rhs blog: My Soundtrack (06/03/2003 01:05:48 AM)

Libby listed a few songs that make up at least part of the "soundtrack to her life". She was following Jess's lead.

I can't boil my personal soundtrack down to a short list. Music has been a very important part of my life. Listening, studying, listening, DJing, listening, playing, listening... There are just so many songs that I like, or that have some significant meaning to me, reminding me of something important in my life. I can't list just a few. Here are 42. I was going to stop at 40, but in honor of Douglas Adams, I decided to add two more. And this list really just scratches the surface...

Beatles - She Loves You - I was very young, but I remember the Sullivan Show performance. I remember being entranced by Ringo's high-hat cymbal. I mean, how is a three-year-old supposed to know that there's a foot pedal down there making it move??
Beatles - Yesterday - I was a little older, and I remember liking it a lot.. and it's still one of my all-time favorites. It was one of the first songs I learned to strum on the guitar.
Zager and Evans - In The Year 2525 - The first non-Beatles, non-Monkees, non-Partridge Family, non-TV pop song that I remember.
Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant - The first song that made me realize that music could entertain, inform, satirize and take a stand on a serious issue.
Don McLean - American Pie - I won't pretend that I understood it when it first came out, but I understood that it was a cultural marker of the transition from the 60s to the 70s
Bob Dylan - Tangled Up In Blue - I became a Dylan fan in my teens, and this is just one of many songs that I could list. It was another one of the first songs that I learned to play on guitar, and it is probably still the longest song whose lyrics I have memorized.
Harry Chapin - Cats In The Cradle - I liked this song from the moment I heard it, but it's not actually my favorite Harry Chapin. That would be "The Mayor of Candor", which has the impact of a novel in a four minute song, but Cats In The Cradle has become far more significant later in life. I think about it whenever I have to travel away from home. It's also one of the few songs that I am actually willing to sing in public.
Climax Blues Band - Couldn't Get It Right - I often woke up to this song after having dozed off trying to read Thoreau for a high school English class. The cover band that was playing at the only high school dance that I went to did a good cover.
George Harrison - Crackerbox Palace - George was on an early episode of Saturday Night Live. Eric Idle did a video for this song. I bought the album "33 1/3" the next day. There are several other great songs on that album, but this is the one that I remember most fondly. To this day I have no idea what it means.
Dusty Springfield - I Only Want To Be With You - I got turned on to this early 60s classic when a DJ on WNEW-FM started giving heavy airplay to a cover by a bar band from Long Island. I liked the cover so much that I scoured record stores for weeks until I found the band's EP.
Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene - My introduction to electronic music. Same story as above... heard it on WNEW and spent weeks searching record stores for a copy. I went on to take two electronic music classes in college, and got to play with an early edition of the Synclavier, which was the first digital synthesizer designed for live performance.
Jackie De Shannon - Things We Said Today - The best Beatles cover ever. I heard this on the radio (WQXR-FM), and scoured the record stores, but never found it. I've only heard it once since.
Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run - Hey, I grew up in Jersey. I have to list this, don't I? Seriously, this is a great song.
Plastic Bertrand - Ca Plane Pour Moi - This was the first punk rock song I ever heard, and I still think it's the best example of the true punk style.
Talking Heads - Psycho Killer - This came on the radio imediately after Ca Plane Pour Moi, and I realized immediately that punk and New Wave was not going to stay underground for long. Talking Heads were the most versatile and creative of the New Wavers.
Chuck Mangione - The Land of Make Believe - My high school girlfriend (ok... we were "sort of" dating, anyhow) sang this at our graduation ceremony
Meatloaf - Paradise By The Dashboard Light - What can I say? I really was "barely 17" when this song came out. Enough said about that. I played in a band -- for fun only -- with some friends, and we played this song. It is tough to play, very tough... but we worked on it and got it down cold. I don't think there's any other song that generates even half as much enthusiastiasm in response when played at gatherings of any of my various circles of friends.
Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing - I think that amateur musicians have a special soft spot for this song. I also think it is the greatest song ever. Period. Of all the many guitar players whom I revere, Mark Knopfler is the best musician.
Southside Johnny - I Don't Want To Go Home - Being from New Jersey has a lot to do with this one, too, but it's on the list because it brings back some very specific memories of certain people who were important to me in my late teens.
The Rubinoos - I Think We're Alone Now - Another great cover of a 60s tune, done by a pretty much unknown band on the Beserkely label. They opened for Elvis Costello at a concert I saw during my freshman year of college, and it was one of my favorite songs to play during my college DJing years.
Doors - Crystal Ship - I could have listed any one of several Doors song. This was the B side of the Light My Fire single in my fraternity house's juke box. The single wore out after about a million plays, and I was in charge of purchasing replacements. It was easy to find Light My Fire, but all the reissue singles were backed with Love Me Two Times. Crystal Ship was the perfect song for a frat house basement, and we couldn't have Light My Fire without it so I scoured record stores for months before I found a copy with Crystal Ship on the B side