The Long Drive

“Harborcoat”

R.E.M.

Reckoning

1984, IRS

This Exit:  First time I ever drove a car down the street alone, R.E.M.’s second album, Reckoning, was the soundtrack.  It wasn’t the radio airwaves that were broadcasting this primitive, raw, eccentric, and art-concerned brand of rock n’ roll, but a cassette that I slipped into the pocket of my goose-down green army jacket specifically for the occasion.  Maybe it’s saying something about my suburban upbringing, but to me it was rebellious music.  It’s true that their 1991 mainstream breakthrough “Out Of Time” made me aware of the band and got me hip to R.E.M. in the first place, but by the time the “Losing My Religion” video wasn’t the video that was airing on MTV or VH1 every time the television was turned on I had all six of the albums leading up to it, and was hooked.  By that time, the only friend that I knew who knew of R.E.M. before 1991 had abandoned them because they were no longer under the radar, but from my point of view, I had simply never been exposed to any sound quite like what R.E.M. was dishing out, including the songs on “Out Of Time.”

In retrospect, I can summarize that sound as good old American garage rock on acid and with a college degree.  At it’s core, R.E.M. reminds me of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and if Buddy Holly were to have survived long enough to do so, I can imagine the trailblazing intellect of the rockabilly-rock-n-roll icon evolving itself into something like “Harborcoat,” the first song on their second album, 1984’s Reckoning.  Lyrically, among all American bands as popular, appealing, and universally admired, few boast a catalog of rock songs as vulnerable, puzzling, and downright unique as R.E.M.  And who knows where Buddy Holly would have taken his unique vision for rock n’ roll.  I doubt that a garage rock n’ roller from a small, conservative Texas town who left on his recordings the sound of serendipitous crickets chirping within the walls of his garage recoding studio and practice space while brandishing black horn-rimmed glasses and producing his own sound when it was entirely unfashionable to do any single one of those things would have looked, wrote the kinds of songs, and made the kind of music that he is now famous for doing for long.  I could see Buddy Holly growing up to be Michael Stipe, if you look at it from a certain angle.

“Most Of The Time”

Bob Dylan

Oh Mercy

1989, Columbia

(#41 on my list)

This Exit:  For this list of what I consider to be the 60 best Bob Dylan songs, it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t share with you the ingredients of the word “best,” in this case.  It’s comprised of 70% of the traditional definition of the word, as in surpassing all others in excellence, achievement, and quality which, of course, includes a certain degree of subjectivity in determining what I think are his least predictable, most brilliantly performed, informed, and flawlessly constructed moments.  Add to that 15% of the traditional definition of the word “enduring,” (lasting, durable), with another 15% of what are probably just my favorite of his songs, for whatever reason (pure sentimentality must play a role).  In all cases, I tried to be as objective as possible, and did my best not to be swayed by what I understand to be the popular opinions and attempted to ignore the undeniable historical significances of some of these works.  The recorded performances that I felt best exemplified each song — not necessarily the original studio versions — are what appears on this list, but the song is the song.  It’s true that “Not Dark Yet,” from 1997’s Time Out Of Mind and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” from 1973’s Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid Original Soundtrack do not appear on this list, but I’d probably put them in a list of the 75 best, which is still pretty damn best.

60 BEST BOB DYLAN SONGS

 1.   The Times They Are-A Changin’ (1963, The Times They Are-A Changin’)

2.   Blowin’ In The Wind (1962, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan)

3.   Like A Rolling Stone (1965, Highway 61 Revisited)

4.   Rainy Day Women #12 & #35 (1965, Highway 61 Revisited)

5.   It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding (1965, Bringing It All Back Home)

6.   Just Like A Woman (1966, Blonde On Blonde)

7.   Gates Of Eden (1965, Bringing It All Back Home)

8.   Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (1966, Highway 61 Revisited)

9.   Idiot Wind (1991, Bootleg Series Vol 1-3)

10. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (1965, Bringing It All Back Home)

11. Simple Twist Of Fate (1974, Blood On The Tracks)

12. Buckets Of Rain (1974, Blood On The Tracks)

13. Positively 4th Street (1967, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 1)

14. Highway 61 (1966, Highway 61 Revisited)

15. Tombstone Blues (1966, Highway 61 Revisited)

16. Foot Of Pride (1991, The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 - 3)

17. She Belongs To Me (1965, Bringing It All Back Home)

18. Ballad Of A Thin Man (1965, Highway 61 Revisited)

19. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (1965, Highway 61 Revisited)

20. Queen Jane Approximately (1965, Highway 61 Revisited)

21. Oh, Sister (1975, Desire)

22. Tight Connection To My Heart (1984, Empire Burlesque)

23. Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through The Dark Heat) (1978, Street Legal)

24. Jokerman (1983, Infidels)

25. Gotta Serve Somebody (1979, Slow Train Coming)

26. Million Miles (1997, Time Out Of Mind)

27. To Ramona (1964, Another Side Of Bob Dylan)

28. Shooting Star (1989, Oh Mercy)

29. Lonesome Day (2008, Tell Tale Signs: Bootleg Series Vol. 8)

30. Love Sick (1997, Time Out Of Mind)

31. Isis (1975, Desire)

32. Desolation Row (1965, Highway 61 Revisited)

33. Romance In Durango (1975, Desire)

34. Lenny Bruce (1980, Shot Of Love)

35. Standing In The Doorway Crying (1997, Time Out Of Mind)

36. Brownsville Girl (1986, Knocked Out Loaded)

37. Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright (1963, Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan)

38. Tangled Up In Blue (1974, Blood On The Tracks)

39. Thunder On The Mountain (2005, Modern Times)

40. Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands (1966, Blonde On Blonde)

41. Most Of The Time (1989, Oh Mercy)

42. Mr. Tambourine Man (1965, Bringing It All Back Home)

43. Precious Angel (1979, Slow Train Coming)

44. License To Kill (1983, Infidels)

45. I Shall Be Released (1971, Greatest Hits Vol. 2 & 3)

46. Restless Farewell (1963, Times They Are - A Changin’)

47. Can’t Wait (1997, Time Out Of Mind)

48. Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965, Bringing It All Back Home)

49. Shelter From The Storm (1974, Blood On The Tracks)

50. Ain’t Talkin’ (2005, Modern Times)

51. Man In Me (1970, New Morning)

52. Seven Days (1991, The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 - 3)

53. Down In The Flood (2002, Masked And Anonymous Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

54. Covenant Woman (1980, Saved)

55. Blind Willie McTell (1991, The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 - 3)

56. Born In Time (1991, Under The Red Sky)

57. Dignity (1994, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. 3)  

58. All Along The Watchtower (1968, John Wesley Harding)

59. Moonlight (2001, Love & Theft)

60. Billy 4 (1974, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid Original Soundtrack)  

“You Don’t Love Me”

Matthew Sweet

Girlfriend

1991, Zoo

This Exit: Matthew Sweet is the Jackson Browne of grunge-era, “Alternative” power-pop.  Based on one’s opinion of Jackson Browne and/or Matthew Sweet, this claim invites various interpretations.  To me, Jackson Browne is a master of sensitive, confessional songwriting whose only artistic weakness might be his penchant for and desire to top the charts.  It’s ironic, because creating chart-topping FM hits might be what he is most known for, the reason his music was heard in the first place, and why his songs are still played on the radio today, but I don’t think he was ever as good at being commercially relevant as he is at writing songs.  Lyrically, Jackson Browne’s forty-plus-years of writing has produced hardly a dud, but two-thirds of this recorded catalog are wrapped up in albums that few new to his music might discover or celebrate, due largely to the fact that they seem dated.  Two of Browne’s most recent releases, 2005’s Solo Acoustic Vol. 1 and 2008’s Solo Acoustic Vol. 2, dually demonstrate what a masterful writer and performer he actually is, and how easily he could have derided his FM career were he to ever create an entire studio album as sparsely produced as these two collections.  The only times Browne’s albums seem as concerned with framing the songs as simply and respectfully as they deserve to be treated was in the 1970’s, when the sounds of an acoustic guitar and piano were still fashionable.

Sweet’s 1990’s discography doesn’t boast as impressive a string of classics as enduring as Browne’s 1970’s, and little on the poetic level to match near what Browne offers on the trilogy of masterpieces spanning 1974’s Late For The Sky, 1976’s The Pretender, and 1977’s Running On Empty, but 1991’s Girlfriend, 1993’s Altered Beast, and 1995’s 100% Fun certainly qualifies him among the most talented, sensitive, and accomplished singer-songwriters to emerge during that Nirvana era.  Songs like “Someone To Pull The Trigger,” “You Don’t Love Me,” and “Until You Break,” (from 1997’s Blue Sky On Mars) will be there for fans of the craft of self-reflexive, confessional song poetry to discover for generations without disappointing.  If Matthew Sweet ever decides to present a solo-acoustic career retrospective, it will be obvious that his more significant role and contribution comes as a singer and a songwriter, and less as a hit-making purveyor of “Alternative” power-pop.

“All I Really Want To Do”

Bob Dylan

Another Side Of Bob Dylan

1964, Columbia Records

This Exit:  ”People get too famous too fast these days and it destroys them,” said Bob Dylan to Cameron Crowe in the exhaustive and generous liner note interview accompanying the release of the songwriting icon’s 1985 Biograph boxed-set.  ”Some guys got it down—Leonard Cohen, Paul Brady, Lou Reed, secret heroes—John Prine, David Allen Coe, Tom Waits, I listen more to that kind of stuff than whatever is popular at the moment.  It’s embarrassing to reveal that it took myself sixteen years to become exposed to Bob Dylan and his music.  Of course, I’d heard his name, and it was as familiar and historically important as Abraham Lincoln’s, but I couldn’t say I knew any of his songs, and I hadn’t heard his music.  It’s not the kind of thing my parents were listening to around the house, and it was the furthest thing from anything in which my peers were interested.  But, like the story of millions of other self-discovering post-Kerouac youths since his emergence in the early 60’s, finding his music and persona represented the end of one part of my life and the development of the beginning of another—two sides of a white-picket fence in the suburbs.

     The first one of Dylan’s songs that made me tilt my head toward the speakers like the RCA Victor dog was 1964’s “All I Really Want To Do.”  Raised on American Pop Standards, Billy Joel, and the rest of the commercial FM radio hit-making machine, this song was simply the oddest, funniest, saddest, worst, and most brilliant composition I’d heard in my life up to that point.  Because of the way my parents reacted to the acceptance speech Dylan delivered at the 1991 Grammy Awards after Jack Nicholson presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award, I was curious to purchase (for five-dollars in a bargain bin at Nobody Beats The Wiz in Carle Place, Long Island) a Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits cassette.  ”He’s drunk!” my parents howled disapprovingly at the television.  ”Andrew,” they conceded, “you can’t understand how sad it is, a man who was so smart!  Look at what drinking and drugs and the 60’s did to him!”  I was enthralled, loved every word, and especially the long pauses.  It was the first time I’d seen him in action, heard him speak, or heard him do anything, for that matter, and from my perspective there couldn’t have been a more perfect introduction.  He was strange, pulsing at the podium with something I never yet witnessed from a person, and there began the study.  Shortly after reading the liner notes of his Biograph boxed-set, which I owned just a few weeks later, I began rummaging through the bargain bins for Leonard Cohen, John Prine, David Allen Coe, Lou Reed, and Tom Waits cassettes, too—all of the “secret heroes.” 

“Don’t Worry About Me”

Frank Sinatra

Sinatra At The Sands With Count Basie And The Orchestra

1966, Reprise

This Exit:  Songs from The American Popular Songbook are certainly what I’ve been listening to for the longest period of my life thus far, dating back as far as I can remember, and undoubtedly before that.  My father, a singer who earned his degree in vocal studies from the prestigious Manhattan School of Music in 1970, always had Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and Diane Schuur records playing in the house, among others, but Frank Sinatra was our favorite.  On weekends, we’d listen to Jonathan Schwartz’s “Saturday With Sinatra” radio program—first on WNEW in New York, and then when it moved to WQEW—like it was a sporting event.  (Mr. Schwartz still broadcasts every weekend from the studios in WNYC in New York City, and it hits everywhere else on XM satellite radio.  I still listen to every show.  Without Jonathan Schwartz telling me what the weather feels and looks like during the weekdays, the weather in New York City really doesn’t seem to be happening at all.)  Sinatra’s most profound vocal contribution, according to my father, was in his phrasing.  ”He sangs in a conversational tone,” he told me, “and that broke all the rules!”  During Sinatra’s lifetime, he released a prolific sixty-six original albums, ten of them live recordings.  Of all, and if we were forced to select only one, my father proclaims that Sinatra At The Sands With Count Basie And The Orchestra is the one to go into a cultural time capsule, and the best example of Sinatra the singer, the persona, the entertainer, and the myth.  I second the selection, and it must be a testament to the artistry, cool, and permanence of this singer (and the singers of the American Popular Songbook, in general) that a son could span four decades (and counting) without once rejecting an interest in a music experience shared with his father since childhood.  An additional note: Disc 2 of 2006’s 4-CD + 1 DVD “Sinatra: Vegas” boxed set contains the ornery, inebriated late show from this very same classic evening with the Count Basie Orchestra at The Sands.

“Wicked Game”

Chris Isaak

Heart Shaped World

1989, Reprise

This Exit:  “The world was on fire/And no one could save me but you,” warbles Chris Isaak—his youthful desperation accented by a retro-falsetto, slicked-back pompadour, glistening pink and black suit, and white Gibson custom ES-345 with Bigsby vibrato and Varitone in place, presenting the singer as a ghost emerging from an era long since past.  Put the gimmick of his fixation with rockabilly 50’s fashion aside—especially given the fact that the 80’s era that delivered Chris Isaak is almost as long since past as the 50’s were to him back then (and the sandy, topless, twenty-one-year-old supermodel with whom he romped around on the beach in the song’s famous video is now over forty)—and absorb the ghostliness of his music and timelessness of his lyrics on their own accord.  ”Wicked Game” is Chris Isaak’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” it’s “world was on fire…” his “Hear that lonesome whippoorwill/He sounds too blue to fly;” a simple but apocalyptic vision and a lyric as straightforward as it is nearly impossible to write.  Try it.  In it is contained an example as good as any of a masterful country song’s ability to portray grandiose, complex emotions with small, economical strokes, stirring tidal waves with wistful sighs.  All this says nothing for James Wilsey’s haunting and iconic lead guitar line, a further demonstration of the elusive paradox that is classic country.

“Buzzby”

Leo Kottke

That’s What

1990, Private Music

This Exit:  The eccentric, artful current that Leo Kottke employs to inform his somewhat odd and intellectual approach to playing Delta and Piedmont influenced six- and twelve-string acoustic guitar comes to a head in “Buzzby,” a half-boogie-slide-guitar-spoken-song-poem from his 1990 album, That’s What.  Kottke, who began his recording career in 1969 with the live album 12-String Blues (recorded at a Minneapolis folk club called The Scholar), was embraced early on by the even more eccentric and artful (albeit lesser known) fingerstyle master John Fahey, who released its follow up the next year, the classic Six & Twelve String Guitar, on his Takoma record label.  Primarily known as an instrumentalist throughout a long career since then, the few times where Kottke actually does sing—from the tongue-in-cheek Tom T. Hall gem “Pamela Brown” on 1974’s Ice Water, to “Buzzby,” which sounds like Primus’s “Tommy The Cat” dragging itself along the shoulder of the Interstate after being hit by Tom Wait’s “The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me Today“—Kottke’s baritone always brings with it a satisfying glimpse deeper into the self-taught virtuoso’s inner-oddball.  On the other end of the spectrum, Kottke supplied textbook gorgeous slide-guitar playing and sensitive backing vocals sprinkled throughout Rickie Lee Jones’ 1993 album, Traffic From Paradise, and then invited Jones to produce his 1994 album, Peculiaroso.

“Cowboys And Indians”

Blood, Sweat & Tears

4

1971, Columbia Records

This Exit:  Since the inception of the nine-piece jazz-rock fusion band in 1967, Blood, Sweat & Tears have endured a staggering amount of personnel changes (as of 2008, there have been 130 official members on record), playing out more like a modern-day baseball roster than a rock outfit.  The band’s most well-known lead singer was its first, Al Kooper, whose legend is arguably more celebrated for crashing Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited studio sessions in 1965 and offering his lack of familiarity for the organ, most notably on the groundbreaking hit “Like A Rolling Stone” (whose eerie excitement is characterized and driven by Kooper’s unsure riff), but the pipes most inexorably linked to the legacy of the band were lent by David Clayton-Thomas, who replaced Kooper in 1968.  Blood, Sweat & Tears are less known for easygoing, contemplative ballads like “Cowboys And Indians,” and celebrated more for the dynamic, brassy arrangements treated chart-toppers like Clayton-Thomas’s own “Spinning Wheel,” Berry Gordy and Brenda Holloway’s ”You’ve Make Me So Very Happy,” and Laura Nyro’s ”And When I Die,” but like the vocal stylings of the tragic Terry Kath during the early 1970’s incarnation of Chicago—arguably the more famous jazz-rock fusion band of its day, and perhaps the Yankees to Blood, Sweat & Tears’ Mets—I find the subdued, honey-gospel purr of Clayton Thomas’s ballads more exciting, driven, inviting, and less predictable than the obvious power contained in his soul-joy exaltations, however impressive his singing on those tracks may be.  Refer to Clayton-Thomas’s masterful interpretation of Richard Manuel’s “Lonesome Suzie” for another example his genius for restraint.  

Norman Rockwell

(1894-1978)

This Exit:  When I arrived at Rhode Island School of Design in the fall of 1994 to study painting, I went so far as to proclaim to my color theory professor—the painter and writer David Hornung—that I believed Norman Rockwell to be among the greatest of 20th Century American artists.  “I expect that you’ll outgrow this, Andy, when you’re older,” was his response.  As it turned out, David was correct.  I outgrew my addiction to Rockwell’s paintings like I outgrew Billy Joel’s music and Whatchamacallits, and fixed my attention toward more conceptually driven and intellectually significant visual artists and musicians.  No self-respecting, serious fine artist working towards a painting degree at RISD (or at any dignified art institution, for that matter) was advised to admit an appreciation (let alone a fixation) for the works of Norman Rockwell, in those days.  Hornung, upon a recent reunion and series of reminiscences over dinner and drinks, was both gracious and amused about the ironic fact that, since that time, Rockwell’s legacy and works have been seriously re-examined (rather, examined for the first time) and embraced by the art world at large.  In 2001, Rockwell was exhibited en-masse at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the end of a twelve city traveling exhibition.  A few years later, one of Rockwell’s paintings sold at a Sotheby auction for $15.4 million.  “Rockwell at the Guggenheim?  Rockwell in sophisticated glory?” wrote Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker.  “Professionally, I am happy to endorse the notion, which seems ever less absurd as time goes on.”

“Every Little Kiss”

Bruce Hornsby & The Range

The Way It Is

1986, RCA

This Exit:  From Williamsburg, Virginia, Bruce Hornsby’s melding of rock, blues, and bluegrass traditions, accented with jazz and jam-band improvisations (Hornsby was an unofficial member of The Grateful Dead from 1990-1992, sitting in with the band at over 100 performances during that period), was coined “The Virginia Sound.”  There were a handful of albums by mainstream pop-rock songwriters released in the 1980’s who were singing about small towns, agriculture, and civil rights, and 1985’s Scarecrow by John Cougar Mellencamp, 1989’s Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty, and Bruce Springsteen’s The River, Nebraska, and Born In The U.S.A. trilogy from 1980, 1982, and 1984, respectively, are certainly the “Roots-Rock” classic stand-outs.  By today’s post-O Brother, Where Art Thou? standards, though, each of those records are also perhaps the closest thing that 1980’s mainstream pop came to delivering what would now be considered a classic “Americana” album.  Hornsby’s debut, then—1986’s The Way It Is—should most certainly be considered another.  Forgive the overall “synth-pop” production and allow his mournful vocals, masterful phrasing, and ability to tell a story by hinting at the details (“Don’t tell me she don’t love me/The money’s just a mere formality,” he sings in Down The Road Tonight) get to the heart of these wonderful songs.