A Case For Song

Paige - Dear Ken

Dear Ken,

All I can say is that I'm a dunce. I'm a dimwit. I'm thick in the head, slow on the uptake. I have no other defense.

Case in point: you know that my father left when I was 11. Well, the next (and last) time I saw him, I was 14. And one of the things he said to me then was just please don't ever get married just because you're pregnant. And it wasn't until I was 27, rehashing events in my head, that it struck me that he was trying to tell me that my parents had had to get married. It took me 13 years to figure that out. I'm that thick.

Well, years before I had figured that out, I met you. We were temping together that summer, some awful clerical job involving mindless data entry, so mind-numbing that I've actually blocked out the details. You were new in town; we clicked instantly. You were (still are, I'm sure) artistic like me. You were (are) a genius; You composed actual symphonies. Good ones, too. You're one of the only guys I've ever met who likes to do interior decorating. Your teeny little apartment was simply gorgeous, dripping with taste. We spent an awful lot of time together that summer. You took in my cats when my landlord was coming to inspect; Ming got so scared of being in a new place that it took us days to find him (he'd crawled behind your kitchen cabinets). You were my roadie and fan club mixed together when my band played our first gig. You understood me. I believed that then, and I believe it even more now. We were two overly creative misfits in an overly conservative town.

Once we were out walking around in German Village, where there are shops and cafes and gorgeous brownstones with beautiful gardens. We were talking about how you wanted to open an art gallery. And you stopped at some point, and got very quiet. And you were about to tell me something. You were, quite obviously, about to make some sort of confession. Unfortunately, something happened to spoil the moment (I don't remember what), and you never got to say a thing. I thought you were going to confess that you were bisexual, which I'd kind of assumed all along. I was about to tell you it made no difference whatever to me. Now I understand what you were really about to confess. At least I think I do.

By the end of the summer, you'd been hired full-time, (doing graphic design?) at an outrageous salary, and you had to move to Boston. And I never saw you again. Some time after you moved, you sent a letter and a mix tape. You invited me to come see your new place, and it made me smile. I never wrote you back. I wanted to write you back; I missed you. But I'm simply horrible at writing people back. I deal with E-mails just fine, but regular letters cause me major problems. I don't know why, but I've always been that way. I listened to the mix tape, too. A bunch of times. You put together a good mix of songs. You'd never given me a mix tape before.

You know this, I'm sure, but recently we were at war. And while I usually listen to NPR in the mornings during my drive to work, I got so sick sick sick of Iraq this and Iraq that - I couldn't stand it for one more minute. So I dug out some old tapes to put in the car, to listen to during my commute. I hardly ever listen to my tapes anymore. I pretty much stick to CDs. But my car has no CD player. Well, one of the tapes I found was your mix tape. To Paige from Ken at 10:00, that's what it said on the spine, which made me smile right away. I hadn't seen it in years.

Then I looked at the songs. How could I not have seen?

You started off with No More 'I Love Yous,' then put

Now,

Nothing Compares 2U,

Baby Can I Hold You,

I Loved You,

Anna Begins,

La Belle Dame Sans Regrets,

I Know It's Over,

Is It a Crime,

Heart for Hire,

Stay by Me,

Evacuee,

A Little of You,

Losing My Mind,

I Feel You, and finished with (Oh, God!)

I Wanted To Tell Her.

When I looked at the song list, I was stunned. I literally put my hand over my open, gaping mouth, as if to shut myself up. It was like some kind of fucked-up, overly obvious SAT question. How could I not have seen that you were sending a message? If I'd realized, Ken, if I hadn't been so thick... Oh, God - did I shatter your heart into tiny pieces? I doubt there are words in this language or any other to convey just how sorry I am, and how I kind of wish life sometimes had do-overs. I'm sure you have a wonderful life now, full of wonderful people, misfits all. And certainly you've gotten over it. But the realization, after all this time, that I likely caused you some degree of anguish - well, I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for that.

Graceland - "Svefn-g-englar" by Sigur Ros

Sigur Ros' Svefn-g-englar is like softly falling back into a growing ocean wave and allowing yourself to slowly sink into the deep, dark water. Your body density slowly grows as drops of water seep into your skin and begin to weigh you down, deeper and deeper. You crash occasionally as you drop, hitting with impact as you pass marked sea levels.

Sometimes you slow down and float. Your lungs fill water, for what seems like an eternity but is really just a few seconds. A minute, and you leave your body. A bell sounds. A beat is kept. Is it your heart, or their drum? Your spirit is hovering away from your body. You begin to hear the sound of angels.

They sing, "It's youuuuuuuu."
"It's Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu."
"It's Yooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuu"
"It's Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyooooouuuuuuuuuuuu."

Their singing slows and is drawn out. You float with no purpose.

Suddenly another sound travels. You look down at your struggling body as it fights the final fight for life.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeee aarggggggggggh........oiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii......heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllllllllllllllpp" your mouth gargles.

The angels sing softly again, "It's yoooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu."

The last thing you hear before silence blankets you, are the angels beckoning with their song, followed by the chiming of a bell.

Vernam Cipher - "Feel Like Going Home" by Charlie Rich

For purposes of discussion, let's say my all-time favorite song is "Feel Like Going Home" by Charlie Rich. To the extent that many people remember Charlie, it's as the long-haired 70s country crossover singer who had a pair of smash crossovers: "Most Beautiful Girl in the World" and "Behind Closed Doors." As a kid back then, I liked both of them, despite my youthful yankee bias against country music. BCD now sounds slightly prefab, with an Elvis-style mock operatic finish. But MBGitW still gets me every time. Its production is relatively understated by Billy Sherrill's standards for the period. Charlie's vocal is gorgeously melancholy; he's way more believable as the jilted ex-lover than as the bragging stud in BCD. In all likelihood, my memory associates MBGitW with some adolescent heartbreak, in which regard this song is hardly unique. I was quite the morbid young fellow.

I only became a Charlie Rich fan about 10 years later, during my first rockabilly phase. I'm still not all that partial to his Sun sides, but they're well worth seeking out. Sam Phillips isn't kidding when he calls Rich the greatest all-round talent he worked with. The piano playing is impeccable and, especially as his Sun years gave way in the 60s to his Groove and then Smash years, Charlie's keyboard work grew more varied and occasionally jazzy. Stan Kenton was reportedly his biggest influence, though he didn't really indulge his jazz instincts much until "Pictures and Paintings," the 1992 album that was unfortunately his last. The Groove material (produced by Chet Atkins) is fine, rocking stuff, but it doesn't move me the way his Smash tracks do.

Around 1982, I bought a used Smash LP of "The Many New Sides of Charlie Rich," which had a dozen masterful tracks that mix R&B, rock n roll and pop in the type of eclecticism that creates legends and short-circuits careers. I can't imagine the Industry greeted it very warmly, but it stands up musically against anything from the mid-60s, including whichever counter-culture masterpiece you care to cite. Yes, he was that good. Enjoy "Lonely Weekends" and "Mohair Sam" -- both terrific, and the latter being what Elvis reportedly played non-stop when he and the Beatles hung out in L.A. But be sure to look past those hits to "I Can't Go On," "Field of Yellow Daisies," "Everything I Do is Wrong," "I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water," and others so perfectly crafted that you'll marvel at how seldom they come up in discussions of the best music from that period. Many of the best songs were written by his devoted wife, Margaret Ann Rich. Imagine my shock when the Complete Smash Sessions CD came out years later with a full 29 tracks, of which no more than two aren't up to the same impossible standard. And several -- like "Best Years," "It Ain't Gonna Be That Way," and "You Can Have Her" -- are better still.

Skip forward to "Feel Like Going Home," a posthumous 2-CD compilation that features, appropriately, two versions of its title song. The first one dates from the early 70s and was seemingly a demo, though the performance is fully realized. Charlie sings like it's an old-time spiritual, accompanying himself on piano:

Lord, I feel like going home
I tried and I failed, and I'm tired and weary
Everything I done is wrong
Lord, I feel like going home

This isn't adolescent angst, it's the real thing. It's a guy approaching middle age and welcoming mortality into his life. The vibrance of his playing, though, belies any notion that Charlie Rich is about to pack it in. He is actually on the cusp of his greatest commercial success, an artist in full command of sizable gifts. That tension pulls against the lyric, which gets darker with each verse:

Cloudy skies are closing in
And not a friend around to help me
from all the places I have been
Lord, I feel like going home

As the last stately piano strains fade, Charlie says with finality, "And that's it." It's a statement of pride, not resignation.

Disk 2 also ends on "Feel Like Going Home," this time with the full gospel treatment of a soaring choir that features male and female soloists on the fadeout. Recorded for his final album, it's no less moving than the intimate solo take. Charlie's voice is notably weaker, his vitality ground away by years of professional struggle and drink. The lyric seems almost too personal now, and there is none of the earlier performance's bravado. When he finally gives way to the gospel choir, the effect is that he seems to have already left us before the tune ends, and the voices are just some beautiful formality, singing him home. Charlie Rich died on July 25, 1995.

Scott Graves - "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" by Michael Jackson

The first track on _Thriller_, one of its seven (!) top ten singles, is a guaranteed dancehall filler. It's one of those songs that can get any crowd to start bobbing their heads, much like "Get Down Tonight" by KC & the Sunshine Band, Sly Stone's "Dance to the Music," "You Should Be Dancing" by the Bee Gees, Rob Base and EZ Rock's "It Takes Two," "Sex Machine" by James Brown, or Jackson's own "Don't Stop 'til you Get Enough." Songs like these make it more embarrassing not to dance than to dance.

Beyond that, the song is a rhythm dynamo. It kicks off with a high-energy drum machine beat, adding more sequenced electronics, live percussion, clapping, chants, and rhythm guitar in singular and combined assaults. Jackson's singing soars and swings, as reminiscent of Frank Sinatra at times as he is of Jackie Wilson. Beyond his varying approaches to the chorus and verses, Jackson's vocal asides and ad-libs throughout the song are riveting. The arrangement impels motion; we can feel, even see the movements in Jackson's all-over-the-map delivery. The shame is that Jackson's singing ossified into a collection of less inspired affectations as the 80s wore on.

_Thriller_, although a phenomenal album, isn't as tight as _Off the Wall_. Still, it's easy to forget how audacious _Thriller_ really was at the time, given its 40 million units sold. The first single off _Thriller_ was MJ's McCartney duet "The Girl is Mine," probably the safest choice off the album (except maybe the non-single "Baby Be Mine"), but "Billie Jean" followed: a driving, hypnotic track about the dangers of the girls on the road. Jackson's themes of paranoia and fear continue with "Beat It." Sure, it was a huge hit and is a cultural signpost now, but back then who would have thought anybody could have a monster single with a rockin' dance song about gang violence with a guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen and a video that looked like a cross between _West Side Story_ and _The Warriors_? The title track from _Thriller_ continues Jackson's interest in horror (visible in earlier Jacksons material like "This Place Hotel") and delivers a pretty tight funk groove (bass stolen straight from Rick James' "Give it to Me Baby") about the love of a good scare with your girl. I can't bring up audaciousness without mentioning the Thriller video: a 15 minute horror story which reinvented the genre and inspired a million Halloween viewing parties. After an intro casting Jackson as Michael Landon from _I Was a Teenage Werewolf_, the video builds up to an electrifying climactic dance sequence featuring a cast of grotesque zombies. Whenever I hear some critic refer to some new release as adventurous, I think of _Thriller_ and scoff.

"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" is also laced with paranoia. The Motown-inspired claustrophobic chorus ("too high to get over/too low to get under/you're stuck in the middle") leaps past the Temptations' "Psychedelic Shack" back to Martha and the Vandellas' "Nowhere to Run." Along with the pain of random rumor mongering and hateful invention, the lyrics hint at the terrified seclusion and megalomania that surfaced in the ensuing years, but who cares when the track is so intoxicating? It's got as much punch as "Don't Stop.." or "Shake Your Body on To the Ground" but injects a harder, more anxious feel appropriate for the early-80s Reagan era. Toward the end, MJ breaks into a celebratory jam suggesting that solace, if not salvation, can still be found in community ("help me sing it!") The neurotic edge of this and other songs on the album recalls contemporaneous Talking Heads, and you can hear the influence on their _Speaking in Tongues_.

I first remember hearing "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" while I was on an enclosed amusement park ride in Myrtle Beach, SC. It was one of those whip-rides that rises, falls and twists unexpectedly and the enclosure (inside a dome covered with flashing patterned lights) makes it hard to see what's going on. The experience was intense and scary (which I loved; I was twelve) and the song stayed with me. Although I was a huge fan of _Thriller_ and MJ at that time, I rediscovered this particular song when I was 20 at a college dance in Chicago. My date kept trying to get me to dance with her, but I was reluctant until "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" came on, at which point I jumped up and in short order thoroughly humiliated myself, attracted considerable attention, and enjoyed every second of it. That experience cured me permanently of the late-adolescent male disdain for dance music and dancing, and helped me rediscover the joys of pop.

Stu Hanson - "Four Seasons In One Day" by Crowded House

Certain songwriters have the ability to give your life a much-needed lift just by placing a beautiful yet unexpected note into a song. Lennon & McCartney achieved this with almost every song they wrote together. Their tunes have long since slipped into our subconscious but the nerve tingling essence of these moments of genius keeps these songs fresh no matter how many times they are played.

Few modern songwriters have inherited this skill. Elvis Costello manages it on occasion, Richard Thompson has a clutch of these moments on every album and Coldplay appear to be achieving it with increasing finesse each time they bring out a new album.

To me, almost every song that Neil and Tim Finn have written together has this skill in bucket-loads. From Split Enz songs through to Crowded House classics such as “Weather with You”, “Catherine Wheels” & “It’s Only Natural”, each song contains that moment of hair raising genius that comes from years of honing their song-writing craft whilst listening to the finer moments of Ray Davies and Lennon & McCartney.

I first heard Four Seasons in One Day when it was released and finally acquired it on the Best of album “Recurring Dream”. A poster blurb stated that when you bought this album you’d be amazed at how many songs you recognized. I recognized the obvious hits but was stunned at just how many of the other songs sounded familiar even though I knew I’d never ever heard them before.
These songs, like The Beatles ones, held in them that certain something that made them classics the first time I played them.

Four Seasons gave me goose bumps from the beginning. The tune is incredibly simple yet totally memorable, although the lyrics had always had me wondering what they were talking about. It took a trip to Melbourne, Australia for me to figure it out.

The city, much like London but with its “old” buildings being much newer than England’s capital, and the surrounding state of Victoria has its own Microclimate. The weather changes so dramatically every few minutes (or so it seems), leaving anyone there with the feeling that they have just lived through, in a very short time, four seasons in one day.

I heard Neil Finn talking about the song on MMM Radio while I was there and explaining that the song was a tribute to the city. Some of the lyrics still left some explanation i.e. “blood dries up like rain” & “Sleeping on an unmade bed, finding out wherever there is comfort there is pain”.

“The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over the domain” chills me to the bone to this day. “The Domain” is an area of greenery towards the outskirts of the city that has pieces of artwork seemingly popping up out of the ground. A beautiful area where you can visually witness the changes of season as the sun gives way to clouds, the clouds drop down their burden and the sun soaks it all up again. I spent a day just lying there as years seemingly flew past in a few hours.

For this simple line, its delicate tune and the accompanying memories this song brings, it is almost up there alongside The Beatles. Almost, but not quite.

Duncan Fitzgerald - Growing Up with Helen, Elton and Todd

Some of the earliest memories I have are actually of songs. There are many songs that form my early fabric of youth. Oddly, most of them I remember hearing in my grandmother's Plymouth (the one with the push-button gear shifter and oxidized sky blue paint), or my parents old Chevy Impala that at first was a fine shade of gold, then repainted chocolate brown. Why, I don't know. I’d be tagging-along or being chauffeured to/from school, from the bowling alley where my grandmother and mom worked and where I spent most days after school, or to/from the baby-sitter's, which is where I spent a lot of time ifI wasn't at the bowling alley. Of course, after I discovered the single best fringe benefit of having a parent or grandparent work in a bowling alley (free bowling!) I spent a good 83% of my time there, and thus necessitating rarer time being driven around, and thus less time hearing the music of the times. Early to mid-seventies, by the way.

There are many, but I think three songs stand out as proverbial cornerstones of my early youth, musical tokens in time that I can mentally weave my way around and have one or three other memories poke out of the fog whilst recalling a time when I may have actually heard them on the radio in the car. Not just personal events either, but I also recall significant historical events while in the car and tuned to the radio. For example, when the announcement came that the Beatles broke up, as well as when Richard Nixon resigned.

Ok no laughing now, but fairly vividly I can still recall Helen Reddy ("Ruby Red Dress"), Elton John ("Bennie and the Jets"), and Todd Rundgren (“I Saw the Light”) as being played often. And I do mean often. I mean, we're talking AM radio here, folks. Wolfman Jack, Kasey Kasem. I don't think I discovered FM until much later. I remember Boston (“More than a Feeling”) sounding crappy on AM radio too.

So, I don't know what my recollection may say about my early formative years but I’m sure it has something to do with me gravitating toward seventies music. Suffice it to say there was a lot of real good crap back then, but, like any period I suppose, it's the nuggets that stand out the most. As for me, I guess I’m stuck with Helen, Elton and Todd.

Hmmm. Maybe that'd be a good threesome for either a wax museum display or some kind of revue featuring men in drag.

Well, Elton’s already in drag. Todd Rundgren, I don't know about.

Dean Martucci - "Naima" by John Coltrane

I've picked - and subsequently rejected - probably 10 songs to write about here.

That, in itself, is interesting to me. What is *the* song that has been the key talisman in my life?

Should I write about a song that resonated so profoundly within me that whenever I hear it, I'm transported back to the first time I heard it? What about music that is indelibly connected with vital real world experiences of significant personal portent? Or, should it be a song that came from out of the blue; turning me on to new musical experiences I'd never imagined before? Better yet, how about something that was of music, but the hearing of it meant a transcendence of the simple act of musical appreciation? A vehicle of enlightenment...with all the pomposity that entails.

I finally decided the last category is the right one. The others are as much about me as the music. After all, it's A Case For Song, not A Vat Of Dean.

So, with that finally settled, really only one song makes sense. John Coltrane's Naima.

It's not news that Coltrane's body of work can, should, be approached with reverence. So much of his work is a personal testament. The Church of John Coltrane in San Francisco is proof that his music exists quite naturally beyond existentialism (is that paradoxical?). Deeply spiritual, masculine and profoundly moving, Coltrane's music is serious. Yet I find, on balance, there are equal measures of tender and tortured. Naima personifies the tender side.

I'll admit this song may not be his highest achievement. It doesn't have the revelatory grandeur of something off of say A Love Supreme. Nor will it deliver the primal purity of Ogunde (which, over the years, I have grown to love). Live recorded performances of Naima are actually somewhat disappointing. But it's original studio recording, from Giant Steps, fills a space in my personal universe. It presents The Question...and answers it, with sublime elegance.

It is a poem, to his wife.

Paul Frankenstein - Le Sacre du Printemps by Igor Stravinsky

I was three years old when I first heard Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (or, The Rite of Spring for those of use who can't pronounce French worth a damn).

My parents had taken me to see Disney's Fantasia (the original version, not the pale imitation that was Fantasia 2000) and I was entranced by it. Specifically, I was entranced with the dinosaurs (I don't know what it is about three-year-old boys and dinosaurs, but there's some kind of primal link there -- someone should do a study). I thought that it was the coolest thing ever.

And that music! So alien, so otherworldly, just so right for those mighty, fearsome beasts with their scales and claws and teeth (disregarding the fact that Disney had shuffled the order of the music around to make it fit the story better, but more on that later). Something about it struck a chord in my heart. This was my music. Loud, irregular, primordial.

My sister still tells the story: our parents were out, perhaps gone shopping, perhaps to go visit the neighbors, and the two of us were home alone. I must have been about four. I put the LP on the stereo (I am, I know, dating myself --we actually had (and probably still have in a box somewhere) a Kenwood turntable that played real vinyl records) and turned up the volume to a level somewhere between pants-wetting and eardrum-breaking. Le Sacre (or, as I called it back at that nascent age, the dinosaur music) has one of the widest dynamic ranges of any pieces of music ever written. Or, in other words, there are bits that are very, very quiet, and then there are bits that are very, very loud. And there's not a lot of transitioning between the two: it goes from v.v.q. to v.v.l. in the space of a single downbeat. So there I was, dancing away when these thunderous hammered chords came blasting out of the stereo. Scared the bejeezus out of my sister. Probably would have scared the bejeezus out of me, too, if I didn't know it was coming.

It is an article of faith among musicologists that Le Sacre was so controversial, so radical, so revolutionary, that the first public performance caused a riot. And that's mostly true. But explaining the legend requires a little bit of backstory.

In 1910, Igor Stravinsky wrote The Firebird, one of the great Russian ballet scores. The success of the relatively conventional Firebird encouraged him to write Petrushka, another ballet, for the great choreographers Serge Diaghilev and Vaslav Ninjinsky. The music of Petrushka is rather different than that of The Firebird; it's more angular, more syncopated, more dissonant; in short, it points the way to Le Sacre.

Le Sacre itself was supposed to be a ballet celebrating the violent Russian spring; it harkened back to a mythical pagan Russia and was to end with a ritual sacrifice. The birthing process of the ballet was itself labored, as Stravinsky wrote:

"I will count to forty while you play", Nijinsky would say to me, "and we will see where we come out." He could not understand that though we might at some point "come out" together, this did not mean we had been together on the way. The dancers followed Nijinsky's count, too ... and as Russian numbers above ten are polysyllabic -- eighteen, for example, vosemnadsat -- in the fast tempo movements neither he nor they could keep up.

This accounts for at least some of the hostile reaction the piece encountered on its premiere. Stravinsky again, on that fateful opening night in 1913:

At the performance, mild protests against the music could be heard from the beginning. Then, when the curtain opened, a group of knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down, the storm broke. Cries of "ta gueule" came from behind me. I left the hall in a rage. ... For the rest of the performance, I stood in the wings behind Nijinsky holding the tails of his frac, while he stood on a chair shouting numbers to the dancers, like a coxswain.

What Stravinsky leaves out, though is the fact that much of the booing was due to a claque that had been paid by enemies of the composer to disrupt the performance. The second night's performance, was, by all accounts, significantly more successful.

Despite its origins as a ballet score, Le Sacre quickly achieved success as a concert piece. Perhaps contemporary audiences heard a musical reflection of the chaos of the First World War.

The music itself is notoriously difficult. The piece opens with a solo bassoon exploring the oft-neglected upper range of that instrument; the time signature changes eight times in the first ten bars. Other parts of the score venture into outright bizarre time signatures, like 9/4, 3/16, 2/8, and 6/4. Stravinsky could play the music before he could figure out how to write it down (he re-notated the score in the late 1940s to make it easier to read (an exercise that had the happy and not entirely unintended consequence of extending his copyright)).

When Disney approached Stravinsky with the idea of using Le Sacre as part of Fantasia, the composer was all ears. Or, more specifically, all eyes, as he was most attracted to the check that the movie company dangled in front of him.

Of course, when he actually saw the movie, he hated it, objecting to both the setting (dinosaurs?) and, somewhat more loudly, the shuffling of his score. Unsurprisingly, though, his level of disapproval never rose to the point where he felt required to return his fee.

While it draws on many different sources (a cottage industry has sprung up finding bits of Russian folk tunes in the piece), Le Sacre truly is one of the few revolutionary pieces of music in the canon. For one thing, some 90 years after its first performance, it still sounds modern. It still sounds new, and it still has the capability to surprise.

My own love affair with the music continues to this day, even though I'm no longer four and have grown to the point where I don't try to scare people with the music. I own five different recordings of the piece (a record only challenged by the number of Rachmaninoff 3rds I acquired several years ago in a fit of temporary insanity) if you include a version scored for four hands. The gold standard, is, of course, the version conducted by Stravinsky himself; but each of the versions I own have their own strengths and weaknesses. The music itself is so complex and layered that orchestras and conductors are still exploring it, still finding new nuances and shades of color and sound in it. I've been to performances that explore the Russian roots of the piece; I've been to performances that makes it sound like it comes from outer space (for the record, I prefer the "outer space" interpretation). I don't think that there can be a single definitive performance or interpretation of this music.

I still like the Disney version, out-of-order and all; the slow march of the brontosauruses to their eventual demise in on a red-hot earth; the thrilling, mano-a-mano (if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor) battle between the desperate, heroic stegosaurus and the looming, rapacious tyrannosaur; I think back on that and I'm three years old again, in the grip of terror and excitement as that gloriously strange music washes over me yet again.

Kirsten Olesen - "Spirit of the Radio" by Rush

Mike has very rarely approved of my taste in music. There is some overlap between our tastes... primarily from our junior high school/British Invasion/New Wave/Punk phases.

But this is one junior high school song Mikey probably wouldn't dig. It's not British, and it's not new wave. In fact, it's Progressive Rock by Canadians. But
for me, this song was practically an obsession. Let me explain.

I didn't grow up with Pop/Rock music like most kids do. My parents listen primarily to classical music, and on occasion to "Oldies" stations... but even that was only when we were on long vacation drives and there wasn't a classical station to listen to. My lack of pop music knowledge wasn't really a problem until I was in junior high school (7th Grade, for us). Though I'd never been one of the "popular" kids (and never would be), my non-pop music upbringing suddenly made me a freak.

I went to school dances, but didn't know a single song they played. I got to know a couple, just because they always got played at the dances ("Stairway to Heaven," and "Rock Lobster," odd combination that they are.) Then, near the end of my 7th grade year, came the school talent show.

Four of the hot guys from the 9th grade (we called them "babes" back then) had a rock band, and the finale of the talent show was when they played. I still remember where I was sitting in the cafetorium. The opening riff was so cool, so unlike the few other songs I knew. Then, the lead singer stepped up to the mic, and.... nothing happened. The mic crapped out. They had to play the whole song without vocals, and I was hooked anyway. It was so hard, so loud, but at the same time, it had a distinctive pattern, just like classical music. It had movements, motifs, pieces of a theme that slowly built together to the climax of the song. It was the coolest thing I'd ever heard in my life.

It took me forever to find out the name of the song and who recorded it. I couldn't ask my friends, because they would've teased me about my ignorance. So I (very quietly) listened to WRIF (Detroit's #1 radio station at the time) every morning before my mom got up. I had to listen on headsets, then re-tune the stereo back to the classical station before she caught me. It took weeks of covert operations before I heard the song, but when I finally did, I loved "Spirit of the Radio" even more than the first time I'd heard it, when it was played by a crummy 9th-grade cover band. Imagine, a band with actual talent playing it... and performing it with words, too!

The irony of the situation is that I fell in love with the song before I even heard
the lyrics... but since then, one of my favorite things about Rush has been Neal
Peart's lyric-writing. He borrows a lot of themes and motifs from mythology (The song Xanadu is a revamping of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan, for example), and some of his songs even lean towards the political ("The Trees" is about equal rights, oppression, and how the law fails in dealing with them).

Of course, none of that was important to me at the time. I finally had a "favorite
song," and it wasn't written by someone who's name was Ludwig, Wolfgang, or even Johann!

Kimberly Austin - "Ocean Size" by Jane's Addiction

Yes, being a Jane's Addiction fan is very 1990. But on a recent car trip, I heard this song again and was instilled with a renewed vigor for one of my favorite bands. Produced when the top hits were, "Step by Step," by New Kids on the Block, "Hanky Panky," by Madonna and "Ice, Ice, Baby," this song has a profoundness that has stood the test of time. It praises the fantastic magnitude and embraces the apotheosis of Mother Ocean.

Using water as a metaphor for emotions, they crash and dissipate on the shore then "come together with no harm done." Many a problem has been faced with the desire to walk away unscathed. Tough issues altered my character, not often for the better. Subsequently, the numerous years following have been spent regaining trust.

And the delicious paradox of persistent motion, while being immobile as a whole, is addressed. The ability to change and facilitate growth, yet remain constant is a wondrous accomplishment. One that I struggle to be capable of; whereas the ocean does with passivity. "I want to be as deep as the ocean," expresses the desire to be readable as the surface yet complex as the uncharted waters. Ever intriguing to be labeled as, "mysterious."

Perry Farrel's improbable comparison notwithstanding, it's quite a reflective song. How you hold something so simple yet so important as an example for life itself. "(I want to) be more like the ocean. No talking and all action." How true actions over words shout volumes, no? Besides the fact, it's bad-ass to speak softly and carry a big stick.

Or, I could just be reading way too much into it. Regardless, it's still a rockin' tune.

Ken Goldstein - "Common People" by Pulp

I, like every other right-thinking person in this world, want to be a Rockstar, and for that reason it's very important that my Rockstars want to be Rockstars too. Along with the normal fantasies and vicarious thrills of any kind of hero worship is the unspoken admission that these people are, in some very important way, better than me, so if my Rockstars refuse to accept this and insist that they're just ordinary, well, what can that mean except that I'm even lower than I thought I was, like getting my ass kicked by a kid who I know regularly got his ass kicked by every other kid in the class?

Which is a roundabout way of explaining why I've always been drawn to British singers and bands. My formative years were when every American band seemed to be trying to out-shrug one another, so it was fairly liberating to pick up copies of Q and read about a succession of drunken louts proclaiming that No, we are the greatest goddamned band of all time and everybody else ain't a pimple on our arses. Sure, a little of that goes a long way but hell, I didn't have to live with them and besides, a combination of grandeur, ambition and bravado (with a dash of irony) is a lot more attractive than insecurity and helplessness. I can picture a lot of ways that Liam Gallagher might die, but none of them involve him turning a shotgun on himself at the height of his success.

So anyway, the song. I considered a few by the Stone Roses, Oasis, Supergrass, Blur, songs that always take me back someplace while inspiring something deep inside that makes me want to write an incredible novel in the middle of a bar brawl, but then I decided that I wanted to write about Pulp's "Common People," a song about the emptiness of the slumming class that for me validates any envy I might have or ambition to become something better than myself.

"Common People" is "Born to Run" if Wendy wasn't home that night and Bruce hooked up with some Princeton undergrad spending the night at the Jersey Shore (because she thought it would be a hoot), who couldn't wait to tell her roommates about just how real it had all been. In the song, Jarvis Cocker meets a rich girl who "wants to live like common people, wants to do whatever common people do," at least for the weekend. I'm tempted to just spend the next three paragraphs quoting lyrics, since the song has more great lines than any 10 movies, but I'll just say that during its six thundering minutes Cocker, with a voice filled with passionate contempt, manages to shame anybody who's ever thought it might be cool one night to drink at that dive bar and talk to the lost and lonely for a while.

But what makes this song important to me is that it's an amazing, powerful, scathing soaring Rockstar masterpiece that could only have been made by a band with the desire to create a soaring Rockstar masterpiece, and for anybody who has even the slightest artistic pretensions the most valuable lesson might be that, despite the thousand Eureka/Lightbulb moments we've absorbed in movies, greatness is not an accident or side effect — it's a difficult, often impossible destination. Because otherwise, what's a heaven for?

Oh, and did I mention that it completely rocks?

Tiffany Wagner - "Calling All Angels" by Jane Siberry

I wanted to back out on this project because a) I’m not a writer and b) Mike’s a music snob and he scares my poor sensitive soul. But I truly love this song and I don’t think he can fault me for it. :)

I have my ex to thank for introducing me to Jane Siberry. Her voice alone is haunting and mysterious. For “Calling All Angels” she teams up with k.d. lang. I’m not a big fan of her albums, but she has an incredible voice. The combination of the two is pure magic.

The song starts out with a low drum cadence and chanting, which feels like a heartbeat. It invites you to release yourself into the flow of the rhythm. You’re further swept away by the melody with Jane’s voice, imploring, longing. All of this leads to the chorus, which is just indescribably beautiful.

It speaks to me of my desire to understand who we are and why we are here, of having some sense that we belong to something greater and wanting to get back to that state where I remember, and yet wanting to be a part of this world as well. I know that there are difficult times to come, growing older, losing the people I love, going through changes, and I think, why go through all of that?

“But if you could, do you think you would trade in all the pain and suffering? Ah, but then you’d miss the beauty of the light upon this earth, and the sweetness of the leaving.”

This song is from the album When I Was a Boy, which I think is a must-have for any CD collection. Jane combines talent with Brian Eno and Michael Brook and the result is phenomenal.

Mike Wolf - “Battered Old Bird” by Elvis Costello

I don't quite know how to explain my bizarre relationship with this odd, angular story song from EC's 1986 release "Blood & Chocolate." On various occasions I've gone so far as to call it my "favorite song." While there really isn't any one tune that fits that bill, it's as good of a choice as any for me.

It's a song that really defies any description. Sonically it starts with simple off-tempo acoustic strum and constantly builds to a crashing coda six minutes later. Elvis practically spits the words onto the disk. The story is odd and surreal. He explains it in the liner notes of the recent Rhino re-issue of B&C.

"Battered Old Bird" was a song about the tenants of the house in which my family had a small basement flat until I was five years old. I only altered a few of the details. Our landlady actually taught me to swear in Welsh rather than French, but "Welsh" didn't rhyme. However, the "old maids" on the first floor, the suicide who danced on the bonfire, the scriptwriter who drank burgundy for breakfast, and the eccentric man who kept a Christmas tree in a cupboard by the stairs "in case of emergencies" were all real people.

The song certainly first lept out at me due to it's surreal content. Think about it. To me David Lynch can do no wrong. Terry Gilliam is pure genius. William Gibson will never be able to re-write "Neuromancer." Also, the cadence of lines like "and then the typewriter's rattlin' all through the night" is vintage Costello.

That, however, only begins to explain my love affair with this song. When I first heard B&C I was a desperate to be hip sixteen year-old living in Rainham, England. I really loved it there and made some amazing acquaintances.

One day my friend John took me to see his girlfriend in a play at the girls' school that shared the campus with our all male school. The play, goofily enough, was "The Wizard of Oz." John's girlfriend was Glinda and was simply dreadful. One look at Dorothy, though, and I was in love. The girl who played her was funny, charming and incredibly talented. I badgered John and his girl to find out more. Seems as though they didn't really know her well. She was Melinda Terry who John said "was obsessed with Elvis Costello." I bought "Blood & Chocolate" that very evening.

It would be wrong to say I was an Elvis Costello fan before that night. Sure, I knew of Elvis. I could sing "Alison" but my fanatacism was certainly lacking. However, I must have listened to B&C twenty times a day for the next week, all the time trying to meet this Melinda person. When I finally did meet Melinda I was charmed beyond belief. She was incredible and was captivated by the fact that I was American. We were soon inseparable.

We spent many hours together listening to Elvis. We dissected "Blood & Chocolate" from every possible angle. She schooled me in all things Costello. Figuring out what the hell "Battered Old Bird" and "Beyond Belief" were about was a constant source of debate. We didn't have access to Elvis' explanations back then. I'm kind of glad we didn't.

My family moved back to Michigan not long after I started seeing Melinda. I was really crappy about keeping up with my Anglo friends. I regret that to this day. I often wonder what happened to her. Her teenage dream, of course, was to move to Hollywood. I guess I'll never know.

I will always have Melinda Terry to thank for my own Elvis Costello obsession. We never quite figured out "Battered Old Bird." At some point we figured out, though, that I had to leave.

That same Rhino re-release features an alternate version of the tune that many people seem to like better than the original. Elvis calls it an attempt to play in the style of Johnny Allen. Whatever. To me it will never be a legitimate version. Only those sounds we tried to decipher behind closed doors will ever matter.

Cory O'Donnell - “To Be Young (is to be sad, is to be high)” by Ryan Adams

I should preface this by first saying this: One of my many pleasures in life is to help turn people onto new and interesting music. There is few moments better than the excitement in a friend's voice after listening to something I recommended to them. Call it what you will; it just makes me feel good.

Over the years, many friends have returned this same favor to me. They all know who they are, but perhaps the most prolific of them all is my good friend Brock. Brock and I worked together with KO in Kirksville from 1999 - December 2001. He also hails from KV and, being four years younger than myself, was working at the station during the summers away from college. He's introduced me to so many genres and styles that I may have dismissed otherwise, but by persistence or sheer luck, he somehow has guided me toward the light.

I thank Brock for a good many musical loves, but probably the most significant is a young man named Ryan.

My first introduction to Mr. Adams took place some 4 years ago, not long after meeting Brock for the first time. One day, we were riding to a friend's house and Brock asked if he could take over stereo duties for awhile. Now, mind you, I usually don't just hand over this daunting task without a fight or good reason. Reluctantly, I said yes. He proceeded to pop in a little diddy named "Stranger's Almanac" by Whiskeytown. For those who aren't aware, Whiskeytown is a great alt country band fronted by a young Ryan Adams. The first song, Inntown, blew me away. The second rocked harder than most of the punk I was into at the time. I sat there thinking, Who is this kid, making music like a country throwback at such a young age. I would come to find out over the next 4 years.

Fast forward a few months later. After listening to Whiskeytown among others during my senior year at school, I returned home with the hopes of working at my hometown TV station full-time. I met back up with Brock and a new guy working at the station named Brian. Brian hails from Omaha and, as we came to learn, was also a big fan of all things music. Needless to say, he fit in well.

While it was Brock that planted the seed, Brian was the first to let me in on a new album recently released by this guy Ryan Adams. I thought that it sounded great, and asked to borrow it so I could burn a copy for myself. Since my birthday was coming up, Brian decided that it was an album that wasn't to be burned, but owned. He bought me a copy, and that's when I first heard track #2.

Now many comparisons have been made about Ryan: The new, important songwriter of this generation; a modern day Dylan. Nowhere is this more true than in this selection. The resemblance to Mr. Dylan is uncanny, right down to the nasal twang in his voice.

Many words come to mind when I hear this song: Cool. Swagger. The kind of song that blows the roof off a concert hall. When I saw Ryan in concert at the Blue Note in Columbia, Mo. just two months after September 11th, his hit "New York, New York" opened the house to a 3 hour plus experience (with a broken hand)that still stands head and shoulders above any show I've ever attended. The second song, the one that got the night rolling and never looking back: To Be Young.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this, rather lengthy essay, I mentioned that I love turning friends onto new music. When I need to choose a song or album to use, it's a very important process that involves several variables:

Who is the listener? What do they like? etc. These factors and many more play a part.

When I think of Ryan Adams, when I think of Whiskeytown, when I think of my personal taste in music in general, I think of this song. This song provides the listener with a key to unlock not only the magic of Ryan Adams, but to understand the kind of person I am. What I like.

Also, It's a pretty good song.

So, thanks Brock and Brian, and Jason and Scott, and Jason H. and Neil, and Kirsten and Robert, and Mike and Deano and all the others that have opened my eyes to new and better things.

I only hope that I, too, can pay it forward to someone new. Because, after all, it still makes me feel good.

Meredith Missroon - “Bingo”

Write an essay about a song? My first thought was to tell you that The Reflex by Duran Duran is my oldest favorite song. But as I typed that, another song came to mind; one that is older than time. I'm going back to childhood, early childhood for this...

I'm a performer. I love to make people laugh. I love to sing. I love to dance. I learn the words to a song after I've heard it just a couple of times. These are innate personality traits, I couldn't get rid of them if I tried. I remember the older brother of a 6th grade friend. He drove me home from her house one afternoon. Like any typical teenage boy, he turned on the radio instead of talking to his little sister and her friend. What did I do? I sang along with the radio. It annoyed him so he changed the channel. I sang that song, too. He changed the station again. Again, I knew that song. After about 6 or 7 attempts to find a song I didn't know, he asked in annoyance, "Do you know every song on the radio?" I guess that's when I figured out that everyone else didn't.

So what does that have to do with this essay? Well, I'm writing about the very first song I recall learning the words to. There have been thousands since, maybe hundreds of thousands - who knows? But that first one is truly special. And it goes like this:

"There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o. B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O. And Bingo was his name-o."

I guess it's more of a ditty, than a song. And some of you will baulk because I left out the disappearing letters in the refrain. Well, I never sang it that way. It still doesn't sound right to hear people sing it that way. My way was to find anything that was at least 6 inches off the ground to stand on as my stage and grab a hairbrush or a pool cue or an upright vacuum cleaner handle to server as my microphone. I'd stand on that stage (usually in little more than my diaper) and perform for whoever was in the room. My parents loved for me to perform for them and visiting friends and family. I have an aunt who still cracks up over one particular performance.

Evidently, I watched a little too much Mike Douglas (or Dinah Shore or whoever had a daytime variety show on at the time). At the end of my performance, I bowed to my well-deserved thunderous applause and said something too fast for the audience to understand. They stopped me and asked me to repeat whatever I'd said. Well, I couldn't repeat it without bowing at the same time. But they still had trouble deciphering it. After a few more bows, my parents figured out that I was saying, "Thank you ladies and gentlemen, nice to be on your show." I was prepared for my debut and at least I was going to be polite when it finally came. The rest of the story is that the audience really lost it when they figured out what I was saying (I couldn't have been more than 2 years old.) But even then I knew how an audience should react to certain material. I knew they weren't supposed to be laughing so hard. So I instructed them in proper audience etiquette by saying, "That was a little bit funny, not a lot funny." I lost them again. I guess I was funnier than I realized.

My performances branched out to include other songs and other acts. I still love Karaoke, though I'm neither as cute nor as funny as I used to be. But it was Bingo that started it all.

Lady Crumpet - "Love This Life" by Crowded House

Although I've heard this song many times over, the image burned into my brain is Neil Finn singing at a show in Chicago, the summer of '98. He dedicated it to the List, that is, those of us at Tongue in the Mail, an e-list devoted to all things Crowded House and Finn. Though I'm rather a timid girl, the commonality of Neil makes it easier to go up to total strangers and ask, "Are you on the List?" They know just what you mean and suddenly the hours in line pass quickly and by the time the show starts there's a companionable mingling down by the stage. I can still see Neil in my mind, onstage alone with his acoustic guitar, aglow in the soft warm spotlight. The crowd of us, though bursting with excitement, are hushed and charged. I'm brushing away tears well before the song's done.

This is a song I like to hear in the car, or some place quiet. The music seems both spare and dense; it seems to invoke an otherworldly space as Neil begins to sing: "Seal my fate / I get your tongue in the mail." It doesn't at first sound like a complicated song, but the lyrics aren't neat and tidy either. The song is about choosing and cherishing life even "when it's holding you down." He sings about "pedaling" his faith, believing that life is meaningful, in spite of the pain, during the times when you don't know why you should bother. "Love this life / don't wait till the next one comes," Neil implores. He doesn't promise that everything will be all right, but he holds out a little comfort in the chorus: "Maybe the day will come / when you'll never have to feel no pain." (Yes, I realize that's a double negative, but you know what he means.) Paul Hester and Nick Seymour softly croon along, and you feel like your heart's about to break. But despite that dull, heavy ache inside as you try to rock away the tears in the dark in your room, or as you drive aimlessly along an empty stretch of highway late at night, choking back sobs, you find a way to exert yourself. Maybe your day will come, maybe it won't, but you're "gonna love this life" anyway, because it's what you've got.