After a day’s break, back to my Soundtrack to Phill. Again, the rules: 40 songs, no repeat artists (though side projects and solo work from bands is acceptable). Songs must fit onto the list because of one or more of these criteria: lyrically (meaning the lyrics themselves have memoir-style meaning), tonally (meaning the feeling the song creates, the mood, though maybe not the actual lyrics) or symbolically (because of where the song is from or a moment it represents)
I left you at 10. Here we go:
11. “Surrender” by Cheap Trick. I consider this an epiphany song, but my strong link to it is more about Conan O’Brien’s love of it and use of it in his first and last Tonight Show broadcast. Please, Conan, don’t harass or molest anyone. I need you.
12. “How I Could Just Kill a Man” by Cypress Hill. For my study of the value of rage, the rhetorical force of anger, few things are more elegant than the line “here’s an example/just a little sample/how I could just kill a man.”
13. “Dave” by Will Rigby. This is a fairly obscure track (it was on Will Rigby’s disc in the Hello Record Club in the 1990s, a TMBG project. Rigby, of couse, is from the dBs), but there’s a certain feeling that comes from this song that is undeniably my exact mood certain summer days on a drive out in the middle of nowhere. This is replaced on my Spotify playlist by the dB’s track “Bad Reputation,” which is tonally similar.
14. “Fort Hood” by Mike Doughty. My wife recently pointed out to me that I AM Mike Doughty minus the hipster fame and the drug habit past, but I can remember my mother listening to the 5th Dimension when I was a kid, and any song that can link that memory to a shout out to Young Jeezy and can express gen-X political angst wins. It just wins.
15. “Flowers on the Wall” by the Statler Brothers. When I was five, I broke my leg in a car accident (drunk driver hit us– one of two times that happened in my life). While I was in the hospital with my leg in traction, this was one of the few cassettes we had. I can’t recall much else off the album, but I can still belt out the chorus “watching flowers on the wall/doesn’t bother me at all/playing solitaire till dawn/with a deck of 51/smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo/don’t tell me/there’s nothing to do. Spend almost a year, as a kid, in a body cast and you’ll totally get this song.
16. “Smooth” by Santana featuring Rob Thomas. The first time I ever defended my right to still be a music snob but listen to a totally and undeniably pop song it was over this track. Seriously– who doesn’t love this song deep down inside?
17. “Mama Said Knock you Out” by LL Cool J. He samples himself– seriously. I performed this song in a lip sync contest at school when I was very small. I think I won.
18. “Ana Ng” by They Might Be Giants. I did the dance from the video at my senior prom. Go look at it, then you’ll know that much more about me.
19. “Kodachrome” by Paul Simon. “When I think back on all the shit I learned in high school/it’s a wonder I can think at all”
20. “Mr. Jones” by Counting Crows. I know this became a mega-hit, but I “found” Counting Crows before they were famous, and when I first heard this song, while driving, I had to pull over and weep. This song is being 17 as me. I even did a portrait of myself in blue, red, black and gray only just to try to capture whatever it was I heard in here.
More tomorrow. Onward to 40!