Before the onslaught of MP3 players, Pandora, Spotify and other streaming services revolutionized how we listen to music on the go, for many-a-year the FM dial had a monopoly over car speakers.
Well, there is also the CD player. But in my case, growing up as a passenger in my Dad’s Miata, it was rendered irrelevant after Bob Dylan’s “Desire” became permanently stuck in it. It still got spun from time to time.
My old man, like the parents of many millennials, grew up in what they, and Rolling Stone magazine, consider the greatest era for rock music, and practically refuse to acknowledge any record released after 1987 (hair metal onward).
Growing up in Connecticut, the station that we most often turned to was 102.1 – Springfield’s Classic Rock. For about 15 years it was my Dad’s personal favorite and its playlist groomed much of my personal tastes.
Until college, I never bothered to follow the music of my peers. I could recognize the ubiquitous acts like Green Day and… basically just Green Day. But the eras of crunk, butt-rock and pop punk came and went without my knowledge. I honestly thought conversations about Fall Out Boy referred to Radioactive Man’s sidekick.
Growing up listening exclusively to my Dad’s music, I inherited his affinity to analog production, progressive guitar parts and deep lyrics. Just like him, my “high school band,” whose music lead to a near-cultist level of infatuation and scores of scrap paper with misguided lyrical interpretation, was Jethro Tull.
That earned me a seat at the cool kids table.
My Dad and I continued to listen to Rock-102 while I endured college as we traveled across the state and tailgated at sporting events. However, we became increasingly frustrated with the respective song selection, the station’s library appearing to go from a vast ocean to a local reservoir combating a summer dry spell.
After hearing “Sweet Emotion,” “The Joker,” “Live and Let Die,” or anything by REO Speedwagon for the 150th time, we should switch over to NPR, sports talk, or even the alternative rock channel, which might as well play ethnic Mongolian music considering how incomprehensible it was to my father’s ears. Two years ago he traded in his 2000 Miata for a new model that has Pandora built into the console computer, effectively terminating his 40 year relationship with radio.
Meanwhile on my own, I moved away from 60s and 70s rock and explored new genres like traditional folk and indie rock
But within the past year I experienced a welcome relapse. I spent a lot of time traveling in my friend Connor’s 2006 Nissan Sentra, with no phone adapter or any “smart” features. I once again found Rock-102 to be my primary source of music, and while there were still plenty of songs I was ambivalent to, my time away gave me a new appreciation for a golden collection of songs that are immune to overplay.
As Connor and I would drive back to campus at one in the morning after a late movie, there are certain tracks that always deliver a jolt of pleasure and adrenaline as they pour through the speakers, and are, always, exactly what I wanted to hear. Here are a select mime of then.
Bad Company – “Shooting Star”
While Bad Company is known for their stiff and mechanical hard rock, it is their gentle, primarily acoustic (save for the guitar solo) hit that most stands out in their library. It’s story is a simple one, practically a summary of 1000 other songs of its type – Johnny dreams of being a rock n’ roll star, the dream comes true, and then dies under vague circumstances of overindulgence and depression. But it’s Paul Rodgers wind tunnel vocal that bring out the resonating power of the ballad. The man has one hell of a voice, and could make any concept sound like a universal truth.
Johnny is a glimmer in the mortal world, but his music and the brevity of his fame is what makes him eternal. It didn’t have to be “Love Me Do” that drove him to be a famous musician and it didn’t have to be alcohol and sleeping pills that killed him. “Shooting Star” probably wasn’t self-referential, and, thankfully, it wasn’t prophetic. but it’s warm and endearing melody make it song relatable to every rock performer, and every fan of rock music.
Golden Earring – “Radar Love”
Essentially, “Radar Love” is a song about telepathy, and one that could only have been written before the rise of cell phones and ease of mobile communication. Taking place on a dark highway in the late hours of the night, the singer hears the voice of his far-away lover in his exhausted mind that powers him to continue.
Underscored by a rattling drum beat, one that we can all sometimes hear in our heads when up at 3 a.m.; and an up-tempo bass melody, “Radar Love” isn’t a song that wallops with power. Rather, it makes all of it’s elements low-key, with only the vocals occupying the front of the mix. The lean guitar solo only comes out of one speaker, and the horns in the instrumental section serve as a perfect complement. It’s one of the tidiest road jams in rock music.
David Bowie – “Space Oddity”
I wonder what it was like to hear this song when it was originally released? Apollo 11 wouldn’t land on the moon for another two weeks, the space race against the Soviets was in full force. The black infinity beyond our atmosphere was seen as another geographic space that had to be explored and conquered. Go skyward, young man.
Bowie’s breakthrough single is a warped masterpiece that captures the marvel of space travel and the insignificance of it. A shuttle in the vacuum of space is just a “tin can” where one can only sit and watch the Earth spin. The iconic Major Tom, a character that is in entirety his occupation goes from public hero to tragic figure from one verse to the next.
“Space Oddity” is like a Hitchcock film, there is so much going on at any one moment, repeated listens is the only way to understand it as a whole. The slow, suspenseful introduction as Bowie counts down to liftoff, the launch sequence that feels like fresh air after two minutes underwater and the progressive instrumentals as Major Tom watches the clouds take shape.
There is now a musical genre called Space Rock, this song invented it.
Bob Seger – “Turn The Page”
If it weren’t for the faint crowd sounds heard throughout and at its conclusion, it would be impossible to realize that “Turn The Page” (as it is most often played) was recorded live. While the saxophone and keyboard work to fill in the holes in the blackness, Seger’s voice is so arresting it’s difficult for the ears to notice anything but.
“Turn The Page” is Seger chronicle of being a touring musician, particularly one with a hippie appearance in the conservative heartland – “All the same old clichés, is that a woman or a man?” It remains one of Seger best written songs, with no line out of place and all building towards the final chorus as Seger wails in exhaustion and desperation. We only want him to keep going.
Kansas – “Carry On My Wayward Son”
Every anthemic rock song owes something to “Carry On My Wayward Son.” It’s five-and-a-half minutes of exhilarating progressive brilliance. The opening harmony vocals burst like a broken dam, and every guitar riff spills over the last like a rocky mudslide. The vocals float over an ethereal keyboard with lyrics resounding with pomp.
Kansas was never more on point than with “Carry On My Wayward Son.” There’s not too much depth to it once you get beyond “charade of the season,” but it’s absolute pleasure when it comes on and it takes a lot of self control not to sing along or break out into air guitar.
Steve Winwood – “Higher Love”
The predominant issue with rock in the 80s is that it was overproduced. The synthesizer went from fresh new voice in the legislature to a maniacal dictator and many of the guitar and drums parts were processed like a prime piece of beef reworked into a Big Mac.
But Winwood, like a chemist in a cluttered laboratory, creates a perfect balance on “Higher Love,” and it’s accompanying album “Back In The High Life.” It falls more into the realm of baroque pop than rock, dazzling with sunshine as Winwood’s soulful voice is reinforced by Chaka Kahn using a gospel chorus effect.
The trumpets, synthesizers (applied to practically every instrument) and guitar are in flawless cohesion, and Winwood shows off his talents as a singer as well as an engineer. “Higher Love” is what every Phil Collins song would sound like if they were, y’know, better.
Crosby, Stills and Nash – “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”
It’s hard to get tired of a song when it’s really four songs in one, a suite defined as a collection of unfinished songs loosely strung together. All the stranger that it became one of the group’s biggest hits and has endured in prominence to this day.
Stephen Stills begins by lamenting about his collapsing relationship with folk singer Judy Collins, trying to push her away from him without creating a permanent divide. Then the group harmonizes about seeking inspiration and love in birds, flowers and spirits (basically an Emily Dickinson poem). The song closes out with Stills singing in Spanish about Cuba over scat vocals that not even a strong concussion could get out of your head.
“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” is CSN in a nutshell, lush synchronized vocals impossible to mimic, a rustic folksy sound and majestic songwriting. What’s not to love?
Steely Dan – “Do It Again”
Is there any band as unique in their sound as Steely Dan? At the top of the “Related Artists” section on their Spotify page are The Doobie Brothers and Chicago. Not even close. They are to jazz rock what Pink Floyd is to psychedelic rock, they are the best at what they do and there is no comparison.
While it would be nice to hear “Midnite Cruiser” or “Bad Sneakers” or any of their fifty other excellent songs on the radio, I will take “Do It Again” every single time.
Featuring the band’s eclectic percussion, a washed out sitar and a syncopated melody and Donald Fagen’s frequent themes of glitz and indulgence gone awry, “Do It Again” is like a strong foreign cheese in a sandwich of store brand turkey and ham, those being songs by Def Leppard and Styx.
Led Zeppelin – “Stairway To Heaven”
Sorry Robert Plant, sorry writers of “Wayne’s World,” I still haven’t heard enough of “Stairway To Heaven,” and I never will. Epic is a word I try to use sparingly, but there’s no better term to describe Led Zeppelin’s nearly eight minute mystical journey that ends with Plant’s voice ripping itself into a new frequency and a guitar solo by Jimmy Page that is the personification of Paradise itself.
Even though I must have heard “Stairway To Heaven” 500 times in my life, I haven’t gotten a complete grasp of its story, but its cryptic nature and ominous tone are what makes it so inviting again and again. I still get a slight shill whenever I hear “the forest with echo with laughter.” Plant himself said there is no single interpretation to his magnum opus, and that he wrote the song practically outside of his own mind. In a way “Stairway To Heaven” creation is also its essence, going to great lengths to find something that is beyond oneself.
All I know is that every time I hear those opening and the misty flute that incites inner visions of a dark and dreary wood lit by fireflies and ripe with the otherworldly. I lay back and allow the song to enwrap me for an experience no less potent today than it was when I was 10 years old.
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