—or, more likely, a friend with benefits—out of his house because he's decided to shack up with a girl who is liberated.  Sexually.)
Makes sense that it's the odd piece in the jigsaw puzzle, considering Bowie originally wrote the song as a vehicle for the band Mott the Hoople, who rejected it.  (The band ultimately went on to record and make a hit out of Bowie's song "All the Young Dudes," which actually was written for the Ziggy character but not used on the album.)
But just like the other tracks on the album, the song is a platform for underrated guitarist Mick Ronson to rip his way through some chunky power chords, seasoned with buzzing, swooping synthesizers.
And I'd be lying if I didn't admit that my favorite part of the song is the false ending, where Bowie & Co. suddenly erupt with this old chestnut: Awww—wham, bam, thank you, ma'am!
I'm sure it was all very shocking in '72.

"Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" (Elton John)

Although Elton John is probably best known for his ballads (can you imagine a world without "Tiny Dancer" or "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"?), I've always preferred Elton John: The Rocker.  Especially "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" from his sprawling, near-perfect album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973).
Written by John and decades-long writing partner Bernie Taupin, it's just a song about going to the pub on a Saturday night, getting blitzed (oiled as a diesel train, as Taupin's lyrics put it), and letting fists fly—pretty much for no reason other than the recreation of it.  Not an exclusively British concept; although, the vibe of the song feels pretty blue collar Brit in its rugby rivalry/courage at the bottom of a pint kind of way.
(Side note: some American radio stations refused to play it in 1973 because they thought it would incite "youth violence."  Can you even imagine that headline?  "Dateline: Kenosha, WI, July 1973 — Teenagers Burn Bob's Big Boy to Ground After Listening to Elton John Record.")
Anyway, the key to the song is guitarist Davey Johnstone's raunchy riff.  It explodes with hard rock fury that resides somewhere between Keith Richards and Mick Ronson from David Bowie's band; it's a rare sound to hear on an Elton John record.  
My favorite moment, though, comes right after the second chorus: there's suddenly this wall of overdubbed guitars, slashing their way through the riff, foreshadowing Elton's Sat-ur-day!  Sat-ur-day!  Sat-ur-day! vamp that closes the track.  I've always marveled at how producer Gus Dudgeon mixed that part to make it sound like it's right in your face—not unlike some drunken lout who's ready to throw a punch.

"Born to Be Wild" (Steppenwolf)

Once upon a time, "Born to Be Wild" was a counterculture anthem.  Its proto-metal riff was the sound of rebellion, open blacktop, Harley engines rumbling under open skies, and a half-baked Peter Fonda in an American flag leather jacket.
But in the years since 1969's Easy Rider, "Born to Be Wild" has become a lazy Hollywood cliche for badassery, which has had the effect of turning it into an anthem for what I like to call "safe-bad."
What is safe-bad?
Safe-bad is an accountant who base jumps.
It's a family dentist with a tattoo sleeve.
It's a suburban high school principal who rides an Indian chopper to work.  Every third Friday.  If it's not raining.
Safe-bad.
That's not saying "Born to Be Wild" isn't a great song or that it's lost any of its ferocity.  (It hasn't.)  It's still the same supercharged witches' brew of menacing guitar, Hammond B-3 organ, thudding bass n' drums, and John Kay's blues-soaked vocals that it always was.  It still evokes images of the open road and wind-in-your-hair, bugs-in-your-teeth abandon.
Unfortunately, for me, it now also evokes mental images of being wedged in the middle seat on a cross-country flight and being forced to watch a teenage Lindsay Lohan race Herbie The Love Bug against a creepier-than-usual Matt Dillon around suburban L.A.  (Damn you, Hollywood.)

"Search & Destroy" (Iggy and The Stooges)

After recording just two albums (1969's The Stooges and 1970's Fun House), The Stooges were dropped by their label, Elektra, because their records weren't selling.  By 1971, the band had all but disintegrated, and frontman James "Iggy Pop" Osterberg was devoting most of his time to heroin instead of music.
Cue long-time fan David Bowie to the rescue.
No one else wanted anything to do with Iggy or his fellow Stooges; however, Bowie took the the troubled singer under his glittered wing and somehow convinced Columbia Records to sign him as a solo artist.
The first step in resuscitating Iggy's career was to get him out of Los Angeles and away from drugs.  So, in late 1972, Bowie flew Iggy to London with three goals: keep him (relatively) clean, make a record, and turn him into a household name.
After a rocky start auditioning a slew of British backing musicians who didn't pass muster, Bowie and Iggy decided to reassemble the 1971 iteration of The Stooges: brothers Ron and Scott Asheton on bass and drums, respectively, James Williamson on guitar, and Pop on lead vocal.  The brief sessions that Fall yielded the seminal album Raw Power (1973), which ended up being credited to "Iggy and the Stooges" because Iggy technically was the only one in the band with a recording contract.
The opening track on that 8-song collection of danger-filled proto-punk is the incendiary "Search & Destroy."  Pop wrote the song with Williamson after reading an article in Time magazine about the U.S. Military's "search and destroy" tactics in the Vietnam War—hence the lyrical allusions to napalm and Williamson's eighth-note assaults on each verse, which were meant to resemble machine gun fire.
As Pop explained in a 2010 interview with British music magazine Clash, the song was less about the war in Vietnam and more about the culture war at home and his feelings of being a "forgotten boy": the pawn of an industry that didn't care what he or the youth of America wanted.

"Once you find out how the people at the top of politics or at the top of the music industry or at the top of anything, how they begin to overvalue things and think that they can push any shit down the throats of the youth, and they just don't care if it's something that kids would like or not…It was very upsetting to me, so I sort of picked sides in that song.  I said, 'I'm not with you, I'm with the other side'."

In the end, Raw Power wasn't the career boost for Iggy that Bowie or Columbia had bet on.  Its uncommercial subject matter and muddled sound quality didn't exactly send it flying up the pop charts.  But, better than chart success, it planted the seeds of a rock and roll movement that erupted a few years later with Stooges' fans like The Ramones and The Sex Pistols, leading the charge.

"99 Problems" (Jay-Z)

Few artists frustrate me like Jay-Z.  On the one hand, I respect his prowess as a wordsmith.  I also respect that he went from being a poor kid slinging drugs in Bed-Stuy to a multi-millionaire in a matter of a few decades.  But at the same time, I get the feeling that everything he's ever recorded has been motivated by a dollar bill and nothing more.  

Don't get me wrong; I'm not implying that an artist has to be broke to create legitimate art.  I'm just saying that, when you're only putting out records because it's part of your brand strategy, contributing your verse to the play of life is not your ultimate goal at the end of the day.

Anyway, that's the dichotomy of Jay-Z.

But I'm going to put all of that aside for minute and focus on the song "99 Problems" itself.  

Back when I first heard Jay-Z's The Black Album (2003), I had no idea that the song was a reimagining of the 1993 track "99 Problems" by rapper Ice-T—a raunchy, embarrassingly misogynistic song that he recorded with Brother Marquis of infamous rap group, 2 Live Crew, and the source of Jay-Z's refrain: I've got 99 problems but a b*tch ain't one.
But instead of following Ice-T's precedent of rhyming about his various female conquests, Jay-Z flips the song into a rebuke of critics, racist cops, and industry adversaries.  The result is a narrative lyric that hearkens back to the style of storytelling rappers, such as Slick Rick.
Adding to that vibe is Rick Rubin's vintage 80s production, complete with Billy Squier sample.
Funny thing is, I wasn't a huge fan of rock-rap back when Rubin first unleashed it on the world decades ago.  Nevertheless, the first time I heard those booming drums and distorted blasts of guitar rip through the speakers with Jay-Z's flow on top, I couldn't deny that this was/is a hip-hop masterpiece.

"Mama Said Knock You Out" (LL Cool J)

So back in the late 80s, pretty much everyone had written off James Todd Smith, a.k.a. LL Cool J.  The words "commercial" and "sellout" got bandied about quite a bit in reviews of his 1989 album Walking with a Panther, a glossy collection of songs that included one too many poppy ballads.  After he got booed by the crowd at The Apollo in late '89, he was considering packing it in.
But the person he looked up to most, his late grandmother Ellen Griffin, convinced him to go back into the recording studio and prove his detractors wrong.  Her advice was simple: "Knock 'em out."
The result was one of the rawest tracks and all-time best song titles in hip-hop: "Mama Said Knock You Out."  
LL delivers an unrelenting lyrical beat down, addressing both his critics and his nemesis, rapper Kool Moe Dee.  The two had been trading blows since Dee threw the first punch in 1987's "How Ya Like Me Now," a track that took LL to task for his young lion swagger.  In fact, LL name-checks "How Ya Like Me Now" as well as his own rebuttal, "Jack the Ripper," in the lyrics of "Mama Said Knock You Out."  I don't think there's any doubt by the end of the track, though, who delivered the knock-out punch.
But the key to the track is Marlon "Marley Marl" Williams's production, which surrounds the rapper with a hip-hop version of the "Wall of Sound"—not unlike The Bomb Squad's productions for Public Enemy in that same era.  Samples are interwoven and layered on top of each other in surprising, "how did he pull that off???" ways.  Case in point: the backing track primarily is a mix of two Sly & The Family Stone songs ("Sing a Simple Song" and "Trip to Your Heart"), "Gangster Boogie" by Chicago Gangsters, "Funky Drummer" by James Brown, and LL's own "Rock the Bells."  Thing is, the samples are so intertwined and beefed up with bass, it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends; it's as if they were meant to go together, all along.  
In short, the atmosphere of the track is about as far from poppy balladry as you can get.  And although LL famously announces Don't call it a comeback at the beginning of the song, it was exactly the comeback his career needed at that moment.  

"Fight the Power" (Public Enemy)

Public Enemy may well have been the pinnacle of hip hop.  
On the one hand, you had brothers Hank and Keith Shocklee coming up with these sublimely funky rhythm/backing tracks for every single track.  In fact, you can't even call what they were doing "sampling"; they were creating complex sound collages from carefully selected breaks and snippets, which were then strategically placed in a mosaic to create textures and evoke moods.  (I mean, there's a reason why James Brown's "Funky President" shows up in the middle of "Fight the Power.") 
Add to that Chuck D, perhaps the most thought-provoking, professorial emcee ever, and consummate class clown Flava Flav, and you had a group that picked up where Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five's "The Message" left off and took the commentary a step further.  The message was: let's not just rap about our situation; let's get our shit together and change the situation.
"Fight the Power" essentially was commissioned by Spike Lee for his 1989 film, Do the Right Thing.  Lee wanted a song—an anthem—that the character "Radio Raheem" would be playing on his boombox, every time he appeared on screen.
Inspired by the 1975 Isley Brothers song of the same name, Chuck D began with the theme of "Fight the Power."  From there, he wrote the bulk of the lyrics, which bluntly address double standards and disenfranchisement, while on a flight to Europe to support Run-D.M.C. on their Fall 1988 tour.
The track caused a bit of controversy because of Chuck's specific mention of Elvis Presley and John Wayne in the lyrics.  (He calls them both "racists.")  Although, as he explained to Rolling Stone in June 2014, his commentary was less about Presley and Wayne, per se, and more about society’s idolization of white "American heroes" while black leaders and innovators often were overlooked.
"It's not that Elvis was not a talented dude and incredible in his way, but I didn't like the way that he was talked about all the time, and the pioneers (of rock & roll), especially at that time, weren't talked about at all."
I'd say Spike Lee got his anthem and then some.

"Peter Piper" (Run-D.M.C.)

Back in 1986, you couldn't turn on the radio or MTV without hearing "Walk This Way" every five minutes.  As an 8-year-old kid, it seemed like the most groundbreaking thing ever.  Rap and rock together!?  Who could've imagined it?

Then, my mother dug out her old 45 of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" from 1976, and it was like someone had popped a balloon.

Suddenly, Run-D.M.C.'s whole vibe felt like it had been dreamed up in a boardroom.  I remember seeing Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels being interviewed on MTV, where he repeatedly told the "VJ" that their rock-rap fusion wasn't just some contrived ploy to sell records.  He swore they had been rhyming over heavy metal riffs and drum breaks for years in Hollis, Queens.  But I wasn't buying it anymore.

A friend gave me a mix tape with "King of Rock" and "You Be Illin'" on it, and I tossed it in the trash.

When the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Eminem in 2009, Joseph "Run" Simmons basically admitted that his brother, Def Jam Records chief Russell Simmons, had come up with the whole "let's mix heavy metal and rap" schtick.  
Around that same time, I was listening to Pandora at work and a couple of Run-D.M.C. songs came on, back to back.  I don't know if it was sheer laziness or latent nostalgia, but I listened to each track all the way through, and by the end of the set I realized something: those guys could spit rhymes.  Forget about the gimmicks (including the laceless Adidas); they had skills.

And it wasn't surprising to me that the song I ended up enjoying most (just like when I was 8) was "Peter Piper," the opening track off Raising Hell (1986).  Out of all the songs on that album, it's the only one that doesn't fit the gimmick.  There are no blasts of overdriven metal guitar.  No obvious attempts to appeal to frat boys and homeboys alike.  Just real, raw tag-team rhyming over a nasty drum break, courtesy of Bob James's jazz-funk rendition of "Take Me to the Mardi Gras."
To me, this song is the real bridge between the first and second wave of hip-hop: there's a bit of that party rhyme feel of early Sugar Hill tracks, only it's much more "street."  It points the way toward what East Coast hip-hop would become in the late 80s/early 90s.  
Simply a classic track.

"Blitzkrieg Bop" (The Ramones)

"Blitzkrieg Bop" (1976) was the song that introduced The Ramones to the world.  The single didn't chart or get the band much attention outside New York and CBGB.  But then they toured the U.K., and within a year, young British rockers had adopted their jeans n' leather look as well as their minimal chords/max volume aesthetic.
The big difference, though, between The Ramones and their British contemporaries was that The Ramones were never really about anarchy, class warfare, and politics; they were just about stripped down, no glitter rock and roll, delivered in three minutes or less.  The Ramones also weren't ashamed to admit they had a strong affection for R&B and pop.  In fact, whereas British punks made it a practice to bash anything that remotely resembled pop, The Ramones embraced the fact that their Hey!  Ho!  Let's go! chant from "Blitzkrieg Bop" was inspired by the bubblegum pop song "Saturday Night" by The Bay City Rollers.
Anyway, this little 2-minute ditty is quite simply about the experience of a Ramones' show: high-octane kids, lightning-fast riffs, backseat nookie.
It's bubblegum pop for kids who steal bubblegum.

"Pretty Vacant" (The Sex Pistols)

When Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols came out in late 1977, it pretty much scared the hell out of England and set rock on a new course worldwide.
Rock & roll had always been subversive by nature.  If we're talking Brit rock exclusively, about ten years earlier, Pete Townshend had smashed his guitar to bits while Roger Daltrey howled about “My Generation”; Mick Jagger had figuratively summoned youths to take up arms in the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man”; and then there was John Lennon in 1970, dropping F-bombs as he strummed his way through a scathing indictment of the British class system in “Working Class Hero.”
But rock had never advocated nihilism in such a blunt, brash way.  "Anarchy in the U.K."  "God Save the Queen."  In the Sex Pistols' world, the fractured British economy, social structure, and politics were beyond fixing.  And pop music?  That had to go, too.
But then, take a song like "Pretty Vacant."  It isn't really advocating anything, other than a Marlene Dietrich-like desire to be left alone.  And that's basically the bent of the whole song: don't try to understand us, don't ask us questions, just go away.
In a way, that's even more shocking and subversive than climbing on a soapbox and screaming about the end of the monarchy and anarchy, because it disengages totally.  What's more jarring than someone walking away from an argument because they couldn't care less about what you think or feel?
In hindsight, considering that the band made one album before it imploded and frontman John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon pretty much went on to create his own brand of fractured pop with Public Image Ltd., the band's bark was louder than its bite.  But you can't deny that there's still something immediate and exciting about Steve Jones's raging guitar riffs and Paul Cook's war drumming on "Pretty Vacant."  It's loud, loutish, and groundbreaking.
What else can you ask for in your rock & roll?

"Sheer Heart Attack" (Queen)

If the song "Sheer Heart Attack" proves nothing else, it's that Queen could tackle any type of music it wanted.
Even punk.
At the height of the punk movement, Queen was catching a lot of flack from young upstarts for being too artsy, too polished.  (One popular story is that The Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious encountered Queen frontman Freddie Mercury at Wessex Recording Studios in 1977 and snarked at Mercury, "Still bringing ballet to the masses, Freddie?")
So the band answered these criticisms with the blistering "Sheer Heart Attack," a song that drummer/songwriter Roger Taylor had composed in 1974 for the album named Sheer Heart Attack but wasn't finished until 1977, when it finally was unleashed on News of the World.
Sung with balls-to-the-wall fury by Taylor (rather than Mercury), the lyrics don't really say anything; it's bits and pieces of cliched teen angst.  And that's the entire joke.  Especially the line I feel so in-ar-in-ar-in-articulate...
Taken with that manic Brian May guitar riff, the message to the punk world was blunt: don't throw the first punch unless you're ready for a throwdown. 

"20th Century Boy" (T. Rex)

T. Rex and its charismatic frontman Marc Bolan didn't win the kind of fame in the U.S. they did in England, where they literally sparked the entire glam rock genre and inspired millions of teens (guys and girls alike) to cover themselves in makeup and glitter.  The effects of T. Rex wouldn't really be felt here in the States (for better or worse) until the West Coast glam metal wave of the 80s.
In any case, Bolan had a knack for crafting some uncomplicated, gloriously catchy pop-rock.
Bolan (born Marc Feld) started the band Tyrannosaurus Rex as an acoustic folk outfit in the 60s.  He even chose the stage name "Bolan" as an homage to folk-rock king Bob Dylan (and, quite honestly, as a ploy to instantly validate his place in the folk-rock movement).  By 1970, though, Bolan had shifted focus to electric, riff-driven rock & roll that bridged 1950s Chuck Berry with flower child mysticism.  
He painted on some of his wife's eyeliner, shortened the band name to T. Rex to reflect the band's new lean and mean sound, and never looked back.
The non-album single "20th Century Boy" (1973) is one of the rawest, most rocking grooves Bolan ever crafted.  It's anchored by an overdriven, caveman-simple two-chord guitar riff that erupts like a glitter volcano.  And while there's nothing terribly profound in the lyrics—it's mostly a string of similes that equate to an extended come-on to a woman, they sound perfect in Bolan's impish tenor voice.  
The R&B-style backing singers also are a nice touch, giving the track a little nod to funky girl groups, like The Ikettes.  (Incidentally, Bolan would work with Ike & Tina Turner in 1974/5, adding his chunky guitar riffs to the songs "Sexy Ida" and "Baby, Get it On.")

"Do Ya" (Electric Light Orchestra)

Electric Light Orchestra is an acquired taste.  I don't care for everything the band released; sometimes the whole rawk+stringz equation felt a little contrived.  Yet when bandleader Jeff Lynne got the formula just right, ELO could be one of the catchiest pop/rock bands out there.
The Lynne composition "Do Ya" from the 1976 album A New World Record falls a bit more on the rock side of things.  He originally wrote the song in 1971 for a psychedelic pop/rock band he was in, called The Move, which basically morphed into ELO after its final album, Message from the Country.  The two versions of the song actually aren't all that different: The Move version feels a little more ragged by comparison, and Lynne doesn't do the lead vocal; that task is handled by Roy Wood (who co-founded ELO with Lynne and then left the group after one album).
But that same thrashing, devastating riff anchors both versions.  
I do prefer the ELO version, though, for its sheer layers of guitars, strings, and doo-wop style backing vocals.  Lynne also gives the song's bridge the dramatic treatment it deserves, revealing his discipleship of Lennon-McCartney even more profoundly than on the original cut.
In all, it's the kind of feel-good rocker that makes everyone want to sing along when they've got a few rounds of drinks in 'em.  And I'm okay with that.

"Lithium" (Nirvana)

I loved the song "Lithium" from the moment I heard it.  Its shifting dynamics.  The almost-jazz feel of the verses set against the crunch of every chorus.  Kurt Cobain's ardent cries of I'm not gonna crack.  It was just the perfectly crafted rock song that didn't feel crafted at all.
As the third, formidable single in a row released from Nevermind (1991), I think it signaled to the world that Cobain wasn't just some lucky bastard who'd scored a major label recording contract.  He had intelligence and a real talent for writing damn good songs.
"Lithium" was mostly inspired by Cobain's stint, staying with his friend Jesse Reed's born-again family when he was a teenager.  Cobain's dad had kicked him out of the house for bad behavior, and the Reed family took him in.  During his stay, he became a frequent churchgoer but became disillusioned in time with religion.
In the song, the protagonist has lost his girlfriend (apparently, she's died), and he's struggling to find the will to stay alive himself.  So he turns to religion to save himself—the metaphor being that religion is a drug, like lithium, that serves to numb the pain of life and gets you through another day.
Although the story in the song is itself fictitious, in real life, Cobain pretty much felt that, if religion worked to keep someone sane/happy/alive, then rock on.

"I'm Waiting for the Man" (The Velvet Underground)

Ah, Lou Reed.  If there's anything that you could count on, it was that he was predictably unpredictable.  (I mean, did anyone expect his disastrous collabo with Metallica, Lulu?)
Read anything about him, and you'll find that music journalists loathed interviewing him.  He was touchy, mercurial.  The only interview I've read that actually went well with Reed was a 1992 piece by writer Neil Gaiman.  
So why did people bother going back to the well, time after time, if the water was tainted?
All you have to do is listen to his storytelling on "I'm Waiting for the Man" from the groundbreaking, Andy Warhol-produced Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), and it becomes clear: he was the poet laureate of society's fringe.  Half participant, half reporter, he captures a gritty tableau of someone traveling from lower Manhattan to Harlem to buy $26 of heroin from his dealer (the "man"), who is consistently late.
For as immediate and rocking as the song is (it really is the blueprint for every punk garage band that followed), it's decidedly bleak, even though it's gracious in its reality.
Put it this way, if the song "Heroin" from the same album is the idealization of the drug, "I'm Waiting for the Man" is the harsh truth: it's a parasite that leaves you waiting in stairwells of rundown brownstones for a pricey hit of fleeting euphoria, inevitably followed by lingering hell.  (And they released that as a pop single.)
Thing is, Reed never judges or wags a finger.  He wasn't about that.  He was more about: here's the facts; make of them what you will.
And if you've wondered, like I have listening to Velvet Underground & Nico over the years, are half of the stories and characters that pop up in Reed's literate rock & roll true?  Here's what he told Gaiman in 1992:
"It's always kind of funny, over the years, people continuously asking me, 'Are these things based on reality?'  I thought it was so obvious that they were."

"Jailhouse Rock" (Elvis Presley)

When I think of Elvis, I don't immediately think of "Hound Dog."  Or "Love Me Tender."  Or "Don't Be Cruel."
It's always "Jailhouse Rock" (1957).
The Jerry Leiber-Mike Stoller composition was written for the movie of the same name.  Actually, to be accurate, the film's working title was The Hard Way when the writing duo received the film treatment.  The title only became Jailhouse Rock after Leiber and Stoller penned the song and the studio realized it was going to be the centerpiece of the film.
Story goes, Leiber and Stoller had been flown in from Los Angeles to New York to meet with Atlantic Records owners, Nesuhi and Ahmet Ertegün, about writing and producing for the label.  They'd also been commissioned by the producer of The Hard Way (a.k.a. Jailhouse Rock) to write music for the film.  But instead of spending their time writing music in their hotel room, they were busy hanging out at jazz clubs every night and soaking in the city by day.  
Time passed.  Deadlines, too.
Finally the film's music publisher decided to drop by their hotel, just to see what kind of progress they were making, which was none.  After lecturing them about the importance of meeting deadlines, he pushed a sofa in front of their door and barricaded them in the room until they fulfilled their obligation.
Leiber and Stoller ended up churning out four songs that afternoon, including "Jailhouse Rock," just so they could get the publisher off their backs and hit the town again.  They had no clue the song was going to be a massive hit.
In any case, it's hands down Presley's hardest rocking song.  I'd even venture to say it was the hardest rock song produced up to that point.  From the moment the drums and that clanging, two-chord guitar intro kick in to Scotty Moore's righteously unhinged solo, it burns like a five-alarm fire.
It's also Presley's best (rock) vocal: gritty, full of attitude, and delivered with confidence.  Personally, I hear the echoes of that performance in everything from Van Morrison's vocals for the band Them to Kurt Cobain's scream on the chorus of "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

"Go on Back to Him" (Solomon Burke)

Solomon Burke often gets overlooked in the pantheon of soul singers.  Sad, considering the man actually coined the phrase "soul music."
Burke was an imposing presence.  Not only was he a big man physically (he weighed approximately 350 pounds at his death in 2010), but he also had a big stage presence that he'd honed from years spent watching charismatic preachers and singing/preaching in churches himself.  In fact, he was known as the "Wonder Boy Preacher" long before he was known as the "King of Rock & Soul."  And lest anyone forget that he was "King," his schtick throughout the 60s was to walk on stage in full regalia: fur cape, crown, and scepter.
He also had a reputation for being a serial entrepreneur: he owned a limousine service, pharmacies, funeral parlors...  (After he was eclipsed by disciples like Otis Redding and James Brown in the mid-60s and his record sales dropped, he went to work as a mortician.)  And while he was touring the so-called "chitlin circuit" in the 1950s Deep South, he was notorious for always having a stash of sandwiches and snacks, which he'd sell (at highly inflated prices) to fellow musicians if they were refused service at segregated diners.
Then there's his reputation as a smooth operator.  Let's just say he had lots of love interests, on and off the road.  Some accounts say he fathered 14 kids; Burke himself claimed he had 21.
But as entertaining as he was as a character, the real allure was the music.
Although his best known song is "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" (which The Blues Brothers brought to the mainstream in 1980), my favorite track of his is a ballad called "Go on Back to Him," a song penned by Joy Byers, a former 1950s housewife who ended up writing songs for the likes of Burke and Elvis Presley.
The premise of the song is pretty simple (and somewhat ironic, considering his reputation as a ladies' man): Burke is telling his girlfriend, who has been stepping out with her former lover, that he's willing to let her go because he loves her so much.
Burke's nuanced performance captures the entire range of emotions in the lyrics: the pain, the embarrassment, the hurt, and the prideful facade.  It's all there in every inflection of his voice as he goes from a near whisper on each verse to a shouted, gritty tenor on the bridge.  (Side note: take one listen to that bridge, and it becomes crystal clear where John Fogerty got his vocal style.)

"Baby I Need Your Loving" (The Four Tops)

The Four Tops had been around for about a decade, touring small venues and waiting for their big break, when Motown Records signed them in 1963.  Their very first Motown single, "Baby I Need Your Loving" by the writing team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland, became a Top 20 hit in 1964.
Holland-Dozier-Holland went on to write lots of other hit songs for The Four Tops (among other Motown artists), but few have the sensuous, tender feel of "Baby I Need Your Loving."
It's no wonder the song broke The Four Tops to mainstream success: there's real candor in those lyrics.  The yearning and loneliness in Levi Stubbs's vocals are visceral.  In fact, the emotion reaches operatic levels when the rest of the group (along with The Andantes, Motown's female backing group) join him on each chorus.
Plus, there's that bass-heavy groove, courtesy of The Funk Brothers, that keeps everything upbeat and danceable.
The song is just pure passion, pure joy for making music, and pure Motown.

"Hard to Handle" (Otis Redding)

I stumbled upon a great quote about Otis Redding from Booker T. & The M.G.'s guitarist Steve Cropper awhile back:

"Otis?  Oh my God.  Otis was unique.  If you took a fruit jar, and you put Sam Cooke in there with Little Richard, and shook it up, you'd come out with Otis Redding."

In Redding's short life, he crafted a body of work that solidified what soul music was all about: sincerity, raw emotion, showmanship, and music that was equal parts Saturday night and Sunday morning.  
Redding died at the age of 26 when his private plane crashed on the way to a gig in December 1967; the posthumously-released "Hard to Handle" from the 1968 album The Immortal Otis Redding was part of recording sessions that he wrapped literally days before his death.
I can't deny that The Black Crowes did a great job with their 1990 cover of the song.  But Redding's throaty Georgia drawl over Booker T. & The M.G.'s / the Memphis Horns' buoyant groove is some kind of rare magic that can't be replicated.