Playlist

Playlist: Our Favorite Songs About… Flying

~ kcorsini ~ 13 Comments

SupermanMovie

“I like pleasure spiked with pain, and music is my aeroplane…” – Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Aeroplane”

I took a little time away from B&V to recharge the musical batteries. As it turns out I’ve also spent a little time in airports and airplanes recently as well… I am on record as admitting I chose the career of the itinerant sales guy. I have to admit, due to the pandemic, I hadn’t flown in quite a while. What a shitty experience flying is now. I’m old enough that I can remember when I was a real little kid, people used to dress up to fly. I remember the first time I flew, I was probably 3, my mom put me in a sporty red blazer and clip-on tie and shellacked my cowlick hair down with, well, mom spit. I don’t remember most of it, but I’ve seen the pictures. In those pics my grandparents, who only drove to the airport to pick us up, were also dressed to the nines. I can’t imagine seeing my Grandmother in yoga pants or my grandfather in a Budweiser t-shirt standing at the gate. We’re not even making the bare minimum effort folks. The last time I flew, I was sitting across from a guy who farted and pretended nothing happened. Thanks pal.

Ah, flying. It all seemed so glamorous when I was a kid. I remember it as being a lot easier. The Wright Brothers, who were the first to fly in 1903 probably never imagined having to take your shoes off to board the Wright Flyer outside of Kitty Hawk. I’ve spent my whole career hanging around airports waiting on a delayed flight or having made the mad dash to the airport and missed that elusive earlier flight. I can’t even begin to tally up all the time I’ve wasted sitting in the gate of some crowded, sweaty airport. I think the airlines only hire sadists these days. I had a flight cancelled recently and I’m certain the gate agent was a former prison camp commandant…There’s something inherently lonely about flying. I was always surrounded by people but had my head buried in my work laptop or a book and most always had my trusty headphones on to be transported out of that situation by rock n roll. What’s that old cliche about being “alone in a crowd?”

That’s the thing about flying somewhere. You are, by definition, leaving somewhere or some place. And flight allows us to travel great, great distances so you’re again, by definition, going a long, long way from home. While travel and traveling are exciting there is an underlying sorrow that always seemed to nag me. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy soaring above the clouds, looking down and trying to recognize landmarks, headed off to explore the world. I’ve been from San Francisco to New York to Barcelona and Rome. There is a freedom in being able to “fly away.” But that freedom also can breed isolation. Sometimes the person you’re flying away from deserves to be left behind. But, then again, now I do most of my fun travel with the Rock Chick and I find that immensely better than the old days.

I will admit, when anybody asked me – and strangely people seemed to ask me this a lot – what “Super Power” I would want if I could have one, I always said flying. Naturally most of my friends wanted to be invisible… something about sneaking into the girl’s shower and “observing?” I have always been surrounded by degenerates…thankfully. I always thought being able to fly – without a plane – was the Super Power to pick. I always said, “I want to fly like Superman,” as the Kinks famously sang. You could go anywhere and be there quickly. You didn’t have to check bags or sit in the middle seat. And who amongst us hasn’t admired the majestic flight of birds. I was standing by a pond once when a flock of ducks floated in and landed on the water in unison. I remember thinking, “Man, I wish I could do that…”

Of course, for me, the easiest way for me to get “airborne” is to slip those head phones on, much as Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers described above, and turn up the music. All of these thoughts about flying – whether in a plane or like superman or birds in flight – got me to thinking about all the great rock n roll songs about flying. I figured it all be “pedal to the metal,” hard driving rock songs. But like I was describing above, there seems to be an undercurrent of sorrow in some of these tracks. As with all of our playlists, we’re all over the board stylistically. It’s the theme that’s important. B&V playlists are best played on “shuffle.”

Without further adieu, here are our favorite songs about Flying. You can find our playlist on Spotify if you’re interested. As always, if there’s a favorite of yours we didn’t include, drop it in the comments. I like to think of B&V playlists as “our” playlists, not “my” playlist. I have left my thoughts on each track below…

  1. Pink Floyd, “Learning To Fly” – I know Pink Floyd purists don’t like the David Gilmour-led version of the band. I love this song. The way he describes flying, it doesn’t sound like he’s piloting a plane… Not every record is Dark Side of The Moon.
  2. The Byrds, “Eight Miles High” – Supposedly planes fly eight miles above the ground but I think the Byrds were likely thinking more about drugs here. Who can blame them, it was the 60s.
  3. The Beatles, “Back In The USSR” – McCartney seems very happy about getting back to the USSR. From The Beatles (aka The White Album).
  4. Eagles, “Earlybird” – From the Eagles debut LP. “He’s got no time for flying in the breeze…”
  5. The Box Tops, “The Letter” – From a young Alex Chilton who went on to form Big Star and record the legendary LP, #1 Record. “Gimme a ticket on an aeroplane, ain’t got time to take a fast train…”
  6. New York Dolls, “Jet Boy” – I just saw a great documentary about David Johansen, the lead singer of the Dolls. Great stuff!
  7. Lou Reed, “Fly Into The Sun” – From one of my favorite Lou LPs, New Sensations. Perhaps his happiest LP? I also love New York, of course.
  8. The Cult, “In The Clouds” – Great track only found on a greatest hits disc. If you’re in the clouds, I have to assume you’re flying.
  9. Jimi Hendrix, “Night Flying Bird” – Great posthumous tune from Jimi.
  10. The Black Keys, “Aeroplane Blues” – The Black Keys are so consistently kick ass. I loved their last LP, Dropout Boogie…
  11. Billy Joel, “Scandinavian Skies” – Billy Joel singing about a tour of Scandinavia where they flew from country to country? I had heard somewhere along the line that this song was about heroin?
  12. Slash (featuring Myles Kennedy & the Conspirators), “Bent To Fly” – My friend Stormin’ turned me onto Slash’s solo work with Myles. A soaring power ballad from World On Fire.
  13. Frank Sinatra, “Come Fly With Me” – I had to include a couple of tracks from the Chairman of the Board.
  14. Johnny Cash, “I’ll Fly Away” – Johnny singing from his mama’s hymn book. I’m at best a pagan and I whispered a little prayer the first time I heard this one.
  15. Elton John, “High Flying Bird” – Beautiful sad track from one of my favorite Elton albums, Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only The Piano Player.
  16. David Bowie, “Space Oddity” – You can’t fly much higher than outerspace.
  17. Chuck Berry, “Promised Land” – I wish I could time travel just so I could take this trip with Chuck. I should have found a cover of this track for my Chuck Berry Covers playlist…
  18. Howlin’ Wolf, “Mr. Airplane Man” – Howlin’ Wolf singing the blues, asking Mr. Airplane Man to help him find his baby who has taken off… Another mule is kickin’ in his stall.
  19. Sammy Hagar, “Eagles Fly” – Sammy giving us a somewhat patriotic vibe here.
  20. Peter, Paul and Mary, “Leaving On A Jet Plane” – This song, and this version of it, probably surprises some long time readers. My parents loved Peter, Paul and Mary. I grew up hearing this song. Not that my parents played much music.
  21. Frank Sinatra, “Fly Me To The Moon” – My favorite of the two Sinatra songs here.
  22. Marvin Gaye, “Flyin’ High (In The Friendly Sky)” – A track from Marvin’s landmark album from 1971, What’s Going On?
  23. Foo Fighters, “Learn To Fly” – I’m not a huge Fighter of Foo fan but I dig this one. Perfect for this playlist.
  24. Ozzy Osbourne, “Flying High Again” – From Ozzy’s second LP with Randy Rhoads on lead guitar… this song turned me into an Ozzy fan for life.
  25. Talking Heads, “And She Was” – I had originally heard that this song was about a woman who died and the “she” who is floating in the air was her soul. Turns out it’s a story of a chick who took acid and had an out of body, Sharky’s Machine experience.
  26. Steve Miller Band, “Fly Like An Eagle” – A 70s classic.
  27. Elton John, “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be a Long, Long Time)” – The first time I heard this track, from Honky Chateau, I was in the Smithsonian… Weird story.
  28. Buffalo Springfield, “Expecting To Fly” – Great Neil Young, trippy track from the Springfield.
  29. Paul McCartney, “Feet In The Clouds” – Again, maybe not exactly a flying song, but he’s in the clouds… how’d he get there?
  30. Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Travelin’ Band” – First line says it all, “Seven thirty seven comin’ out of the sky, Won’t you take me down to Memphis on a midnight ride…” I just included this in my playlist about the Music/Show Biz.
  31. Faces, “Flying” – I think this was the Faces first single? We do love the Faces here at B&V.
  32. REO Speedwagon, “Time For Me To Fly” – Another track about being time to go. So many times I stayed too long at the “party.”
  33. Iron Maiden, “Flight Of Icarus” – Only a metal band would take a story from Greek Mythology and turn it into a great rock n roll song.
  34. Mudcrutch, “Dreams of Flying” – I loved Mudcrutch. It was the perfect side project for Petty, Mike Campbell and Ben Tench. This is from the second album, creatively titled 2.
  35. Buffalo Springfield, “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong” – Great, great song written by Neil Young and sung by Richie Furay. I’d like to hear a version of this song sung by Neil… I’m sure it’s out there.
  36. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, “Little Wing” – One of my all time Hendrix favorites. “Fly on, little wing…”
  37. John Mellencamp, “My Aeroplane” – Great deep track from Mellencmap.
  38. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “My Zephyr” – “Fly away on my zephyr…” Does anybody know what Anthony is talking about?
  39. Paul McCartney & Wings, “Jet” – One of my favorite rockers from McCartney.
  40. David Bowie, “I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spaceship” – Bowie was always singing about space.
  41. Linda Ronstadt, “Birds” – Neil Young isn’t on Spotify, but Linda Ronstadt does a fine cover here. I loved her third album.
  42. David Crosby, “Sky Trails” – Brilliant title track from a brilliant album. Sung beautifully by David and Becca Stevens. So sad to have lost Croz this year.
  43. Stephen Stills, “Jet Set (Sigh)” – I loved Manassas.
  44. Queen, “Spread Your Wings” – “Spread your wings and fly away…” From my first Queen LP purchase, News Of The World.
  45. INXS, “Johnson’s Aeroplane” – Obscure early INXS but I dig it.
  46. R.E.M., “Alligator Aviator Autopilot Anitmatter” – R.E.M.’s last few lps were awesome. This fun track is from Collapse Into Now.
  47. Elton John, “Take Me To The Pilot” – I think if you asked to be taken to the pilot these days, the plane would land and an international incident would ensue. A great, great Elton track.
  48. David Bowie, “Like A Rocket Man” – Late period, fabulous Bowie. Bowie and Elton seem obsessed with flying. “I’m speeding like a rocket man…”
  49. Bad Company, “Movin’ On” – Sometimes you just gotta pack up, head to the boarding gate, and get outta there. I had to do this in Jamaica once. Luckily the embassy didn’t get involved.
  50. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Aeroplane” – The true theme song of this playlist. Let the music help you soar, baby.
  51. Led Zeppelin, “Night Flight” – One of my all time favorite deep tracks from the mighty Zeppelin.
  52. Joni Mitchell, “Amelia” – Joni, like Neil is boycotting Spotify – rightly so – so I sub’d in David Crosby’s cover. But I had to list her name here as her version is definitive.
  53. Bad Company, “Seagull” – “Now you fly, through the sky, never asking why, And you fly all around ’til somebody, Shoots you down.” Heavy stuff.
  54. Elton John, “Daniel” – A lamentation about seeing his brother return to Spain on an airplane.
  55. Steve Miller Band, “Jet Airliner” – Another great 70s classic from Steve Miller Band. I’ve always loved this song.
  56. Lenny Kravitz, “Fly Away” – From Lenny’s great LP, 5.
  57. The Kinks, “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman” – I think I included this track on my list of rock bands with a disco song? I was more of a Batman guy, but I did used to wish I could fly like Superman.
  58. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Police Helicopter” – This is the only song I’ve ever known about helicopters so I included it. Not many people like early RHCP’s, but I do.
  59. Pearl Jam, “Given To Fly” – I consider this one of their greatest tracks.
  60. The Beatles, “Flying” – A spacey instrumental that I felt had to be included. There are some wordless vocals toward the end, but I consider it an instrumental.
  61. The Rolling Stones, “Flight 505” – You know how I love the Stones and it took me this long to include one of their songs? “Well yes I’ll have a drink.” A sorry tale about a man who decides to leave home and seek adventures, but the plane lands… in the sea.
  62. Crosby, Stills, Nash, “Just A Song Before I Go” – Sad track where the singer just wants to hear a song with his woman before he takes off for the “friendly skies.”
  63. The Beatles, “Blackbird” – “Take these broken wings and learn to fly, all your life you were only waiting for this moment to be free…”
  64. Mudcrutch, “Bootleg Flyer” – Mudcrutch having fun imagining flying a plane full of smuggled hooch really low, just above the trees.
  65. ZZ Top, “Flyin’ High” – Soaring arena rock from ZZ Top. Always a winner…
  66. Rush, “Fly By Night” – Another of my absolute favorite tracks… Can’t believe it took me this long to get it on the list.
  67. Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Free Bird” – If you have to have a good ending song, this is it. “Won’t you fly high free bird?” My wife hates this song.

There you go friends. A little playlist to help you as you soar above the clouds whether you’re in an airplane or in your backyard on the patio. Again, if you have a favorite I might have missed, drop it in the comments and I’ll add it on Spotify.

Cheers! And lets remember – Birds of prey know they’re cool (according to the Far Side anyway).

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B&V Playlist: For The Love Of… Money

~ kcorsini ~ 12 Comments

Money_Cash

“When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know that it is.” – Oscar Wilde

Before I met my wife I was always fond of saying, “Money and sane women have eluded me my whole life.” But since the Rock Chick never laughed at that line, I stopped saying it. It got a little awkward. And let’s be honest I wasn’t the most solid citizen in the old days – I’m happy to own my part in the craziness…bygones. Anyway, having been happily wed for a long time, I guess I would now amend my original statement to “money has eluded me my whole life.” I mean, I’ve been lucky professionally, but big money has always seemed just out of my grasp. I guess it’s like Springsteen once sang, “Poor man wants to be rich, rich man wants to be king, and the king ain’t satisfied until he rules everything.” The more you get the more you seem to want. The reach always seems to exceed the grasp.

I read recently that to be in the top “1%” you would need to earn on average, $823k a year. That’s some big bucks. To be in the top 5% in terms of earnings, you’d need to average $283k a year, again big bucks. I know income distribution currently is as out of wack as it was during the “Gilded Age” in the late 1800s. Back in the Gilded Age, like five families controlled 80 percent of the wealth and the rest of us, based on pictures I’ve seen, all lived in the same tenement house battling over what was left. I realize there was real wage growth in those days but there was a lot of terrible poverty especially for immigrants and minorities. It was overall a pretty awful time. It would appear that certain elements in this country are trying to push us back to those days. What they forget, as they siphon off more money for the super rich, is that without a stable middle class, democracy almost always fails. As someone said to me recently, “It used to be you could work in a factory your whole life and if you didn’t join a country club, you’d have a nice retirement.” Do we even have factories any more?

It’s no coincidence that I’ve got money currently on my mind and today is Tax Day in the U.S. It’s typically April 15th, but since that fell on a weekend, U.S. taxpayers were given until today to pay their federal and state taxes. I’ve posted about Tax Day Blues and even included a playlist but today I’m thinking more about money in general. There’s a high likelihood as a member of the middle class I’m paying more tax than Elon Musk which seems a little backward to me. I guess I’m like that song by the Stereophonics, “Every Day I Think About Money.” When I was young, I didn’t have any money so I worried about it a lot. Then I had some money and I constantly thought about how to get more money. And that’s sort of been the mindset I’ve been stuck in since I was 30.

There was a time when I was happy just to have enough money for beer and vinyl albums. Maybe some extra cash to take a date to the movies. I’d work summer jobs – mowing lawns or building tennis courts which afforded me a fabulous tan – which was the goal in the summer – or I’d work as a bus boy or a dishwasher which afforded me a legendary case of acne. As a friend once said to me, “It’s summer, you drink beer with your friends.” I’ve already chronicled my old days as a working stiff when I posted a playlist in honor of Labor Day last year so I won’t beat that drum again. In many ways I was a much happier guy in those days. Of course I was living at my parents house. My friend Arkansas Joel always said he was happier when he was flipping burgers in high school. As life went on, there were bills, mortgages or rents to be paid and car payments to be made. Responsibility costs money. No wonder there are so many t-shirts that say “Not Adulting Today” out there.

While Oscar Wilde is right, money is important, I hated starting with such a cynical quote. I did find it funny. I wonder if we’re measuring success incorrectly in the world. We’re all so focused on money and materialism we don’t think about the other ways to measure success. Money really isn’t everything – although it certainly seems like it in today’s society. I’ve never been one of those “he who dies with the most toys wins” kind of guys. Having a great, strongly bonded family or great relationships with friends and colleagues is just as big a sign of success as a McMansion. Doing good in your community or doing good unto others has to be a measure? When I was in college I considered becoming a history professor. I was passionate about researching and writing and let’s face it I look good in a tweed sport coat with those leather elbows. But I talked to one of the history professors and he said, “There are probably more history majors driving cabs than teaching history.” I didn’t want to starve so I joined the large rank of traveling sales people. It worked out okay but I can’t describe it as a passion. The best parts of the job were the relationships I formed with the people I worked with and the mentoring I’ve done over the years in management. When I think about it through that prism – the relationships and impact I had on people’s lives – I actually think I might be more successful than I allow myself to think I am.

As I sat around thinking about money and my decision all those years ago to be a “happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender,” I started to think about all the great rock n roll songs about money – dough, cashish, coin, cabbage and my favorite scratch – and suddenly to snap out of it I started to build this playlist. As always tempo-wise it’s all over the place. We aim to put a song you haven’t heard in a while back in your ear or better yet, turn you on to something you haven’t heard. I usually recommend hitting “random” when you play these tracks. It works in order, but hey, variety is the spice of life… and apparently money is the honey. Here’s the playlist and you can find my comments on each tune below. And no, I didn’t include any versions of “Shake Your Money Maker,” because let’s face it… that song ain’t about money.

  1. Warren Zevon, “Lawyers, Guns and Money” – Always a go-to tune for me when there was trouble… or when “the shit has hit the fan.” Zevon needs to be in the Rock Hall this year…
  2. Prince, “Money Don’t Grow On Trees” – Prince had so many great tunes. This was in the vaults for a long time. Originally recorded for 1999. And apparently he stole the title from a phrase my father was fond of repeating when I was growing up.
  3. AC/DC, “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting Around To Be A Millionaire)” – I’m stunned by how many songs AC/DC have about money. They truly have their “mind on my money and my money on my mind.” This song makes me smile.
  4. Ozzy Osbourne, “The Almighty Dollar” – Ozzy from the sadly overlooked gem Black Rain.
  5. Motley Crue, “Keep Your Eye On The Money” – Good advice from the Crue.
  6. Montrose, “Paper Money” – Montrose, Sammy Hagar’s first band, long before Van Hagar and Chickenfoot. With Ronnie Montrose on guitar.
  7. The Black Keys, “For The Love Of Money” – I like this song so much I stole the title for this post… from last year’s Dropout Boogie.
  8. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Millionaires Against Hunger” – I wish there were more millionaires against hunger… or better yet a lot less hunger. I think this started as a charity single… Hillel Slovak on the lead guitar.
  9. Dire Straits, “Money For Nothing” – Iconic track from 1985. I can remember being in the car when I heard this for the first time and Sting came over the speakers and sang, “I want my MTV…” Mind blown. The next thing I knew I was going 80… but that might just be how I drove back then.
  10. Tom Waits, “’til The Money Runs Out” – Things are always bad when the money runs out, as Mr. Waits reminds us here.
  11. Randy Newman, “It’s Money That Matters” – Sadly, if you deign to look at any social media these days this adage seems to be true.
  12. The Firm, “Money Can’t Buy” – I’ve always felt that the Firm were slightly under-achievers considering the pedigree of Paul Rodgers (Free, Bad Company) and Jimmy Page (the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin) but that didn’t keep me from buying both their LPs.
  13. The Black Keys, “Money Maker” – The Keys are just so solid. Do they have a bad tune?
  14. Queen, “The Millionaire Waltz” – Only Freddie Mercury could get away with a song like this. Brian May’s guitar work is, as always, spectacular.
  15. AC/DC, “What You Do For Money Honey” – The most hateful track on here. Used to remind me of someone in the 90s but those thoughts have long disappeared into the ether.
  16. Alice Cooper, “Billion Dollar Babies” – I’d put Alice Cooper in their prime up against any band from the 70s.
  17. Van Morrison, “Blue Money” – I doubt when Van wrote this song that “blue money” was slang for $100 bills.
  18. Robert Plant, “All The Money In The World” – Plant’s late work is all fantastic and should be played at maximum volume whether it’s with Alison Krauss or just by himself.
  19. The Who, “Put The Money Down” – Great deep cut from Odds And Sods.
  20. Bruce Springsteen, “Easy Money” – I know Billy Joel has a song with the same title from An Innocent Man, but I despise that album.
  21. The Beatles, “Money (That’s What I Want)” – So many versions of this song out there, I had to go with the Beatles.
  22. Crosby & Nash, “Take The Money And Run” – Love these guys as a duo and a lot of their solo work.
  23. Bruce Springsteen, “The Price You Pay” – Often the price we pay isn’t in dollars.
  24. Bob Dylan & The Band, “Million Dollar Bash” – Dylan with his best backing group, The Band… recorded in the basement of the iconic house known as Big Pink.
  25. Bob Seger, “Ain’t Got No Money” – “but I sure gotta whole lotta love.” That pretty much describes me from ages 16 to 35.
  26. Aretha Franklin, “Money Won’t Change You” – The Queen spreading truth. They say money won’t change a man but it only amplifies what was there before. Food for thought.
  27. The Who, “Did You Steal My Money?” – From one of those albums that perhaps only I love.
  28. Don Henley, “If Dirt Were Dollars” – Great Henley deeper album cut.
  29. AC/DC, “Moneytalks” – “Money talks and bullshit walks…” I wonder if they were inspired by Spinal Tap.
  30. AC/DC, “Money Made” – AC/DC have so many tracks on this playlist, I just gave up and put 2 in a row. There is nothing more satisfying than getting that paycheck when you’ve earned it through some good ol’ fashion labor.
  31. Annie Lennox, “Money Can’t Buy It” – One of music’s greatest voices.
  32. Peter Frampton, “(I’ll Give You) Money” – Frampton’s heaviest riff? Great guitar work here.
  33. Beady Eye, “Millionaire” – One of the Rock Chick’s favs.
  34. AC/DC, “Down Payment Blues” – Bon Scott giving us a little darkness on one of my favorite AC/DC LPs, Powerage.
  35. B.B. King, “Paying The Cost To Be The Boss” – I love the original but I almost went with B.B.’s version on Deuces Wild performed with the Stones. Mick and B.B. singing, with Keef and Ronnie Wood riffing… yummy. I do so love the blues.
  36. Scorpions, “Money And Fame” – What everybody wants but few work for…
  37. Bulletboys, “For The Love Of Money” – The Rock Chick turned me onto this 80s rocker.
  38. Black Crowes, “Downtown Money Waster” – Every thing about this tune is cool. And since I lived downtown most of my life, I can identify with the title character.
  39. The Beatles, “You Never Give Me Your Money” – From the second side medley on Abbey Road.
  40. Ray Charles, “Greenbacks” – Ray Charles singing about money is actually money!
  41. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “30 Dollar Fine” – From the expanded/deluxe 50th anniversary edition of Deja Vu. Some times the Man makes you pay the fine.
  42. U2, “Silver And Gold (Live)” – This song is about so much more than money… I took any excuse I could to slip it onto a playlist.
  43. Dave Matthews Band, “Pay For What You Get” – DMB with some early career truth. If the price is too good to be true, turn and walk away.
  44. Van Halen, “Big Fat Money” – I’ve never had big or fat money but it sounds like fun.
  45. Spoon, “Rent I Pay” – The bill is always due, the wolf is always at the door.
  46. Randy Newman, “It’s Money That I Love” – This is true for quite a few people I know… sadly.
  47. Steve Miller Band, “Take The Money And Run” – Two thieves out on the road, running from the law. Ah, the 70s.
  48. Pink Floyd, “Money” – This iconic track is likely their most famous song. I’ve been listening to this a lot in the last few weeks as the band celebrates the 50th anniversary of Dark Side Of The Moon.
  49. Rickie Lee Jones, “Easy Money” – Also covered by Lowell George of Little Feat on his sole solo album.
  50. Rush, “The Big Money” – I knew a woman whose nickname was Big Money…
  51. Patti Smith, “Free Money” – Well I think we could all get on board for a little free money…
  52. The White Stripes, “Honey, We Can’t Afford To Look This Cheap” – Great little B-side from our friends the White Stripes. This track is from Icky Thump, but I’ve been listening to that new 20th anniversary edition of Elephant of late.

There you have it folks. If I missed a favorite song about money of yours, please leave it in the comments section and I’ll see that it gets added to our playlist.

For those of you bummed out about your tax bill today, I suggest turning this playlist up and pouring something brown and murky. For those of you getting a refund, my advice is well, turn this playlist up and pour something dark and murky. Isn’t that always my advice?

Cheers!

Playlist: Favorite Country Rock Songs – Rockers Going “Country-ish,” Hidden Rhinestone Gems

~ kcorsini ~ 15 Comments

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*Image of Gram Parsons taken from the internet and likely copyrighted

If someone were to ask me today, what my favorite music is, I’d give the same answer I would have given when I was in my teens. I only hate two kinds of music – country and western. Especially today’s country. I mean I’ll admit as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten into Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline and the late, great Johnny Cash. I saw Merle Haggard open for Dylan and frankly he blew Bob off the stage. His voice is liked aged whiskey, amazingly smooth. I was probably aided in my journey toward older country music by my sister-in-law who happens to be a country singer in a gigging band. That said, today’s country music is nauseating to my rock n roll sensibilities. It all sounds like re warmed Bob Seger played with an insipid twang.

However, I have to admit some of the greatest rock and roll bands/artists ever have done country songs. Or at the very least “country-ish” songs. They’ve all done tracks that are either overtly country or heavily influenced by country. I’m not talking about Bon Jovi doing a country album as a career move. I’m talking about the Stones, the Byrds or Neil Young making country rock, well, fashionable. Country rock was established in the late sixties… bands from the Buffalo Springfield to the Stones incorporated country-tinged tracks on their albums. No one more than the Byrds who did a straight-up country album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. That album came out when country music was considered the property of red-necks and hicks. Which, let’s admit, it is. The Byrds actually played a show at the Grand Ole Opry… their long hair was met with sullen, menacing silence. Country rock was born!

I actually started out tangentially listening to country. My dad had a stack of singles from when he was young and cool. He had some great music in that old wire rack of his. My brother kind of took ownership of those singles and played them all the time. I remember hearing Dion, Elvis Presley and yes, Johnny Cash. Oddly though I never associated Cash’s music with country music. It sounded more fundamental to me. I thought of Johnny Cash along the same lines as Elvis, as early, earthy rock and roll. There wasn’t that much separation between Elvis and Johnny to my novice ears. It all had a steady beat. Years later during his American Recordings era I started to hear people describe Johnny as the world’s first punk rocker. Weirdly, I sorta get that.

While I was as staunchly anti-country music as I was a “Death Before Disco” guy, I was actually listening to rock acts doing country without realizing it. I can be a little thick. On the first album I ever bought, the Stones’ Some Girls, one of my favorite tracks was always “Far Away Eyes.” I loved that it lampooned people for using religion for more…temporal purposes. In the song Mick prays and sends a donation to a radio church for a girl with “far away eyes.” Praying for sex? It actually makes some sense. It was years before I realized that song was basically a country song. I finally started to realize how many great country tracks the Stones did. That was mostly from the influence of Keith Richards’ friend, Gram Parsons. Gram was the driving force in his brief period in the Byrds and got them to record Sweetheart of the Radio. Gram turned Keith onto country music and he started writing songs in that country vein. Jagger once said that while the band played straight up country he always sang it in a mocking style. Tongue in cheek (rather than sticking out through thick lips like their logo) and rolling eyes. He said he considered himself more of a blues singer than a country singer. Only later did he get into in a serious way with tracks like “Wild Horses.” Whether its blues, country or reggae (B&V Playlist: Rockers Playing Reggae: It’s Not Just For Vacation Any More) Mick can sing anything.

When I was in college I had a music addict (like me) for a roommate, Drew. Drew was the one who turned me onto Neil Young. Prior to meeting Drew I’d have said, eh, Neil, no thanks on that voice. In 1985 Neil went full on country with his album Old Ways. It was during a bit of a creative and commercial lull in Neil’s career. Geffen Records had actually sued him for purposely making “uncommercial music.” As a “fuck you” to the record company he went full on country on Old Ways. I think there’s even a duet with Willie Nelson. To this day, I’ve never heard that record. In ’85 having just been turned onto Neil and his great early catalog, I went and found Drew to announce the bad news… “Oh my God, Neil has gone country, can you believe it?” Drew, ever the wise rock and roller, shook his head and said, “Have you been listening to Neil? What do you think he meant by “Are You Ready For The Country”?” My god, he was right.

In the years since then I’ve branched out in many ways musically. I’m still not a fan of most country music but I can dig country rock. It’s, to my ears, a lot like folk rock. I’ve really gotten into the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and similar acts. One guy who was critical to the whole movement, pictured above, was Gram Parsons. Gram was in the Byrds when they did Sweetheart, as I mentioned above. He hung out with Keith at Nellcote in France, while the Stones were recording the basic tracks for Exile On Mainstreet. From the Byrds he went on to form the Flying Burrito Brothers with Chris Hillman, another hugely influential band. He dreamt of an “Cosmic American Music” blending rock and country. Frankly I think ex-Byrd Gene Clark came closer than Gram did… As I started to piece this playlist together, I realized I had to represent all that great music.

I’ve attempted in this playlist to compile my favorite country rock tunes. Some of these are really full on country, some are just country influenced or tinged. I think there are some real hidden gems here. My hope, as with all of my playlists, is that you’ll hear a song you might not have heard – or haven’t heard in a long time. My dearest hope is you’ll think, man I love that song. There are probably great country/country-rock songs I’ve missed here. I’m not into say, Poco. So if I’ve missed something you dig, put it in the comment section and I’ll add it to the playlist which as always is on Spotify. This one is under “BourbonAndVinyl.net Favorite Country Rock Songs.” I always recommend pushing the “shuffle” button. Put on your cowboy hat, put a piece of grass between your teeth, grab your favorite moonshine and groove on these tracks…The link to the Spotify playlist is below.

  1. The Rolling Stones, “Far Away Eyes” – This is where it all started for me so I had to start here.
  2. Neil Young, “Are You Ready For the Country?” – Apparently in 1985, I was not ready.
  3. Bob Dylan, “Lay Lady Lay” – Dylan doesn’t get enough credit for starting the country rock craze with his seminal album Nashville Skyline. 
  4. The Little Willies, “Fist City” – Norah Jones’ side project doing a Loretta Lynn cover.
  5. Mick Jagger, “Evening Gown” – Great, great solo Mick… covered gamely by Jerry Lee Lewis.
  6. Dillard & Clark, “Train Leaves Here This Morning” – Former Byrd Gene Clark was an underrated genius. Bernie Leadon recorded this song again when he was in the Eagles.
  7. Eagles, “Tequila Sunrise” – Speaking of the Eagles, this is one of my favs. Drinking your broken heart away, something B&V knows a lot about.
  8. Bob Dylan, “I Threw It All Away” – Another great track from Nashville Skyline. I love this song.
  9. Sheryl Crow, “First Cut Is The Deepest (Country Version)” – I wanted to incorporate more female voices and I love this version of a song made famous by Rod Stewart.
  10. The Allman Brothers, “Blue Sky” – “You’re my sunny day…” Great track.
  11. Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, “Girl From The North Country” – I avoided any overtly “country” artists but I had to sneak Johnny on here somehow.
  12. Neil Young, “Comes A Time” – Title track from a great album.
  13. Eagles, “Peaceful Easy Feeling” – What we all need in these troubled times.
  14. Gin Blossoms, “Cheatin'” – “Its not cheatin’ if she reminds me of you…” Great lyric.
  15. The Black Crowes, “Garden Gate” – From the great double album, recorded live at Levon Helms’ place, Before the Frost…Until the Freeze. 
  16. The Byrds, “Hickory Wind” – Gram Parsons’ signature track. One of the few he sang.
  17. Mike Ness, “The Devil In Miss Jones” – I love Social Distortion and Ness’ first solo album Cheating At Solitaire. There’s a great duet with Springsteen on there as well.
  18. The Flying Burrito Brothers, “Wild Horses” – It may seem like blasphemy to not put the Stones’ version of this song on here but I had so many other tracks by them to choose from.
  19. Norah Jones, “How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart” – Norah putting music to lyrics written by Hank Williams but never recorded.
  20. Hindu Love Gods, “I’m A One Woman Man” – Warren Zevon backed with 3/4 of R.E.M. doing an LP of great, eclectic covers.
  21. The Rolling Stones, “Dead Flowers” – Also on our heroin playlist, B&V Playlist: Chasing the Dragon – Songs About Heroin.
  22. Neil Young, “Beautiful Bluebird” – From the great late period LP, Chrome Dreams II, seemingly a sequel to an album never released.
  23. Robert Plant, “If It’s Really Got To Be This Way”* – I put an asterisk here as its not on Spotify. If you haven’t heard this tune, seek it out somewhere.
  24. Fleetwood Mac, “That’s Alright” – By the time they reconvened for Mirage Stevie Nicks had become a solo sensation with Bella Donna. She made the band do a country tune for her father who loved country music. This track works for me.
  25. Gram Parsons, “Ooh Las Vegas” – He didn’t do a lot of solo stuff but what he did is worth checking out.
  26. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Southern Accents” – This is more “country-ish” than country, but Mike Campbell’s superb dobro playing puts this track on the list.
  27. Linda Ronstadt, “Love Is A Rose” – Linda always had great taste in songwriters, doing a Neil Young track here. (Documentary Review: The Sublime ‘Linda Ronstadt, The Sound Of My Voice’).
  28. Talking Heads, “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel (Country Angel Version)” – Weirdest track on here? Yes.
  29. Doobie Brothers, “South City Midnight Lady” – People forget the Doobies were HUGE. I love this song.
  30. Grateful Dead, “Box of Rain” – Easily for me, their best song (Lookback: Grateful Dead’s Americana 1970 – ‘Workingman’s Dead’/’American Beauty’).
  31. Neil Young, “From Hank To Hendrix” – Another great country track from Neil.
  32. Eagles, “Lyin’ Eyes” – Every time I put a Neil Young track on this list it appears I have to put an Eagles’ song too. Gram Parsons, like the Dude, hated the Eagles. He described them unflatteringly as “a dry plastic fuck.” Not sure what that means but it doesn’t sound good.
  33. The Rolling Stones, “You Win Again” – Great deep track from the Stones (Playlist: B&V’s Favorite Rolling Stones Deep Tracks).
  34. Buffalo Springfield, “A Child’s Claim To Fame” – A dis track about Neil Young which caused him to write, “I Am A Child.” Musicians, what are you gonna do?
  35. John Fogerty, “Southern Streamline” – I could have gone with any number of CCR tracks but I like this Fogerty solo track.
  36. Randy Newman, “Rider In The Rain” – The Eagles sang back up on this standout track.
  37. Mudcrutch, “Orphan Of The Storm” – Great track from Petty, Campbell and Tench’s side project.
  38. Stephen Stills/Manassas, “Colorado” – One of the greatest country rock tracks ever.
  39. Doobie Brothers, “Black Water” – Another great Doobies track.
  40. The Rolling Stones, “Indian Girl” – “Little Indian girl, where is your faaaather?”
  41. The Little Willies, “Jolene” – Norah doing Dolly Parton this time.
  42. Lynyrd Skynyrd, “The Ballad of Curtis Loew” – Southern rockers had to be on here somewhere.
  43. CSNY, “Teach Your Children” – Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead’s pedal steel puts this track on the list.
  44. Rod Stewart, “What Made Milwaukee Famous” – Great cover of Jerry Lee Lewis.
  45. Elvis Costello, “Good Year For The Roses” – Elvis doing George Jones.
  46. Mike Ness, “Cheating At Solitaire” – The title track of his great first solo album.
  47. Stephen Stills/Manassas, “So Begins The Task” – Such a great double album, I had to double dip from it for this list.
  48. Grateful Dead, “Friend Of The Devil” – One of their best known tracks.
  49. Pete Townsend, “There’s A Heartache Following Me” – Pete covering Jim Reeves because it was his guru’s favorite song.
  50. Led Zeppelin, “Hot Dog” – I love this track from their last album.
  51. Sheryl Crow/Kid Rock, “Picture” – I despise Kid Rock but I dig Sheryl.
  52. Don Henley, “You’re Not Drinking Enough” – Advice I always follow.
  53. Eagles, “Girl From Yesterday” – Oddly most of the country rock tracks by these guys I’m drawn to were sung by Glenn Frey.
  54. Sting, “I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying” – Sting is a pretentious dick, but he captures the country ethos of my baby is gone and she took my dog here.
  55. Hindu Love Gods, “Vigilante Man” – A Hank Williams cover I believe.
  56. Peter Wolf (with Mick Jagger), “Nothing But The Wheel” – Great track with Mick on harmony vocals.
  57. Lucinda Williams with Elvis Costello, “Jailhouse Tears” – The funniest song on this list.
  58. The Rolling Stones, “Do You Think I Really Care” – Another great deep track.
  59. Elton John, “Country Comforts” – Also really well done by Rod.
  60. Stevie Nicks, “After The Glitter Fades” – All the pedal steel on here puts this track on the list for me.
  61. Social Distortion, “Like An Outlaw (For You)” – Full-on “cow-punk.”
  62. The Blues Brothers, “Theme From Rawhide” – If this song doesn’t make you smile, you’re on the wrong blog

There ya go cowpokes! Enjoy! Stay safe out there!

Playlist: Virtual Summer Vacation Tour – 50 Songs For 50 States

~ kcorsini ~ 6 Comments

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I only recently realized that the year is half over. I was terribly busy at work and knew that June was ending – its a big deal for my Corporate Masters when the first half ends – but it wasn’t until I woke up on July 1st that I thought, wow, we’re now starting the back half of the year. I can’t believe that the July 4th, Independence Day Holiday is upon us. It tends to sneak up on me. I’d like to wish all my American readers a happy and safe 4th of July. We posted a playlist for the 4th a few years ago, BourbonAndVinyl iPod Playlist: 4th of July, American Independence Day. Remember folks, watch those firecrackers, we want all of you out there to keep all of your fingers. And also – sparklers are really hot so be careful with those. I burned my hand really badly one year… #clumsy.

For years on the 4th of July, we used to take our daughter out to my sister-in-law’s house in the country for that time honored tradition of “blowing shit up.” Now that she’s grown and moved away that tradition sort of withered. At night, out on that little farmstead, we’d climb up on the roof of the house which was on a hill and you could see every small town fireworks display in the three county area. It really was awesome to behold. I don’t even know if in this time of pandemic that towns and cities will be doing fireworks displays? I know east of where I live somebody has been enjoying lighting firecrackers for a few weeks now. Usually at 2 a.m., thanks kids.

For me, the calendar rolling to July tends to signal the start of summer. I know that most people associate the start of summer with Memorial Day and the end of summer with Labor Day, but for me the start of summer was always July. By July school was over, when I was older I was into whatever summer job I had. I was a bus boy for a while, filthy work, really. I also did light construction at my best friend Doug’s father’s company building tennis courts. That was even filthier work. Dirty jobs seemed to be my specialty back then. As the Who sang, “I’m getting put down, I’m getting pushed around…” In the tennis court days I prayed every summer day for rain. Joe Zona was the weather guy on the AM station and I used to listen to him every morning like he was the Oracle of Delphi hoping he’d say it would rain so I could have a day off.

When I think back (mostly fondly) of summers I think of my father’s tradition of taking us on a family vacation. I was a…let’s call it… “difficult” child. My father, brother and I weren’t terribly close at the time. We weren’t a fly-on-a-plane somewhere family. We’d load up the car and drive wherever we were going. Locking me, my brother and my father in the same car had to be pretty tense for mom. A lot of testosterone in a small space. It’s a wonder we all stayed alive. We drove as far as Cape Cod to visit my aunt one year. Thankfully my grandparents were in a second car… we communicated with toy walkie-talkies I’d gotten for Christmas the previous year. My brother and I would switch cars every time we stopped, like a prisoner exchange. We were like Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold’s family in ‘Vacation.’ I will say, after that trip we only drove that far one other time, to Florida. I think everybody realized the long drive was a difficult plan to execute.

The place we went probably more than any other was in southern Missouri. It was a western/cowboy themed amusement park named Silver Dollar City near Branson. I think it’s still open. This was before Branson became, well, Branson. It was nothing tremendous but we really loved going there. The problem was the three or four hours in the car getting there. My father, the poor bastard, would load us up in the car and before we’d hit Grandview he’d already run through his greatest hits: “Stop jiggling my seat,” “Don’t make me come back there,” or my favorite, “If I have to stop this goddamn car…” That was the most menacing of threats. His face would be red and I couldn’t even imagine how batshit crazy he’d have gotten if he ever did have to stop the car. I imagined being flogged with a belt beside the highway until the cops showed up to drag our rabid-dog-angry father away from us to prevent our death. I was so obnoxious the cops might’ve helped dad beat me. We didn’t have iPods or iPads or TV’s built into the back of the driver’s seat. It was 4 hours of billboard bingo… I spot an A… These kids today don’t realize the struggle was real. I feel sorry for my dad having to work 50 weeks a year only to face his hostile family for 2 weeks while we vacationed “together?”

Here I am all these years later and “summer vacation” means taking a few extra days off around the 4th of July so I can sleep late and go for a walk. These days it’s more likely a “staycation” instead of actually traveling somewhere. This year there really is nowhere we can go. I have a brother in Houston… nope, COVID is spiking there… I hope he’s wearing a mask. My wife will go out and see our daughter at some point but I’ll probably hang here at the house… Usually when she leaves me alone like that for a weekend she finds me slathered in peanut butter and bourbon, weeping over an old video of Springsteen and the E-Street Band, muttering, “I can’t believe the Big Man is gone…” I need adult supervision.

I know some people are planning to travel anyway, despite the pandemic. I see those crazies at the Lake of the Ozarks. I was never really a “lake” person. My pal Doug’s dad had a boat and that was fun, but my parents never took us to the lake. For those of you who are stuck at home – or hell for those of you on a long car drive, threatening members of your family for invasions of your space (“he’s on my side of the car”) – I thought I’d put together a playlist that takes us on a virtual tour of the United States. I know it’s trite, and it’s been done before, but never by us down here at the B&V labs. I tried to pick one song for every state. Usually I looked for songs that had the state in the title but the rules were pretty loose, to be honest with you. I actually got the idea listening to Neil Young who seems to have more songs named after states than seems normal. And yes, there are many songs about states, but these were my favs… and as usual I’m all over the place stylistically. You can find this playlist on Spotify, just search on “BourbonAndVinyl.net” and you’ll find it. Wherever you are out there, traveling or not, I hope you all have a great and safe summer. We’ll be here at B&V listening to rock and roll, locked in our attic like a modern day Boo Radley. Leaving our little gifts in the form of these humble posts. Enjoy!

  • Alabama: Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Sweet Home Alabama” – Well, you knew I’d go here first. I considered Neil Young’s “Alabama” but I knew I’d be using him later.
  • Alaska: Maggie Rogers, “Alaska” – I actually stumbled across this tune by accident. I know nothing about her but I dig this track.
  • Arizona: Scorpions, “Arizona” – From their great album, Blackout. 
  • Arkansas: Bruce Springsteen, “Mary Queen of Arkansas” – I actually had the pleasure of seeing Bruce play this deep track live in Little Rock (aka La Petite Roche).
  • California: 2Pac featuring Dr Dre, “California Love” –  We like to turn this track up as loud as it will go. Simply brilliant.
  • Colorado: Stephen Stills with Manassas, “Colorado” – From the country rock side of the double album… I love Manassas.
  • Connecticut: Aerosmith, “I Live In Connecticut” – I totally cheated here… this is just a song fragment. I like Aerosmith tho…and there aren’t a tremendous number of songs about Connecticut, the Wonder bread of states.
  • Delaware: George Thorogood, “Delaware Slide” – A really long song for a small state. This is George’s first appearance on a B&V playlist, welcome George.
  • Florida: Eric Clapton, “Mainline Florida” – I stayed in the guitar hero area here. I love this track.
  • Georgia: Willie Nelson & Ray Charles, “Georgia On My Mind” – I had to go with this live duet as most of Ray Charles’ music isn’t on Spotify. I don’t know who is running things at his estate but they might wanna look into that.
  • Hawaii: Neil Young, “Hawaii” – From the brilliant vault release Hitchhiker, LP Review: Neil Young’s Album From His Vault, ‘Hitchhiker’.
  • Idaho: B-52s, “Private Idaho” – Fun song from a fun band.
  • Illinois: Tom Waits, “Johnsburg, Illinois” – I was late to the Waits’ party but I’m all in now.
  • Indiana: Melissa Etheridge, “Indiana” – Kansas lady singing about Indiana…I loved her debut LP.
  • Iowa: Mal Blum, “Iowa” – I only picked this track because Manfred Mann’s “Stranded In Iowa” is not on Spotify. Sigh.
  • Kansas: Big Country, “We’re Not In Kansas Anymore” – I considered cheating and putting a track by the band Kansas here, but I dug this song.
  • Kentucky: Elvis Presley, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” – Many have sung this song, but none like the King.
  • Louisiana: Randy Newman, “Louisiana 1927” – Newman was from southern California but he spent summers at his New Orleans’ grandmother’s house.
  • Maine: Rudy Vallee, “Maine Stein Song” – Consider this track “intermission.” It sounds like a school fight song. There just aren’t many tracks about Maine.
  • Maryland: Good Charlotte, “There She Goes” – I don’t know if these guys are from Maryland but this song is about it.
  • Massachusetts: Modern Lovers, “Roadrunner” – “I’m in love with Massachusetts” was not how I was feeling after the Cap Cod trip of 1976…
  • Michigan: Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Especially In Michigan” – Kiedis’ mother lives in Michigan… I’m so glad Frusciante is back!
  • Minnesota: Tom Waits, “Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis” – Minny is a jewel of a city and this is a jewel of a track.
  • Mississippi: Bob Dylan, “Mississippi” – This track was also covered by Sheryl Crow but Dylan’s version trumps that.
  • Missouri: The Beatles, “Kansas City” – I went with this because, well, I’m from KC and I feel that the rest of the state outside of Jackson County is a no man’s land.
  • Montana: James Taylor, “Montana” – That voice…
  • Nebraska: Bruce Springsteen, “Nebraska” – The title track from Springsteen’s bleakest LP, B&V’s 10 Favorite Grim And Sad Albums.
  • Nevada: Billy Joel, “Stop In Nevada” – From his Piano Man album, which not surprisingly I love.
  • New Hampshire: Sonic Youth, “New Hampshire” – It’s about time we get some Sonic Youth on a B&V playlist!
  • New Jersey: Tom Waits, “Jersey Girl” – I didn’t realize I had so much Waits on here… Obviously I could have gone with Springsteen’s version but I dig this one.
  • New Mexico: Johnny Cash, “New Mexico” – I considered “Albuquerque” by Neil Young but you can’t beat the Man In Black.
  • New York: Frank Sinatra, “Theme From New York, New York” – So many NY songs to choose from, B&V Playlist: Songs For New York City, but you have to go with the Chairman of the Board on this one.
  • North Carolina: James Taylor, “Carolina On My Mind” – I did research here and this song is about North Carolina…
  • North Dakota: Lyle Lovett, “North Dakota” – A song about the “girls from North Dakota” and perhaps the saddest track on this list.
  • Ohio: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Ohio” – Written by Neil…”Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming, we’re finally on our own…” Powerful even today!
  • Oklahoma: Merle Haggard, “Okie From Muskogee” – I got to see Merle open for Bob Dylan. He had a voice like smooth whiskey. I’ve also been to Muskogee… a good place to be “from.” Merle was probably on the wrong side of history with this song, but I love the man’s music.
  • Oregon: Loretta Lynn, “Portland, Oregon” – From an album produced by Jack White. Great duet! Loretta and Jack, singing together? Yes, please.
  • Pennsylvania: Heart, “Pennsylvania” – A track I was unfamiliar with until I started researching this list a few months ago. Kind of a haunting track.
  • Rhode Island: Ike & Tina Turner, “Rhode Island Red” – Ike is a bad man but I dug this song.
  • South Carolina: The Raconteurs, “Carolina Drama” – From Jack White’s original side project. Great little band. This is my favorite song by the Raconteurs. And yes, he name drops South Carolina in the song so I’m good here.
  • South Dakota: Liz Phair, “South Dakota” – The 90s “It Girl” rocker.
  • Tennessee: Chris Stapleton, “Tennessee Whiskey” – On a blog with “bourbon” in its title you knew I’d be drawn to this track. My friend Drummer Blake turned me onto this one… This might be my favorite track on this list, right now anyway.
  • Texas: Stevie Ray Vaughn & Double Trouble, “Texas Flood” – The title track from the great bluesman/guitarist’s debut album.
  • Utah: The Beach Boys, “Salt Lake City” – It shows you my desperation on finding a track about Utah that I went to the Beach Boys (who I despise) for a track.
  • Vermont: Willie Nelson, “Moonlight In Vermont” – From the wonderful Stardust album. Willie was the first country singer I actually liked.
  • Virginia: Foo Fighters, “Virginia Moon” – Virginia is for lovers and fighters of Foo. Kind of mellow for them.
  • Washington: Nirvana, “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge Seattle” – I don’t know where Cobain got his inspiration for this song but the movie ‘Frances’ starring Jessica Lange might just be it… It was a harrowing, unblinking look at how Frances was just betrayed by everyone around her. I’ve always connected with this abrasive track.
  • West Virginia: John Denver, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” – The karaoke, sing along favorite. I had to reach deep on this state.
  • Wisconsin: Ben Iver, “Minnesota, WI” – Two states in one song…
  • Wyoming: Neil Young, “The Emperor of Wyoming” – From Neil’s debut album. 100% country-rock instrumental and a nice way to take us out of the 50 states.

Enjoy this little virtual tour of the fifty united states of the U.S.

Cheers!

Editors Note: No children were harmed or abused in the writing of this post, least of all me, your intrepid blogger. Corporal punishment was used sparingly in my house in the 70s and only when I deserved it. The threat of corporal punishment was used quite a bit. 

B&V Playlist: Happy Mother’s Day Playlist… Probably Safest To Not Play For Mom

~ kcorsini ~ Leave a comment

 

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“I hear “Mama” sounds the same in any tongue” – David Gilmour, “In Any Tongue”

I see that the calendar has rolled around to yet another “Hallmark Holiday,” namely Mother’s Day. I don’t know how this thing sneaks up on me every year. I’ll have to make the annual rush trip to the card shop, decked out in a mask and gloves… This year I’ll have to mail mom her card even though she lives in the same city as I do. Such is life in a pandemic.

I know there are all kinds of moms out there. Good ones, bad ones, tall ones, short ones, all kinds. When I refer to my mother, I tend to refer to her as “my sainted mother.” A lot of people say that about their mothers, but in this case, I really mean it. My mother is one of the nicest human beings you’re ever going to meet. If by chance I meet someone who knows my parents, inevitably the person says something along the lines of, “You’re mother is the sweetest person.” Which is probably confusing for most people  who meet me when they are forced to ponder how such a wonderful person (and she is wonderful) produced such a miscreant.

My first memory of my mother, and I’m willing to admit this may be apocryphal in nature, is riding in the back seat of a police car. No, I wasn’t arrested. I was probably two, which makes me think the memory was implanted in my head by hearing the story so many times. I was learning to tie my shoes. My mother was pregnant with my brother. For some reason my parents took me to the hardware store. They were looking for something and I wandered off. My shoe was untied and I swear in my mind I can see my tiny foot as I placed it on a stack of paint cans to tie my shoe. My father says he heard a crash, glanced down the aisle and all he could see were my legs sticking out from a pile of paint cans. I had a huge gash in my forehead, blood everywhere. My mom grabbed me and the cops grabbed my mom and rushed me to the hospital. I remember looking up at my mom’s face, bathed in the siren’s red glare as she tried to soothe me on the ride to the hospital. Maybe that’s why I’ve always thought of my mother as an angel. Paging Dr. Freud.

I feel bad for my mom. She had to play shuttle diplomat most of her life. She still does. She was the lone female in a small family surrounded by my father, me and my brother… none of whom got along particularly well in the old days. She would have to wander our house between whatever neutral corners that we’d all retreated to in order to avoid each other. I remember one Mother’s Day asking my dad what he was getting her for Mother’s Day… His reply always stuck with me, “Nothing…she’s not my mother.” There was none of that gross calling your wife “mother” at my house… Which, let’s face it, is super creepy.

I realize that the whole dynamic of mothers and daughters are completely different. Early in my tenure as the Evil Stepdad, I would drive my daughter to school every day. To torture her, I would tune the radio to NPR and make her listen to talk radio the bane of a junior high kid’s existence. I was the Evil Stepdad after all, so why not educate the child in the car. She would retaliate by wearing an entire bottle of perfume which was tough to stomach in a small car. One day on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ they had an author of a book about “mothers and daughters.” She was going on and on about mothers saying the most horrible things to their daughters because they thought they were “helping.” Stuff like, “I really liked your hair better when it was long,” or “Why in the world did you get bangs?” Usually when I pulled up to the school my daughter would spring from the car like she was being shot out of a cannon. On that day, as this lady author spun tales of mothers doing and saying horrible things, my daughter stayed in the car and turned up the volume. She and the Rock Chick were extremely tight even in those difficult adolescent days. I guess mother/daughter relationships are weird in their own right, maybe weirder.

In honor of all of you out there with complicated relationships with your mom (and whose isn’t?) we’ve compiled some of our favorite songs about moms. This isn’t going to be like a country song where it’s all sentimental misty-eyed love for mom. This playlist explores a lot of the more complicated emotions that are associated with moms. Some of my choices may leave you scratching your head, so I included an explanation of why I included it below. In some songs the mother might only be a part of a story with a broader meaning. I was surprised at how many songs about moms consist of conversations between sons/daughters and the mothers… maybe its the fact that so many of them are giving advice all the time, wanted or not. Maybe we just all have things we want to say to our mothers. There were a lot songs with “mama” in the title but they were mostly from the 70s where dudes called their girlfriends (or more appropriately their “main squeezes”) mama. I left those off the list, it was too close to that calling your wife “mother” thing. Creepy. In some of these songs the mother is only a peripheral figure in the story but if the vibe fit, I went for it. Again, these are just some of our favorites and it’s not meant to be definitive we’re just trying to put a smile on your face.

As always you can find our playlist on Spotify under the title “BourbonAndVinyl.net Mother’s Day Playlist…Probably Safest To Not Play for Mom.” As usual I’m all over the place here from country to heavy metal. Here’s the link, with our explanations below.

**Technical Difficulties Prevent Posting the Spotify Link**

  1. The Rolling Stones, “Mother’s Little Helper” – What mother doesn’t need a little “help” now and again?
  2. The Beatles, “Julia” – A song John Lennon wrote for his mother, Julia, who died when he was 17 when she was hit by a drunk driver… it was an off duty cop, no less.
  3. Norah Jones, “Tell Yer Mama” – A track in which Norah suggests to an ex that he should tell his mother he was raised wrong. Tough break-up tune. Mom is only a suggestion here, but it felt right.
  4. The Vaughn Brothers, “Baboom/Mama Said” – Where Jimmy and Stevie Ray trade guitar licks over the voice of their mother…
  5. Tracy Bonham, “Mother Mother” – I think Ms. Bonham captures the sometimes volatile nature of mother-daughter relationships here… but what do I know?
  6. The Rolling Stones, “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby” – I’ve never understood completely why this mother was hiding in the shadows. It’s perhaps a mystery only Mick Jagger can solve.
  7. Cowboy Junkies, “Musical Key” – Beautiful song about both parents really. “My mother sang the sweetest melody, although she never sang in a musical key.” An ex of mine, back in the day, wrote these lyrics down in a homemade Mother’s Day card and that stuck with me…
  8. Bruce Springsteen, “The Wish” – Bruce wrote so many (angry) songs about his dad, I guess it was finally his mom’s turn. He did this in his On Broadway show so it must be important to him (Review: Netflix’s ‘Springsteen On Broadway’ – The Artist’s Dialogue With Fans Comes to the Great White Way).
  9. Cream, “Mother’s Lament” – Cream “taking the piss” in a little humorous sing-a-long that I like to imagine was sung in taverns in England back in the day.
  10. Tom Petty, “Southern Accents” – Weird choice here, I know. Mom only makes a cameo but what a powerful image: “There’s a dream I keep having, where my momma comes to me And kneels down over by the window, and says a prayer for me…” One of Petty’s most evocative tunes.
  11. Joe Walsh & Barnstorm, “Mother Says” – I love Joe Walsh’s guitar playing. His solo stuff deserves more attention.
  12. Queen, “Tie Your Mother Down” – I’m not sure why mom needs to be tied down, but what Freddie Mercury wants, Freddie Mercury gets.
  13. Danzig, “Mother” – I think this song is hysterical. Glenn Danzig singing to someone’s mother, “and if you wanna find hell with me…” just kills me. It was either going to be this song or that crazy song of the same name by the Police, but I hate that one.
  14. Paul McCartney, “Only Mama Knows” – Great, late period rocker from McCartney.
  15. Merle Haggard, “Mama Tried” – My favorite song by Hags.
  16. John Lennon, “Mother” – A truly harrowing song where Lennon employs techniques he learned in scream therapy.
  17. David Crosby & Graham Nash, “Mama Lion” – It was written about Joni Mitchell, but I like it on this list anyway. Whose mother out there wasn’t a lion when it came to protecting you?
  18. Social Distortion, “Mommy’s Little Monster” – A song best used to describe me or my wife’s cat.
  19. Warren Zevon, “Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded” – The mother here was his maternal grandmother who was not crazy about Warren’s father.
  20. Randy Newman, “Mama Told Me Not to Come” – Mothers are always giving advice. Too bad we rarely listen. Three Dog Night had a hit with this but I prefer Randy’s original version.
  21. U2, “Iris (Hold Me Close)” – Bono writing about his late mother. It all reminds me of how lucky I was to have my mom.
  22. Ozzy Osbourne, “Mama, I’m Coming Home” – A phone call from a lonely pay phone that I made in college to my own mother springs to mind when I hear this song.
  23. Pink Floyd, “Mother” – “Mother should I build a wall?” A song about a, shall we say, overprotective mother?
  24. Dave Matthews Band, “Mother Father” – A nice little political rocker from DMB where the protagonist asks his mother & father, how did the world get into such a state? More relevant today than when it came out.
  25. Paul Simon, “Mother and Child Reunion” – Named after a dish in a restaurant that had both chicken and egg. Catchy, prime, rhymin’ Simon.
  26. Ozzy Osbourne, “Flying High Again” – This song sums up my entire adolescence…”Mama’s gonna worry, I’ve been a bad bad boy, no use sayin’ sorry, it’s something that I enjoy.” Perfect.
  27. James Brown, “Mother Popcorn” – I won’t even venture a guess as to what Soul Brother No. 1 is talking about here.
  28. David Gilmour, “In Any Tongue” – The best, most important track on this list. See the quote above.
  29. Metallica, “Mama Said” – Great deep track off of Load. 
  30. Elvis Presley, “That’s Alright” – Written for his mother. His first hit, I believe.
  31. Eric Clapton, “Motherless Child” – I think this is the first of two distinctly different versions of this song Clapton did. Or maybe both songs are from the same traditional song. I feel badly for those without a mother.
  32. Bob Seger, “Momma” – Great Seger from before Live Bullet made him famous.
  33. Bruce Springsteen, “The Hitter” – Another conversation with mom song. A burned-out boxer returns home and is trying to talk his mom into letting him in.
  34. Eric Clapton, “Motherless Children” – This one is from his comeback 461 Ocean Boulevard. 
  35. Neil Young, “New Mama” – “New mama’s got a sun in her eyes, no clouds are in my changing skies…”
  36. Aerosmith, “Mama Kin” – Steven Tyler’s favorite of their songs.
  37. Talking Heads, “Mommy, Daddy, You and I” – A disturbing tale of what sounds like a family of refugees heading north to escape… what?
  38. David Crosby & Graham Nash, “Carry Me” – This time it’s David Crosby writing about his newly deceased mother.
  39. Elvis Presley, “Mama Liked The Roses” – Hearing Elvis sing about his mama is almost as moving as hearing the man sing gospel.
  40. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Mommy Where’s Daddy?” – Goofballs singing a goofball song. I always laugh when I hear this song.
  41. The Beatles, “Your Mother Should Know” – She should… and she often does know, just ask her.
  42. The Who, “Squeeze Box” – Why does the mother have a squeeze box? Why does she play it all night? What is happening in this household? So many questions.
  43. Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” – Epic song. So much more than a song about his mother, but I couldn’t resist. It’s another track where there’s a conversation between an artist and his mother.
  44. U2, “Mothers of the Disappeared” – A political track about the mothers under Pinochet’s cruel rule, dancing in the village square to symbolically shame the regime into freeing their sons who were “disappeared.”
  45. Van Morrison, “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” – Van Morrison closing us out on a soulful rendition of what may be the same song Clapton did… A perfect reminder of how happy we should be with having any mother at all.

I’m sure you all have a favorite song that makes you think about your mother. Or a song that reminds you of her… Let me know what it is in the comments and I’ll add it to the playlist on Spotify. I hope you all have a safe, healthy, socially distanced Mother’s Day out there… Hint though, you’ll probably have a better day if you avoid playing this playlist for mom…

Cheers!

Playlist: An Old Friend Inspires The BourbonAndVinyl 30 Day Song Challenge

~ kcorsini ~ 4 Comments

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In my early 20s I was living in exile…in Arkansas no less. I had moved there for that first corporate job out of college. I couldn’t stand it and as Bob Dylan once sang, “one day the axe just fell.” I walked in and quit. On a random Tuesday. My father was utterly distraught. I don’t remember specific conversations with him but I seem to remember rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth. His anger was biblical in scope. I used to joke I could never get a date while I lived in Arkansas as I didn’t have any relatives down there. That probably goes a long way in explaining why Arkansas wasn’t a fit for me… or maybe vice versa. I had to get out of there and my father never understood that. I did what many post-college kids in their twenties do, I showed up at my parents front door in a U-Haul with all my earthly possessions and moved into their guest room. I don’t think that event ever made my parent’s Xmas newsletter. It’s never a proud milestone: moving back in with your parents.

After about a year of living with my parents, during which time my father rarely spoke to me, I finally got a job. Yes, I was unemployed for a year which was also a big hit with my “parental units.” The tension dropped after I got a job for a dubious medical supply company out of Chicago. I think they did most of their recruiting at prisons…”So, it says here on your application that you assaulted someone…did you happen to steal anything too?” One afternoon, I was in a cramped corner of my father’s home office where I’d carved out a small space as my “home” office doing some paperwork. The office door burst open. My father had this strange ability to come through a doorway without turning the knob which is a skill I wish I had, but I digress. It was startling, his sudden appearance in the office as he never came upstairs. He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. His eyes finally rested on me…his face screwed up with that familiar distaste he registered when he spoke at me…”I know this woman from work, she’s a friend of mine. She knows a lot of people. You’re meeting her for drinks tomorrow.” I was sitting frozen in the position I was in when the door burst open, paralyzed with surprise and could only mutter, “Huh?”

Apparently my father had taken it upon himself to help my social life. Perhaps he was concerned about me hanging out with all my old college friends who were, as Jackson Browne sang, “the fools a young fool meets.” (I still love those guys, don’t get me wrong). I faced this meeting with great trepidation. In my paranoid young mind I assumed this woman was being sent in as a spy, to inform my father of my miscreant ways. I drove down to the dreaded meeting at the Levee, a bar in midtown. The woman in question, who I’ll call the Jean Genie (to protect the guilty), was sitting at an upstairs table nursing a longneck. And lo and behold, we clicked. I mean, it took me a while to trust that she wasn’t a spy but rather quickly we became good friends. She was like the sister I never had. Who’d have thought after my father’s rough intro that it would end up this way.

We’ve had a lot of rock and roll moments, the Jean Genie and I. From drinking until two on her thirtieth birthday… on a Wednesday no less, to celebrating St Patrick’s Day together in Chicago with my good friend Doug we cut a wide swath. The Jean Genie married a wonderful man who happens to be a huge Neil Young fan. When she was pregnant, and I mean like 8-months in, her husband had a work conflict and she called and asked if I wanted to be his stand-in at a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert. Yes, please. Of course I’ve never gotten over the hateful stares of people who thought I’d drug my very pregnant wife out to a concert. Judgmental bastards.

Needless to say, the Jean Genie’s rock and roll bonafides are in place. When we became mired in our current quarantine, I saw that the Jean Genie was doing a 30-Day Song Challenge. Every day you have to go out and pick a song that fits into that day’s theme. One day it was about color, one day it was a song with a number in the title… you get the drift. The only caveat or rule – you can’t pick the same band twice. I found myself looking forward to her selections each day. What else do I have to do? Last Friday in a vodka-fueled frenzy, trying to kill time in quarantine, the Rock Chick and I decided to take the 30 day challenge in one night. Well, I was vodka fueled anyway. The Rock Chick would pick a song on the assigned theme and then I would do mine and so on through all thirty songs. That’s sixty songs between us for you math people out there. We actually played all sixty songs while we were choosing them. It made for a great, long evening.

I will now share with you the Rock Chick’s choices (annotated as “RC”) and then my choices (annotated as BV) in order. Below are our selections, with my usual commentary. I’ll post the B&V list and also link in the Rock Chick’s list as she’s already posted hers. I encourage everyone to Google “30-Day Song Challenge” and try this yourselves, either day by day or all at once. It’s fun and what else do you have to do? With my thanks to my dear friend the Jean Genie as inspiration! Some of these categories are hard… Good luck!

Day 1: A song you like with a color in the title

  • RC: U2, “Red Hill Mining Town” – The Rock Chick has always dug side 2 of The Joshua Tree
  • BV: Porno For Pyros, “Black Girlfriend” – Perry Farrell’s other band.

Day 2: A song you like with a number in the title

  • RC: Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, “Zero” – Technically, zero is not a number but I’m not going to overrule the Rock Chick on a playlist… ever.
  • BV: The Beatles, “The Two of Us” – One of my favs off of Let It Be. They were doing a riff on the Everly Brothers and I love it.

Day 3: A song that reminds you of summer time

  • RC: 311, “Sunset In July” – The Rock Chick’s selections are much hipper and more current than mine.
  • BV: Van Halen, “Ice Cream Man” – “I’m usually passing by right around eleven o’clock…I never stop…”

Day 4: A song that reminds you of someone you’d rather forget

  • RC: Boston, “Don’t Look Back” – A song about not looking back under the category of forgetting someone… The Rock Chick’s selection here blew my mind for the depth of the symbolism. She’s an onion, soooo many layers.
  • BV: Don Henley, “You Don’t Know Me At All” – “You took my breath away and now I want it back, you should have killed me, you always looked so good in black.”

Day 5: A song that needs to be played loud

  • RC: Motley Crue, “Primal Scream” – Perfect again for the theme. The Rock Chick was on fire during this process.
  • BV: Dio, “Last In Line” – Dio’s best track.

Day 6: A song that makes you want to dance

  • RC: Michael Jackson, “Rock With You” – A fine choice.
  • BV: Bee Gees, “Stayin’ Alive” – Nothing will ever make me want to dance. Ever. When pressed I went to a primordial disco track from my childhood… and yes, I like this song. I don’t know why.

Day 7: A song to drive to

  • RC: Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Passengers” – Superb Iggy Pop cover.
  • BV: The Allman Brothers, “Ramblin’ Man” – Clearly my heart remains stuck in the 70s… like my musical tastes.

Day 8: A song about drugs or alcohol

  • RC: Social Distortion, “Drug Train” – The Rock Chick’s favorite Social D track.
  • BV: AC/DC, “Gone Shootin'” – Bon Scott singing about his woman’s heroin addiction.

Day 9: A song that makes you happy

  • RC: The Go-Gos, “Our Lips Are Sealed” – A good time track from the 80s.
  • BV: Bob Marley, “Three Little Birds” – Bob Marley’s music makes me happy.

Day 10: A song that makes you sad

  • RC: Ryan Adams, “To Be Without You” – Ryan Adams, the king of sad songs.
  • BV: Bonnie Raitt, “I Can’t Make You Love Me” – Cribbed from the Jean Genie’s list, yes. Reminds me of those tragic, melodramatic break up days…sitting in my car staring up at the moon.

Day 11: A song you never get tired of

  • RC: The Cult, “She Sells Sanctuary” – Her favorite song from her favorite band.
  • BV: Bruce Springsteen, “The Ties That Bind” – Every time I hear this song it takes me back to high school and the first time I dropped the needle on the vinyl…

Day 12: A song from your preteen years

  • RC: Queen, “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions” – Yes, technically this is two tracks, but I felt you have to play both. Her big brother owned the album.
  • BV: Elvis Presley, “Jailhouse Rock” – This takes me back to my brother playing my dad’s old singles in our shared bedroom.

Day 13: A song you like from the 70s

  • RC: Jerry Rafferty, “Right Down the Line” – A truly great song and an inspired choice, yet again from the Rock Chick.
  • BV: Jim Croce, “Operator” – I love almost everything from the 70s except disco… This was a song by an artist my parents owned not one but two albums by. He just reminds of that era.

Day 14: A song you’d love to be played at your wedding

  • RC: Whitney Houston, “Your Love Is My Love” – The song the Rock Chick wanted to play for our first dance but never told me… I wish she had.
  • BV: Rod Stewart, “Have I Told You Lately” – Rod singing Van… and the song my wife humored me with for our first dance at our wedding.

Day 15: A song you like that’s a cover by another artist

  • RC: Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Higher Ground” – Great Stevie Wonder track from the Peppers.
  • BV: U2, “Paint It Black” – U2 doing the Stones!

Day 16: A song that’s a classic favorite

  • RC: AC/DC, “Back In Black” – Living up to her nickname…
  • BV: Led Zeppelin, “Stairway To Heaven” – After several vodka drinks, it just seemed that if I was going to pick a classic favorite, it needed to be the classic favorite.

Day 17: A song you’d sing a duet with someone on karaoke

  • RC: Johnny & June Carter Cash, “Jackson” – Their greatest duet.
  • BV: Kenny Rodgers & Dolly Parton, “Islands In the Stream” – First off, like dancing, singing karaoke is something that will never happen again. Kenny Rogers just died so I picked this one. Blame the vodka.

Day 18: A song from the year you were born

  • RC: Tom Jones, “It’s Not Unusual” – I love Tom Jones.
  • BV: The Rolling Stones, “It’s All Over Now” – This one took some internet research, I won’t lie. I’m glad I saved the Stones for this one.

Day 19: A song that makes you think about life

  • RC: Bruce Springsteen, “You’re Missing” – From the phenomenal LP, The Rising. 
  • BV: Jackson Browne, “Sleeps Dark and Silent Gate” – OK this song is actually about death but what makes us think more about life than death?

Day 20: A song that has many meanings to you

Day 21: A song you like with a person’s name in the title

  • RC: Steve Winwood, “Valerie” – A great tune. I never pegged the Rock Chick as a Winwood fan… You learn a lot when you’re putting music lists together.
  • BV: The Cars, “Candy-O” – Title track from my favorite Cars LP.

Day 22: A song that moves you forward

  • RC: Oasis, “Champagne Super Nova” – Their best track.
  • BV: Triumph, “Fight The Good Fight” – Gets me up and going.

Day 23: A song you think everybody should listen to

  • RC: Green Keepers, “Lotion” – Its not very many bands who can put dialogue from ‘Silence of the Lambs’ into song…
  • BV: Iggy Pop, “James Bond” – I wish everyone listened to Iggy Pop.

Day 24: A song by a band you wish were still together

  • RC: The White Stripes, “Hello Operator” – Meg White, come home, we need you.
  • BV: The Faces, “Ooh La La” – Written by Ronnie Lane, sung by Ronnie Wood. Rod’s best music was when he was with the Faces.

Day 25: A song you like by an artist no longer living

  • RC: INXS, “The One Thing” – The one and only Michael Hutchence.
  • BV: Tom Petty, “Breakdown (An American Treasure version) – This version was released to radio stations only as a promotional deal. It was the version KY/102 played when I was growing up.

Day 26: A song that makes you want to fall in love

  • RC: Sonny & Cher, “I Got You Babe” – Like I said… you learn a lot about someone playing music on a Friday night.
  • BV: Frank Sinatra, “The Way You Look Tonight” – If you’re gonna talk about love, you’ve gotta talk about Frank.

Day 27: A song that breaks your heart

  • RC: Nirvana, “Something In the Way” – I’m especially fond of this track in it’s Unplugged incarnation.
  • BV: Neil Young, “Out On the Weekend” – “Woman I’m thinkin’ of, she used me all up and I’m so down today…”

Day 28: A song by an artist whose voice you love

  • RC: Eurythmics, “Love Is A Stranger” – Annie Lennox has a sublime voice.
  • BV: Norah Jones, “Come Away With Me” – The voice of an angel. I’m looking forward to her upcoming album.

Day 29: A song you remember from childhood

  • RC: Elvis Presley, “Suspicious Minds” – The King singing to Priscilla…
  • BV: Peter, Paul & Mary, “Blowin’ In the Wind” – My parents fucking loved these guys and I don’t know why. This track takes me back to that time.

Day 30: A song that reminds you of yourself

  • RC: Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” – Yes, indeed they do. And the Rock Chick and I had a lot of fun with this playlist.
  • BV: Mick Jagger, “Wandering Spirit” – “I’m a wandering spirit, yes I am a restless soul.”

For those of you interested, here is the B&V playlist on Spotify:

And, the better of the two, here is the Rock Chick’s Spotify playlist:

I hope all of you enjoy our picks and hope you will also take this challenge… I mean, again, what else do you have to do? Stay safe, stay healthy, stay away from people. Let’s all social distance now so we can see each other at concerts later.

Cheers!

B&V Playlist: Chasing the Dragon – Songs About Heroin

~ kcorsini ~ 23 Comments

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*Image taken from the internet and likely copyrighted

Is it just me, or does it seem like the bad guys are winning a lot lately? January was one of the most awful months that I’ve ever endured… personally, professionally, politically… you name it. Of course it was a Dry January… that might have had something to do with it. I just sort of feel better with a tumbler of bourbon in my hand. At least I have my local NFL team, the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl as a distraction. Otherwise I might be found downtown at the bus station, screaming “The End is Nigh” at all the passersby. It’s hard to watch my country lurch ever closer toward the specter of authoritarianism while Australia burns. The 1% has the world bought and paid for while so many of us struggle. Even Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer have been knocked out of the Australian Open. Dammit.

On top of all this, Big Pharma has gotten rich cramming so many pain pills down our collective throats we are now in what is called “The Opioid Crisis.” I guess the ruling class wants to keep us all mildly sedated so their rapaciousness won’t be noticed. The horrible side affect of all this opioid stuff is its caused a resurgence in that most evil of drugs, heroin. Call it what you want – smack, junk, dope, China White, Chasing the Dragon, horse – its death in a syringe by any other name. It’s going to be hard to calculate the human cost of all of this, because human life is priceless. When people’s doctors cut them off the opioids, they have no where to turn but heroin or worse, fentanyl.

This resurgence in the use of heroin has me thinking about when I was a young kid back in the 70s. Just the word “heroin” was enough to strike fear in our hearts. I used to love the TV cop show, Kojak. Say what you want, but there hasn’t been a decent cop show on television since they cancelled Kojak in 1978. Telly Savalas had a style that all of us here at B&V absolutely loved… “Who loves ya, baby?” I watched that show religiously when my parents weren’t around… they could be strict about programming. There was often some character who was a heroin addict as part of the plot line of so many episodes. The way that show portrayed heroin is probably what kept me far, far away from that stuff – despite a healthy curiosity about all things nefarious. You gotta draw the line somewhere, and heroin was certainly way over the line for me.

I may have felt that way, but back then heroin was everywhere. John Lennon, Keith Richards were the vanguard of cool and rock and roll and they were both on heroin. Janis OD’d on heroin. Heroin was cool and subversive. William Burroughs was a junkie. Even as late as the early 80s, John Belushi died from doing a speedball, a combination of heroin and cocaine. Sounds like one foot on the gas, one foot on the break to me, like putting booze in Coca-Cola or coffee. Finally as the 80s wore on we saw the scourge of heroin recede like floodwaters back where it came from. Although, admittedly that was probably because cocaine replaced it. I remember when Grunge took over the world in the 90s the media would talk about “heroin chic,” as if there was such a thing. Cobain was on heroin… I don’t think it helped him. So many of that generation OD’d or killed themselves later after recovery…Scott Weiland, Layne Staley… Why do we have to keep learning the same lessons over and over again?

And now, here we are 30 years on, and heroin is back and bigger than ever. I thought by the time we got to 2020 problems like heroin would be all gone. Of course I thought we’d have flying cars by now too… Whoever said “Greed is Good” must have worked in Big Pharma and was lucky enough to not have a heroin addict in their family.

As usual, musicians and artists are always in the vanguard of drugs and subversive culture. We’ve lost too many people to heroin overdoses. There’s so much music we might have had… it’s a staggering loss. These poor people. At least they’ve left behind an impressive body of work. You’d think a list of songs about heroin would be harrowing…or at least a bummer, but actually there’s a deep range of emotions and styles that make up my list of favorites. I’m sure I left a few off, so please mention your favs in the “comments” section and I’ll add them to the BourbonAndVinyl.net Chasing the Dragon – Songs About Heroin playlist on Spotify.

I put this list together to honor all those we’ve lost to heroin and opioids. I want to honor all of those people and families that have been upended and touched by this tragedy. It’s a dark ride folks – take care of each other.

  1. AC/DC, “Gone Shootin'” – One of my all time AC/DC favs with Bon Scott on lead vocals singing about his lady whose gone out to score smack.
  2. The Beatles, “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” – Took years before I realized Lennon, who was using at the time, was singing “I need a fix, ‘cuz I’m going down…”
  3. The Tubes, “White Punks On Dope” – A personal favorite I remembered from college. Rich white kids in Hollywood going off to score heroin.
  4. Warren Zevon, “Carmelita” – His best song…”I’m all strung out on heroin on the outskirts of town.”
  5. Alice In Chains, “Junkhead” – “What’s my drug of choice? Well, what have you got?” Layne Staley was alas a casualty of heroin. RIP.
  6. Guns N Roses, “Mr. Brownstone” – I don’t know who was on heroin, I just know Axl was not happy about it.
  7. Black Sabbath, “Hand of Doom” – “You push the needle in…”
  8. Pete Townshend, “Somebody Saved Me” – Pete singing about his recovery. The first part is about someone saving him from a woman or infatuation that would have killed him… I’ve been there… but then he sings about a friend who nursed him while he got clean… only to find his friend dead when he did.
  9. David Bowie, “Ashes to Ashes” – Poor Major Tom… “we all know Major Tom is a junkie.”
  10. Lou Reed, “Perfect Day” – Reed insisted this was just about spending the day with his woman… but that part about “you just keep me hanging on” at the end has always made people think he’s talking about a perfect day, on heroin.
  11. John Lennon, “Cold Turkey” – This might be the only song I know of about quitting heroin cold turkey and suffering through it.
  12. Alice In Chains, “God Smack” – Another gripping track from AIC. Perhaps the hardest track here.
  13. The Black Crowes, “She Talks To Angels” – “She never mentions the word addiction, in certain company…” but she’s going to “smile when the pain comes.” Lovely song about the local hot chick on heroin.
  14. U2, “Bad” – Epic and full of emotion, one of U2’s best songs ever.
  15. The Rolling Stones, “Dead Flowers” – Sticky Fingers was such a druggy album, I could have included most the tracks here. I left off “Brown Sugar” even though it was rumored to be about heroin and not black women… This song finds Mick sitting with a “needle and a spoon.”
  16. The Velvet Underground & Nico, “Run, Run, Run” – Running to meet the drug dealer…
  17. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Under the Bridge” – Autobiographical lyrics from Anthony Kiedis, about where he used to score his heroin.
  18. The Rolling Stones, “Coming Down Again” – This time with Keith on lead vocals… the loneliness of coming down alone. Desolation personified.
  19. Pink Floyd, “Comfortably Numb” – I never felt this was about heroin, but the doctor does give the guy a shot (“pinprick”) and I couldn’t resist adding a Pink Floyd track.
  20. Placebo, “Song To Say Goodbye” – The Rock Chick bought this album and I sort of ignored it, until I heard this song. A friend is frustrated with his friend turned junkie.
  21. Ozzy Osbourne, “Junkie” – Ozzy rocking out and preaching baby.
  22. Social Distortion, “Drug Train” – Not specifically about heroin, but Mike Ness is a recovered heroin addict… what else could it be about?
  23. Nine Inch Nails, “Hurt” – I was so tempted to put Johnny Cash’s version here but this version feels more on the nose.
  24. Billy Joel, “Captain Jack” – Captain Jack was a drug dealer. Joel used to watch suburban kids scoring heroin from him across the street in his apartment.
  25. Jane’s Addiction, “Jane Says” – Another song about a pretty junkie.
  26. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Fight Like a Brave” – “When you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired…” I love that Kiedis wrote lyrics about the struggle of wanting to get away from heroin.
  27. Depeche Mode, “Never Let Me Down Again” – The singer asking heroin to never let him come down. Scary when you think about it.
  28. The Velvet Underground & Nico, “Heroin” – The track that inspired this whole list.
  29. Steely Dan, “Kid Charlemagne” – Great track about a heroin dealer… “I think the people down the hall know who you are…” All the paranoia you need is in this song.
  30. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Knock Me Down” – “If you see me getting high, knock me down.” A cry for help, really.
  31. Lynyrd Skynyrd, “The Needle And the Spoon” – “And any trip to the moon…”
  32. U2, “Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car” – Another song about heroin by U2 off the great Zooropa album.
  33. Mike Ness, “Dope Fiend Blues” – Call it what you want, it’s all heroin.
  34. Iggy Pop, “Lust For Life” – Vague references to itchy skin here. The use of this in the movie, ‘Trainspotting’ made this a must.
  35. The Rolling Stones, “Sister Morphine” – Again from Sticky Fingers. 
  36. James Taylor, “A Junkie’s Lament” – People forget JT was an addict.
  37. Humble Pie, “30 Days In the Hole” – A song about being arrested for possession. That Newcastle brown isn’t the famous beer.
  38. James Taylor, “Rainy Day Man” – Once again a song where the addict waits for his dealer.
  39. Velvet Underground & Nico, “I’m Waiting For the Man” – Ditto what I wrote about #38. Of course in this case, the addict is in Harlem waiting to meet his guy.
  40. U2, “Running To Stand Still” – One of my all time favorites. “I see seven towers but I only see one way out…”
  41. Prince, “Sign O the Times” – All the bad shit that Prince sang about back then, is current here. I liked the line, “In September, my cousin tried reefer for the very first time, now he’s doin’ horse, it’s June.”
  42. Neil Young, “The Needle And the Damage Done” – A perfect place to end. Neil saw plenty of damage…

There you have it folks. Give us a listen on Spotify and let me know what you think. Cheers!

And, Go Chiefs!

B&V Playlist: Songs About Los Angeles, California

~ kcorsini ~ 4 Comments

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*Image taken from the internet, likely subject to copyright

As I a child I don’t recall a deep desire to travel. I always hear people say, with moist eyes staring off into the horizon, “I always wanted to travel.” How did they know that as children? My mother was never a big fan of travel. Despite that, she’s been quite the trooper in her golden years, following my father around the globe on cruises. Most of our trips were to see our grandparents, who lived a two hour car ride from here. I can remember driving back on Sunday nights, my mom would always make us stop at the store to buy “fresh milk.” I’m not sure how the milk all went bad in just forty-eight hours, but it made me suspicious about dairy for a long time. As a kid I seem to recall driving down to southern Missouri (hillbilly country) to go to the Silver Dollar City amusement park every summer. That’s just what you did back in the day – you loaded your spouse and your 2.5 kids into the car and drove somewhere. In the midwest, there aren’t a ton of vacation spots. “Welcome to Silver Dollar City.”

It’s not that my parents didn’t travel at all. I know my parents took trips together. I’ve been hearing about a certain journey to Puerto Vallarta my whole life. I do remember, when I was in grade school, my first ever airplane flight, my parents took us out to Los Angeles to go to Disneyland. My dad’s aunt Gemma lived out there and I remember she had an orange tree in her back yard and I thought that was pretty fucking awesome. Her husband had a nudie calendar hung in the garage. Fresh oranges and topless women…needless to say, I spent a lot of time on that visit outside…enjoying the sunshine. That’s always sort of summed up L.A. for me… fresh fruit and chicks.

Despite that wonderful introduction, Disneyland was cool to a 4th grader, I’ve never really been back there. And indeed, despite never having a burning desire to travel as a kid, I love to travel now. It’s one of my favorite things to do. In fact, I chose the career of the Traveling Salesman if I’m being honest (Thoughts From The Traveling Salesman And A B&V Playlist: Hanging On The Telephone). I’ve been a ton of places…granted I’m not Johnny Cash who sang, “I’ve Been Everywhere.” I can’t make that claim, but I’ve been all over, just never really in Los Angeles. I’ve been to Costa Mesa for work, but does that count? I’ve braved the horror of John Wayne Airport’s security line. I did fly out of LAX once… it was like being transported to the 70s and into an episode of ‘The Rockford Files.’ It was in midsummer and the air-conditioning was off. It was like being in a third world airport… I think there was a woman trying to board the plane with a live chicken or some other livestock.

It’s odd that I’ve never spent time in L.A. It has quite a bit of import for my family. My dad’s aunt and uncle (and probably numerous cousins) live out there. In the Great Depression my grandparents were part of that wave of “Okies” who migrated to California for work (although let me state for the record they were from Kansas, not Oklahoma). My grandfather got a job at a plant and really started his family there. My father and my uncle were born there. If my grandparents hadn’t moved back to Kansas when the war was over, I’d probably have ended up growing up out there and despite having no musical talent I just know I would have ended up in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I was offered a job out there right out of college… what might have been?

As a music lover, it’s astounding I’ve never been out there. I’ve never seen Hollywood. I’ve never been to the Sunset strip where hair metal was born. There’s so much great music to come out of that town. From classic rock like the Doors or the Byrds to seminal punk bands like X to the entire hair-metal thing with Motley Crue. This was the birthplace of Van Halen for fuck’s sake. I’m not forgetting all the great country music that came out of Bakersfield, which was just down the road. Orange County was the home of No Doubt and Social Distortion. If I’d taken that job out of college god knows how much more music I’d own today.

While I was in New York, I started to think about the recent playlist I did for that city, B&V Playlist: Songs For New York City. It’s usually a slow time for music after the holidays so I was quietly strolling around the city putting playlists together in my head… I would never want to get accused of a Tupac/Biggie kind of feud so I began to think about songs for Los Angeles. I have no idea why… travel to New York, think about L.A., that’s about right for me. I was just amazed at how compact New York was…I hadn’t been there in a while. I couldn’t help but contrast it with how spread out LA is. I mean, it’s true, “Nobody walks in L.A.” I think of cars racing by on the freeway, big 8-lane highways. There’s also the allure of Hollywood and the movie star making machinery. While I did see DJ Khalid outside the Hermes store in New York, one has to wonder how many stars I’d see in LA.

So, as is my habit, I put together the following playlist of songs about L.A. I extend it to some of the more famous neighborhoods and areas… Hollywood, Laguna, Bel Air etc. I didn’t discriminate. I’m not sure it’s not a complete list, but it contains some of my favorites. Hopefully you’ll hear something you haven’t before. We’re all about turning you onto new music here at B&V. And, while there are certain songs I know are about L.A., they don’t contain any reference to the city so I omitted them: “Welcome to the Jungle” is Axl’s harrowing view of arriving in Los Angeles, or Tom Petty’s “California” is great, but it doesn’t mention the city. As always this playlist is on Spotify under the same title as the post. My thoughts below.

  1. The Doors, “L.A. Woman” – One of my early favorite songs about the city of the angels.
  2. Motley Crue, “Saints of Los Angeles” – Oh, to have been on the strip during the Crue’s heyday.
  3. Eagles, “King of Hollywood” – This could be the Harvey Weinstein theme song.
  4. James Taylor, “Honey Don’t Leave L.A.” – Oddly this was the first track I thought of when forming this thing.
  5. Eddie Money, “Another Nice Day In L.A.” – Just a great, great track by the Money-man, RIP.
  6. Bob Seger, “Hollywood Nights” – Epic, epic song with fabulous drumming. Seger took a tape of this song and put it in his car when driving home from the studio the night they recorded it… he said he looked down and he was going 90. Indeed.
  7. The Kinks, “Celluloid Heroes” – A song about movie stars.
  8. Pete Townshend, “Exquisitely Bored” – Only Townshend could take his trip to rehab in L.A. and turn it into a song… “there are good times walking in Laguna, but it rains my heart.” So true, Pete, so true.
  9. The Runaways, “Hollywood” – Joan Jett, Lita Ford, the Runaways should have been huge!
  10. Social Distortion, “Highway 101” – This is my favorite song by Social D. “I believe in love again…with all of its joys and pain.” And I think the 101 goes through L.A.
  11. “The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man” – Early Stones taking the piss out of an L.A. hipster who works for the record company.
  12. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Out In L.A.” – A little blast from the debut album.
  13. Neil Young, “L.A.” – “L.A., city in the smog.”
  14. Steely Dan, “Bad Sneakers” – A song about a New Yorker in L.A., home sick for the “frozen rain.”
  15. Lindsey Buckingham, “Bel Air Rain” – A beautiful, cascading acoustic guitar fuels this track.
  16. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Century City” – Another great Petty deep track.
  17. X, “Los Angeles” – Title track from their seminal debut produced by the Doors’ Ray Manzarek.
  18. Warren Zevon, “Carmelita” – One of the greatest songs about Los Angeles ever written.
  19. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Californication” – You can’t do an L.A. list without a bunch of RHCPs. “Hollywood sells Californication.”
  20. Tom Petty, “Peace In L.A.” – Great track recorded to calm people down after the Rodney King riots. Hard to find, Spotify didn’t have it…
  21. Randy Newman, “I Love L.A.” – A big cheesy anthem.
  22. Eagles, “Hollywood Waltz” – Could the Eagles have been more disillusioned with Hollywood?
  23. Lyle Lovett, “L.A. County” – A song of violence and love gone wrong.
  24. Ozzy Osbourne, “Old L.A. Tonight” – This song should be to L.A. what Sinatra’s “New York, New York” is to the that town. Ozzy sings his ass off.
  25. Grateful Dead, “West L.A. Fadeway” – A funky little favorite of mine.
  26. Mudcrutch, “Topanga Cowgirl” – I loved both the Mudcrutch LPs that Petty and the gang did.
  27. Steely Dan, “Glamour Profession” – More complaints about the “L.A. concession.”
  28. Hole, “Pacific Coast Highway” – From the overlooked Nobody’s Daughter. 
  29. Missing Persons, “Walking In L.A.” – I had a roommate in college who loved this album… I guess it rubbed off.
  30. Journey, “City of the Angels” – At their Steve Perry-led majestic best.
  31. Paul McCartney, “Mamunia” – I couldn’t tell you what the title means to save my life… there’s a lot about the “L.A. rain” in this song.
  32. Motley Crue, “Down At the Whisky” – I’ve never been the Whisky and I think it’s criminal.
  33. Warren Zevon, “Desperados Under the Eaves” – Another great track from his self titled LP. The reference to the Hollywood Hawiian Hotel is priceless.
  34. 311, “Champagne” – From the “dark side of Hollywood.”
  35. Wang Chung, “To Live And Die In L.A.” – From the movie of the same name. Their best track,
  36. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Into the Great Wide Open” – Classic show business track.
  37. Hole, “Malibu” – Another great Hole track.
  38. Bush, “Everything Zen” – With lines my brother could have written about me had I lived in L.A…. “I’ll go find my asshole brother in Los Angeles.”
  39. Warren Zevon, “Meet Me In L.A.” – Yes, yes, I’m pounding the Zevon. He needs to been the Rock Hall of Fame.
  40. Tom Waits, “A Sweet Little Bullet From A Pretty Little Blue Gun” – The seedier side of Hollywood and Vine.
  41. Billy Joel, “Los Angelenos” – I prefer the live version.
  42. Tom Petty, “Free Fallin'” – Quintessential L.A. track.
  43. Starcrawler, “I Love L.A.” – Love this band.
  44. Billy Gibbons, “Hollywood 151” – Dirty blues rock.
  45. Billy Joel, “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” – Almost our fitting ending here…
  46. Don Henley, “Sunset Grill” – The epic synth ending was arranged by Randy Newman… A good way to end things, down on Sunset Blvd.

Enjoy!! If you have adds, please put them in the comments and I’ll add them out on Spotify. Happy New Year everybody!

B&V Playlist: Songs About The Moon

~ kcorsini ~ 6 Comments

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“So if you want to write a song about the heart, and it’s ever-longing for a counterpart, write a song about the moon.” – Paul Simon, “Song About The Moon”

I’ve been away for a while. It’s been a heavy travel time here at B&V but luckily not all of it was dictated by my corporate overlords. As I travel I tend to peruse social media quite a bit. I noticed a while back there were a bunch of posts about the 50th anniversary of the United States putting a man on the moon. My father always said his jaw dropped in disbelief the first time he heard JFK say that it was his goal to put a man on the moon. Space exploration was inconceivable at the time. Way to go science! Of course, I recently discovered that someone in my wife’s family believes they faked the moon landing. There’s one in every crowd, right? This person also thinks the world is flat… and Paul McCartney is talentless. Needless to say, recent holidays have been weird. Rest assured that in those instances, the whiskey helped.

I have extraordinarily vague memories of the first moon-landing. I was a very small child. I remember my parents friends had a party at their house and their kids had a shit ton of toys. I remember being in their walk-out basement, sun streaming in the backdoor window and seeing the astronauts were on the moon. That’s gotta be a false memory. I was way too young to remember something like that but it sure seems real. Of course, there were a number of moon landings, so maybe it wasn’t that first one in 1969. It couldn’t have been. Back then my parents still partied quite a bit, as did their friends, so maybe it was one of those “extra” moon trips that I remember. As Lynyrd Skynyrd once sang, “Too many lives they’ve spent across the ocean. Too much money been spent upon the moon.” “Things Goin’ On,” indeed.

All of this moon-landing talk and the seasons changing to autumn with it’s early arrival of Halloween decorations got me thinking about the moon. All those spooky moon’s with witches’ silhouettes passing by on their broom sticks… reminds me of a girl I knew once who was the scariest thing I’d come across… but I digress. I was thinking about the moon and naturally my thoughts turned to rock and roll and all the great “moon-centric” tunes out there, but in all honesty, these things I were thinking about were merely a trigger for deeper thoughts about the moon…

I’ve always been a night owl. It was always a struggle to get me to even go to bed. I can remember those rare occasions when I was allowed to leave the house at night, to run something next door to the neighbor’s house or going to a school program… It was so different to be outside in the dark. I used to think the moon was following me. There was a thrill to walking around in the cool, night air. The Allman Brothers used to practice in a graveyard and I swear if there’d been one in my neighborhood, I’d have taken up the guitar. Shadows grow darker and larger… as does the curiosity of what’s lurking around out there? The weird thing was as a youngster I wasn’t repelled away from that darkness, I had to hold myself back from plunging into it…which sort of explains those troubled teen years, I guess. All of that exultation about running around in the night was crowned with the King of the Night… the big moon casting its gaze over everything. I remember being at sleepovers and thinking, I’m staying up all night long…only to fall asleep immediately. I’ve talked about the thrill of riding in a girlfriend’s car in college, on a night I should have been home with family, staring out of the moon-roof, er I mean, the sun-roof at the nighttime sky and feeling fucking alive! When the moon came up, my weariness from the day faded…as the Stones sang, “the sunshine bores the daylight out of me…” The word lunatic stems from the Greek word for moon…”Full Moon Fever,” indeed.

Eventually it was time to “do away with childish things.” We all grow up some time… although my wife and daughter would tell you I’m still working on it. When love and romance entered my life, the moon took on all new resonance. I was in a few long-distance relationships when I was young and I can remember staring at the moon and thinking my girlfriend was staring up at the same moon and thinking it made me feel closer to her. Like the Little River Band sang, “staring at the full moon, like a lover.” Jesus, I can’t believe I went through that, but I guess we all do. Eventually the inevitable breakups would come and suddenly the moon takes on a different meaning to us and the longing begins. The heart stares up at the moon, its lonely counterpart as Mr. Simon sang. Ironic that the moon can lead to feelings of connection and disconnection… all depends on where you’re standing, I suppose.

With all those thoughts and ramblings aside, it’s pretty obvious that the moon evokes a ton of emotions in me and I’m guessing most people are the same as I am. Because of that wide range of emotions, I’ve selected one of my most eclectic collections of tracks for a playlist ever. From happy elation to brokenhearted isolation, we’ve got it all here. The goal is for people to find a song they’ve never heard before so I went pretty deep into the album tracks for this one, folks. I hope you enjoy it. As always, if there’s a great one I forgot, go ahead and drop it in the “comments” section and I’ll add it to the Spotify playlist, BourbonAndVinyl.net Songs About the Moon.

  1. The Waterboys, “The Whole of the Moon” – Great little Irish band I only discovered when U2 played this track to begin their KC Show on the Joshua Tree tour a few years ago. Great starting track.
  2. Free, “Moonshine” – A real blues rock gem from their debut album. They’re talking about the actual light from the moon, not the booze with the same name.
  3. Echo & the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon” – Haunting, jealous longing… this track sums up a lot about this list.
  4. Talking Heads, “Moon Rocks” – Danceable weirdness from the Heads.
  5. Foreigner, “Girl On the Moon” – Great ballad… I’ve really gotten back into these guys this year.
  6. Neville Brothers, “Yellow Moon” – Another song about jealousy and worryin’ about your woman.
  7. Robbie Robertson, “Sonny Got Caught In the Moonlight” – From Robertson’s debut… I think we’ve all been caught in the moonlight at one time or another.
  8. The Cult, “Brother Wolf Sister Moon” – An epic from the great Love album.
  9. R.E.M. “Man On the Moon” – Sure it’s a tribute to Andy Kauffman, but it works.
  10. T. Rex, “By the Light of a Magical Moon” – I’m not a huge T Rex fan, but this weird, mostly acoustic track always catches my ear.
  11. John Mellencamp, “Circling Around the Moon” – Great, emotionally effective deep track about struggling lovers.
  12. White Stripes, “White Moon” – Menacing piano ballad from Jack & Meg, which is a sentence you don’t type very often.
  13. Pearl Jam, “Yellow Moon” – One of the Rock Chick and my favorite ballads from PJ. God, I wish they’d record again.
  14. Sting, “Moon Over Bourbon Street” – Is there any place better for staring up at the moon, over a Hurricane cocktail, than New Orleans. Sting doing spooky jazz.
  15. The Doors, “Moonlight Drive” – Takes me back to high school, driving around at night when it’s way past curfew, but it’s just too much fun to hang!
  16. The Black Crowes, “Black Moon Creeping” – A funky rocker from their second album, which is my favorite.
  17. Tom Waits, “Drunk On the Moon” – I love early Tom Waits, especially this track. Sinatra would have nailed this track.
  18. Duran Duran, “New Moon On Monday” – I hated these guys in college, but now I think they’ve got some great tunes, this one amongst them.
  19. Norah Jones, “Shoot the Moon” – With that voice, oh yes.
  20. Robert Plant, “Moonlight In Samosa” – Great deep track from Plant’s solo debut. I feel like I’m in a John Le Carre novel.
  21. Paul McCartney & Wings, “C Moon” – An almost reggae track where McCartney turns goofing around into an actual hit single.
  22. Kinks, “Full Moon” – A great track I’d almost completely forgotten about until I put this together.
  23. Van Morrison, “Moondance” – One of his all time greatest tunes. And uh, I don’t think he’s discussing dancing.
  24. Neil Young, “Harvest Moon” – Beautiful, acoustic Neil from his “sequel” to Harvest, naturally recorded decades apart.
  25. The Rolling Stones, “Moon Is Up” – Knowing Mick, he’s talking about someone’s bum, but this is a great deep track from Voodoo Lounge. 
  26. Chris Cornell, “Worried Moon” – The older I get the more worried the moon becomes.
  27. The Police, “Walking On the Moon” – Well, you knew this one would be here. After “Roxanne” probably the first Police track I remember hearing.
  28. Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Bad Moon Rising” – Did Creedence have a bad song?
  29. George Harrison, “Here Comes the Moon” – Was he ripping off “Here Comes the Sun”? Maybe, but this is a great track. George doesn’t get the credit he deserves.
  30. Paul McCartney, “Monkberry Moon Delight” – Speaking of the Beatles…
  31. Bob Dylan, “Moonlight” – A great, late career attempt at crooning from Mr. Dylan.
  32. Prince, “Moonbeam Levels” – An out take from the 1999 sessions, released on a Greatest Hits thing a year or so ago.
  33. The Beatles, “Mr. Moonlight” – Great Beatles deep track. John Lennon’s impassioned vocal makes this one special.
  34. The Rolling Stones, “Moonlight Mile” – The best track on this list and one of the Stones’ greatest all time tracks.
  35. Ozzy Osbourne, “Bark At the Moon” – We all need to do this once in a while, it’s good for the soul.
  36. David Bowie, “Moonage Daydream” – I had to have some Bowie on here, he seems like he belonged on the moon, looking down on us.
  37. Little Feat, “Spanish Moon” – I told Dr Rock I was listening to Little Feat and he laughed at me… I love this band and Lowell George especially.
  38. Annie Lennox, “Fingernail Moon” – Such a beautiful voice singing the saddest track on here. I wanted to capture as many emotions as I could. I’d say Annie nails the “despair” column.
  39. Iggy Pop, “Midnight Lady” – Don’t be afraid of Iggy.
  40. Pearl Jam, “In the Moonlight” – A deep track from the compilation, Lost Dogs. 
  41. Thin Lizzy, “Dancing In the Moonlight (It’s Caught Me In the Spotlight)” – I love Thin Lizzy, even if they got a little disco-esque on this one.
  42. David Bowie, “Fall Dog Bombs the Moon” – I have always loved this late career track of Bowie’s from Reality. 
  43. Lyle Lovett, “Moon Over My Shoulder” – A voice as smooth as whiskey. If you’re going to sit and stare at the moon with a glass of something strong, might as well have great singers to keep you company.
  44. Sting, “Sister Moon” – More spooky jazz from Sting.
  45. Bob Seger, “Shame On The Moon” – An acoustic track from Bob that has only grown on me over the years. Hated it the first time I heard it.
  46. Van Morrison, “Once In A Blue Moon” – Van has had so many great, late period albums. He’s really going through a renaissance. This is a great track from What’s Wrong With This Picture. 
  47. John Fogerty, “Blue Moon Nights” – A lovely little strummer.
  48. The Rolling Stones, “Child of the Moon” – Something from the psychedelic era.
  49. Beck, “Blue Moon” – From his acoustic masterpiece Morning Phase. Just a great tune.
  50. Tom Waits, “Grapefruit Moon” – Every song on Tom’s debut is a classic.
  51. Paul Simon, “Song About the Moon” – Sums up what all these tracks are about and serves as an instructive bit of advice on how to write a song… well, about the moon at least.
  52. Elton John, “Bad Side of the Moon” – I think this one made my list of Elton’s deep tracks. I love this song and think it should have been a huge hit.
  53. Arc Angels, “Spanish Moon” – Great little band out of Austin. Charlie Sexton, the rhythm section from Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Double Trouble and Doyle Bramhall, Jr.
  54. AC/DC, “What’s Next To the Moon” – Just a little AC/DC to liven up the proceedings and keep everybody on their toes.
  55. Traveling Wilburys, “New Blue Moon” – A song that I only wish Roy Orbison had lived to sing on.
  56. Peter Wolf, “Waiting On the Moon” – Great singer who is also releasing a lot of great late career albums.
  57. Chuck Berry, “Havana Moon” – The master… Elvis was always uncomfortable with the “King of Rock n Roll” title… he used to say, “Uh, you’re talkin’ about Chuck Berry.”
  58. Fleetwood Mac, “Sisters of the Moon” – Stevie in full Wiccan mode. One of the stand out tracks from Tusk. 
  59. Warren Zevon, “They Moved the Moon” – Warren Zevon should be in the Rock Hall of Fame. Can someone make that happen already, please.
  60. Bruce Springsteen, “Moonlight Motel” – Bruce singing about a little Motel No-tell out on the deserted highway.
  61. Pink Floyd, “Eclipse” – Because “everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.”

“There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.”

Cheers to all you lunatics out there!

Playlist: The B&V 50 Favorite Songs About Trains – “that lonesome whistle blows…”

~ kcorsini ~ 17 Comments

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“Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance, everybody thinks it’s true.” – Paul Simon, “Train In The Distance”

There’s just something about a train.

I spent my early years right out of college, after a brief summer in Boston, living in Northwest Arkansas. First in Fort Smith, then later in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I met a fetching young woman, full blooded-Thai with a southern accent, who lived in Shreveport, Louisiana. She was a lovely woman, but as many of us do in our youth, I was chasing something I would never attain, which turned out to be a pattern but those sad records are sealed.

Almost every Friday while I lived in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, (aka Ft. Hell), I would leave, usually before work was over and head down the two-lane blacktop of Highway 71. It ran the length of Arkansas and eventually into Louisiana and to my goal of Shreveport. I would typically spend as much time as I could in Louisiana before I returned to the dreaded Arkansas so I usually left Shreveport after the sun had gone down…even the sun split before I did. Highway 71 cut through Texarkana, first on the Arkansas side and then the Texas side. My memories of those days are faulty but I can remember on some of those dark nights, the highway turning into surface streets in Texarkana and being stopped by a train crossing the train tracks. I distinctly remember getting out of my car to use a discarded napkin to wipe dirt off my headlights, so dim was my view. I’ve always treated my car like a golf cart so its perpetually filthy. I can remember sitting in my car, watching those trains roll by. I would wonder where they headed. I was wondering why I was out there on the lonesome road headed somewhere I didn’t want to go.

Years later, after a brief stint living with my parents in Kansas City (after returning from my Arkansas exile), I rented an apartment at the junction of I-35 and I-635. I was high on a hill in a top floor apartment. In the spring and summer, I’d open the windows (who could afford A/C back then) and listen to the trains roll by on the tracks that ran parallel to I-35. There was something about that sound. The train chug-chugging by and then they’d blow that whistle. Is there a more lonesome sound than a train whistle in the darkness? I was alone at that time of my life and it was if the train was accentuating the point. There was so much it evoked: travel, movement, goodbyes, leaving, distance…

I was driving out to my parents new house, which is way south of Kansas City and lo and behold, I was stopped by a train. I sat there at the tracks, frustrated because I was already running late, when all those memories of driving dark roads around the south came back to me. I found myself just sitting there, enjoying the sight and sound of a freight train passing my field of vision, a car at a time. My thoughts wandered to Johnny Cash. That guy wrote more great train songs than anybody.

It was then that it hit me – there are shit-ton of great train songs. It doesn’t matter what genre you look to – rock and roll, classic rock, blues, country, country-rock (the Eagles, naturally), heavy metal (even German heavy metal), reggae… Hell, I’m certain even Sinatra probably has a great train song or two. If the sound of train evokes so much emotion in me, with all these great songs out there, maybe I’m not alone. Over the next few weeks I started to compile a list of songs with train references or about trains. Again, I could have just listened to Johnny Cash’s entire catalog and been satisfied, but we like to mix it up here at B&V. Pretty soon I had over 100 songs, and this was just off the top of my head. I whittled it down to just 50 tracks. As usual, you will find this list out on Spotify, under the title, “BourbonAndVinyl.net B&V 50 Favorite Songs About Trains.” While I quote the amazing Paul Simon track, “Trains In the Distance” above, it didn’t make the cut. It was too mellow. If you have suggestions for additional tracks, I missed, please recommend them in the comments. My thoughts on each track below.

  1. The Blues Brothers, “She Caught the Katy” – About a hardheaded woman who “left me a mule to ride.” Its the background for the iconic beginning of their movie and I’ve always loved it and hardheaded women.
  2. Bob Seger, “Long Twin Silver Line” – A rocking deep track that takes us across America.
  3. The Rolling Stones, “Silver Train” – The Stones riding a Chuck Berry-esque riff like it’s an actual train. Johnny Winter did a great cover of this song.
  4. The Band with Paul Butterfield, “Mystery Train” – I love this live version of Leon Helm duetting with Paul Butterfield from The Last Waltz. Butterfield did the studio version on his band’s first album.
  5. Bob Dylan, “Slow Train” – Dylan bringing an apocalyptic train round the bend.
  6. Velvet Revolver, “Sucker Train Blues” – Ex-GnR members and Scott Weiland of the Stone Temple Pilots on their most rocking tune.
  7. The Velvet Underground, “Train Round The Bend” – Lou Reed could even make a train song sound dirty.
  8. Crosby, Stills, Nash, “Marrakesh Express” – OK, it’s more of a drug song, but it works.
  9. Neil Young, “Boxcar” – Beautiful track from Chrome Dreams II.
  10. The Eagles, “Midnight Flyer” – Country rock from the band that made it famous.
  11. Steve Winwood, “Night Train” – I love this song. It’s long and so evocative. The production is “of its time,” but who cares.
  12. AC/DC, “Rock ‘N Roll Train” – One of AC/DC’s great late career jams.
  13. The Allman Brothers Band, “All Night Train” – A bluesy, stellar track from the Allman Brothers.
  14. Jimi Hendrix, “Hear My Train a Comin'” – Any version of this blues epic will do.
  15. Rush, “A Passage To Bangkok” – Ok, like “Marrakesh Express” more of a drug song, but I wanted to show that even prog-rockers do train songs.
  16. Van Morrison, “Evening Train” – A jaunty train song from Van who even sounds like he’s having fun on this ride.
  17. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Runaway Trains” – “I’m down here changing lanes…” a song that still haunts me.
  18. Paul Butterfield Blues Band, “Two Trains Running” – Such a great song by such a great blues band.
  19. Bruce Springsteen, “Tucson Train” – One of the happier songs on Bruce’s latest album, Western Stars, which find our hero waiting on his woman whose coming in on the train from Tucson.
  20. Social Distortion, “Drug Train” – The Rock Chick’s favorite Social D song… and one they never play live, alas.
  21. Scorpions, “Catch Your Train” – I had to go all the way back to Virgin Killers for this one.
  22. Grateful Dead, “Casey Jones” – “Drivin’ that train, high on cocaine…”
  23. The Who, “5:15” – From the fabulous Quadrophenia. One of my all time Who favorites.
  24. John Fogerty, “Big Train From Memphis” – Great track about the loss of the King, Elvis Presley.
  25. The Rolling Stones, “Love In Vain” – I debated about whether to put the Faces cover of this Robert Johnson track, but ultimately, the Stones version is definitive for me.
  26. Jeff Beck & Rod Stewart, “People Get Ready” – I wish these two would work together again in some capacity.
  27. The Rolling Stones, “All Down the Line” – A track that should be on their greatest hits. Yes, there’s a lot of Stones here, but I love the Stones and they love trains.
  28. Little Feat, “Two Trains” – Lowell George was a genius.
  29. Robert Plant, “Win My Train Fare Home (If I Ever Get Lucky)” – Plant covering a track made famous by Muddy Waters. What’s not to love?
  30. Bob Dylan, “Duquesne Whistle” – This track from Tempest starts off old-timey but takes off a minute in. Benmont Tench does a nice cover version too.
  31. Rod Stewart, “Downtown Train” – I was tempted to go with Tom Waits’ original, but this is better known and I have a story about this song… The Downtown Train to Wichita: The Road to Drew’s Wedding and the real Mayor of El Dorado, KS.
  32. Elton John, “Tell Me When The Whistle Blows” – Great Elton deep track, Playlist: B&V’s Favorite 20 Elton John Deep/Album Tracks.
  33. R.E.M., “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” – From their mumble the lyrics phase…there’s a train song under here somewhere.
  34. Lenny Kravitz, “Freedom Train” – More of a riff than song, but irresistible for this playlist none the same.
  35. The Doobie Brothers, “Long Train Runnin'” – The Doobies don’t get the love they once did, but they used to be as big as the Eagles, in my opinion.
  36. Joe Walsh, “At The Station” – Joe Walsh is just so solid. This is such a great riff and great song.
  37. Aerosmith, “Train Kept A Rollin'” – First done by Jimmy Page and his Yardbirds. I like this one.
  38. Gary Clark, Jr, “When My Train Pulls In” – A great, “I’m leavin’ here” track. Gary gives me hope for the guitar.
  39. Johnny Cash, “Hey Porter” – I almost went with “Orange Blossom Special.” There are so many great Johnny train songs. I had to limit it or his music would take over the playlist.
  40. The Cult, “Medicine Train” – From their biggest record, Sonic Temple. They’re out touring playing this record in its entirety right now but I haven’t caught up with them yet. I will…mark my words.
  41. Jethro Tull, “Locomotive Breath” – My favorite Tull song.
  42. Chuck Berry, “Let It Rock” – A railroad song from the perspective of someone working on the line… with a runaway train on its way…”gotta get the workers out of the way of the train.” The Stones, Bob Seger have both covered this track.
  43. Bob Marley, “Zion Train” – From his last studio album when alive. He was a giant.
  44. U2, “Zoo Station” – The opening track from Achtung Baby. 
  45. Guns N Roses, “Night Train” – More about the cheap wine of the same name, but I love these guys and this is one of my favorite songs by them.
  46. Ozzy Osbourne, “Crazy Train” – His signature song and an NFL stadium favorite.
  47. The Beatles, “One After 909” – A song they wrote in their early days but only went back to record during the jams around Let It Be. 
  48. Bob Marley & the Wailers, “Stop That Train” – It says Bob Marley, but this is Peter Tosh on lead vocals.
  49. Sting, “Twenty-Five to Midnight” – A song I first heard after wandering into a bar in Amsterdam. It was a bonus track from Mercury Falling that wasn’t put out in the U.S. until it came out as a b-side.
  50. Bruce Springsteen, “Downbound Train” – Beautiful, haunting ballad from Bruce to end our proceedings.

You can easily shuffle this playlist, which is something I always advise. Again, I probably missed about a million songs that could have been on here… Please make your suggestions in the comments section. This might be a good playlist for the car, when you’re out on that open highway, chasing something you just can’t catch…but again, those files are sealed.

Thanks and as always, Cheers!