Your absolute, favorite song

Continuing the European pianist theme, I stumbled across Swiss boogie woogie master Silvan Zingg on Spotify and I have become a big fan.

Here’s just one of his great pieces:

 

Disagree.

It's fine for a concert (even if that wasn't recorded during the actual concert); similarly, their "rockier" versions they did live (like for Festival Express) are fine for concerts, when the crowd is upbeat and in a party mood.

But the original recording much more matches the lyrics. They are not upbeat lyrics, and The Last Waltz rendention is too upbeat.

The Staples Singers studio cover is more appropriate.

 

Sam Cooke. “Change is gonna come”. So much hope. Percy Sledge “When a man loves a woman”.

 

Man, this one is a challenge. There are a LOT of songs on my No-Skips playlist, and the ones that are most meaningful to me are really hard to explain or have a “You kinda had to be there” element to their stories. They’re probably not songs that’ll make any Rolling Stone list of top anything, but they are embedded in my heart in a way that wouldn’t really make sense to anybody else.

I’ll go ahead and try to tell the stories of my top 3:

“Don’t Look Back” by Boston:

On the day I graduated from high school, I was alone in the house about a half-hour before the ceremony. My parents and grandparents had already gone to the school. I was just so indescribably happy that this part of my life was over and that I was moving on to whatever was coming next. I put that album on the stereo and cranked it up as loud as those speakers would handle.

Twenty-six years later, I was driving my oldest kid to Tallahassee to start at FSU. That song came on the iPod on shuffle while we were waiting at a light, and the kid noticed the tear forming. I told the story, and the light turned green. As we circled the exit ramp, the bridge to the song started. I just cranked it up and floored it. I shifted into fourth JUST as the guitar kicked in on the solo. We were going about 105 by that point. Kid looked at me. “That … was COOL.”

“Downstream” by a band from Missouri called The Rainmakers:

I grew up in a very average part of a very average place. There aren’t many songs about Missouri, and for good reason. This one just is the essence of Missouri and makes me homesick whenever I hear it. It’s best heard live, where the drum and rhythm guitar are nice and up front.

“Children of Children” by Jason Isbell:

Not like I can pick one Isbell song, but this one …

My parents were 17 and 16 when I was born. I have a clear memory of my mother’s 21st birthday. I remember when she got her driver’s license, not long after. When I heard “all the years I took from her/just by being born” for the first time, I literally had to be physically lifted from my desk by my partner. That was it — exactly the thing that I felt and never could articulate. Isbell found words for the thing that had wordlessly haunted me my entire life. Because she and my father gave up their early adulthood, I was able to have one.

Again, maybe you had to be there.

 

Couple more favorite stories about impulse purchases, from back when you had to buy music, about which I was right:

* At a party one night, I caught the video for “Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles — WITH THE SOUND OFF. I bought the album the next morning.

* I heard the last 39 seconds or so of “Bring Me Some Water” by Melissa Etheridge after switching the radio station while driving. I changed my plans from wherever I was going and drove instead to the record store to buy that album.

 

This is amazing.

So is the follow-up post.

Thank you.

 

My first year of college was spent at Northeast Missouri State (now Truman State) in Kirksville. A friend I made there was from Kansas City and was a big fan of The Rainmakers, so I know the song you’re talking about. Pretty good late-1980s Midwestern rock band!

 

They apparently suck on stage but some of their studio songs are top 500 ...

 

I spent the summers after my junior and senior years of high school working as a climbing instructor at a summer camp two hours from home. My dad let me take his Jeep with me, so I spent all of my free time driving around blasting music with the top down. The Gin Blossoms’ “Hey Jealousy” was the big hit one summer, and Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “Fall Down” was the big hit the next year.

Every time I hear either of those songs, I’m taken right back to those summers, which also just happened to be the best of my life, and all of the stupid, care-free shit we did.

 

I hesitate posting on here that I like Boston's music because of the ensuing ridicule from so-called music experts. Music is like wine, you either like it or you don't ... and you don't need a reason.

 

Man, I hadn’t thought of The Rainmakers in decades.

There was also a band around that time that just went by their first names, but I can never remember what it was. They had some good tunes, too.