The listThe list

I really like the guitar tone on this song. The Strokes were one of the most hyped bands in the early 2000’s along with other indie bands like The White Stripes and The Hives. The Strokes are the only one of the “The” bands I really listen to anymore. All three of their albums are pretty solid all the way through. The first time I heard this album I was in the backseat of my parents Concorde with Jessie driving back to Adel from my grandparents. It was our first Christmas together. Other great Strokes songs: Is This It, Last Night, 12:51, Reptillia.

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I like the way the bass and drums sound too heavy for the guitar and violin parts. Robert Smith is a weird dude, but I like the way he sings this song. My knowledge of The Cure stops with the singles, but they have some great ones: Love Song, Just Like Heaven, Friday I’m In Love, Mint Car, The 13^th

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David Berman must be a fan of himself. In the song “Blue Arrangements” he says, “All my favorite singers couldn’t sing.” I have a lot of favorite singers that can’t sing either, but DB takes the cake. The reason this song is on the list is purely the lyrics. I always chuckle at the part he sings: “Boy wants a car from his dad/dad says, first you gotta cut that hair/boy says, hey dad/Jesus had long hair and dad says that’s right son/but Jesus walked everywhere”. More Silver Jews to come.

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I love songs like this where they start out sort of boring and build up to a climax. Neko Case has one of the best voices ever. I bought this CD in Illinois with scratch ticket money while I was a training for my job. Can this really be the only New Porns/Neko Case song here? Oops. See also: Testament To Youth In Verse, Letter From An Occupant, Sing Me Spanish Techno, Challengers.

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This song can always put a smile on my face. Jeff Tweedy (another favorite singer that can’t really sing) trying to sing sweetly, a nice straightforward drum beat, Bob Dylan-like organ and a elevator music guitar solo all wrap up in a nice little package to make this opening track from Wilco’s sixth album Sky Blue Sky. I’m going to rip off Pitchfork (music review website) and say, “Way to embrace dad-rock, guys!” More Wilco to come.

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Whenever Stephen Malkmus puts out a new album, I always wish Pavement would get back together. It’s not that I don’t like his solo stuff, but a lot of what was so appealing about Pavement was that is was so loose and unpolished. “Church on White” is neither of these, but that is not a bad thing. This song almost sounds like it was written and manufactured right in the studio, and sounds like nothing Pavement ever released. This album was almost called Sweedish Reggae instead of Stephen Malkmus. Good call.

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Favourite Worst Nightmare, The Arctic Monkeys second album wasn’t as hyped as their debut but it is really pretty good for a bunch of 14 year olds from England. I think the reason I like this song so much is the video. The part that goes, “Where did you go?” always grabs my attention. Other good songs by these dudes: Brianstorm, Fake Tales Of San Francisco. Fun Fact: I learned how to play the bass part of their song “A Certain Romance” all by myself. Go me!

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This song is a b-side from Hail to the Thief. One of the few Radiohead songs that are just acoustic guitar. I like it even though Thom Yorke’s voice kind of sounds weird. A LOT more Radiohead in store.

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Another odd song I’m not really sure why I like so much, but my favorite part is the guitar bit at :42. Pixies are one of those great bands that sort of brought attention to the indie rock scene in the late ‘80s and influenced a lot of bands that I really enjoy today. I also like that they don’t really have the tinny production sound that (help) make most of the songs from that decade so bad.

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This is off of Sufjan’s album Illinois about… what was it about again? This is the only one of his songs on this list because I really think his stuff works better in the album format rather than just single songs. I gotta say though, this is probably the creepiest song on my list. It gives me the chills every time I hear it. Other songs to check out: Come On! Feel The Illinoise! Casimir Pulaski Day, The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us! (I’m not kidding.)

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Songs like this are not for everyone, but you have to give credit for the time it must have taken to get this particular sound. From the time it starts, five or six individual guitar parts build on top of each other, then come organ and bass followed by a couple vocal tracks. As I mentioned in my write up on 13, a lot of the album has a certain pretentiousness that makes it interesting rather than detracting from the overall experience. This song has two separate “mini-songs” tacked on to the end which works better when listening to the album as a whole, but still sounds ok here. More 13 and more Blur coming up.

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The list’s first song with pedal steel guitar! I love pedal steel, although it is buried pretty deep in the mix on this song. This song isn’t really groundbreaking or innovative like some of the other songs off of Being There, but it doesn’t really need to be. It’s just pleasant to hear. Songs like this always make me think of the several times we have seen Wilco in concert. More Wilco to come.

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Picaresque was the first album by The Decemberists that I heard, and “The Engine Driver” was the first song that I liked immediately. I like the use of the accordion and xylophone in this song. Picaresque is one of those albums that I don’t listen to as much anymore, but when I do it always surprises me a little bit with how many good songs are on it. The last album they could be called “indie rock” as they moved from the Kill Rock Stars label to Capitol, a major. More Decemberists later on in the list, but check out: “We Both Go Down Together” and “On The Bus Mall”. Also, watch this video of “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” made by people who have way to much time on their hands.

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It’s sort of hard to describe a song that is in Icelandic. I don’t know what any of the lyrics are, but you don’t really need to to enjoy it. Like a lot of Sigur Rós songs the vocals take a backseat to the ambiance and atmosphere of the almost orchestral music. Parts I like are when the bass comes in and hearing different instruments play the melody. I would definitely recommend hearing all of Ágætis byrjun, the album this song is off of. More Sigur Rós later.

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This is the only song off of Pixies 1988 full length debut written by Kim Deal. I like the simplicity of this song. It is basically bass, drums, power chords and vocals. Sounds best LOUD. Pixies are great.

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I was sort of late getting into the game hearing Of Montreal and don’t know a lot of their back catalog, but I would definitely recommend the album this is off of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? It’s pretty much one dude, Kevin Barnes, messing around in his studio making weird, cool sounds. Am I the only one who thinks this song sounds like ABBA? Of Montreal have nine full length albums but this is the one I’ve always heard the most about. I like it much better than the other Of Montreal album I have Skeletal Lamping.

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David Berman is a great lyricist. He actually shows a bit of musical talent in this song, too. More Silver Jews later.

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One of my friends in college, Danny Dondelinger, was into some weird music. He was always trying to get me to listen to music like Frank Zappa, Umphrey’s McGee and Ween. Whoops! Umphrey’s McGee! No thanks! They are terrible! The only jam I like is on toast, not on bands. Catch my drift? Anyways, Ween are only half terrible, here are some sample song titles. “Spinal Meningitis (G
ot Me Down)”, “The HIV Song”, “Hey There Fancy Pants”, and the classic “Poop Ship Destroyer”. So Ween is pretty much a joke band, right? This song is actually really good. If Ween were like this all the time, I would like them a lot more. Um, check out more Ween at your own risk.

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Sometimes I play this song on my guitar for my boys before they go to sleep (because it is really easy). Whenever I hear this song I always think of the first time we saw Wilco at the Val Air Ballroom and they played it. It was funny when Jeff Tweedy sang “There’s bourbon on the breath of the singer you love so much” and then pointed to himself. Originally this was one of my least favorite songs on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but it reveals itself on repeat listens. Best part: the piano that starts at 3:01, and I guess this is the first time I’ve listened to it with headphones because I just realized that each piano note alternates back and forth from the left to the right channel! Music geek moment. The production on this whole album is out of sight. More Wilco and YHF coming up.

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Our friend Tyler introduced me to The White Stripes. The first time I heard any of their music (including this song) was driving on I-80 East to go to Adel for a quick stop then on to Buena Vista University. I was really only listening to a few bands at the time: Radiohead, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Tool. The White Stripes were like nothing I had ever heard before. This song isn’t really a good representation of what they sound like, but if you like any of their music you would probably like all of their music. I still like them quite a bit, but don’t listen to them as much any more. This is the only White Strips song on this list but there could be several more: “Seven Nation Army”, “My Doorbell”, “Blue Orchid”, “Icky Thump”, “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known”, “We’re Going To Be Friends”, etc. Get ready for a rip-roaring country ho-down!

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This is the only song on my list from The Decemberists’ major label debut, The Crane Wife. I know some people don’t like this band (I’m looking at you, Travis), and I can see why. They are over-literary, Colin Meloy’s voice is shrill and nasally, and most songs are set in the 1800’s. Sounds really cool, right? Actually, all these things are sort of endearing to me and make me enjoy these songs even more. This song is pretty sappy and sugary but a fun listen. The rest of this album is pretty good, too. It tells a cool story. Read about it here if you have time. We went to Minneapolis to see this band when they were touring for this album. There are a few things I will always remember about that trip/concert. First, we got all the way to Story City when our friend Pete realized he forgot his ticket. Next, Colin Meloy (the singer) had the flu and had to leave the stage to be sick towards the end of the show. Lastly, when we were leaving in the morning, we shared an elevator with the bass player, Nate Query. I wanted to say something and seem cool but all I could muster up was, “You guys rocked last night.” (This band does not really rock.) He said, “Uh… thanks” and slowly backed away from me when the elevator door opened.

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I’ve been listening to a lot of Rolling Stones lately and Exile On Main Street has been the hardest album to get into of theirs that I have. It seems to be just a slipshod thrown together mess. The two best songs on the album, “Tumbling Dice” and “Sweet Virginia” are back to back and seem to be placed too early. Its growing on me, though. The only part I don’t like about this song is the sax solo. I want to invent a filter to take saxophone out of every song I like starting HERE. More Stones later. Here’s my first parental warning: This song has a few sh*ts in it.

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I don’t know if Wilco can ever top Yankee Hotel Foxtrot but I am really happy that they haven’t tried to replicate it. They are a band that has changed its sound on every album they have released. I’m really looking forward to hearing their new one, Wilco (The Album) at the end of June. This is probably the prettiest song on the album. Violins are played and plucked and there is an appearance at 1:58 of wonderful, wonderful pedal steel guitar. Jay Bennett (formerly of Wilco) died last weekend. He had a big part of shaping the sound of this song and album.

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This song is off of Wilco’s debut album A.M. and is written and sung by the band’s bass player John Stirratt. I laughed out loud the first time I heard this song because of how earnest and corny it is. The more times I heard it, the more I enjoyed it. But hey, more pedal steel guitar. This is the only song from A.M. but the rest of the album is good, too. Very countryish. Also check out: “I Thought I Held You”, “Passenger Side”, and “Should’ve Been In Love” from A.M. Even more Wilco coming up.

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I can just imagine being thirteen years old again when I hear this song. It makes you sort of sad that you won’t ever be that age again and all the great things that come with being young. Summer vacations, hanging out with friends, how weekends now fly by but then they seemed to go on forever. This song has taken on a new meaning for me since I have become a father. I wonder what my boys will be like at that age, not yet realizing how much life they have in front of them to live and new things to experience.

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This is one of the coolest Radiohead songs just because of how it was made. The reason the vocals sound so screwed up is because they were sung backwards then played backwards. It’s hard to describe without hearing. Click the button below. This is the only song I have from Amnesiac but there are several others that could have made the list: “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box”, “Pyramid Song”, “I Might Be Wrong”, “Life In A Glass House”. Amnesiac is probably Radiohead’s most underrated album. More Radiohead coming up.

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All of Sumday by Grandaddy is worth hearing, but this song always stands out for me. After this album came out, we drove all the way to Chicago to see the band, only to have the concert last 50 minutes. We were a little disappointed. Before they played this song one of the band members dedicated it to Elliott Smith, a musician who had died not too long before. After putting it in that perspective of someone who has passed on made me look at the song in a different light. My sister-in-law Emily introduced me to Grandaddy. (Horrible band name, btw.)

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I don’t really like The Smashing Pumpkins all that much. This song was not written or sung by Billy Corgan, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. All I know about this song is that James Iha wrote it and the lady from Veruca Salt sang it with him. It’s just a nice song. It’s a b-side to “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”.

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My favorite movie is Magnolia. That movie was written by Paul Thomas Anderson and inspired by some of Aimee Mann’s songs. After the movie was done Aimee Mann contributed some original songs to put in it. One of them was “Save Me”. You should see the video, it is great. It has a lot of the actors from the movie and was directed by PT. The song is great and everything, but it may not have ranked if it weren’t for the movie. All of her songs from the movie are great, especially “Wise Up” and this one. I was going to Wikipedia to get a pic for the album cover and I guess this song was nominated for an Academy Award, but lost to a song by Phil Collins from the Tarzan cartoon. That’s too bad. Phil Collins stinks.

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In October of 2007, Radiohead announced that they had finished an album and ten days later anyone could go to their website and download it for however much they wanted to pay for it. A few months later the physical release of In Rainbows came out and there was a bonus disc released with the deluxe package. This song, which is just piano, guitar, and vocal is one of the highlights.

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There are a couple of things I like about Rufus Wainwright that I would hate coming from any other musician. His voice and music are very operatic and showy. Despite that, he has got to be one of the best singers in pop music today. This song is another one that starts out sort of slow and builds to a couple of different high points, the first at 2:23 and the other at 4:21. This whole album is great. More Rufus later.

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This is another slow builder, but it is interesting from the second it starts. One of the things I love about Wilco is how frequently they use piano in their songs. Piano seems to be disappearing from rock music recently. This song contains one my favorite Jeff Tweedy lyrics. “I thought it was cute/for you to kiss/my purple black eye/even though I caught it from you.” I love the guitar part that starts at 1:59 and builds for the next three and a half minutes. This is the only song on the list from A Ghost is Born but the rest is pretty good to. Hear: Hummingbird, Theologians, Muzzle of Bees, Wishful Thinking. More Wilco later. Fun fact: This was the song playing when I hit a deer eight days after I bought the car I was driving.

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At 1:05, this song is the shortest on my list. Also, it is the debut of Pavement – easily one of my top five bands of all time. This song is off of the Pacific Trim EP Pavement released between their third and fourth full length albums. Looking through songs to come by Pavement, looks like I have just as many b-sides and non-album cuts as I do off of proper albums. Although all of their albums stand up by themselves as masterpieces (a feat not many bands, including Radiohead, can claim), some of the other songs are just as good if not better. One of the best things about Pavement is they don’t take themselves very seriously. Stephen Malkmus was known to make up lyrics on the spot when recording and not care if he sang out of tune. This song was previously available only on the vinyl version of Pacific Trim EP but thanks to the great efforts of Matador Records to expand all of Pavement’s albums into two-disc versions with all the b-sides and rarities, any Pavement fan who wasn’t around to enjoy them the first time (like me) can hear all the great extras. First available on the Wowee Zowee reissue. More Pavement later.

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This is off of my favorite Silver Jews album, American Water. It is so far ahead of anything else I’ve heard by that band. I’m sure some of it has to do with the fact that none other than Stephen Malkmus plays guitar and does the backing vocals for it. I can freely admit that I have a non-sexual crush on SM and, like Radiohead, would say I like anything put out by him. Not to steal any thunder from David Berman though, The Silver Jews are totally his band. The only Silver Jews songs left on this list (spoiler alert!) are from American Water.

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I don’t listen to the album this song is from, The Eraser, as much as it probably deserves. I just can’t help imagining what all the songs would sound like if they were given the full band treatment by Radiohead rather than Thom Yorke messing around on a computer by himself. This song is sort of in the same vein as Radiohead’s Kid A, which everyone should hear at least three times (because no one likes it the first or second). Dude still has a crystal clear voice at 38 years old.

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One night I was having a conversation with my friend Tyler about music. I asked him why, since we shared similar tastes in music, did he not like David Bowie. He asked me, “Do you like musicals?” I shook my head no. “That’s pretty much what David Bowie is” he says. Well, sort of. You could make that argument more for this album, Hunky Dory, than any other. Before the Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke eras, Hunky Dory showcases a more theatrical side of Bowie before he really starts to rock in later years. This whole album is great, but other songs I love from it include: “Changes”, “Life On Mars?” and “Queen B*tch”. That reminds me, this song has the word “b*tch in it if that offends you (it’s not in a misogynistic way). More Bowie coming up.

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Transatlanticism was the first DCFC album I heard. This whole album and this song in particular remind me of fall. Jessie and I lived in West Des Moines during my last semester of college, and I listened to this a lot driving back and forth to Ames. It’s a song that makes me nostalgic for no particular thing. I wasn’t really very happy at that time in my life, I was tired of college and the group projects and worrying that I could support Jessie and our unborn child when I graduated. I still like this album and I tried to convince my self Plans and Narrow Stairs were good too, but they don’t hold a candle to this one. The whole thing is good, but check out “The New Year” and the title track.

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This song is David Berman at his finest lyrically. His rhythm and delivery are perfect, too. The best part: “So if you don’t want me I promise not to linger/but before I go I gotta ask you dear about the tan line on your ring finger.” Good guitar playing by Malky, too. One more Silver Jews song to come.

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One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to was LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire in Kansas City, September 2007. During LCD’s set, I kept thinking a few things: 1) was the drummer ever going to tire out and 2) this has got to be one of the best live acts on the road today. “All My Friends” for me was the high point of the show and the high point of the album it is on, Sound Of Silver. I think you have to be in your mid to late 20s to really appreciate it. It’s about growing up and trying to reconnect with your friends after getting a real job and not seeing all your best friends very often. Or maybe it’s not, but that’s what it means to me.

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This song/album always makes me think of the time when Jessie and I started dating. When Pinkerton came out I was a freshman in High School and had only heard the first single “El Scorcho”. I was a big fan of that song, but didn’t hear the whole album until Jessie bought it. We had only been dating a few months. It got to be on heavy rotation around my apartment and in my car. I was also learning to play guitar at the time, and this song was an easy one to learn. One of my best friends Eric was a big Weezer fan, too. We would listen to this album when hanging out. Warning: this song has the b-word, too.

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Like “Caramel” off of 13 “Trimm Trabb” is a production masterpiece. I don’t know or care what the song title means, except I know ADIDAS makes a shoe called the Trimm Trab (one b). The whole song is cool, but the best part is easily at 2:53 when the heavy guitar comes in. This album is so good. Plus this song leads into “No Distance Left To Run”. I would be friends with Blur on Facebook if they wanted to, and if I did Facebook.

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I only know about five Todd Rundgren songs, and I really like all of them except “Bang The Drum All Day”. (That song would be on my 139 least favorite songs of all time. It’s the worst!) I love this song not only because it is great, but also because it was used very well in a climactic scene from one of my favorite TV shows, Six Feet Under.

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Okay, so Fleet Foxes are just a little boring. That doesn’t mean they aren’t great. I really liked this song before Fleet Foxes were on Saturday Night Live, but it was cemented as a classic after that performance. They knocked it out of the park. Best musical guest ever (after Radiohead in 2000)! I was going to post a link to the performance, but since NBC/Universal are losers and don’t allow anything on YouTube I can’t find it. Come to my house, it’s on the DVR. Anyways, their whole debut album is very good. Check out: “White Winter Hymnal”, “He Doesn’t Know Why”, “Blue Ridge Mountains”.

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I used to be pretty obsessed with Pink Floyd. I have all of their studio albums (some of them are pretty terrible, some are unbelievably good). Looking through the remaining Pink Floyd songs it is easy to see what is so impressive about them. From 1971 to 1979 they released Meddle, Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. That is one amazing album released every two years without sounding anything like any of their other albums. (Ok, Obscured By Clouds was 1972 and a little underwhelming.) The opening song off of Meddle, “One Of These Days”, is sort of a strange song. There is only one lyric, “One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces.” Both Roger Waters and David Gilmour play bass in the first part of the song. More Pink Floyd later.

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This song isn’t as deep as some of the other Radiohead songs I love so much. I just like the way this one grooves. Other songs that deserve mention off of In Rainbows are: “15 Step”, “Bodysnatchers”, “Nude”, “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, “All I Need”, “Faust Arp”, “Reckoner”, “House Of Cards”, “Videotape”. See what I did there, Radiohead fans?

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Blur’s most recent album hasn’t aged as well as some of their other work (13!) but there are some great songs on Think Tank including this one. I love the production on this song. The static-y sound of the percussion reminds me of one of these things. A lot of unusual instruments are used on this song (Middle Eastern sounding?) I also like the vocal filter Damon Albarn uses. Sort of a sad sounding song. Don’t worry, there are still six more Blur songs to come.

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There are a lot of musical heroes I have that I would never want to meet face-to-face. Thom Yorke of Radiohead would probably be really annoying in person with all of the carbon footprint and vegan posturing he does. Paul McCartney won’t let anyone eat meat who tours with him and won’t ride in a car that has leather seats. John Lennon sort of seems like a jerk from the interviews and videos I’ve seen of him. “Working Class Hero” off of Plastic Ono Band has got to be the single most pessimistic song ever written. It is as far from “I Want To Hold Your Hand” as you can get. It is pure venom committed to tape. But… the thing that stinks about this song is that he is sort of right. Warning: two ¡¡F-BOMBS!! in this song. Some of John Lennon’s (less depressing) musical contributions later with that other band he was in, Wings.

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Ah, Rufus again. This man can write a pop song. This is off of Poses, his second album. I usually joke with people that know Rufus Wainwright’s work that my favorite song of his is the song about him being gay. (It’s a joke because most of his songs are about him being gay.) I guess I was kidding because this is the last song on my list by him and it is not about his gayness. I’m still gonna say that joke, though. That joke is a funny joke, man. There could be a lot more Rufus on my list: “April Fool’s”, “One Man Guy”, “The Tower Of Learning”, “Dinner At Eight”, “Oh What A World”, “Vibrate”, his cover of “Across The Universe” etc. etc.

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This song should have been called “#91 on Josh’s Super-Cool List”. Or “Bono is the number ‘One’ most annoying jackass ever in the history of the world”. Or “This is the ‘One’ U2 song that Josh really likes”. In all seriousness and fairness to the band, though, this song is awesome. Awesome instrumentation and awesome poignant lyrics. This song… this is my kind of song. Maybe some of you reading this can recommend some U2 songs to me. I know a lot of them that are good, but I don’t see why they are so insanely popular.

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Should I be ashamed to admit that I tear up almost every time I hear this song? I don’t love Iron & Wine, most of his (it’s one dude) stuff is all just him and acoustic guitar. This album, The Shepherd’s Dog, has a lot of accompaniment of other instruments. If Sam Beam keeps releasing music like this, he will probably become one of my favorite artists. Fun fact: Leroy Bach, who was in Wilco during the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot era plays guitar on this album. I think he even plays the awesome pedal steel on this song.

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Like “Save Me” by Aimee Mann earlier on the list, “Head Over Heels” is here because of it’s appearance in a movie. That movie is Donnie Darko and it may be my favorite use of music in a movie. The song is great, too, but look at those doofuses over there. Homoerotic geek city. No wonder the eighties are the least represented decade on my list from the sixties on. I don’t think I need to say it, but this is the only Tears for Fears song on my list. (A big thanks to Tyler P. (Minor) Forret for introducing me to the wonderful world of Donnie Darko.)

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Whoops, looks like I have another movie tie-in in this entry as well. This one is from the fantastic movie Rushmore by Wes Anderson. Wes always uses great music in his movies, and Rushmore might be his best. Cat Stevens once wrote a song called “Peace Train” and now supports killing people. Oh, dear. He also sings a song called “Father And Son”. Here is a video of what I really wish that song sounded like. I’m the best dad!

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Jeff Mangum’s band Neutral Milk Hotel was so good that 14.3% of their officially released songs are on my list. This is the only one from their debut On Avery Island. Although that album sounds just a little bit dated with the mid-90s fuzzy guitar and grunge-y production, I still love it. My favorite part is when he sings “Leave me alone.” I think that part to myself over and over and over and over and over every day. Although this song is great, it nothing compared to the other songs by this great band with a terrible name coming up.

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Graham Coxon’s solo output has not really ever done much for me, but his guitar playing and singing in Blur are always some of the most enjoyable parts for me. His lyrics aren’t always insightful (“You’re really cool”, from “Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery”, “Oh my baby, oh my baby” from “Tender”, “You’re so great” from “You’re So Great”), but he is still probably my favorite member of Blur. This song is from their self-titled fifth album that led them in a new direction of more alternative, lo-fi output. I like the ambient tape crackle and muffled vocals in this song. I listened to this album, Blur, a lot when driving from West Des Moines to Ames my last semester of college. More Blur after a while.

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Ironically, the previous Silver Jews songs that I rated were better lyrically than this one, and lyrical prowess is my number one reason for liking The Silver Jews. I guess “The drums march along at the clip of an I.V. drip/Like sparks from a muffler dragged down the strip” is pretty good. The bass is awesome in this song, and my buddy Stephen Malkmus contributes guitar and backing vocals. If you have been digging The Silver Jews sorry to say that this is the fifth and final appearance of that band, which Jessie is happy about. She doesn’t think there should be five Silver Jews songs on my list.

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Funeral by Arcade Fire has got to be one of the ten (or five, or even two) best albums of the last five years. My reaction to it was immediately positive. If there is one album up to this point I would recommend to anyone, it would be this one. From start to finish it is one beautifully cohesive masterpiece. It will be remembered years from now as legendary. I know my musical tastes are not for everyone, but would have a hard time believing that someone wouldn’t like this album. Having said that, as wonderful as Funeral is as a whole, it loses some of its magic and power when you break it up into individual songs. Same goes for their follow up (and only other album to date) Neon Bible. This song is one of my favorites of the ten songs on the album, but isn’t really a good representation of Funeral since it doesn’t sound like any other song on it.

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This Pavement song, like “I Love Perth”, is a b-side off of the Rattled By La Rush EP. The sloppiness of this song is what is so appealing to me. The guitars sound slightly out of tune, SM does a sort of mumbly sing/speak sort of thing but it all works. This is another song off of the Wowee Zowee reissue. Best lyric: “I don’t need a timekeeper, I don’t need an interlocutor/Baby you look a little cuter day by day”.

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Released September 23, 2008, this is the youngest song on my list. I have known about this band since their last album Return To Cookie Mountain and while that album was good, Dear Science is great. Bonus, I have this on vinyl and you don’t thanks to my awesome sister-in-law Emily. Speaking of in-laws, my bro-in-law Jacob and I went to see Stephen Malkmus on Halloween last year and this song was playing when I dropped him off at his car in Altoona at 2 a.m. or whatever time it was. This album was probably my second favorite of last year, right behind The Stand Ins by Okkervil River. This song is about racism, I think? More like eracism.

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About a couple who are addicted to painkillers, “The Next Four Months” is sort of shocking from the start. While undoubtedly there is a lot of great art and music created under the influence of drugs (David Bowie doesn’t even remember writing or recording Station To Station, 5 stars), this song is about how lost a person can get when they lose control. This is the first song by Okkervil River on the list, and I can’t believe how great this band is. They are one of the few that have no missteps in their whole back catalog (like Pavement), every album and EP is pretty much fantastic. If you don’t believe me, you will see as the list progresses. This song is originally off of the “For Real (There’s Nothing Quite Like The Blinding Light)” single and was later added into the Black Sheep Boy Appendix for re-release with the Black Sheep Boy album as Black Sheep Boy (Definitive Edition) Warning: one ¡¡F-BOMBS!!

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This song is the second Pixies song I ever heard. My friend The Tyler Forret got a Pixies compilation nine or ten years ago and this song was the only one that we really liked other than “Where Is My Mind?”. I think Pixies are sort of a hard band to get into (they were for me anyway), but once you do, every song sounds really good. This song is sort of a transition from the style of their previous album Surfer Rosa to the space-surf sound of Bossanova. This is a cut from Doolittle which is probably my favorite Pixies album. More Pixies later.

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I really think this is one album that everyone should hear at least once. Aside from classical music (which I know nothing about) Ágætis byrjun has got to be 72 of the most gorgeous minutes of music ever to be put onto tape. Its hard to imagine someone writing this, it just seems like it exists and has always been floating around out in the ether. I have to be in a certain mood to listen to Sigur Rós but when I am there is nothing else like it. I like the cheap almost toy sounding guitar and when the trip-hoppy drums come in at 3:16. I saw the movie The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou before I bought this album (I owned ( ) before that) and when they are down in the submarine this song starts playing. It is the best part of the movie. You have to see it to know what I mean. Listen to this whole album, though, you won’t regret it. More Sigur Rós coming up.

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This song has what has to be the funkiest bass line by The Stones ever. “Asking people ch-ch-ch what’s the matter wit you boy?” Yeah, you know this song. Someone take the sax at 3:05 out please. “Beast Of Burden” is also good off of Some Girls. The rest I haven’t really gotten into yet. There may be some more of The Rolling Stones later.

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I’m usually not the biggest fan of story-songs but I make an exception for this one. From the start the melody is contagious. Stephen Malkmus is a strange album, I think you really need to either be a Pavement fan first or hear some of his other solo work before listening to this album. I’m not sure I would be as big of a fan of his if I heard this first. I’m not saying it’s bad – actually, there are a lot of great songs on it but its different than anything else he has ever put out (“Jo Jo’s Jacket starts out with a sound clip of Yul Brynner talking about shaving his head). Anyways, this song was a grower for me, I didn’t really care for it first. “Off came those awful toe rings.”

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I’m sad to say this is the second and final Arcade Fire song on my list. “But wait, Josh” I can imagine you asking, “Didn’t you go on and on about how great this band, and in particular, this album is?” Yes, everyone, I did. I certainly did. If you remember, though, I said I loved how Funeral works so well as one cohesive work. And if you don’t have it, you should buy it. You can get it for $13. This song is a better idea of what Funeral sounds like as a whole than the other song on my list “In The Backseat”. Arcade Fire own it live, go see them if you get the chance. See also: this whole album, all of the follow-up, Neon Bible. Oh yeah, this song is in the trailer for the sweet-looking movie, Where The Wild Things Are.

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This is one of the cleverest songs I have ever heard. It takes famous songs with numbers in the title and adds one (“96 Tears”, “99 Luftballoons”, “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover”, etc.). This song is the first on my list by Okkervil River where lead singer/songwriter Will Sheff really shows his lyrical prowess. I have read a few critics who have said he is the best lyricist in music today. I won’t argue. Probably my favorite lyric by him (not this song): “And this book you once read/says there’s less people dead/at this point now than those who are not.” More Okkervil River coming up.

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This is totally coincidental, but one of the songs referenced in “Plus Ones” is “TVC15”. “Your eyes dilated as light played upon the sight/of TVC16 as it sings you goodnight.” Oops. This is about David Bowie, not Okkervil River. On this song, I don’t really know any of the lyrics except, “Oh my TVC15, oh oh” and “Oh oh oh oh oh”. Oh oh oh well, it’s still a great song. More David Bowie later. I think Station To Station is my favorite David Bowie album. It’s where the Ziggy Stardust alter ego is retired and The Thin White Duke is introduced. Or rather, the return of The Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lover’s eyes. 33% of it is on my list. (There are only six songs.)

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Oh, dear. How do I describe this song? This is one of the stranger songs on my list. It is also the only song by the great band Modest Mouse. At nine minutes long, it goes through several distinct movements without really focusing on a central theme. It is also the centerpiece of their (best?) album The Moon And Antarctica. My favorite part is the acoustic guitar outro after the everything builds to a climax. This song is a good representative of their work before this album, but I really prefer their albums after and including this one. We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank (2007) featured guitar work by ‘80s icon Johnny Marr who is best known for being in English band The Smiths. It is a solid album, I would recommend it, this one, and Good News For People Who Love Bad News. Their earlier releases are good, but a little uneven for my tastes. (I know, I like the stuff they put out after they “got big” but I really do think it is better.)

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This song uses a small bit (melody and lyrics – kind of) of the song “I Just Called To Say I Love You” by Little Stevie Wonder. Animal Collective couldn’t get clearance for the “sample” so they put it out as a “white label” release, meaning it had no info on it so no record label really profits from it. Below is the album cover for Feels where another version of “The Purple Bottle” can be found. I really like the album version, too. I’ll put both versions up so you can decide which you like better. Jessie and I were talking about Animal Collective one day, and she noted how that band name is apropos of the “music” or more appropriately, “noise” that they put out. It is very primal and animalistic. They are certainly not a band you can just put on and expect to like the first time you hear them.

I had heard about how great this group, and in particular, this album was and I had to listen to it probably ten plus times before it clicked. There is still some of there work I shy away from (Here Comes The Indian) that is supposed to be essential listening. I really enjoy Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished; Sung Tongs; Feels; Strawberry Jam; and most recently this year’s Merriwether Post Pavilion (which may end up being the album they are most remembered for). For some reason this is the only song I put on my list. Some of the other songs you should check out if you like this are (off the top of my head): “Penny Dreadfuls”, “Chocolate Girl”, “Winter’s Love”, “College” (I’m sorry, I can’t resist putting that song up, too. It’s only a minute long, so you have no excuse to not listen), “Did You See The Words”, “Peacebone”, “For Reverend Green”, “My Girls”, “Summertime Clothes”, “Brother Sport”.

Stevie Wonder Mix:

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Album Version:

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“College” (from Sung Tongs)

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I know it is tragically unhip to like Coldplay but I gotta admit, these guys can write a song. When A Rush Of Blood To The Head was released, I played that album out. All of their releases are pretty good. I could have a lot of songs by them on my list. My favorite off of their latest album is called “Strawberry Swing”. Check it out. This is the only song by Coldplay on my list.

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Last fall, Jessie, myself, sis-in-law Emily and her boyfriend Adrian, my cousin Aaron and his wife Amy, and my cousin Melissa and her boyfriend Travis all went to Omaha to see Okkervil River. I had a wish list of four songs that I wanted to hear them play. This is the only one (the other three are coming up later) that wasn’t played that night. The show was still unbelievable. This song is the story of Bruce Wayne Campbell, also known as Jobriath, who was a heavily promoted glam rock star in the 70’s that never really went anywhere. He died of AIDS, broke, in 1983. This song isn’t depressing, though. It’s a cool end to my 2008 Album Of The Year, The Stand Ins, I really like the when the vocal melody and the music sync up (“Let it di-i-i-i-ie…”, etc.) I also like the Spanish sounding horns and mandolin. There’s also just a bit of pedal steel guitar at the very end. Okkervil River sort of has a thing for dead quasi-celebrities: John Allyn Smith, Jobriath, Shannon Wilsey (don’t Google her name, please. She was an adult actress. I’ll explain later.) Warning: one ¡¡F-BOMBS!! More Okkervil River coming up.

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Bright Eyes is another band that my friend The Tyler Forret introduced me to, and I still remember the first time he played this album for me. We were driving to see our friend John in Marshalltown. This whole album, Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground, is really pretty strange. This song isn’t too unusual, but it is a little strange when you realize it’s a 23 year old one man band from Omaha, Nebraska singing the song. I love the end when you can’t tell whether he is saying, “You will.” or “Will you? (Explains the title and punctuation.) Probably the best Bright Eyes album. More Bright Eyes later.

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I hope my in-laws can forgive me for only including one Bob Dylan song. I really like him, but he is another artist whose songs just sound better to me in album format. Obviously Bob Dylan is recognized as one of, if not the best, singer songwriters and lyricists of all time. The album this song appears on, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, is a collection of protest songs, songs about civil rights, songs about strange dreams, and songs like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”. I can’t remember the first time I heard this song. Heck, I can’t even remember if I had heard it before or after I’d met Jessie (I was aware of Bob before her, but not really a fan). Sometime between then and now it has worked its way into my brain and made a place there for itself. There are some songs I would consider better: “Like A Rolling Stone”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” etc. But this song is my favorite of his. It’s sort of biting and sort of sarcastic. I won’t really recommend individual songs of Bob Dylan, but Highway 61 Revisited (his best), Blood On The Tracks, and Blonde On Blonde are required listening.

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Is it just me, or does everything in this song seem way out of tune? That’s actually why I like it so much. Slanted & Enchanted might actually be my least favorite Pavement album (which is not something you say if you are into indie rock music), it just doesn’t flow as well for me as the others do. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great songs on it (“In The Mouth Of A Desert”, “Here”, the classic “Summer Babe (Winter Version)”), but I listen to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Wowee Zowee, Brighten The Corners, and maybe even Terror Twilight more than Slanted & Enchanted. Does that make me a bad person? Don’t answer that unless you are a Pavement fan. More soon.

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For my money, there is only one American band that mattered in the destitute musical wasteland that was the 1980’s, and that was Pixies (eh, maybe R.E.M. to a much lesser degree). Same goes for The Smiths in England. I haven’t gotten around to listening to much more of their work other than The Queen Is Dead, but this album is one classic song after another. “I Know It’s Over” is my favorite. Whenever I see somebody write about this album, they never mention this song for some reason. Jessie and I listened to this a lot right around the time we got married (but it was only just beginning, not over, for us). This is all The Smiths you’re going to hear on my list. Still a good band. Lead singer Morrissey is a character.

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Like the “/” in the title implies, this is two songs blended into one. It starts off with nice sounding acoustic guitar in drop-D tuning (I think – correct me if I’m wrong anyone who can tell). I always like the way drop-D sounds with acoustic guitar. Neil Young has a few songs with it. “Follow Me Around”, an excellent song by Radiohead I have been hoping would show up on an album for about 10 years has it. It makes a cool sounding buzz when the low string gets strummed. This song also has some pedal steel guitar in it. I love that The Decemberists use that instrument so frequently. Only one more Decemberists “song” (you’ll see) left.

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Two Pavement songs in a week? Lucky you! This is a joke song, but I still love it. If you ever meet Stephen Malkmus in a dark alley and you need to solve the riddle asked in this song to save your parents’ lives, the answer is “enslavement”. Do people consider “ass” a swear word? Whether you do or don’t, the word “ass” or rather, “asses” is definitely in this song. Enjoy!

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This is the song that brought David Bowie to the spotlight. None of you reading this probably know him, but I always think of a fellow called Austin Goodrich when I hear this song. When I was a junior in high school, I took an environmental science class. One day we went to a field south of Adel to look at where water would run at different spots in the field, but all old Austin Goodrich wanted to do was walk back and forth in the field singing, “This is ground control to Major Tom!” at the top of his lungs while pumping his fists considerably. On one of the later trips, Austin Goodrich confided to us that he was a member of Canadian band Rush’s fan club.

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Has anyone heard any new Weezer jams lately? They stink. Weezer, aka “The Blue Album” is the best, though. Every song on it is all killer, no filler. Weezer’s first two albums were awesome, the next two were okay, and everything after is no. Coincidence that they started the decline after Matt Sharp left? I think not. I listened to this a lot when I was in college (I think that’s true for a lot of people) When we saw Weezer in concert, Rivers Cuomo said, “Give me a new axe, my man. It’s time to shred” to one of the roadies (before this song, I think?). This is the last Weezer song on the list.

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I got Revolver for my sixteenth birthday. I asked for it because I liked the songs “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yellow Submarine”, the only ones I had heard off of Revolver up to that point. At the time, I only listened to songs I knew when I got a new CD, so I skipped to “Eleanor Rigby” (Track 2) when I first put the disc in. Before I had a chance to skip to Track 6 (“Yellow Submarine”) I heard “I’m Only Sleeping”. I liked it quite a bit right away. That same day was the powderpuff football game (it was homecoming week) and we had a bonfire at a senior’s house for the whole school to attend. I drove my car out to this place listening to the song a few times in a row. Later that night, I was walking through the crowd of people to find the girl I was taking to the homecoming dance (I was excited for the dance because I was sweet on this girl and she agreed to go with me) and I came up on her sitting talking to a senior and he had his arm around her. She spent the rest of the evening with this dude, and they started “going out”. This was on my birthday. Not around the time of my birthday. On my birthday. I still took her to the dance three days later, but she ended up dancing with him most of the night. It’s not all sad, though. Three and a half years later I met the love of my life and I still get to listen to that song whenever I want to. I think there are more Beatles songs coming…

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This song contains my favorite Bright Eyes lyric and one of my favorite lyrics of all time: “You were the switch on the wall/in the dark of the hall/I’m still fumbling for” This song is from the There’s No Beginning To The Story EP, which I haven’t listened to in its entirety for years. I read the Pitchfork review of this to see if other people thought this song is as great as I do, but they say this song is “the one fatal misstep of this EP” and “particularly poor”. What do they know? This song is just acoustic guitar and voice at first, but it really starts sounding great when the banjo comes in. I really like the Bright Eyes albums Fevers And Mirrors, Lifted…, and I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. The rest are good, not great. This is the second of two Bright Eyes songs on the list. See last week’s winner announcement for more.

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In my life, I may have listened to The Wall more than any other album. I still love it, but not as much as I used to. It has sold more than 11 million copies in the US alone. That is nuts. In the first quarter of 2009, there wasn’t even one album certified platinum by the RIAA. I think this is sad. Music (and especially full album) sales are way down, and drop every year. Some people say it is due to declining quality of music, but I don’t believe that at all. It is harder to find, but there is still great stuff out there. Anyway, back to this song. It’s a sad song. Warning: the S word appears one time.

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There are a few things that stand out right away when I listen to this song. I love how industrial and sterile the rhythm section sounds compared to the emotion of the vocals and lead guitar. Also, I love how his singing gets more urgent as the song goes on. The first time I heard this song it was a cover version by The Wallflowers off of the Godzilla soundtrack. Later, when I bought the album I was surprised to hear two extra verses tacked on at the beginning since The Wallflowers and radio edit of Bowie’s version cuts them out. This is six minutes and ten seconds of rock perfection. The rest of “Heroes” is pretty good too (I like probably five albums of his better), but strange. Almost the entire second half is instrumental. This is unrelated, but I put a link to the movie Labyrinth here, too. I watched that movie probably a hundred times when I was younger, this was well before I knew how awesome David Bowie’s music is. You could say he is one of my musical “Heroes”.

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If you’ve listened to the other songs by this band on my list, you know that they are not much like anything else. For example, this album is titled ( ) and didn’t contain any info about the music on the packaging other than the band’s name. It is also sung entirely in “Hopelandic”, which is a nonsense language. Furthermore, of the nonsense language they use the same lyrics for every song. I love the way that Pitchfork describes this: {There are but eleven syllables uttered on this entire album. SPOILER: "You xylo. You xylo no fi lo. You so."} Wow, sounds pretty cool, huh? NOT! Well, with Sigur Rós it’s never about the lyrics (unless you speak Icelandic or Hopelandic, of which there are a small population of the former and no one of the latter), just the music. A version of this appeared in the underrated movie Vanilla Sky. Officially, it is “Untitled 4” but the band calls it "Njósnavélin" which is “The Spy Machine” in English. That’s awesome. For those who listen to this song (thank you!) be aware that there are thirty seconds of silence at the end, it is intentional on the band’s part. They wanted to separate the first and second half of the album. I’m sad to say this is the last Sigur Rós song on the list.

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The first time I heard this song was sometime in the month of October, 1999. I know this because I was sitting in a movie theater watching  the movie Fight Club. I may have mentioned this talking about Pixies before, but I love how their stuff doesn’t sound dated at all. This song could have been released in 2008 instead of 1988 and still would have sounded great. I like when Black Francis sings, “Tryin’ to talk to me coy koi”. There are a couple of Pixies tunes remaining.

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Ok, before anyone listens to this I want to warn you that it is eighteen and a half minutes long. You’ve trusted me thus far so believe when I tell you that it’s worth every minute. I love the drum part of Pt. II (2:05 – 4:58). You should see me air drum that part, man. I’ve got it down. This whole thing is based on some Irish mythology. You can read about it here if you want to, but it’s kind of a snoozefest. It’s about some dudes trying to steal a cow or something. Back to the song, though. The song is good. In Pt. III, I really like the “Here come loose the hounds” melody and backing vocals. After a while Pt. V starts at 14:22 and it sort of rocks until the end bringing back the original riff from the very beginning. The best part of the whole thing is 16:23-17:24. This song does have some brief sexual lyrics in the first two minutes, but is okay after that. No more Decemberists left on the list.

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I still can’t believe Jessie and I did this, but on May 7, 2005, we went to Chicago to see one of our favorite bands, Wilco. We weren’t even parents a full two months before our first overnight trip away from Jude, who was born in March. Wilco’s only live album, Kicking Television was recorded May 4-7, so some of the stuff on the CD we were there to witness in person. It was a killer show. Wilco played for four hours and there was no opening band. From the many concerts we have been to there have been good opening acts (Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks for Radiohead, Blitzen Trapper for Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, Neva Dinova for Okkervil River, LCD Soundsystem for Arcade Fire, Eisley for Coldplay)  and a whole slew of terrible opening acts [Paik for Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, Carla Bozulich for Wilco, Saves The Day for Grandaddy (who also stunk), Paik for Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks (so bad I had to name them twice), Ron Sexsmith for Coldplay]. Back to this song, I prefer the live version a little better than the studio version. I really like the loud drums and dissonance (on both versions) but the live version is even louder and even more dissonant. I also like how strange some of the lyrics are, the first line is: “I dreamed about killing you again last night and it felt all right to me.” Disclaimer: in the live version the crowd (like all concert crowds) are painfully annoying. They cheer every time Jeff Tweedy says the word “Chicago” like Pavlov’s dogs with a different stimulus. “Chicago!” “WooOOO!” No. Proper concert etiquette is cheer when the band takes the stage, when they start playing and at the end of a song. Maybe after a tasty lick on the guitar or some proficient instrumental playing, but never for a particular lyric. People are the worst. I will put both versions of “Via Chicago” up here so you can decide which one you prefer. More Wilco soon.

Studio:

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Live: (I may have been here for the recording of this at the Vic Theater!)

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Yes, I am an adult. Yes, I like this song. You like this song, too.

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If you were at our wedding, you heard this song. This was played during the photo montage that you see at every wedding or wedding reception you go to. I always thought this was a nice song, but it meant even more after Jessie and I started dating. This is the only R.E.M. song on my list. I do like quite a few songs of theirs, but not “Nightswimming”. Never “Nightswimming”.

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This song holds the distinction of being the only cover on my list. It was originally written and recorded by Echo & The Bunnymen. I really like their version, but Pavement’s is better. I especially like Stephen Malkmus’ non sequitur ad-lib lyrics. “Cucumber, cu-cucumber, ca-ca-ca-ca-cabbage, ca-cumber(?), cu-cu-cu-cu-cu-cu-cu-cu-cabbage. He’s the yo-yo man, always up and down. So take him to the end of his tether-her-her-her.”

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I really like the way the acoustic guitar sounds with the electric in this song. Another cool thing about it is the cymbal crash after every time they play the main riff. I wonder why this song wasn’t played or isn’t played on classic rock (yuk) radio stations. Maybe its the twee late-60’s psychedelic way David Gilmour sings or the overly long outro. After Dark Side Of The Moon, Meddle was really the first Pink Floyd album that got a lot of repeat listens from me back in high school. This is a really good album, I still like listening to it. “Echoes” could have been epic, but it is too long and wankey! There are still a couple of Pink Floyd songs left.

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This song was originally a b-side to the “Paranoid Android” (see below) single then released on the Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP that collected all b-sides from my favorite album of all-time OK Computer. I really like the way Thom Yorke sings Part 1 and then the guitars of part 2. This whole EP is pretty great but no where near the perfection of OK Computer. More Radiohead (especially circa 1997 and 2000, hint hint) later.

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This song is one of the happiest and saddest songs all at the same time. It is off of The Flaming Lips’ tenth album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which was the first of theirs that I bought. A few years ago, Jessie, her sister Emily, my friend Pete and myself went to Council Bluffs to see a rock concert that The Flaming Lips were headlining. The two opening acts, The Magic Numbers and Sonic Youth were both awesome. Then The Flaming Lips came on and showed everyone how to put on a show. There was confetti, pyrotechnics, giant balloons, giant plastic bubbles that singers of rock bands could get inside and “walk” over the audience, people dressed up in animal and Santa Claus costumes. In short, everybody left happy. Oh, except for that one dude that totally got beat down by about ten policemen. He probably wasn’t happy. He really got a beating. Fun fact: As of a few months ago, this is the State of Oklahoma’s official “State Rock Song”. This is the only song on my list by The Flaming Lips.

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I have no idea what even one word in this song is, and I don’t care. I think there is a “Come on!” in there somewhere. Or may be it’s “sha’mo” or “shamon” or whatever it was that Jacko used to sing all the time in his songs. (Note: This was written well before Michael Jackson died. Don’t hate!) Either way this is another classic Pixies song. I may have mentioned before, but I think that Bossanova is my favorite Pixies album. It might also be Doolittle. It’s close. One more Pixies song left.

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Here is the first song from the aforementioned OK Computer, aka “My Favorite Collection of Songs, Ever”. This is one of the first songs I got familiar with by Radiohead, and I can remember the first time I listened to OK Computer after buying it. I was really impressed with how the song transitions effortlessly through different parts to make up a great song in total. I found out much later that the band had a few song fragments they didn’t know what to do with and they had heard that The Beatles pieced a few fragments together to make “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”, so they tried that and came up with “Paranoid Android”. My favorite parts are Jonny Greenwood’s “abusive” guitar, Colin Greenwood’s bass, and when Thom Yorke sings, “The panic, the vomit/the panic, the vomit” and “kickin’, squealin’ Gucci little piggy”. It’s the best! More Radiohead/OK Computer later.

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I really, really love Okkervil River. I really can’t decide which album of theirs is my favorite, but Black Sheep Boy is definitely in the running. I know it is a concept album, but I’m not entirely sure what the story is. I get more impressed with Will Scheff whenever I read something by or about him. Here is the story of how Black Sheep Boy came to be and how the writing process went. It is an interesting read, especially when you know the album. There are so many great songs I wish I could have included, and I think my sister in law Emily would have included “A Stone” on her list (deservedly so – it’s a great song!) I have heard some people describe Okkervil River as Neutral Milk Hotel’s successor. This is the album that they heard to make them say that. You can compare when there is more Okkervil River and Neutral Milk Hotel later on in the list. I love the lyric “There’s nothing quite like the blinding light.”

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This is the first song off of the first full length Pavement album, and it’s still one of the best. It is also one of the simpler songs on my list, it only consists of three chords. I love the cymbal part. I first got into Pavement when Jessie and I lived at University Village (married and international housing) in Ames. I remember sitting in our spare bedroom playing Minesweeper and listening to Pavement and Modest Mouse albums. I may or may not have been skipping class at that time. Consolation prize: I got really good at Minesweeper.

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Hail to the Thief is the only Radiohead album I’m not entirely sure of. There are some amazing songs on it and contains some of Radiohead’s greatest musical accomplishments. The band has said that it is their only album they wish they spent more time on, including the track order. I agree with them. When I think of OK Computer or Kid A  I think of two fully realized masterpieces where one song by itself is not as powerful as when listening to the full album. You can’t (or shouldn’t) skip a track on either of those. With Hail to the Thief I don’t feel that same spark. I actually really like all of the songs, too (with exception of “The Gloaming” possibly). I always remember Radiohead playing this song on David Letterman. I love how the rhythm and structure of the lyrics are so unusual, somewhat conversational. “All hail to the thief, all hail to the thief/but I’m not, but I’m not!”

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Being There is Wilco’s first great album. For me, the best two songs are easily the first song on each disc. “Sunken Treasure” is the first song on disc 2, and the opening acoustic guitar is really cool (dropped D tuning?). There are a couple of lyric gems, too. “I am so out of tune… with you” and “I got my name from rock and roll’”. “Misunderstood” is pretty different from “Sunken Treasure”. It starts out with loud drums and abrasive guitar. After that, it’s strips down to piano and Jeff Tweedy’s vocals. The first lyric is, “When you’re back in your old neighborhood.” This got huge applause from the audience at the Vic Theater in Chicago. I didn’t mind that time, it was the first song of the night and they were in their hometown. It just felt right. My favorite part of the song is the end when Jeff yells, “I’d like to thank you all for nothing! I’d like to thank you all for nothing at all. I’d like to thank you all, for nothing! Nothing! Nothing! (In live performances, he yells “Nothing!” dozens of times. It is awesome.  As much as I love Wilco (these are the eighth and ninth songs on my list) there is only one song by them left in the top forty. Any guesses? Does anyone else love Wilco, too? Any new fans?

“Sunken Treasure”

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“Misunderstood”

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Okay, I have to put the live version up, too.

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Everything about this song is great. I love the way it starts with just guitar and then the full band comes in. I love the way Graham Coxon sings. I haven’t talked much about the bass player Alex James but I think his bass lines are some of the best ever. I love how British this sounds in general. I love the vocal melody, especially when he sings, “Do you go to the country? It isn’t very far.” My favorite guitar part is the one right after “So give me coffee and TV, peacefully” I love the little keyboard melody towards the end and the organ that closes out the song. It is six of the best minutes to be committed to tape in rock history (Yes, really.) This song should have been Blur’s big hit instead of “Song 2”. I still think about Europe – Ireland especially – whenever I hear this song. When I visited there ten(!) years ago this video was in heavy rotation on their version of MTV the whole time we were there. I am writing this entry June 21st (Father’s Day. I’m the best dad! This is the third time I have found an excuse to link to that vid.) and just a few days ago there was an announcement that Blur may go in to the studio to record new music in the near future. There are few bands I would be more excited to hear new music from than Blur, especially since their last three albums are my three favorite by them. If you don’t usually listen to the songs on my posts, listen to this one. Trust me, you will like it. Oh yeah, the video is really cool, too. Click here to see it. The milk carton is so popular I think it has an official fan club. Okay, apparently it does. I just looked it up.

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When I first started getting into The Beatles, I thought they were just the songs you heard on the radio. I first bought their greatest hits collection from 1967-1970 followed by Revolver (only listening to the songs I knew) then the greatest hits from 1962-1966. Then my friend The Tyler Forret got The Beatles aka The White Album. Wow. I had no idea how amazing The Beatles actually were. This collection of songs is so varied and unusual and messy it is hard to believe that it sounds so good. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Radiohead took inspiration from this song for the amazing “Paranoid Android”. This song has five distinct sections in two minutes and forty three seconds. I really like the choice of words in the lyrics, too. “Lizard on a windowpane”, “hobnail boots”, “soap impression of his wife which he ate and donated to the National Trust”, etc. The White Album is definitely a desert island album for me, I never get sick of it. In “Uh… What?” news, read this excerpt from Wikipedia about The White Album:

“On the 40th anniversary of the album’s release the Vatican issued an unusual review of the album. The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published a lengthy article which declared that ‘Forty years later, this album remains a type of magical musical anthology: 30 songs you can go through and listen to at will, certain of finding some pearls that even today remain unparalleled.’ Forgiving John Lennon’s ‘more popular than Jesus’ remark, the paper called the White Album the ‘creative summit’ of the Beatles’ career, comparing it favorably to contemporary music and taking note of the now antiquated equipment used, concluding that ‘a listening experience like that offered by the Beatles is truly rare.’ ”

Okay, if you say so.

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Recently, Jessie and I happened upon a documentary about Neil Young and, pardon my language, but that man is batshit crazy. I’ll always remember him on the VH1 countdown of best artists of all time. He was wearing a trucker cap (before they were popular) that said, “Take this job and shove it.” I have periodically tried to find a screen grab of that to make my computer wallpaper. If anyone can help with that, I’d be much obliged. My favorite story about Neil Young is when he was touring in support of the very non-commercial album Tonight’s the Night and everyone in attendance of those concerts was not happy about his refusal to play any of his hits from a few years prior. He would always start the show with the song “Tonight’s the Night” and sometimes play it for upwards of thirty minutes. He would then trudge through all the new material on his upcoming album, then at the end of the concert say, “Here’s a song you’ve all heard before.” Everyone would applaud, hoping to hear “Heart of Gold”, “Harvest” or “Old Man”. Neil and his band would then proceed to play another lengthy version of  “Tonight’s the Night”. Anyways, this song, “Harvest Moon” is just gorgeous. It makes me think of my wife, as she and her family were the ones to introduce me to Neil Young. The album this is from, Harvest Moon, is also very good (except for the inexplicable “Old King”, which is about his dog and how it jumps off the truck and how Neil once kicked him because he was bad. Huh?) If Jessie and I had a real wedding reception and a formal “first dance” this was going to be the song. It makes me happy.

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What’s not to like about this song? A snaky guitar part, a funky bass line, those wet wet (to steal a line from Stephen Malkmus) drums, David Bowie going “Ahhhhhhh”. Jessie doesn’t really like the way that Sir (Not really, he declined knighthood. Declined being a knight!) Bowie sings, but I love it. There aren’t many lyrics in this song, “Blue, blue, electric blue/that’s the color of my room” among others. This is from one of my favorite David Bowie albums, Low. Like “Heroes” there are a lot of instrumentals in it, but it is a good listen. It’s only been a few years since I have been into David Bowie, but he is one of my favorites. He only has one more song on my list. See below.

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This song has one of my favorite vocal melodies, especially the part that goes “You want to cut me off”. It is the first proper song off of Okkervil River’s second album Down the River of Golden Dreams. It is a good transition from the alt-country stylings of their first album (and only one not represented on my list) Don’t Fall in Love With Everyone You See. I think it is about unrequited love – possibly for a good friend, maybe someone taking advantage of the character singing the song. (“I’ll just come when I am called”, “String me along”.) This is just a phenomenal song musically and lyrically. I really can’t believe this band doesn’t get more attention. There are a few more chances for you to get acquainted with them later.

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I’ll just tell you right away that if you don’t like David Bowie you will probably not like this song. But I hope that you do on both counts. This is the first song I really don’t have much to say about. The story behind the song is pretty cool (if Wikipedia is accurate), you can read it here. I got this album on vinyl for $5 shipping included. That’s something interesting, right? Looks like this is my favorite David Bowie song. I will now name some other songs I know by David Bowie: “Drive In Saturday”, “Time” “Lady Grinning Soul”, “Changes”, “The Man Who Sold the World”, “Moonage Daydream”, “Suffragette City”, “Bring Me the Disco King”. There, this entry is long enough now.

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When we went to see Radiohead all the way back in 2003, the opening band was Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks. If I remember correctly, the band only played something like six songs. It was cruel irony. Most of the opening bands Jessie and I have seen throughout the years were not very good but I didn’t want The Jicks to stop playing. I was even waiting to see my favorite band Radiohead. Shortly after the concert I purchased a copy of his latest album, Pig Lib. That was the start of my nonsexual crush on Stephen Malkmus. I listened to Pig Lib almost nonstop for a while then moved on to Pavement. The rest is history. I remember that “Animal Midnight” was one of the few songs played at that fateful concert and I liked it right away. I also remember that there was one dude standing up and dancing, and clapping really obnoxiously and whooping between songs. Everyone else in the venue was sitting. It was outdoors and still light out. My favorite part of the song (and I know it is my friend Pete’s favorite part, too) is the part when he sings, “Animal Midnight, shit for a brain.” I don’t know why I like that part so much, but I do. This is the last solo song from Malky, but there are still two essential Pavement songs coming up.

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I don’t really need to talk about this song or album, Obscured by Clouds, because everybody knows it and has a copy, right? Oh, what’s that? Obscured by Clouds is maybe the worst thing ever and no one has ever heard of it, you say? Hmmm. Okay. If you say so. But this one song is good, right? It is! What does “Wot’s… Uh the Deal?” mean? I don’t know. I thought you knew. Whatever. Ok, so if you think of what Pink Floyd sounds like, this song is the opposite of that. This song was sort of our (Jessie and I) song for a while when we first started dating. It is a hidden gem in Pink Floyd’s catalog. That was stupid, sorry.

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I listened to Kid A by Radiohead probably an average of four or five times a week when it came out in October 2000 (“Happy Millennium”, Sean Connery Entrapment, 1999). As much as I always say that OK Computer is my all-time favorite album, Kid A is very, and I mean very, close to being as good. I’m not a huge fan of the last track “Motion Picture Soundtrack” as much as I love most of the other songs. And I will put the album version up here first for everyone to listen to. You can stop listening at 3:15, the remaining four minutes are mostly silence.

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Ok, it’s pretty good. It actually sounds pretty awesome after listening to the rest of the album, but that’s beside the point. I don’t know where the acoustic version came from or was recorded, all I know is that my friend Tyler (who is a huge Radiohead fan like yours truly) found it and put it on a CD for me. It was in the heyday of Napster and other filesharing programs where you could find anything you wanted in a matter of seconds. Heck, I guess it’s still like that today. He also found a file by the artist “Radiohead and Pink Floyd” and the track was called “Hey Joe (Live)” He wasn’t aware of and collaborations by those two bands and was curious to see if the cover of the Jimi Hendrix song was legit. The song ended up being “Rock N Roll McDonalds” by Wesley Willis. We couldn’t figure out what on earth we were hearing (none of the information was on the file and this was before Google, although there were other search engines which is how I think we eventually figured it out). Wesley Willis has about a billion songs and they all sound EXACTLY THE SAME. I am being literal here. Here is “Rock N Roll McDonalds” (I just purchased the mp3 from Amazon and this song is track one on his greatest hits.)

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Wow. I love the vocal echo on the second “Rock and Roll McDonalds!” Where was I? Oh yeah. The acoustic version of “Motion Picture Soundtrack”. When it is all stripped down this song is truly one of the most beautiful things ever created. I love the third verse that is not on the studio version. It is one of the songs I play for my boys when they are in bed ready to go to sleep. They call it the “baby” song. (Even though it is “maybe” not “baby”.) Wow, I have really talked this up. Here it is in all its glory, hope you like it. Still lots more Radiohead to come, including three more songs from Kid A.

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Even though this is the only song from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, that album is my favorite by Pavement. For anyone interested in getting into that band, I think it is probably the best starting point. You could also start with Brighten The Corners which is also very good, and probably their most polished album. (I made a mistake and should have put some songs from that album on my list. Is it too late to start over?) I’ll do a few bonus songs later. Back to “Range Life”. It mentions Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins which dates it a little bit, but the music still seems as fresh as when I first heard it in 2003 (It was released originally in 1994). I remember listening to this album a lot when I worked Saturdays while still in college. I like the piano and guitars in this song. Pavement don’t really get the credit they deserve for writing such great melodies (See also: “Gold Soundz” and “Heaven is a Truck” but not “Silence Kid”. “Silence Kid” has a great melody but they totally stole it from Buddy Holly.). The lyrics don’t make much sense, but what Stephen Malkmus song does? Warning: one ¡¡F-BOMBS!! My very favorite Pavement song is coming up in two weeks, stay tuned. (We will probably have a new baby by then. Crazy.)

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Towards the end of my freshman year of high school, one of my high school teachers introduced me to CD burning. I borrowed some of my friend’s dad’s CDs and put a bunch of Queen songs on it. Why not? Queen is pretty good. I later threw the CD out the window of my car at my friend Damon (aka Gaymon) who was trying to pass me or something on the gravel road south of Adel by the water tower. His Firebird hit my Camero and caused a fair amount of damage. I still maintain that I was 100% innocent. I like the opening keyboard riff, but the bass line is my favorite part of the song. Queen is (are?) pretty good, I don’t have to name more songs by them. You know ‘em. The album this is from, A Night at the Opera is killer Queen even though the song “Killer Queen” is not on it. Also, check out “’39”, “Death on Two Legs” and of course, “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Freddie Mercury, pictured here, and here is YOUR best friend. And your boyfriend. (Note to Jessie: Please fix my links or no one will get my joke. For those who read this before it gets fixed, I found two ridiculous pictures of Freddie Mercury. You look at the picture and then I tell you that Freddie Mercury is your boyfriend. Trust me, it’s really funny! Just wait.)

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Whoops, the first two songs on this week’s list are sort of lame, but I still like them. There is a whole lot of cool guitar going on in this song. I had heard it long, long ago, but I still remember the first time it clicked for me as being great. I was in a hotel room in Tennessee with Jessie and our two boys (Jett was only two or three months old at the time) and I was listening to it on my iPod. I had bought a two disc greatest hits collection (Hot Rocks) almost ten years prior and never really got around to digesting it. I hate greatest hits CDs. I like to listen to an album all the way through. (I even sit through “Revolution 9” every time.) I know I am in a minority when I say that. It makes it all the better when you get a CD you have never heard and end up loving it. I bought two Okkervil River albums on the same day based on reviews without ever hearing a note played by that band. It was the best surprise to find out how amazing they are, and I still get great enjoyment from them (see below). I very rarely buy a single song digitally (Kelly Clarkson, Wesley Willis being the exceptions). Anyways, I mentioned earlier that I was delving deeper into The Stones’ back catalog lately (‘67-‘78 specifically) and Sticky Fingers is one of the albums I have been listening to quite a bit. It’s pretty good, especially this song and “Moonlight Mile”. I really debated putting “Moonlight Mile” on my list.

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Okay this is technically two songs but I don’t care. It’s my list. It’s part 1 and 2 or something. Remember way back when I said I would explain about Shannon Wilsey? She was an in adult movies (“pornos”) and went by the name of Savannah. She picked that name from the movie “Savannah Smiles” (hence the title of the song), which she liked when she was a little girl. I had never heard of that movie, but Jessie had and said she had seen it several times. “Savannah Smiles” is about her father and wondering if he failed her because of who she grew up to be and remembering how innocent she once was. “’Cause all I’m seeing is her face, age eight”. I think. Shannon Wilsey, although she died at the age of 24, dated several famous men, from Slash and Axle Rose, to Billy Idol and Gregg Allman and, uh, Pauly Shore (The Weasel, buuuuuuudddy). Late one night she left a party (probably a beer and drug party) and crashed her car. She broke her nose and got several facial lacerations. Instead of living disfigured and not working in the adult industry any longer, she shot herself in the head. Oops! “Savannah Smiles” was on The Stage Names from 2007. The following year, Okkervil River released The Stand Ins. The albums are thematically similar, see how the album covers go together? (You have to imagine them one on top of the other.) Cool. “Starry Stairs” was originally a bonus track you got when you purchased The Stage Names from iTunes. Or you could buy it for $0.99, which I did (It was called “(Shannon Wilsey on the) Starry Stairs”at the time. That’s how I know this song is about her since the lyrics don’t really say. They also both have alliterative song titles starting with the letter S and are both track four on their respective albums). I really liked that song and was thrilled when I heard it was going to be used on The Stand Ins. I like this song so much better than “Savannah Smiles”, but I had to include both to paint the full picture. Remember also when I said that last September I had four songs I really wanted to hear live? This was one of them. What made it even better was that Will Sheff told the audience that it was the first time they had ever played it in concert. This was also the only song he played with an electric guitar. I don’t know what this song is really about, but I think it is how she lives on through her movies and pictures? Or is it a criticism of the people who indulge in her image long after she is dead? It’s not really a tribute to her, but it is sympathetic towards her. The lyrics to this are so good, almost poetic. I really like: “I retire to a split white smile to be seen/In some old stag magazine”, “And this girl’s eyes/When they were roughly wrenched open I/Could see a starry stair up your thigh”, “So, here’s goodbye/From the part that’s staying behind/To the part that has to leave”. Great, but my absolute favorite is “What a hot half-life I half-lived”. The line “If you don’t love me, I’m sorry” was something she said at an awards ceremony for being in “pornos” or something. Did anyone make it through all that? I hope so. Moving on. Two more Okkervil River songs later.

“Savannah Smiles”

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“Starry Stairs”

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I don’t think there has been a truer song ever written. No matter who you are you can relate to it. Everyone has gone through changes, moving to different areas, meeting new people and so on. When I think back through my life it is sort of sad and sort of amazing the relationships you can have with some people that were so important at one time. I had such a close group of friends my senior year in high school and throughout college and I never see or speak to any of them anymore. There are people I saw or spoke to on a daily basis for years that I only see once or twice a year now. There are a handful of people I am still close with ten years after our friendship began. I am grateful for all the good friendships I have had and still have. Things change and we move on, that is what this song is about to me. It’s neat because it doesn’t have to be about just one stage in your life. I still remember the first time that I heard it. Several years ago, ABC did The Beatles Anthology. I had heard a few of their songs (but not many, if I am being truthful) and knew they were this big cultural phenomenon so I was curious to see what all the fuss was about. We were going to be at my grandparents’ house during the airing so I set the old VCR to tape the three part series. When we got back, I watched it and really – if anything – that was the spark that ignited my love of music. I never knew how great it could be. I have looked at music and many other things differently since that time. So, thanks ABC, I guess. I will repay you someday by finally getting around to watching Lost. I could be wrong, since I now have the expanded DVD collection of the documentary, but I believe this song was the very first bit of music that they played. I love every part about it, including the piano played by Sir George Martin that I have heard people gripe about. Should I have put it higher? Maybe. More Beatles later.

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I used to think think that The Great Escape was the best Blur album. I was not correct. It’s very uneven, starts to drag at the end and is just too long. It could have been a great EP with just the songs “Stereotypes”, “Country House”, “Best Days”, “Charmless Man”, “The Universal” and “He Thought Of Cars” (Glad I’m not the only one who thinks this song is underrated. Read this.) “The Universal” is the best of those. Apparently it is my 26th favorite song of all time and 4th favorite Blur song (Yes, there are three more!). Around the time I was trying to become exposed to new things myself and The Tyler Forret started to watch the films of Stanley Kubrick. Especially A Clockwork Orange. We watched A Clockwork Orange a lot! We also watched a lot of MTV2 (“All music all the time”, and “24 more hours of music” were the taglines, now it is 24 hours of Cribs and Wild Boyz.), it really was great back in the day. Occasionally they played the video for “The Universal” which pays homage to A Clockwork Orange. See it here. I was hooked on that song right away. I downloaded it from Napster and burned it on a mix CD. I used to love mix CDs. Not anymore though (see the “Wild Horses” entry above). I remember driving around Storm Lake hearing that song a lot on my mix CD. The title was “HS3105 DL091 3603 D4 Josh Zeigler”. So, what do I like about the song? Well, like other Blur songs it is very British. Its got some great string and horn arrangements. And something just hit me today (Editor’s note: not really today) while I was hearing this mowing the lawn. The line “It really, really, really could happen” seems so optimistic and, i don’t know, hopeful. Like anything really could happen. Good stuff.

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I said earlier that I may have listened to The Wall by Pink Floyd more than any other album in my lifetime. Kid A is up there, too and I see my self listening to it a lot more than The Wall in the future. There is just some unidentifiable quality about it that makes it completely unique. When this first came out The Tyler Forret and I listened to it almost every night in our good friend John’s room. I didn’t always feel that way about it, though. The first time I heard Kid A I fell asleep. A year later, I was dating Jessie and telling her how much I liked it. She called me later and told me that she hated it and wanted to take it back. “Idioteque” is the most upbeat song on the album, but I like other songs off of it better. The four note synthesizer bit is a sample of one of the first pieces of music composed on a computer back in the seventies. SPOILER ALERT: There are seven songs by Radiohead in my top twenty-five, which means six more coming up. I will also always remember listening to this song with my friend The Tyler Forret in our mutual friend Matt Hemphill’s dorm room when we made one of our trips to see him at Simpson College. I have no idea where Matt was and that is probably as far as I should go with that story on this blog.

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This is easily my favorite Pixies song. It is weird and makes absolutely no sense at all. It is also the only Pixies song I can think of that has violin and cello on it. I missed the boat big time when Pixies were originally releasing music (to be fair, I was only eight when this was released). I bought all four Pixies albums since I had heard so much about them and Radiohead always mentioned them as influences. This song grabbed my attention right away, later I found out that this is a lot of people’s favorite song by them. This is it for Pixies. Hope you enjoyed them. Like The Silver Jews, I think Jessie was disappointed I had so many songs (6) by them on my list. Pixies are touring and playing this album in it’s entirety this year for the 20th anniversary. Anyone want to go to Chicago with me in November?

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Abbey Road was one of the last Beatles album that I bought. The songs I had heard off of that album (“Come Together”, “Something”, “Here Comes the Sun”) were good but didn’t rank in my favorites. I’m really glad I got it and was pleasantly surprised when I heard the medley at the end. Of all the Beatles info I read nothing ever mentioned these brilliant sixteen minutes that began with “You Never Give Me Your Money”. I love how they reprise the song again later on “Carry That Weight”. It’s weird, I know, but one of the reasons I wanted a record player was just so I could hear Side 2 of Abbey Road and see the dynamic between that and Side 1 compares since you actually have to flip the vinyl over. I think I ordered it the same day or day after I got the record player for Christmas (Thanks Jamie and Denise). More Beatles in the top ten. Fun Fact: I’ve walked across the intersection at Abbey Road Studios. I either took my socks and shoes off like Paul or I just thought about it. I have to dig that picture out.

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My first memory of this song is seeing the video on MTV2. After I bought the CD I would put it in the stereo and play this song then “Coffee & TV” and then stop it. As I talked about before when I wrote about the album this is from, “Tender” and the other singles are really not a good representation of 13 as a whole album. This is just a pleasant song, it is not really groundbreaking or unusual in any way. My favorite parts of the song are Graham Coxon’s guitar playing and singing. I also like when the instrumental break starts you can hear Damon Albarn start to sing the word “Tender” and they left the mistake in. Makes me wonder if they recorded this live as a full band with the choir. Side note: Graham Coxon left the band five or six years ago and recently rejoined. I have never gotten the chance to see them live so I really hope they make it to the U.S. if they tour extensively. Doubtful, since they were never big here, but I can hope. Update: looks like this is unlikely anywhere. When Blur released 13 it went to #1 in the U.K. and only got to #80 here in the U.S. Tender was the lead single and made it to #2 on the singles chart. The #1 song at that time (according to Wikipedia)? “…Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears.

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This song is the third song out of four that was on my wish list for Okkervil River to play live when we saw them last September (already mentioned: “Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979” which was not played, and “Starry Stairs”). They did play it that night and it was amazing. This song, like The Stand Ins album closer about Jobriath and “Starry Stairs’” Shannon Wilsey, is about the death of a famous tragic figure. John Allyn Smith was better known as John Berryman and was a poet. I didn’t know this until just now, but apparently he was a faculty member at the University of Iowa’s writers workshop. He killed himself, “From a bridge on Washington Ave the year was 1972”. Okkervil River has some depressing subject matter. The best part of this song is how the band ends it. Without spoiling too much, Okkervil River tacks another song on the end of their original material. The first time I heard it Jessie, myself and the boys were on our way to her parents. I knew what was going to happen since I had already read the review on Pitchfork, but I got goosebumps anyway. Up to that point I had never heard an artist do that in a song (That I know of. If they did it didn’t leave an impression). The following year the band Islands put a section of “A Quick One While He’s Away” by The Who (the same part that is in the movie Rushmore) in their song “In the Rushes”, which was cool, too, but not as awesome as “John Allyn Smith Sails”. This is the most recent song (2007) released in my top twenty-five. Only one more Okkervil River song remains. I’ll give you a hint, it is from Black Sheep Boy.

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I have been waiting and waiting to write about a song from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It is either tied for my favorite album of all time with OK Computer or second by a razor thin margin. Actually, at any given time it is a toss up which one I like most out of those two and Kid A. This song is for the most part just Jeff Mangum (his vocals are multiple tracked at one part of the song) and an acoustic guitar and some sparse horns towards the end. I am amazed at how great this album is even though it is so simple, in fact, I’m not sure there are more than ten chords on the whole album. I don’t know how he does it. The lyrics are sort of stream of consciousness and don’t make much sense, but there is still a lot of emotion there. This is not a song that I think everyone would like just hearing once. First, it is long – over eight minutes. Second, it’s not overly pleasant to listen to. The melody is not pretty and Jeff Mangum’s voice (while I love it) is not going to get him to Hollywood on American Idol. Uh oh, I hear the police coming to take me to jail for mentioning American Idol in the same sentence as Neutral Milk Hotel. I read at one time (I’m sorry, I don’t remember where) that this song was for the most part recorded in one take and the overdubbed vocals and horns were added later. Whoever was there for the recording knew they were experiencing something special, if you listen really closely at the very end you can hear “Holy shit!”. Totally. This album is a vague song cycle about Anne Frank. Awesome. Two more Neutral Milk Hotel songs from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea make appearances later.

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“Lucky” was not a song I paid any attention to when I was first getting into OK Computer. I love the twenty-one second intro before Thom Yorke’s voice, Johnny Greenwood’s guitar and Colin Greenwood’s bass all start at once. I also love the soaring guitar played during the chorus. This song to me represents the feel of the entire album. This song and the song immediately preceding it are the best two songs in succession in the history of recorded music. I wish I had something more insightful about this song or the first time it really hit me how great it is, but I had probably heard the entire album over a hundred times by the time I started to love it. I read a Radiohead biography once where someone in the band said “Lucky” is the “purest” song that they had ever written. At the time I thought that was an odd thing to say about one of their lesser songs, but I think I understand now what they meant. Like “I Saw the Light” from a previous list, this song was used very well in an emotional scene from the great show “Six Feet Under”. There is more Radiohead later in this list and even more still next week.

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This is my favorite song by Okkervil River, who sort of owns the ‘00s in music for me. It is also the last song out of the four that I was hoping the band would play live in Omaha last September. I thought it was least likely for them to play of all the ones I wanted to hear. It is over eight minutes long, for starters. (Like “Oh Comely”, looks like I really like epic songs. I should put up “Estranged” by Guns ‘N’ Roses, too.) I don’t usually need to look up words to songs I like but this one had me stumped with “diapason” and “abecedarian”. It also has words you don’t hear every day in rock songs, “bacterium”, “magisterial” and “wisteria”. I love the way Will Sheff sings this song. The first time it really hit me was when I was raking leaves two autumns ago and listening to it on my iPod. I can even remember what part of the song made me stop what I was doing, the part hat goes, “So why/did you bawl/from the spell of some old holy song?” That lyric/melody combination still gives me goosebumps. The song is so mysterious and unusual, so dark. I love it. The lyrics paint a picture almost as clear as Bob Dylan does in “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”. Even if the rest of Black Sheep Boy wasn’t amazing, this song alone makes that album worth owning. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this band. They have already released five stellar albums and the lead singer-songwriter is only 32 years old. Check them out. Come see them with me next time they come around.

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I have already talked about how Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a great album. I bought it the same day I drove to Des Moines from Ames to talk to a guy about a summer job. After two years of part time work, I am still with the same company several years later. That’s beside the point, though. I remember going back to my apartment and listening to this album several times in a row. The songs are great, but the production is what makes it stand out. There are so many subtle things going on, cool little noises put strategically here or there that make everything work so well. Although Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was recorded (but not released) before September 11, 2001, it is kind of eerie the things that are on the album. This song, “Jesus, Etc.” contains the lyric “tall buildings shake” and the album cover has a picture of two buildings. Okay, it’s all coincidence and a stretch at best, but sometimes I think of that so I put it out there. This is my favorite Wilco song to date. Warning: one ¡¡F-BOMBS!!

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This is another great guitar performance by Graham Coxon. Some guy Jessie used to work with at Citigroup burned her a CD with the words “Knowledge Records” and a drawing of two eyes on it. That CD contained this song, I guess Jessie told him she liked it? It was sort of weird. Was dude creeping on my woman? Although we are getting toward the end of my list, there is still one more Blur song left (in the top ten, even!). Does anyone want to guess which one it is? This is the fifth out of five songs off of the album 13. I’ll have to check, but I believe that is the most represented album on my list. Great job, Blur!

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Like other Pavement songs, this makes me think of college a little bit. This is off of Wowee Zowee, which is the longest, strangest and hardest to “get” of all the albums Pavement released. This song prominently uses pedal steel guitar. In fact, I think this is the first song I heard that really made me pay attention to how great that instrument sounds (I guess I’m excluding “Speak to Me” from Dark Side of the Moon. I really love that song and whole album, but I’m not sure I knew specifically that it was a steel guitar used.) This is the song that everyone waiting for a well constructed Pavement song needs to hear. It is my favorite song by that great band. Note: Crap! I forgot to put “Grounded” from this album on my list. Oh well. Honorable mention.

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Several years ago VH1 had this show called “The List”. Every day there was a panel of four or five people (“celebrities” as VH1 was and still is wont to call people who have been on TV for over a minute) who would count down their favorite things of whatever the daily topic was. One episode I saw aired in the first few months of the year 2000. The topic was favorite songs of the 1990s. I don’t remember who was all on the show except for Duncan Shiek. You may remember him from his mid-90s hit “Barely Breathing”. You’ve heard it, even if you don’t remember. Anyways, his number one song of the nineties was “Fake Plastic Trees” and when he announced it the graphics department put a little picture of The Bends, which is the album that is on, up on the screen. If you remember from an earlier post, around that time I was only listening to songs I had heard from the radio or music videos on CDs I owned. I had The Bends but had only listened to “High and Dry” and “My Iron Lung” up until the airing of that program. I watched that show at The Tyler Forret’s house and after it was over I drove home. I put The Bends in and listened to “Fake Plastic Trees”. That was the first time I had heard it. The end. More Radiohead below and more next week.

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I mentioned before that in high school I was pretty into Pink Floyd. Wish You Were Here was always, and still is, one of my favorite albums by that or any other band. When I was a freshman in college, I was inseparable with two friends, The Tyler Forret and John Campbell. With one week remaining in the year, John asked me to go back to his hometown for a get together. I initially didn’t want to go, but after much prodding I got in the car. Later that night at his friends’ house there was a girl who for some reason brought her green Washburn acoustic guitar and was playing some songs. One of those songs was “Wish You Were Here”. I’m usually not very outgoing but started talking to her since I loved that song and was surprised that A) a girl my age knew and liked that song and B) she knew it well enough to play it. We exchanged e-mail addresses since we were both going to be living in Ames a few months later. Eight years later, this is still one of my favorite songs. I like it more today than I did the years before I met that girl.

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Like “Fake Plastic Trees”, this is another song from The Bends that I didn’t really appreciate until after I owned the album for awhile. I was really into The Bends right after I graduated from high school and was working at Rube’s Steakhouse in Booneville. I distinctly remember sitting in the parking lot and listening to that song. The video is also really good, very arty. See it here. Another thing I think about when I hear this is when we saw Radiohead live, Thom Yorke’s right hand moved a lot more than I thought it should to play this song. Nobody ever said my thoughts were interesting, right? I love the last line of this song, which is the last line of the whole album: “Immerse your soul in love.”

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Um, I don’t really know what to say about this one. The very first concert I went to was New Kids on the Block when I was six and I waited twelve years before going to another one. That show was A Perfect Circle opening for Nine Inch Nails. And I’m a Libra. P.S. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I like this. The song is great, but my days of listening to nu metal/modern rock/whatever are long behind me.

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This is another song that I didn’t really notice the greatness of until a couple of years (and a couple of hundred listens) after I first heard it. I think it is the centerpiece of Kid A, and I believe that is what the band intended it to be. Opinions about that from anyone who likes/knows this album? I really love everything about Kid A, from the artwork and packaging to the way it was promoted to the fact that it debuted at #1(!) on Billboard. This song has such an ambiance to it, some of it almost just seems like white noise. It’s more than that, though. Some of the lyrics like, “That day, that’s not me” and “I’m not here, this isn’t happening” really fit the tone of the whole album. I like the bass a lot in this song. Also, who knew there could be so much emotion in a two note guitar riff? More about this album later.

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I had heard about Neutral Milk Hotel a few years before I had ever heard a note by them. I really don’t remember why I decided to hear this album, but out of the blue one day I downloaded it. There was one song (not this one) that made an immediate impression, but the rest of In the Aeroplane over the Sea didn’t really live up to the hype. I listened to the burned CD of the downloaded files several times to hear that one song that sounded so good. And then – like many other great albums – something clicked. The other songs slowly revealed their greatness and I could almost see the full picture being painted. I know it sounds strange, but this is the one album I think of as almost being a living entity. I feels like it breathes. It feels like it speaks to me. I am always captivated when I hear it. What makes it so good? I can’t answer that question, even to myself. I do know that sometimes when I hear this song I wonder how this song makes me forget that, excluding the intro, this is just one man and an acoustic guitar. Same recipe as “Oh Comely” (see last week) but such a different result. Fun fact: I ordered a copy of this CD when I started digging the album a lot and it came in the mail on the same day Jessie told me she was pregnant with Jett.

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I already said that I love The While Album. My friend (“The Tyler Forret”) got a copy of it long ago and we listened to it a lot. If it wasn’t for him getting it, I may never have bothered listening to The Beatles beyond the greatest hits CDs I had. We listened to it a lot when the two of us and another friend Damon (“Gaymon”) drove to Michigan to see my cousin (“Cousin Sarah”). I guess this is my favorite song off of it. I have to address something that has been bothering me at this time. At the very beginning I said this list is flawed. It is flawed because each artist is weighed differently than others. I like The Beatles, Radiohead and various bands better than others, like The Silver Jews. I consider dozens of songs by The Beatles better than the best song by The Silver Jews. I had to look at each band independently and decide which songs I absolutely HAD to have on the list. If I did it the other way, there would be thirty songs by The Beatles and Radiohead each. That isn’t very much fun. I have dubbed this “The Karma Police Problem”. “Karma Police” is a song by Radiohead off of the titan of an album, OK Computer. It is not my favorite Radiohead song. Not even close. It is, however, a better song than maybe half of the songs I have already posted and written about. I also feel it is my responsibility for everyone to hear this song since part of the reason I did this was to expose new music to our friends. If you chose, you are able to hear it tacked on to my #8 entry, “Sexy Sadie”. Why “Sexy Sadie”? The chord structure of “Karma Police” is very reminiscent of “Sexy Sadie”. Hope you like both songs. Here is an inside (not really a) joke that maybe four people will get: “Don’t worry, Thom got out!” Anyways, this is a pretty accessible Radiohead song if you are looking for a place to start. This is what you get when you mess with us. 1=1 We hope that you choke. (Another inside not really a joke.)

“Sexy Sadie”

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“Karma Police”

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What can I say about this song? Via Wikipedia: The single has sold approximately eight million copies and is frequently included on professional lists of the all-time best songs. I don’t know about professional, Wikipedia, but if you insist… A lot of people don’t realize that this song was released as a single only and not on an album. It does appear on several compilations. I chose to feature The Beatles 1967-1970, which is the place to start if you want to get into The Beatles. Just looking at that picture brings me back. I listened to those two CDs a lot. I remember going on a family vacation to Minnesota and listening to them pretty much the whole way there, back ,and coming and going wherever. (While we are mentioning that collection, can anyone tell me why “Old Brown Shoe” is on there. Seriously, “Old Brown Shoe” ) Lame alert: as a teenager this was the song that I went to to make me feel better. (As I type this July 11th, I wonder what the odds are I will leave that last sentence in before publishing. If you are reading this, you’ll know the answer.) I love it now for a different reason. It the name of my firstborn. While Jude is often strange and difficult, he is definitely my little boy. Fun fact: When I was in Hawaii on a family vacation with my parents and little brother, Juttin, we saw the piano that Paul McCartney played when recording this song at the Hard Rock Cafe.

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I think the first time that I heard this song was watching “The Wonder Years”. I never saw that show during its original run, but I watched a lot of it when it first came to Nick at Nite. I don’t remember the specifics of the episode but they go on a field trip or something and Winnie asks Kevin to sit with her on the bus? It has been a long time since I have seen that episode, when is it coming out on DVD already? This song is also in one of my favorite movies, Boogie Nights. Even without those two appearances, the song stands on its own (Even with the nasally bah-bah-bah’s in the middle) The intro with the harpsichord and horns are a good example of how the rest of Pet Sounds sounds. Its very symphonic. I also really like the outro with the overlapping vocal melodies and the drums. The Beach Boys aren’t really one of my favorite bands, but Pet Sounds is one of the greatest albums ever. When I first bought it, I knew Pat-Tech (The Tyler Forret’s dad) was a big fan. He approved of my purchase and told me something to the effect of, “Don’t give up on it.” I’m glad I didn’t. It also contains the classic tracks “Wouldn’t it be Nice” and “Sloop John B”.

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There was a sentence written in a review that perfectly describes this song. I couldn’t remember where I read it, but after a minute with Google, this is it: “How is it that Kid A’s opening track, laden with an electronic vocal stuttering “bleh, bluh-bleh bleh bluh” is the most fascinating statement made in rock & roll this year?” (From the end of year best list on Amazon.com – written by Beth Massa) That fits this song perfectly. If you were a fan of the band’s previous three albums you knew right away that this one was different. Just hearing the first few seconds makes me want to turn up the stereo, turn the lights off and just listen to the perfection that is Kid A. The album does take a few listens to get into (did I mention I fell asleep the first time I heard it?), but it is worth the time investment. I think it says a lot for the artists on my list that of the top 10 all of the albums are some of my favorites, too. Is this the last Radiohead song? You can scroll to the bottom to peek if you can’t wait.

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I think this is going to be the biggest surprise for some people that this is in my top 10, let alone number 4 of all time. I really like the bass part in this song, it might be my all time favorite. I really don’t have a story or anything why I like this song so much. I remember seeing the video on MTV2, buying the CD and listening to this song a lot the summer before my senior year of high school. This song and the previous entry “Everything in its Right Place” have got to be two of the best first songs on an album, ever. Well, obviously they are my two favorite. This is my favorite Blur song. After I placed it so high, I started to do a little research to see if there was anything interesting I could add and I found that on several message boards and polls that a lot of Blur fans consider this to be their favorite song by them. Rightly so. Now listen to it!

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After all these years of being a Beatles fan I have finally decided that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a little overrated – as far as Beatles albums go. It’s very good, don’t get me wrong, but when compared to Abbey Road, The Beatles, Rubber Soul, Revolver and maybe even Magical Mystery Tour it just seems to come up a little short. There are some great tunes on it: “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, “Getting Better”, “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, “When I’m Sixty-Four”, the underrated “She’s Leaving Home” which are all classics in their own right. And then there’s “A Day in the Life”. A few strummed chords on acoustic guitar, some piano and some of the more poignant lyrics and singing form John Lennon make this song great from the second it starts. I haven’t really read a lot about this song, but I can imagine that there are people who don’t like the middle section by Paul McCartney. I love it. I think it brings a little levity to the song and makes the John Lennon parts more enjoyable. I don’t know why the words “Blackburn, Lancashire” sound so good coming out of his mouth. When I was a sophomore in high school, I had to give an informative speech in speech class. There was a time limit that we had to reach (I don’t remember how long). I gave mine about the life of John Lennon and asked if I could play a song. The teacher said yes but said I couldn’t count that into my time, so I played this song while I sat uncomfortably in front of the room in silence for five minutes when it played. Another memory I have of it is when I went to the science center to watch a laser light show of either Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. I know there were four or five people in the car, myself and The Tyler Forret included. This song was playing and were were debating whether or not the words were “house of lords” or “house of Paul” (you know, the whole “Paul is dead” thing). I know we both thought it was “lords” but I thought there was at least a small possibility it could be “Paul”, an argument The Tyler vehemently disagreed with. Great stories, huh? Moving on… (Note: I am streaming the version from The Beatles 1967-1970 rather than the one on Sgt. Pepper’s. They are basically the same but the one here cleans up some applause noise mixed into the intro and removes the gibberish at the end.)

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This is the song I was talking about earlier that stood out immediately when I first heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. For some reason this album just resonates with people. Most of the people I know who have it or have heard it love it and have a personal relationship with it. It is one of the few things that I can hear at anytime in any mood and always enjoy. Although the music is stellar and incomparable to anything else, including Neutral Milk Hotel’s one other album, it and its creator Jeff Mangum’s legacy has grown as well. Neutral Milk Hotel was part of a collective of musicians on the Elephant 6 record label and quite a few of those bands still tour in one capacity or another. It’s quite rare, but on occasion Jeff Mangum will pop up to play a song at a show. When he does, it makes news on all of the indie music blogs. For one song. This is how well regarded this man is to some people. I have seen baby onesies that have the words, “Where is Jeff Mangum” on them. He has become somewhat of a recluse since releasing this album. He even turned down an opportunity to open for R.E.M. in 1998. Not much has been heard from him since then, he has become the Willy Wonka of indie rock. His status is still growing, though. This record still sells enough for him to support himself without other work. In 2008, it was something like the eighth best selling vinyl of the year. It is still finding its audience. Okay, after that history lesson let me tell you about this song in particular. It’s probably the prettiest song Neutral Milk Hotel ever released. I love the guitar and the simplicity of it. It is only four chords. This may be the only band I know of that uses a singing saw. If you have been scared of listening to the songs up to this point, this is the one you need to hear. Play this song at my funeral, Jess.

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Kinda funny how my favorite song of all time comes from my favorite album of all time, huh? From sometime in the year 2000 up to today if you would have asked me on any given day what my favorite song is, “No Surprises” by Radiohead would have been my reply. There are no frills to it. No pomp and circumstance, just a pretty melody. Some of my favorite lyrics ever are in this song. “A heart that’s full up like a landfill” and “bruises that won’t heal’”. It doesn’t get better than that. That’s all you’re going to get about this song, I’m keeping the rest for myself. I will tell you that I cannot keep from smiling just a little bit every single time I hear “Such a pretty house and such a pretty garden” towards the end.

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