TOP 10 - THIS IS THE END

The Final Installment: Top 10 Is Complete! It is now safe for me to fly and end up stranded on a tropical island with a CD player and unlimited batteries forever.

Roxy Music - If There is Something - Viva! Live Roxy Music

First of all, this Roxy Music live album should be the only live album they ever released, because it rules, and their other ones, well, I think they leave something to be desired. There is an every and crispness to these performances that I don't hear on later live albums. It's sort of amazing, they never really had a full time bass player. Between live preformaces and studio sessions, they had more than 10 different bass players play with them (maybe you don't think that's amazing, but bass players are much more important than a lot of people realize).

I think that Bryan Ferry is one of those guys who is polarizing to a lot of music fans - you either really like him or you really do not like him. There is a certain pretentiousness about him that can be off-putting - he doesn't seem like the kind of guy you would want to sit down and have a beer with. (Isn't it amazing the traits that we assign to rock stars, I mean, I don't know the guy, but I am willing to state publicly that I would not have a beer with him. Talk about judging a book by its cover!) But he has a cool voice, a good look, he is very sure of himselg, and he likes what he is doing. When he let's it fly at the end of this one, it's sweeping and glorious, and he takes you with him - right back - when you were young.

Phil Manzanera had a great look in the 70's, with long hair and outrageous outfits. He was more than serviceable on guitar as well, although Ferry wrote almost all of their music. Basically, you look at him and say, "well, let me guess. This is where British art-rock came from right?"

This song in particular shows a lot of what makes Roxy Music so great, and powerful live performers in the 70's. Nice long solos help build from a simple beginning. By the time the guitar solo and violin solos come, it's a completely different song. Then, in the final section. Ferry really lets us have it. What a joy.

The posted video here is from The Old Grey Whistle Test, which is must viewing for anyone who likes 70's and 80's live performaces. Just look at him in this video - Ferry's look is no less than 10 years ahead of its time. And is that Brain Eno on keys? Oh my.



I also have to mention that they were #98 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest bands ever. I am sorry, but that is just plain wrong. It makes me crazy to think about it.

Last, and not least...

U2 - Walk On - from America: A Tribute to Heroes

There was no way U2 was not going to make this list. I consider them the best band of all time. We can argue about it forever if you want, but that's how I think of them. They have produced 3 of the 10 albums of all-time: The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby! and All That You Can't Leave Behind. That's remarkable, to have created truly seminal albums THREE TIMES in their career. And my absolute favorite show I have ever seen in person was not Phish, but U2, at Target Center in 2001. We were behind the stage, and paid $55 per ticket, but they made it worth every single penny. For three hours I was in almost total and complete ecstasy. They know how to give a live performace.

There's a lot of good stuff on the Tribute to Heroes discs. Mariah Carey singing America the Beautiful with Willie Nelson still gives poor Willie nightmares I am sure. Neil Young's Imagine performance was also amazing. But the best performance of all was U2, in a studio by themselves, singing their signature single of that time, Walk On. (They were closing most shows with it at the time, with PEACE written in many different languages spinning around the arena. U2 walks the line between awesome and lame, emotional and cheese, more than any other band I know. They often cross over it, but most of the time they are right on it, and the results are beautiful).

From the beginning softly spoken words "I'm sick of hearing/ again and again/ that there's never gonna be/ peace on earth", and his "Goodnight from London" (always reminds me that there was no flying still at the end of that week), you know they are not going to mail in this performace. And while they stay under control the whole time, I think you can see some strain on their faces, even these guys (Edge is possibly the coolest individual of all-time). There are so many lines that get me in this one, like, "we're packing a suitcase for a place/ none of us has been/ a place that has to be believed/ to be seen". Then in the end his promise: "See you when I get home!" Well, it sends the softer ones among us to the brink of emotional release. Even to this day. It's an amazing performace, and it's connection to 9/11 makes it that much more poignant, without taking emotional advantage. A few months later, they performed at halftime of the Super Bowl, another incredible scene. That might be the best Super Bowl halftime ever (although if you put a gun to my head, I would probably say Prince in 2007 was the best ever, I mean, he was able to make it rain in Miami for the love og God. Who else could do that?)



That's it! The List is complete! Here is the final tally:

1. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks


2. Bad Religion - Skyscraper


3. The Velvet Underground - Heroin


4. Phish - Harry Hood (live)


5. Felix Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto in e minor


6. Coldplay - The Hardest Part


7. Neil Young w/ The Band - Helpless (live)


8. Dave Matthews Band - Seek Up (live)


9. Roxy Music - If There is Something (live)


10. U2 - Walk On - (live)

Four songs that start with H. 5 songs that feature a violin/viola at some point. 5 LIVE recordings. I didn't set out to make that happen, it just did, but I guess it is not THAT surprising. I might have to publish the list of songs that came close but fell short. And I'll burn mp3 discs for anyone who wants one!

Top 10 Continued

Now that I have caught my breath after the Super Bowl, it's time to get back to the top 10. Jonathan's is all wrapped up, so if we want to get together to have beers and listen, I better get mine done too. Without further ado, and also without any of the cool videos that Jonathan uses, here's more from my Top 10 list:

Neil Young - Helpless

I would have a hard time accepting any list of this kind that did not include at least one Neil Young track. Arguably the greatest singer/songwriter of the past 50 years (don't get excited Bob Dylan fans, I said arguably), I could have filled an entire Top 10 list with his songs alone. What is it about Neil that is so awesome?

1. Lyrics - I do not consider lyrics, especially most rock lyrics, to have much weight. Too often the rhymes are so forced, and the imagery so childish, that it is more fun to make up my own lyrics. Not so with Neil. Here's the opening from Helpless:

There is a town in north Ontario,With dream comfort memory to spare,And in my mind I still need a place to go,All my changes were there

That's good stuff. The lyrics of this song in particular make you think while you enjoy them, which adds to the awesomeness of this song.

2. Music and Voice
He can do beautiful, poignant, angry, rockin, folky - whatever you want. He can absolutely do it all - you cannot put him in a box. And the quality is always top notch, too. He can make noise too (Sleeps with Angels is an often overlooked album, or it is only considered as part of the Kurt Cobain saga). This particular recording, on my top 10 list, is from The Last Waltz concert, with The Band. It starts out acoustic, mellow. His haunting voice (no other word describes it so well, I think) let's the audience know what's coming, and then... By the end, they are absolutely ROCKING on this song, and I can hardly stop myself from screaming it along with them. Talk about having a good time - you can see it. An excellent performance.

3. Attitude/Mystique
My favorite story is from the MTV Unplugged sessions, when he got up and walked out during rehearsals because the band they brought in was not ready. They came back a couple of months later and did it right. Not many rock artists out there would have the guts to maintain that kind of a standard. Another one was one of the guys in Crazy Horse saying that they basically had to operate knowing that any day Neil might show up and say, "that's in, I'm leaving for awhile", and there was nothing they could do about it but accept it. That's the kind of crazy I want in my rock stars! I really think that for Neil it is not about himself, but about the music, which sounds really silly of course, except that for him it is true, so you have to love it.

Last note - this recording features Joni Mitchell singing in the background - they hid her behind a curtain so that the audience wouldn't know she had her own set coming up. And it was very hard for me to cut Coyote from this list, but Neil hits an absolute home run here.

Dave Matthews Band - Seek Up - Live at Red Rocks
Here's another violin song, and believe me, I would LOVE to play along sometime. If you have ever been to Red Rocks, you can imagine what this set opener must have been like - you're about ready to pop waiting for the show to start and then they come out with 15 minutes like this - I am surprised anyone had any energy left be the end.

This one has all of the things that I liked about Dave, and none of the things I don't like. I like his voice, the rhythm section, and the solos in the long jams. I don't like pretentious Dave, Dave that talks too much telling stories, and Dave talking about girls. That's annoying Dave, and it's covered up nicely here. They do a good job of making you wait, not giving away the jam too soon. And the end section with him wailing and the violin freaking out in the background sounds like a lot of fun. Excellent stuff. This song is a fantastic way to spend 15 minutes!

Here's a summary of what I have so far:

1. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
2. Bad Religion - Skyscraper
3. The Velvet Underground - Heroin
4. Phish - Harry Hood (live)
5. Felix Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto in e minor
6. Coldplay - The Hardest Part
7. Neil Young w/ The Band - Helpless (live)
8. Dave Matthews Band - Seek Up (live)

Two more entries left, and I am very excited about them. Classics, both of them. One you've heard and one you haven't! (Unless you have been over to my house recently, then you would have heard both of them.)

Top 10 Continued

Pure. Piano. Pop.

If I am going away to island forever, I am going to need something I can sing to. Since I may have been seen driving down the road singing this one as loud as I could, it seems like a good choice.

Coldplay - The Hardest Part - X & Y

This one just soars, and I love Chris Martin 's voice. I love it so much, that many times, when I am listening to this one, I try to pretend I have the same voice he has. Thankfully I am generally alone when this occurs. One thing I like about this one is that there is absolutely no doubt that Martin loves this song. And I personally think it takes some amount of guts to say, ok, I am doing at least half this song in falsetto. And I can practice my air drumming while I sing this one. It's such a simple song, and I find that to be a fascinating part of many of the songs on this list. So simple, yet so magnificent. Also, I will be able to spend all my time on the island thinking about what The Hardest Part of living on the island is.

K-Fed Never Saw This Concert

That's a picture of Brit and K-Fed from Halloween 2005. I am sure that I can speak for all of my children and parents and let you know that they could not possibly be prouder of us!

On to more civilized matters...

Felix Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto in e minor

Ok, no surprise here, a violin concerto (which is very heavy in violining, surprise sirprise). If the original question had been "You get to pick on violin concerto to take with you to the island and you can't listen to anything else ever again, what would it be?" I would have picked this one. The performance linked to above is by Joshua Bell, who gets a lot of media attention because he has a marketable face and oh, by the way, he rules. Missing him completely during his leadership of the SPCO was a travesty that I may never outlive. But you can pick whatever recording you want, this piece absolutely rules.

Mendelssohn himself was an excellent violinist in his day. While his live was short (he dies I believe from tuberculosis at 37), he contributed mightily to musical development. I think it is interesting to go back and look at pieces that were written so long ago and try to look at them as though we had never heard them before, or any music that has come since. We forget that some of this music was quite new at the time - that no one else was making music like this then, and that the ideas Mendelssohn put on paper had never been though of before. It's hard to do because a lot of these ideas have been copied so much since then that we take them for granted now, and we hear this music and think of it as just another concerto, even though in its time it was almost revolutionary. It's like the story of Romeo and Juliet. There are so many tragic love stories that have come since that was written, that when we think of Romeo and Juliet, we think of it as just another tragedy or love story with a sad ending. But when it was first conceived it was original, and no one had ever put a story like that down before. I like to try to listen to music in this way, as though I was hearing the original performance of the music, although that is very difficult to do.

This concerto starts out quite differently than concertos traditionally began at the time, with the solo violin entering almost immediately. More typically, the full orchestra would play the main theme before the soloist entered. Also, all three movements run together, without breaks. The lonely bassoon note that ties the first and second movements together is sublime. This concerto is widely viewed as ushering in the Romantic period in classical concertos. Oh, and it's really hard, although it is accessible enough to the masses that it is also considered one of the cornerstones of violin repetoire.

A bit of controversy here for me personally, as I selected all three movements, rather than just one track, to include on my mix. And the overall length of this piece (along with some others on the list, I ended up picking long songs although not deliberately) made it so that in regular audio format, the entire Top 10 will not fit on one CD. But in mp3 format, there is plenty of room, so sue me if you want.

What a view!

That's Nicole and I at the "summit" of Flattop, right outside Anchorage in July, 2003. Seems longer ago than that. For some reason we were woefully unprepared - our footwear was NOT appropriate even for the simple climb. But I can guarantee you that we listened to these two songs at some point on that trip - yes, the Top 10 continues...

Astral Weeks - Van Morrison

I know I know, I don't get to take the whole album with me to the island, but if I could, this would be a tempting one to take. But the title track is so great, and while I normally don't put a whole lot of weight on lyrics in music, for some reason I love the lyrics on this one: "When I ventured into the slipstream/ between the viaducts of your dreams..." It goes on from there of course. Three things about this song:

The man can sing. It is not easy to sing what he sings, and if you think it is, go try it sometime. He's an incredibly talented singer.

This was the first song that I ever listened too that made me think I could play violin and be a rock star. It was the first time I ever sat down with my violin and tried to play along - it's not that hard really, but the string part on this song shows exactly how I would like to try to sound when I play. It's color on top in this kind of setting, and it is very important to the music, but it sounds silly on it's own. Just imagine the violin playing its part in this song with none of the other instruments. BORING.
This song was introduced to me in high school by my friend Owen on yes, you guessed it, a mix tape. I asked him for music to listen to, and he always came up huge. I still have some of those origina. l tapes, and while I don't listen to them anymore, they are a very important piece of the music I love today.

You might start to notice a violin theme with these songs - it was unintentional, and I was as surprised as anyone when I realized how much violining there was on these songs.

Skyscraper - Bad Religion

If you haven't heard any Bad Religion and you like any kind of punk at all, you should come over to my house sometime and we'll waste an hour listenting to all of their songs. Yes, most of their stuff is very short (their album No Control has 15 tracks and does not last 28 minutes), but I like it because there is nothing extraneous in any of their music. Everything has a purpose, there are no extra notes, no extra choruses, no extra solos. They hit you hard, make their point, and are done.

This is my favorite of all their songs, although a lot of what they do sounds similar, and I could have come up with a different one and been just as happy. I have no idea how someone can play drums like that, but the real magic of Bad Religion really is lyrics and harmonies. Whoever figured out that harmonies sounds cool over lour guitars and pounding drums deserves some sort of award. The nice thing is you can always understand what he is saying, and sometimes it makes you think. Those two qualities are lacking in 97% (scientifically calculated!) of the music I hear coming out today. I'm not saying that the music has to have a message, and I am not saying that I have to understand what you are singing - but if you do have a message, I better be able to make the words out.

I actually saw these guys once, in 1991 while on a school trip to Germany. I don't remember much of the show, but you know those German kids love them some punk, and I do remember having a good time.

Top 10 - Why So Fussy?

For once it appears as though Connor is not the fussiest one in the room. Can you guess who it might be?

Over a month late, I am going to start releasing the Top 10 finally, so comment away if you want. And remember, with this blog, you get exactly what you pay for.

Heroin - The Velvet Underground

Like many of the songs that have made this final list, Heroin has a little bit of everything in it. It's a simple song, but I think that this song is a perfect example of what real musicians can do with even the simplest of ideas. There's only three chords used in Heroin, but the group makes the most of them, changing the tempo, dynamic, and texture several times through the song. And that really is an electric viola in the background there. No bass player in this one either.

I love how the song starts slowly and calmly, you might even say it's pretty. Then we are taken on the journey all the way up and all the way back down again. It's one of the best absolute freak outs that you will ever hear in any song. And we know that no one is doubting Lou Reed's credentials and his influence on future musicians, but if you listen to a lot of the popular grunge music of the 90's, there is no way you can tell me that those guys didn't listen to a LOT of Velvet Underground, and this song in particular.

I could listen to that thumping drum line and feedback viola all day long.

Harry Hood - Phish

When I got the idea to do this, there was only one song that I knew would be on the list for sure, and this is it. I prefer this recording from A Live One to almost any other recording of anything I have ever heard. I often listen to this track while flying, usually when I think I am around 20 minutes from landing. I don't think that there is one note out of place in the entire song. And it has a little of everything of course. There's some sort of a bridge section in the middle that just blows me away - they are playing together so precisely, but I have no idea what the count is. It's a remarkable show of what "tight" really means. And Trey's guitar solo over the last several minutes of this one is absolutely beautiful. And you get the double climax in the last section too - I still get goosebumps listening and this has been around for over 10 years.

If you made me pick one track, one single recording of something and told me that it was the only thing I could ever listen to again, this would be it.

Top10 Nerdy Controversy

I'm going to start rolling out the Top 10 list, also known as the CD that I would carry with me all the time in case I got stranded on a tropical island with a CD player and an unlimited amount of batteries. The list itself is complete. However, when I went to burn the disc itself, I ran into a serious problem - the tracks I picked would not fit onto one CD in standard CD format.

Now, this is a problem for two reasons: 1) I wanted to stay true to the spirit of the list. Specifically, I thought it was important to keep the set on one CD. When we are working on these kind of lists, the limit we set is important. A top 10 list with 12 songs on it rings hollow to me. The interesting part of this exercise is making the hard choices, and if we allow extra songs on the list, then the list itself is tainted. So having 10 songs that all fit on one CD was important to me. The other problem: 2) Since I am iPod-less right now, if I want to enjoy the list, I would need to burn the disc on a CD. If all the songs don't fit, I have to leave tracks off the final production CD, which would be lame for obvious reasons.

So I am cheating, but I think it is ok. I am still keeping 10 songs (although I am including a couple of extra tracks due to the solution I came up with). But I decided to burn the CD in mp3 format. This method means there is no problem fitting all the tracks on one disc (a regular CD could fit 70 or more mp3 tracks). And since most CD players being sold these days play mp3 CDs as well as regular CDs, the format should not be a problem for most equipment I come across on a tropical beach. The main issue now of course is that why keep it to 10 songs? Since the mp3 format would allow as many as 70 songs to fit on one disc, why not just do a top 70 disc? Well, I am not doing that. I'm sticking to 10, and that's that. It's a nerdy controversy after all, so there is no need to stop the exercise altogether.

The picture with this post is from the trip we took to the North Shore with Emily and Jonathan in the fall of 2006. On our way back, we took a short hike at Gooseberry Falls. Very good times!

List of 10

There's been a lot of list making going on over at Rolling Stone this year. The Top 100 singers of all-time is the most recent edition. It got me thinking: what are my top 10 songs of all-time? It's a hard question to answer. Too big a project really, because I really think that if you made that list on a regular basis, the list would change every time you remade it. So I decided to narrow my thinking a bit. And since we are about half way through the first season of LOST, a perfect scenario came to mind:

You have crashed on a tropical island, and you can survive, but you are not going to be rescued. You have your iPod, but there is no way to recharge the battery on it, so you won't be able to listen to that for long. But you did find a portable CD player with pretty good headphones attached. Going through all the luggage, you found enough AA batteries to keep the thing running for a LONG time. And you were smart, and a nerd, and you thought about it ahead of time, so you made this one CD that had 10 songs on it, and it almost never leaves your side, because these recordings are that important to you. So what 10 songs did you put on the CD and why?

I was happy to have someone else to go over the list with, so Jonathan is going to be announcing his best of list as well. I think it will be a good chance to talk about the music we love, discover some new music from each other, and hopefully, to sit around and have a few beers and listen to music sometime. I'll be announcing the list over the next few weeks - not all at once, because I want to talk a bit about each song. I hope you like the list!