(click on album cover to purchase and download Transformer by Lou Reed featuring Walk on the Wild Side) So I've shared this before, but there was this moment sometime in the early 80s, when this skinny, weird and confused adolescent boy found himself listening to a college station WTTU in Cookeville Tennessee, and he heard this fine, fine music coming from his transistor radio and the suddenly some things became clarified (though he remained confused for some time - 30 years or so and counting to be exact). Walk on the Wide Side was subversive and beautiful. Rock & Roll is supposed to be subversive, when it stops being subversive, something new and yes subversive comes along --the Beatles and the Stones then the Stooges and the Velvet Underground then the Ramones and the New York Dolls, then X and the Germs...
(click album cover to purchase and download The Best of Simon & Garfunkel featuring Hazy Shade of Winter)Okay, I'll admit, my first introduction to this song was the Bangles mid to late 80s version, but at least I was paying attention enough to know it was a cover. My memory associated with Hazy Shade of Winter involves one of those post-high school reunions. Socially, I was a late bloomer (if you call what I did blooming), and these gatherings made up for a lot of real or imagined missed opportunities. One night or morning, I was leaving one of these gatherings - it was probably around Thanksgiving or Christmas, and I was feeling a bit hazy and the song came to my mind and I suddenly thought I understood.
(click album cover to purchase and download The Essential Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes featuring Teddy Pendergrass which contains the song Satisfaction Guaranteed (or Take Your Love Back))So every generation in recent memory thinks it invented rebellion and sex and cool music. At best, though, all the next generation can do is stand on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before and hopefully move things forward a bit. That's why I call myself a progressive. I think as a race (human), we must keep moving forward because the past is gone and the good ole days weren't always so good. Satisfaction Guaranteed (or Take Your Love Back) makes me think about the book Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem which I've written about before. That novel tells a musical history wrapped into the lives of two boys whose lives collide in an emerging gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn. Soul music moving into the early days of hip-hop, with a dash of early punk rock provide the soundtrack and back beat to the book. The song itself will take you back even if you weren't there the first time. I should know because I was not and it does.
(click album cover to purchase and download In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra featuring the song Dancing on the Ceiling)Speaking as a child of the 80s, I thought Lionel Richie was the first person to go Dancing on the Ceiling.
Sinatra is Sinatra, and In the Wee Small Hours is one of the best albums of all time.
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