"Smokestack Lightning" (Howlin' Wolf)

At some point, I went from being a Muddy Waters fanatic to a Howlin' Wolf fanatic.  Might have been around the time I got a Muddy Waters cassette stuck in the tape deck of my car in college, so every time I turned on the radio, there was always Muddy belting out "Hoochie Coochie Man," live from the Newport Jazz Festival, 1960.  Or maybe it was around age 20, when I bought a Chess Records compilation and heard Howlin' Wolf for the first time and was instantly mesmerized by that voice.  It sounded like liquor, buckshot, and razor blades, thrown in a blender on high speed.  
I loved it.  Still do.
But more than just the sound of Wolf's voice, there was a real earthiness and pain in his delivery.  Unlike Waters, Wolf's songs were less often about boasting or proving his virility and more often about being down on his luck in love: women cheated on him, left him, stole from him, and gave him gasoline instead of water when he was thirsty.  There's something inherently reassuring about a man of Olympic stature (he was 6'3" and nearly 300 pounds) who was as vulnerable as the rest of us mere mortals.
My all-time favorite bad luck song of his is the 1956 single "Smokestack Lightning"—a greasy recasting of his own 1951 song "Crying at Daybreak," which is a lament about his woman leaving him.  
In short, Wolf is watching a locomotive passing in the night, and he's wailing at the sight of the golden sparks coming out of the smokestack (i.e. "smokestack lightning"), knowing that his baby hopped that train and left him for good.  Or, to look at it another way: his woman found a flashy, new man willing to carry her.
Wolf's voice is mournful and haunting throughout the track.  I love his literal howls after each verse; they're as spine-tinglingly lupine as they are train-like.  Also, lead guitarist Hubert Sumlin's prototypical electric blues riff sounds as lonesome and lowdown as Wolf's moan itself.
In short, feeling this bad never sounded so damn good.

"Mystery Train" (Elvis Presley)

Before the song "Heartbreak Hotel" made him a household name, Elvis Presley had cut several sides for producer Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis between 1954-55.  His final recording for Sun and his first #1 charting single was the country song "I Forgot to Remember to Forget."  
But I want to discuss the flip side of that single: "Mystery Train."
I'll start by saying, as a child of the late 70s, the image of Elvis that was burned into my brain at an early age was the puffy, sweaty Elvis in sequined jumpsuits who struggled to remember lyrics.  You know, the kind of caricature that you'd find some two-bit impersonator with a beer gut and pair of mutton chops trying to pull off at a drive-thru wedding chapel a couple of miles off the Strip.  Even as a kid, I had no time for that kind of Lost Wages kitsch, so I kind of turned my nose up at Presley's whole catalog and career.
It wasn't until I got a bit older and started exploring my dad's record collection that I first heard a couple of Presley's early recordings, and they blew me away.  They were raw and boundless in their fusion of country and R&B.  Not what I'd been conditioned to expect at all.
What surprised me most was that nothing sounded contrived.  
(Slightly derivative?  Maybe.  Insincere?  Not in the least.)
I guess the cynic in me was expecting the music to sound transparently money-grubbing—kind of like when producers in the 2000s started tossing together the hottest rapper of the moment with the hottest pop-country star of the moment on duets that played to the lowest common denominator of both fan bases.  (I'll let you, dear reader, do a Google search for yourself to find examples.)
But what I heard instead was three blue-collar guys from Memphis, jamming on their favorite country tunes in the style of their favorite R&B tunes, and vice versa.  And it not only worked, but it was electrifying.
Which brings me to 1955's "Mystery Train," a straightforward blues tune that was originally written and performed by blues artist Junior Parker for Sun Records in 1953.  Presley, lead guitarist Scotty Moore, and bassist Bill Black take the basic structure of Parker's song and then "countrify" it with that galloping rhythm/riff, which worms its way into your core within the first 3 seconds of the intro.
What I love about this track overall is the recorded-live feel—not to mention that glorious 1950s slap-back reverb on all of the instruments.
But Presley's vocal truly steals the show.  From effortlessly hitting those high notes on Train! Train! down to the low notes that cap every stanza, it's a helluva performance.  The icing on the cake is the little oooh-woo! he lets out at the end, sounding like a train whistle trailing off into the night.  It's obvious he was having the time of his life.

"Up On Cripple Creek" (The Band)

"Funk" is not necessarily what comes to mind when one thinks of The Band.  Yet, it's hard to characterize "Up On Cripple Creek" from 1969's The Band as anything else but funk.  Between Levon Helm's syncopated drum licks and Garth Hudson's inventive use of a wah-wah pedal on his clavinet to create a jaw harp sound, the song is rooted in rhythm.
The astounding part to me is that Helm was able to put down his soulful, Southern-fried vocal while simultaneously kicking that beat.  It's the musical equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time.
But as the ever-humble Helm (RIP) noted in the Classic Albums: The Band documentary from 1997, he actually preferred to drum when he sang.
"People give me good credit, and I appreciate it.  They think it's harder to play when you sing, but it's actually easier because you play along and you leave holes, and there's where you sing."

"Tell Me Something Good" (Rufus feat. Chaka Khan)

Time was, Stevie Wonder was bubbling over with so much unbridled creativity that, not only was he churning out his own awe-inspiring albums every few months, he was giving away a ton of music to other artists, too.  Aretha Franklin, The Spinners, and the band Rufus, to name but a few.
Wonder became a fan of Rufus after hearing their 1973 cover of his song "Maybe Your Baby," which features a searing lead vocal from Chaka Khan.  To express his admiration, he decided to write Rufus an original song with Khan's voice in mind.
So one afternoon, he surprised them by dropping by their recording studio in L.A. and unveiled his new composition, a funky, upbeat song called "Come and Get This Stuff."
Khan (being Khan) flat out told Wonder that she didn't care for it.
As you can imagine, the band was mortified.  But Wonder (being Wonder) laughed it off and whipped up the sultry "Tell Me Something Good" in response.  
(He ultimately gave "Come and Get This Stuff" to his ex-wife, Syreeta Wright, for her second album, Stevie Wonder Presents: Syreeta.)
Like every Wonder composition, everything on "Tell Me Something Good" from 1974's Rags to Rufus is in its right place: the slinky verses with their descending clavinet lines, the noteless bridges with their heavy-breathing vocal percussion, and the fiery choruses with their rapturous exclamations of Tell me something good, punctuated by "talkbox" and distorted lead guitars.  It all serves to make your hips move like...well...y'know.
But it's Khan's performance that seals the deal.  She promises that she's gonna set your stuff on fire, and then she delivers, tenfold.  Her vocal is so naughty yet so sublimely sweet, I'm sure it's why radio programmers in 1974 couldn't resist keeping this paean to good nookie in constant rotation.

"Real Love" (Mary J. Blige)

I'd heard Mary J. Blige's debut single, "You Remind Me," on the radio back in 1992, and I liked it well enough.  It was a pleasant R&B ballad with a nice hook.  But it didn't bowl me over.
And then her second single from What's the 411? dropped.
I'd never heard anything quite like "Real Love" before.  
Before 1992, if a song came at you with that kind of streetwise beat, you pretty much knew someone was going to be rapping, not singing, over it.  But here was this beautiful, young voice, singing about her quest for true affection with this hip-hop backdrop (sampled from the classic track "Top Billin'" by Audio Two, which itself is built on a cleverly chopped up sample from "Impeach the President" by the Honey Drippers.)  Her delivery was warm and sincere, yet it also had a ton of grit; it was like listening to a hip-hop Etta James.
Although I think Blige truly came into her own on 1994's My Life, which is a stronger collection of songs overall compared to What's the 411?, "Real Love" is still the touchstone that defines the career of the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" for me.

"They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)" (Pete Rock & CL Smooth)

My favorite hip-hop album of all time is Mecca and the Soul Brother (1992).  The record is the perfect specimen of intelligent lyrics and creative production coming together to create something timeless that transcends genre.  CL Smooth's flows are as natural as breath, while the inimitable Pete Rock's production makes the familiar fresh and the obscure familiar.  That's true of every song, verse, bridge, intro, and outro on the entire album.
But my favorite cut (and my favorite hip-hop single of all time) is the reverent and profound "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)."
I first heard the song late one night while channel surfing in spring 1992.  I wasn't sleeping too well back in those days because my dad kept having these Parkinson's-related episodes, where he'd wake up in the middle of the night, freaking out because he couldn't move or breathe properly.  That year, there was a 6-month stretch where my mom and I were loading him in the car at least once every 10 days to take him to the emergency room.
The first few times, I went with them to the hospital and tried to sleep in the waiting area, which was nearly impossible.  As you might imagine, getting ready for school the next morning was a bitch, and after getting reprimanded for being late to school a number of times, my mom decided that, for all future incidents, I should stay home and rest.
Anyway, I first saw the video for "They Reminisce Over You" late one night, a few days after one of my dad's episodes.  (I've found that, after a jarring event like that, you often don't feel the full effects mentally and physically until a few days later.)  I was exhausted but couldn't shut off my brain, so I wound up watching a broadcast of Yo! MTV Raps.  In the middle of a video block, hosts Ed Lover and Doctor Dré started telling a story, which I wasn't following too well, that somehow involved Salt-N-Pepa and Rock's cousin, Heavy D. (RIP).  From the somber tone, I could tell they were talking about someone's passing, which was even more obvious as soon as the video started to roll.  What I witnessed was a heartfelt, cinematic eulogy set to one of most haunting jazz breaks I'd ever heard.
The story behind the song, as Rock recounted in a 2011 interview with Complex magazine, is that his childhood friend, Troy "Trouble T-Roy" Dixon, had been a dancer/rapper with Heavy D. & The Boyz, who were touring in 1990 with Kid 'n Play and Salt-N-Pepa.  After a show in Indianapolis, Dixon was having fun and clowning around, when he slipped from an elevated ramp and fell 20 feet to his death.  His sudden passing devastated his family and friends, but it hit Rock especially hard and caused him to fall into a lengthy depression.
In short, he and CL Smooth created the song as a way to heal.
"CL came up with the lyrics even before I came up with the beat…The beat made me emotional so I figured it would work.  When the lyrics came together with the music, that was the match made in heaven.  Thank God it matched the way it did.  It was a great outcome."
The song resonated with me because I found CL Smooth's lyrics comforting at a time of turmoil in my own life.  He was rapping about his own family persevering through less than ideal circumstances, and it made me feel that I could persevere, too.  
But, more than anything, it was Pete Rock's music that reached right into my soul.  His brilliant treatment of jazzman Tom Scott's cover of Jefferson Airplane's "Today" is the most beautiful, sincere sample in all of hip-hop.  The soulful saxophone, the choir backing vocals drenched in reverb, and that Motown-meets-acid jazz beat were/are capable of suspending reality for me, if even for 4 minutes.

"So Fresh, So Clean" (OutKast)

There are so many songs in OutKast's catalog, including quirky/obscure album tracks, that I love.  But I can't help but choose the single "So Fresh, So Clean" from Stankonia (2000) as one of my favorite tracks.
Basically, it's just André 3000 and Big Boi spitting freaky deaky come-ons over a tasty, tricked-out Organized Noize beat for 4 minutes.  But the scenarios they sling are just so wrong that they're right: they call up everything from Noah's Ark to Anne Frank in their quests to get some luvin'.
My favorite pick-up line of all comes from Big Boi: Teddy Pendergrass / Cooler than Freddie Jackson sippin' a milkshake in a snowstorm.
Game doesn't get colder than that.

"Check the Rhime" (A Tribe Called Quest)

"Check the Rhime" from 1991's The Low End Theory was my first introduction to A Tribe Called Quest, even though the group already had several singles and an album, 1990's People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, under its belt.
I was in 8th grade when "Check the Rhime" dropped—a time when the likes of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer were still being crammed down our throats (you couldn't turn on MTV without seeing the latter's gaudy, unintentionally hilarious "2 Legit 2 Quit" video every 20 minutes).  The whole pop-rap craze was really off-putting to me, especially when I knew there were groups out there (who didn't have Saturday morning cartoon shows) making intelligent hip-hop that acknowledged the genre's roots in blues, jazz, and funk.
Anyway, in the midst of all the "2L2Q"-ing, here was a group out of Queens with this unflashy video, where no one was wearing parachute pants or flashing lame hand gestures.  They traded rhymes like crews from the early 80s, only with flows that were so much smoother and more cerebral.  Plus, the backing track was funky.  It didn't surprise me at all when I found out they were compatriots of De La Soul and Jungle Brothers.
Incidentally, my favorite verse of the song is still Q-Tip's quip at the very end of the track:
Proper.  What you say, Hammer?  Proper.
Rap is not pop, if you call it that, then stop.

"Devil's Pie" (D'Angelo)

There had been definite tinges of Marvin Gaye on Michael "D'Angelo" Archer's debut album, Brown Sugar (1995).  But I felt an even stronger kinship between Gaye and D'Angelo on the song "Devil's Pie," which was released as a single in 1998 and eventually appeared on his second album, Voodoo (2000).  It wasn't so much D'Angelo's vocal approach, per se, or the sound of the song that made me think of Gaye.  In fact, the song was more indebted to hip-hop than the 70s-influenced jazz-soul found on Brown Sugar, courtesy of the brilliant production work of Gang Starr's DJ Premier.  (Why brilliant?  Just check out the bassline of the track.  It's built from a two-second sample from the ballad "And If I Had" by Teddy Pendergrass, which Premier chopped and looped to create the foundation of the whole song.)  Rather, it was the inherent human struggle in the song: the challenge of living in the material, physical world tempered with a need for deeper, spiritual fulfillment.  That theme pops up throughout Gaye's entire catalog and life story, just as it does D'Angelo's.
Think about it: both were the sons of charismatic preachers, both grew up singing/playing in the church, but then both got a taste of fame and its trappings at a fairly young age, and overindulgence in the material world led to negative consequences for them both.  
All I can say is, thank God D'Angelo is still with us and making music.
Anyway, "Devil's Pie" is about trying to maintain perspective in the face of materialism and what can happen when you let the acquisition/consumption of stuff run your life.  He acknowledges that things like "bread," "cheddar," and "dough" are everyday necessities; however, they can become the ingredients in the "Devil's Pie" if you let them.  Clever little metaphor, I think.
Going back to the music/production on the track for a moment, the earthly/spiritual dichotomy is present there, too.  The beat and samples have the raw feel of hard-edged hip-hop, yet the choir of D'Angelos intoning the verses and refrains sounds like a congregation at a dirt floors chapel.  It reminds me of going to my great aunt's Pentecostal church in rural Western NC and hearing her, pounding away at an out of tune piano, while old women who could barely stand shook tambourines and sang/shouted to the rafters in hopes of catching the Ghost.  I hear that sound come through in D'Angelo's layered vocals on "Devil's Pie," particularly toward the end of the track.  
(My take is that he channels Prince as much as the choir from his dad's old church on every song he sings.)
I also go back to Premier's bassline, where the contrast is present, too: the bassline isn't even in the same key as what D'Angelo's singing; but it's tenacious and sincere, just like my great aunt playing her gospel song on that busted upright piano.

"He Can Only Hold Her" (Amy Winehouse)

Amy Winehouse was a tortured, talented soul whose star burned out much too soon.  Years from now, I have a feeling that her second album, Back to Black (2006), will be widely regarded one of the best pop albums of the 2000s—and not just because the decade was otherwise filled with Auto-Tune garbage; the disc stands on its own merits.  Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson's 60s throwback production gave the songs an air of familiarity, but then Winehouse flipped the tunes on their heads by giving them witty, irreverent lyrics that set them squarely in the 21st century.

If I had to choose a signature song for her, it wouldn't be the cheeky Ray Charles-indebted "Rehab," or the heart-wrenching addiction tale (disguised as torch song) "Back to Black."  I would choose the lesser known album closer, "He Can Only Hold Her."
To the casual listener, the vintage Stax-flavored track (which features members of the Dap-Kings, replaying portions of the obscure soul nugget "(My Girl) She's A Fox" (1966) by The Icemen*) might seem to be about Winehouse feeling torn between two men: she's pining for an old flame, and neither she nor her current boyfriend really know how to quell those feelings.  However, if you put the song in the larger context of the album and look at the narrative arc (she starts out by refusing rehab and then, along the way, confesses that she always falls back on bad habits whenever she gets her heart broken), it becomes clear that this song is about addiction.
Unlike every other song on the album, she sings "He Can Only Hold Her" in third person.  Curiously, she's able to acknowledge for the first time on the album that she's not merely a victim of circumstance but an active participant.  As an objective observer of her own situation, she finally realizes that clever quips, sex, and/or her old Donny Hathaway records aren't going to save her.  But the truly heartbreaking thing is, she doesn't know how to save herself.  
At the risk of sounding completely morbid, she wrote her own obituary.
The day she passed away in 2011, I listened to this track over 100 times, disappointed that she had become yet another entertainer to die before age 30.  As a fan, I'd sincerely hoped that, by recognizing her demons, she could exorcise them.  But that simply wasn't the case in the end.  Still, she left behind a solid (albeit brief) legacy of pithy, soulful music that will surely endure.

(*If you take a listen to the linked track, you might recognize the guitar playing of the late Jimi Hendrix.  The single was recorded about a year before Are You Experienced? would drop.)

"Blue Train" (John Coltrane)

The album Blue Train (1957) wasn't John Coltrane's first time as bandleader; he'd recorded his solo debut, Coltrane, earlier that same year.  But Blue Train is where his artistic genius truly begins to shine.  Every solo flows so fluidly, it's as if the music is being poured into his body and is finding its outlet via his horn.  It's where you get the first real glimpse of Coltrane's hotline to the divine.
The album's title track remains one of my favorite jazz recordings of all time.  I first heard it on a Blue Note Records compilation album called The Best of Blue Note (1991), and I loved it from moment one.  As the name "Blue Train" implies, it's built around a basic 12-bar blues structure.  But it's what Coltrane and his band do with that structure that keeps the song from being anything but basic.
In short, the song is a journey of melody and virtuosity.  It's an aural representation of a passenger train trip: the engine easing out of the station and slowly gaining speed as it rolls past the graffitied backsides of tenements before finally rocketing into leafy suburbia, steady on its trajectory to the next metropolis.
It opens with this melancholy, minor-hued riff, which resembles a train whistle.  It remains in a minor key as Coltrane goes headlong into his excellent solo, but then as soon as the locomotive is up to speed, he shifts from minor to major, subtly creating this feeling of propulsion.  A few bars later, drummer Philly Joe Jones abandons his swing for a fast shuffle, which sounds like the click-clack of metal wheels on tracks.  Along the way, Coltrane's consummate sidemen (in order of soloing: Lee Morgan, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Kenny Drew, piano; and Paul Chambers, bass) take their turns painting the world that's flying by the train windows.  (If I had to pick a favorite solo, it actually would be Fuller's.  It's mellow yet nimble—more nimble than I ever thought a trombone could be.)

"Ain't No Sunshine" (Bill Withers)

I can't express my respect and admiration for Bill Withers enough.  If you want to know why I'm such a fan, just watch the documentary Still Bill (2009).  You'll see a portrait of an intelligent, humble man who also happens to be one of the best songwriters of the 70s.  He's also highly principled: instead of kowtowing to trends and giving in to record execs who kept telling him how they thought his music should sound, he simply walked away from the industry in 1985 and went to raise a family instead.  (In the film, he tells a story about a white A&R guy who tried to convince him that a cover of Elvis's "In The Ghetto" was going to be his ticket to a pop hit.)
My favorite track of his (largely because it's the first one I ever heard) still is "Ain't No Sunshine" from his debut album, Just As I Am (1971).  It's a deceptively simple song: a short phrase ("I know") that gets repeated a total of 26 times, bookended by a few short lines that (on the surface) are about longing for lost love.  
As a little kid, I liked the track because it was easy to learn and remember.  I also enjoyed the counting game that my mom would play with me, where she'd challenge me to count the 26 I know's.
But as I got older, I started to realize that "Ain't No Sunshine" isn't some torch song, where ol' Bill is pining away for his woman.  It's a song about the vicious cycle of dependency.
Withers pretty much confirmed this in a 2004 interview with Carl Wiser of Songfacts.com.
"It's pretty obvious what it's about.  I was watching a movie called Days Of Wine And Roses (1962) with Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon.  They were both alcoholics who were alternately weak and strong.  It's like going back for seconds on rat poison.  Sometimes you miss things that weren't particularly good for you.  It's just something that crossed my mind from watching that movie, and probably something else that happened in my life that I'm not aware of."
Musically, it's beautifully melancholy.  But it also grooves like crazy.  After all, he had 3/4 of Booker T. & The M.G.'s (minus Steve Cropper) + Stephen Stills backing him on the single.

"Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine" (James Brown)

Back in early 1970, James Brown's original band quit just before a performance in Columbus, GA.  They were pissed off at the breakneck touring schedule and wanted more pay, so they refused to go on stage until Brown met their demands.
So what did Brown do?  
He sent singer Bobby Byrd to Cincinnati in his private Learjet to get a replacement band.
William "Bootsy" Collins and his brother, Phelps (a.k.a. "Catfish"), had their own group, The Pacemakers.  The band had recorded and hung out at Cincinnati's King Records, home of James Brown, where they'd gotten to know various producers, managers, and musicians, including the members of Brown's band.  So The Pacemakers were a known commodity.
As Bootsy tells it, they were the middle of playing a gig at a club in Cincy when they got a phone call from Byrd, saying that Brown needed them in Georgia, right away.  Within the hour, they were on Brown's jet (their first plane ride ever), not realizing that they were en route to replace their friends/idols on stage as Brown's new band, "The J.B.'s."
Ultimately, the Brothers Collins didn't even remain with The J.B.'s for a full year.  They experienced the kind of shenanigans (like not getting paid) that prompted their predecessors to walk out on Brown, and they went home to Cincinnati for a couple of months before joining a little outfit in Detroit called Parliament/Funkadelic.  But in their brief apprenticeship with Brown between 1970-71, they helped create some groundbreaking funk classics, including the single "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine" (1970).  (The title alone is epic.)
Here's the thing: if you attempt to dissect "Sex Machine" into its individual components, it doesn't sound like much.  Bootsy plays the same couple of notes on his bass throughout.  Catfish plays some chicken-scratch rhythm guitar, accenting the end of every bar with the same little two chord phrase.  Brown and Byrd do some call-and-response, with Byrd always responding Get on up! to whatever Brown intones.  And every few bars, Brown comes in with a little honky tonk piano, which sounds like it's in need of a good tuning.
It's like so many of Brown's songs from the early 70s: on paper, it shouldn't work.  In fact, it should sound like an unholy mess.  But it doesn't.  And the reason it doesn't is because the band is completely immersed in the groove.  
Brown's approach was visceral, not cerebral.  So what if the piano was out of tune or Byrd didn't always quite reach the note?  It felt right.
And what feels especially right to me on this track is John "Jabo" Starks's drumming: funky, swinging, with just a little bit of ambient squeak from his bass pedal.  It's perfect imperfection.
As Bootsy put it at the 2011 Red Bull Music Academy in Madrid, "We had no idea that we were really creating something that was going to be lasting, something that people were going to fall into, that was going to groove people like that.  I think the part of not knowing helps the experience of getting there."

"Freddie's Dead" (Curtis Mayfield)

Even if you've never seen the 1972 blaxploitation film Super Fly, it's impossible to hear the gangsta lean congas, jazz flute, and rumbling bass of "Freddie's Dead" and not think of tricked out Cadillacs and 70s urban decay.
If you have seen the movie, you know the song is about the character "Fat Freddie," one of the few characters who dies in the film.  Freddie is kind of a pushover and screwup.  His main function in the plot is that he rats out the protagonist, "Youngblood Priest" (a.k.a. Superfly), to shady narcotics agents to save his own skin, only to be hit by a car as he attempts to flee the police precinct.
Being that Freddie is a relatively minor (and somewhat irritating) character, it always surprised me that Curtis Mayfield wrote what's essentially the movie's theme song about the guy.  But then I read this quote from Mayfield in the liner notes of the 1999 re-issue of the Super Fly soundtrack: "I had such a feeling for this character who wasn't really a bad man.  He just got caught up with the wrong people."
After reading that, it all made sense.  Nearly every song on Mayfield's soundtrack addresses the social ills and economic realities that led each character to a life of crime, and he takes extreme care to make sure you learn about the humanity of every individual.  In this case, the portrait he paints of Freddie is that of a man who was a victim of circumstance: a soft-hearted guy who was never cut out for dealing drugs or shaking people down for money.
So for every image on the big screen that glamorized the lifestyle (the cars, the clothes, the cash), there was Mayfield saying: hold up; what's the real cost of these things?  Remember, this man died because of these things.
It's a powerful message set to one of the catchiest grooves of the 70s.
And if you check out no other part of the song, take a listen to Joseph "Lucky" Scott's bassline on the breakdown around the 2:40 mark.  It's so funky, it hurts.

"Right Place Wrong Time" (Dr. John)

New Orleans native Mac Rebennack had gigged as a session musician for the better part of two decades before getting a hit song.  When he landed in the Top 10, it was as his hoodoo priest alter ego, "Dr. John Creaux, the Night Tripper," with the track "Right Place Wrong Time" from the album In the Right Place (1973).  
"Right Place Wrong Time" is a bubbling cauldron of New Orleans funk with this curious stop/start structure: the verses suspend the groove for Rebennack to relay his bluesy, paranoia-tinged predicament, and the refrains bring things back up to a simmer to keep the roux hot.
Even without having read the album credits, the moment I first heard the recording I had a hunch that his backing band was Crescent City R&B royalty, The Meters, and I was absolutely correct.  The sense of timing and tight-but-loose precision on the track are dead giveaways that you're hearing none other than Zigaboo Modeliste (drums), Art Neville (organ), Leo Nocentelli (guitar), and George Porter, Jr. (bass).
The Meters' rhythmic interplay and Rebennack's bayou drawl are plenty to keep me coming back to this tune, time and again.

"Walk on the Wild Side" (Lou Reed)

Quite honestly, I didn't know what to make of "Walk on the Wild Side" from Transformer (1972) the first time I heard it as a pre-teen. At the time, I knew little or nothing about Lou Reed or the Velvets, so I had no clue the song was about actual people who were associated with Andy Warhol and his so-called Factory. I mean, even in context, it's still pretty peculiar: a jazz-inflected R&B song with half-spoken/half-sung vocals about transvestites and hustlers.
As Reed notes in this clip from the Classic Albums series, he'd been approached about turning Nelson Algren's gritty 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side into a musical.  So he composed a title song, only to have the writing team abandon the play for a different project. Reed had a song without a home, so he reworked it as a chronicle of the real-life characters he'd encountered at Warhol's Factory: Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro, Joe "Sugar Plum Fairy" Campbell, and Jackie Curtis.
Despite knowing that those are/were real people, it didn't really sink in until I got the chance recently to visit Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum, where there are numerous photographs (and occasionally videos) on display of those very folks. I got a pretty good sense of what life at Warhol's Union Square (NY) studio must have been like in the late 60s: a non-stop carnival of misfits looking for their place in the sun, shelter from the elements, or other misfits like themselves. And as much as they were parasites, trying to suck fame and sustenance from Warhol's very veins, they were his family, too. Strip away the campiness and glam of Warhol's photos of this brood, and there's an unmistakeable tenderness.
That's why, when I hear the strings swell behind Herbie Flowers's double-tracked bassline and the Thunderthighs singing their doo-do-doo-do-doo-do-do-doo's before that after-hours sax kicks in, I sense endearment behind the seediness now.
There's no judgment. No finger-wagging. It's just poetic honesty about some unconventional souls Reed once knew.

"I Got Nothin'" (Iggy Pop & James Williamson)

In a previous entry about a fantastic cover of "No Sense of Crime" by Van Hunt, I discussed Iggy Pop & James Williamson's album Kill City (1977).  To briefly recap, Kill City is an album consisting of a bunch of demo tracks that Pop and Williamson had recorded together in 1975 after the dissolution of The Stooges.  The demos were cut in hopes of landing a new record deal.  But with all of the drug-fueled turmoil surrounding Pop, no record labels could be convinced to gamble on the duo.  So the tapes sat for almost 2 years until Pop made a comeback with David Bowie's help, and then to capitalize on his new popularity, Kill City was hastily released by indie label Bomp! Records.  
Thing is, the songwriting and Pop's performance were excellent on Kill City; the sound quality, not so much.  I heard a copy of Kill City in college, circa 1999, and it was a muddy mess.  It sounded like someone with a cheap tape recorder and even cheaper microphone had snuck into the studio to capture the band warming up.  It drove the audiophile in me crazy.  But, then again, it felt a little like having some exclusive glimpse into Pop's creative process—like a bootleg tape from your friend's cousin's neighbor who got it from his girlfriend's brother's coworker, who used to be a roadie for Iggy back in the 70s.  Or something.
Anyway, there's a song sitting in the middle of side one called "I Got Nothin'" that I instantly loved the moment I heard it.  In it, melancholy verses alternate with blistering choruses, where Pop screams I got nothin'! over a devastating riff.  We're talking primal, Arthur Janov catharsis.  It's frightening and exhilarating, all at once.
In short, it's a song about Pop's state of mind in 1975.  He had checked himself into a mental institution to try to kick his heroin habit, and he felt like he'd hit bottom.  Basically, he's saying that pleasures of the flesh don't even hold any interest for him anymore; he's a shell of his former self.
To put it another way, this is not the "million in prizes" Iggy that would celebrate a "Lust for Life" a few years later; this is an artist at the nadir of his life, and he's not hiding it.  It's that raw, unvarnished truth that draws me to this track.
Thankfully, Williamson went back into the studio in 2010 and remastered the entire album so that it sounds as fresh and spry as if it were recorded yesterday.  Every dull edge is now sharpened to spiky (im)perfection, making the album an even more worthy successor to 1973's Raw Power.

"Dancing Days" (Led Zeppelin)

"Dancing Days" from Houses of the Holy (1973) is the perfect Zeppelin pop song.  It's a compact, rocking capsule of everything that made the band legendary: a thunderous (yet grooving) rhythm section, layers of exhilarating guitars, preternatural tenor vocals, and a fusion of East and West that blurs musical and geographical boundaries.

From all of the books, articles, and Web blurbs I've ingested and digested about the band since adolescence, I know the track was inspired by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's travels in India, where the duo soaked up all of the music around them.  In short, the Indian rhythms and tunings they heard organically made their way into Page's undulating riff on "Dancing Days," which, incidentally, got its name because the band celebrated completing the song's backing track by dancing on the front lawn of Mick Jagger's mansion, Stargroves, where a good chunk of Houses of the Holy was recorded.

Lyrically, it's also one of my favorite Zeppelin songs.  Plant strikes a balance between cheeky innuendo ("tadpoles in jars" and whatnot) and bucolic fun, complete with booze-sipping at sunset.  In fact, this ode to summer does more for me than a dozen Tolkien references and ladies purchasing staircases into the clouds combined.

"When My Baby's Beside Me" (Big Star)

Big Star's #1 Record (1972) simply is one of the best pop-rock albums ever made, which makes it extremely hard to cherry-pick.  It's one of those albums that you put on and let play from start to finish.

As I was putting together this list of favorite songs, I'd occasionally weigh one artist against another, or one track against another.  More often than not, if nostalgia or pure groove couldn't break a tie, taking a look at my play counts on iTunes or Spotify would.  Apparently, I have listened to the track "When My Baby's Beside Me" from #1 Record 100+ times without realizing it.  (Come to think of it, I guess I do have a tendency to put the track on "repeat" when I listen to this album.)  When I stopped to analyze why I'd revisited this particular track so many times, I kept coming back to the same things: the intelligence and lack of sentimentality in Chris Bell/Alex Chilton's lyrics juxtaposed with crunchy riffing and a catchy refrain.  

On the merits of the music alone, Bell/Chilton could have phoned in some cotton candy verses about teenage love, and the song still would have been a good listen.  But it's obvious they took the time to craft a portrait of a guy who's in turmoil and feels very skeptical about the world around him.  He discounts everything from his psychiatrist to his textbooks in his search for direction and comfort.  Ultimately, the only time the world makes sense is when his love is right there beside him.  

It's a note-perfect, post-modern take on being in love that's more tenacious and true than ten sappy ballads combined.

"See No Evil" (Television)

I've never been exactly sure what Television frontman Tom Verlaine was driving at in "See No Evil," the opener of the landmark album Marquee Moon (1977).  In any case, I never got the impression that he was using the phrase in the usual sense (i.e. turning a blind eye to wrongdoing).  Considering the rest of the lyrics are somewhat fantastical (i.e. jumping over mountains, flying fountains, etc.), he seems to be using the phrase to mean that, he's so optimistic and hope-filled, that he's seeing the good in everything.
Er.  Maybe.
Like any good New Yawk art punk band of the late 70s, things are always a bit more cerebral than they might seem on the surface.  And based on what I know about Television's long road to landing a recording contract, my guess is that it's a tongue-in-cheek dig at the music industry.  
The band did some demos with Brian Eno, circa December 1974, with the intent of recording on Chris Blackwell's Island Records.  Verlaine liked Eno but was disappointed with the results of the sessions.  So the project was shelved.  But the demos apparently got leaked to other artists at Island in the U.K.  Verlaine has even asserted that the entirety of Roxy Music's Siren was a complete rip of the early demos of Marquee Moon!
Anyway, it was 2 more years before the band finally landed a deal with Elektra Records, and even then, Verlaine wasn't allowed to produce the project on his own.  (He ended up with engineer extraordinaire Andy Johns as a production partner.  So it wasn't all bad.)
So that's why I think "See No Evil" is a bit of snark.  Sort of like: we finally have a contract, the A&R guys are blowing smoke up our various orifices, and no one has any ulterior motives.  Riiiiiiiight...
I don't know.  Just my interpretation.
What I do know is that "See No Evil" is jittery, guitar-driven nirvana, and Verlaine's nasal whine on the word eeeeevillllll! makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  In a good way.

"Trouble" (Lindsey Buckingham)

"Trouble" from the album Law and Order (1981) was one of my favorite songs as a little kid.  I recall the single came out around the time of my 4th birthday.  The reason I remember this is because my family treated my dad and me to birthday dinner (our birthdays were 3 days apart) at my favorite restaurant, and "Trouble" was playing over the restaurant speakers as we waited for our table.
Let me set the scene: I was not your typical 4-year-old kid.  I was an only child, and I hung out around the adults in my family a lot.  So my tastes in everything (T.V., music, food, etc.) definitely skewed older.  While it's true that I liked Sesame Street, my Disney singalong records, and Happy Meals like any other kid that age, if anyone had asked me to name my favorite show/record/food, the response would have been WKRP in Cincinnati, Abbey Road, and Reuben sandwiches.  Yes, that's right: my favorite meal at age 4 was not pizza or pasketti; it was corned beef, melted Swiss, and sauerkraut on buttered, grilled rye.  This is what I got every time we went to Tuesday's Restaurant at Asheville Mall.  And I insisted upon ordering it myself: "Reuben sandwich, no Thousand Island, pickle on the side, and a sarsaparilla with two cherries."  
The "two cherries" bit inevitably elicited chuckles from the servers.  Occasionally, one of the waitresses would think my delivery was particularly cute, and I'd end up with half a jar of maraschino cherries in my drink. 
After dinner that evening, my grandmother asked what I wanted for my birthday.  Without hesitation, I told her I wanted to go to Record Bar and get two singles: "Trouble" and this other song that I'd heard on the radio but didn't know its name, which meant I was going to have to hum it to the clerk.  (I'm not going to reveal what the other song was because it's my favorite song of all time.  You'll find out in a couple of weeks.)
Long story short, Record Bar was sold out of "Trouble," and they didn't have the other single because, well, it was from 1965 (even though it sounded like punk or New Wave to me).  So I left empty-handed.  I probably would have put up more of a fuss, but it was late, and I was full and sleepy.  Plus, we heard "Trouble" again on the radio on the drive home before I conked out.
Anyway, the reason why I still enjoy listening to "Trouble" today (apart from nostalgia) is because it's so well crafted.
When you listen to anything by Buckingham, be it something from a solo project or with Fleetwood Mac, there's this meticulous attention to detail.  But there's also a bit of quirkiness—a purposely ragged edge, an unusual texture, or some unique treatment that makes you wonder "what is that instrument?"  
"Trouble" is no exception.  The lush vocal harmonies.  The note-perfect flamenco guitar solo.  And the almost zither-like sound of the haunting guitar riff on the refrain.  (A quick Google search on how Buckingham achieved that sound miraculously returned a 1981 article from the Bay Area's BAM magazine, in which he reveals that he recorded his guitar at half-speed and then played it back at full speed to get those dulcet tones.)
Simply put, it's a well-made pop song with a few tricks up its sleeve.

"Love Is the Drug" (Roxy Music)

I only started exploring Roxy Music's catalog a few years back.  I'd find myself reading some article about glam rock, and along with the inevitable David Bowie or Marc Bolan references, there would be Bryan Ferry's name, big as life.  Then one day it hit me: I'd never actually heard anything by Ferry or the band.  So I felt like I had some catching up to do.

I'll say this: it's music that's not exceptionally easy to warm to.  It's odd, fractured art rock, often delivered with Euro playboy/lounge lizard greasiness by Ferry.  But, then again, that's also what's compelling about it.  It's pop made by a bunch of guys who had no clue how to write pop music, which gives it a freshly-hatched kind of feel.  

Perhaps the most accessible song they ever recorded is "Love Is the Drug" from 1975's Siren.  It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek exploration of clubbing and wookin' pa nub in the 70s.  In short, Ferry boils down the big hunt to nothing more than a junkie rush.  Scoring a date or scoring pharmaceuticals, it's all the same to him.

Being a sucker for a good bassline, I can never get enough of bassist John Gustafson's funky rumble throughout this track.  It's as much a parody of disco as it an homage.

"Ashes to Ashes" (David Bowie)

Normally, I wouldn't go for something as gimmicky as a follow up song, where you find out the latest about a character whom you met 10 years earlier.  But, dammit, when Bowie does it, it's a work of art.
In "Ashes to Ashes" from Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (1980), you get reacquainted with "Major Tom," the celebrity/space cadet/junkie from Bowie's very first hit song, "Space Oddity" (1969).  If you're unfamiliar with "Space Oddity," it uses the sci-fi premise of an astronaut being launched into outer space and then losing touch with ground control back on earth as an extended metaphor for a meteoric rise to celebrity and eventual fall because of overindulgence.
It's oddly prophetic, considering Bowie himself skyrocketed to fame only to nearly lose himself to a massive cocaine habit by the end of the 70s.
Anyway, in "Ashes to Ashes," we meet up with "Major Tom" again to find out that he's doing well, even though he admits he's still fighting his demons.  
Ultimately, by the time Bowie gets to the end of the track, he decides that it's time to clean up his own act and put "Major Tom" behind him: My momma said to get things done / You better not mess with 'Major Tom'.
As a narrative, the song is compelling enough.  But the track's fractured funk with its twisted beat, slapped bass, and spacey synths make it even more desirable to visit and revisit.

"Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (Tears for Fears)

I was at the office recently for a quarterly planning meeting.  There were about 30 of us of varying ages, squeezed around a conference table, having lunch.  Somehow in the course of conversation, one of my colleagues started talking about 80s music, and this (very) young intern pipes up and says, "Wow, I wish, like, I was born, like, in the 80s.  It was, like, so much, like, fun and stuff!"
After I got done tossing her from the roof of the building*, I made my case that the 80s weren't so hot.  Honestly, they were pretty awful.  Everyone dressed like clowns escaped from a mental institution, and we had the hair to match.  Self-centeredness was status quo.  And the Russians were out to obliterate us, and vice versa.  Honestly, it was a decade of bad taste, greed, and fear that planted the seeds of our current decade of bad taste, greed, and fear.  (If you were alive in the 80s, I challenge you to name one fond memory that isn't somehow related to one of the following: a consumer product, a T.V. show, a song/album, or a film.  It's nearly impossible to do.)
I bring this up because I always found "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" from Songs from the Big Chair (1985) to be an astute commentary on the 80s.  (Quite a feat, I think, considering the decade was only half over when Tears for Fears wrote/released it!)
On the surface, it's an upbeat pop song with a danceable beat, memorable guitar solo, and singable chorus.  If you're not really paying much attention, you might think the refrain Everybody wants to rule the world is just some douchebag mantra that reiterates the 80s "I'm gonna get mine" mentality.  But if you listen a little more closely, you get that Curt Smith is delivering a warning about greed and powermongering.  In truth, the song is a lament.  It's about being full of hopes and dreams as young person in the modern world, but then coming to the stark realization that it all could be obliterated at the whim of one person tomorrow.
That was the reality of the 80s.  We were just trying to remain upbeat through the thick of it.

(*No 20-year-olds were harmed in the composition of this blog entry.)

"Eyes Without a Face" (Billy Idol)

Billy Idol is not one of my favorite performers.  Maybe this is an inaccurate characterization, but he always felt a little too manufactured to me: a sneering punk robot, programmed to appeal to the masses.  Even as a child, I could see that The Clash, The Ramones, etc. were a totally different species of rocker than Idol, despite his similar leather and studs look.  (All those hours of playing "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other" no doubt paid off.)
But damned if Idol's "Eyes Without a Face" from Rebel Yell (1983) isn't one of the better pop/rock songs of the early 80s.  That wistful, Gothic ballad portion with the haunting backing vocal from Idol's then-girlfriend Perri Lister, singing/sighing Les yeux sans visage ("eyes without a face"), lures me in, and then that screaming, slashing guitar portion by Steve Stevens just seals the deal.  
Incidentally, Idol borrowed the track's title from a 1960 French film called Les Yeux Sans Visage.  I saw a good bit of the film in college when I was doing research for a paper in a film criticism class.  (It actually was a much more challenging class than it might sound, by the way.)  Although it's generally labeled a horror flick, the movie is more of a Hitchcock/Serling-esque twisted thriller about a brilliant, but sickly obsessive, surgeon whose young daughter is disfigured in an accident.  To quell his guilt about the mishap, he sets about trying to find a new face to surgically graft onto his daughter's.  Ultimately, he and his assistant kidnap and kill countless, unsuspecting young women in an attempt to steal their faces.  In the meantime, the daughter is locked away in her dad's gigantic mansion, left to wander its halls with this plaster mask over her face with only her eyes showing.  It's an unsettling, artsy film with a moralistic message about the nature of obsession and obsession with physical beauty.
Anyway, Idol's song only relates to the film inasmuch as his protagonist feels that his girlfriend has become someone he no longer recognizes, i.e. "eyes without a face."
So there ya go.  It's a hydrogenated fat-filled cheeseburger of a song, and I savor every moment of it.

"Lovesong" (The Cure)

Unlike yesterday's entry, "Lovesong" from the 1989 album Disintegration is actually an affectionate song.  The Cure's resident tunesmith/frontman Robert Smith wrote it for his high school sweetheart and eventual wife, Mary Poole, to let her know that she was always in his heart, even when he and his band were playing the other side of the world.
It's a sentiment that he echoed again recently in an interview with The Guardian.  Discussing his marriage, Smith said, "I just struck lucky early on.  I really enjoy what I do, and who I'm with, and where I am."
When "Lovesong" was released in 1989, I remember it struck me how sincere it sounded.  It felt different from the typical, tepid "Ooh, baby, baby, I lurve you" ballads that were (still are) a dime-a-dozen.
But what I really loved was how bouncy, yet ethereal, the track was; it was one of those rare ballads that you could either fast or slow dance to.  Which was great for middle school dances.  The popular guys who were "going with" the popular girls would all be in one corner of the gymnasium, arms draped around each other, swaying languidly, while my pals and I would be on the other side of the gym, flailing around to that great bassline and those punchy drums, having a frigging blast in spite of ourselves.
I've always had this picture in my head of Smith going, "Hmm, I need to write something for the nerds and drama geeks who always feel left out when they play slow songs at junior high dances.  Ah!  How about this..."
On that note, I really do admire Smith's songwriting abilities.  His knack for combining fresh melodies with an air of Gothic romanticism always gave The Cure's music an odd Beatles-meets-Tim Burton kind of charm.  Furthermore, I never felt like Smith was trying to chase any trends.  That's why I can go back and listen to "Lovesong" and Disintegration, and neither feels particularly stuck in the moment.  They live and breathe in their own atmosphere.

"The One I Love" (R.E.M.)

"The One I Love" from Document (1987) was the moment I began paying attention to R.E.M.  And while there were many fine moments both before and after it, it still stands as my favorite track by the Athens, GA, band.  Frontman Michael Stipe intoning the word Fire! with bassist Mike Mills harmonizing She's comin' down on her own now gets me every time.  It's like some sort of Gregorian chant over one of the crunchiest, Byrds-esque riffs of the mid-80s.  It's angelic and ugly, all at once.
Which reminds of a conversation I once had with a wedding DJ.  He was venting about having to play "inappropriate music" at wedding receptions: U2's "One"; The Police's "Every Breath You Take"; and, of course, "The One I Love."
"Do people not listen to lyrics?" I remember him asking rhetorically.
Contrary to what some might think, "The One I Love" is not some romantic ballad about pining for love across the miles, as Mills told VH1 back in 2008.
"'The One I Love' is not a love song.  'The One I Love' is a very vicious breakup song.  It's very cold and cruel.  Which is, you know, I hate to break or burst anyone's bubble, but I always look out and see couples hugging and dancing to that song.  That's fine.  It doesn't matter.  Michael (Stipe) writes a song about whatever he thinks it's about, and then whatever you think it's about is what it's about...Whatever it means to us isn't nearly as important as what it means to you."

(Little bar trivia for you: Food Network personality Alton Brown of Good Eats fame served as director of photography on the video for "The One I Love.")

"Add It Up" (Violent Femmes)

I inherited a cassette tape of the Violent Femmes' compilation Add It Up (1981-1993) from my friend Kerri after high school.  I still have it in a crate of 90s curios that I browse through every so often.
We were hanging out at her house one afternoon not long after graduation, reminiscing about stuff—laughing at the good, cringing at the bad—when she had that moment I'm pretty sure every 18-year-old has (I know I did), where you look around your bedroom one day and go, "What the hell was I thinking the past 4 years?"  
I remember her picking up a pile of clothing that she'd just gotten from a mail-order catalog for grunge grrrrrls, and she shook her head.
"I can't even look at this stuff anymore.  Maybe I'll give these to my step-sister.  Think she'd wear this?"
She decided that a good, cathartic purge of her closet was in order.  We filled a couple of Hefty bags with clothing: one to donate, one to ditch.  And then there was the pile of tapes.  She told me to look through the small mountain of cassettes to see if anything caught my eye.  It didn't take long for me to realize that our collections were nearly identical.  After all, I'd pretty much bought all the music I owned while hanging out with her and vice versa, so it made sense.  (If either of us ever wondered, "How did I end up with a copy of 'Gypsy Woman' by Crystal Waters again?" one of us was able to fill in the details.)
But then I spotted something I didn't own in the "expunge" pile: Add It Up (1981-1993).
"You're getting rid of this?  I thought you loved Violent Femmes?"
The look on her face was all the explanation I needed.  It wasn't the Femmes that she wanted to get rid of; it was the emotional baggage that went with the album.  She couldn't even look at the album cover without wanting to take a blowtorch to it.  So I took it off her hands.
Strangely enough, as I listened to it afterward, the song sequencing actually brought to mind stuff she'd told me about her breakup (we told each other everything in our Clarissa and Sam friendship).  I'd find myself listening to the live version of "Add It Up" in my car, and I'd start feeling my temper rise.  
"That idiot really thought she would believe that he was just 'hanging out' with his ex-girlfriend?!"
After awhile, I couldn't take hearing those songs in that context either.  So I sought out the Femmes' self-titled debut from 1983.  (Funny, Violent Femmes contains many of the same songs as the Add It Up compilation, but it's amazing how different the scenery looks with the furniture rearranged.  I still love the entire Violent Femmes album; I still can't listen to the Add It Up compilation the whole way through.)
Anyway, the studio version of the song "Add It Up" is still one of my favorite tracks by the Milwaukee-based band.  It's such a perfect specimen of teenage frustration and nervous energy.  (Probably because frontman Gordon Gano wrote it when he was a frustrated, nervous teenager.)  
Every time I hear the song's anxious, unvarnished folk-punk and Gano's pleading warble, it instantly transports me back to my teen years, for better or worse.