Posts tagged 2011

Another day passes, and more musical discoveries are made. Of course during this musical journey I would love to find thousands of more songs to listen to, but I all I really need is like a few more classic songs to add to my library. If I can get that, I will be satisfied. I found some of those yesterday.

Let’s start off with The Yardbirds. These cool kids had it goin’ on.  I featured “For Your Love” last night on this blog, but they had some other great songs too.

Train Kept A Rollin’
I’m a Man
Stroll On

The Temptations. Sometimes saying their name is all you need to say. So let’s get right into some of my favorites!

The Way You Do The Things You Do
Get Ready
Ain’t Too Proud To Beg
I Wish It Would Rain
Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone
My Girl

More Sam Cooke! I have a ton of Sam Cooke, so I will feature him more than a few times this year. Here are some more of my favorites:

Wonderful World
Summertime
You’re Always On My Mind

Black Sabbath might be one of my favorites of all-time. Whaa? You Mike? Yes, me. It must have been amazing to hear them for the first time back in the early 70’s, but I don’t know if it is possible for them to put a really bad song. More from them!

Changes
Black Sabbath
Wheels of Confusion / The Straightener

How could I forget about John Lennon? I don’t know, but apparently I listened to him on Wednesday and totally forgot to drop some tracks yesterday. Sorry dude. Anyways, Imagine, a really good album. Here are my favorites:

Real Love
Help!
Strawberry Fields Forever
A Day In The Life
Julia
God

Also gave a listen to Paul Simon’s Graceland, and I liked this more than I thought. I mean it’s not one of my all-time favorites, but it gets the job done. Here are some of my favorites:

Homeless
Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes
Graceland

Led Zeppelin will be featured this year a lot, because they are one of my favorite rock bands of all-time, maybe my favorite? So yeah, gave a listen to II yesterday, and of course Whole Lotta Love is a jam, but here are some more jams from that album:

Ramble On
The Lemon Song
Heartbreaker

Another day down, hundreds more to go. Crazy how this thing is just getting started.

Yesterday I didn’t go so much for listening to a lot of different artists, but focused on an album for a couple different artists.

Up first was Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.  Now Rolling Stone has this as one of the top 100 albums of all-time, and while I know Rolling Stone is not the end all of listmaking, I believe they have some merit to say this. However, I guess I am just not an Elton John guy. I can understand how this would have been a big hit when it came out though, so sorry Elton John fans.

Here are some of my favorites:

Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting
The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-34)
Roy Rogers

Elvis Costello could be in the same camp as Elton. I understand how influential he has been in the music industry, it’s just that we don’t connect in a very deep way. I decided to listen to This Year’s Model (Deluxe Version) and boy did that take a long time to go through! I was ready to give up on Elvis until we got to some of the demo versions of his songs.  The stripped down versions of “Running Out of Angels” and “Greenshirt” really show the power of Costello’s voice. Definitely am willing to hear some more songs based off of this.

Here are some of my favorites:

Hand In Hand
You Belong To Me
Running Out of Angels (Demo Version)
Greenshirt (Demo Version)


After Elton and Elvis, I moved over to Ricky Nelson. Let kid was amazing. I just watched Rio Bravo with John Wayne and Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson was in that too! He was a little firecracker haha! I can see how he was able to handle his own against Elvis for a little while. It’s hard to pick out some favorites from his Best Of collection, but I have tried.

Here are some of my favorites:

Bye Bye Love

Young World
Poor Little Fool
Never Be Anyone Else But You
It’s Up To You

Oh, almost forgot about Curtis Mayfield! Excuse me! Since I had Curtis Mayfield in my library before, it kinda got lost in the shuffle. Here are some of my favorites from one of the best voices in music history:

I Mo Git U Sucka
Pusherman
Superfly

That’s it for Day 3! Will probably get to some more artists tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Alright day two! Another fun day going back in the past and discovering some good ol’ classics. Let’s get right to it.

Rediscovered a classic from Donny Hathaway! You might know the original, or if you are an American Idol fan, you might remember Elliott Yamin (my mom’s favorite) doing a wonderful cover of this song, probably one of the best performances ever.

A Song For You - Donny Hathaway
A Song For You - Elliott Yamin

Etta James, oh miss powerful Etta James. When I listen to her, I feel like I can dive into the soul of her voice and never reach the end. You can feel the pain and heartbreak in her soul, which is why it’s unfortunate that her tortured personal life is why her songs are so amazing. But then again, which musician has not shared this same fate. From every rose has it’s thorn to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

At Last is obviously her most recognizable song, but I think “Stop The Wedding” might be my favorite.

Here are some other favorites:

All I Could Do Is Cry
Something’s Got A Hold On Me

Howlin’ Wolf was up next, and man, his voice is unequaled. Meaning that if people tried to imitate it, they would probably have to get a throat replacement! Usually you would think that a scratchy voice would be horrible, but here, it is absolutely perfect.

Here are some my favorites:

How Many More Years (WATCH THIS, BE EDUCATED)

Spoonful
I Asked For Water
Smokestack Lightnin’


Jackie Wilson, the performer of all performers. Another great artist with a tragic story, but once again, nothing new in music world. Of course there is “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher” and “Lonely Teardrops” but here some other classics I love:

I’ll Be Satisfied
Am I The Man
You Got Me Walking

James Brown, oh boy I am just getting started with James Brown. The man had 103 singles on the Billboard charts, and that’s just the singles! I have gone through two albums, and had to stop there to get to some other artists haha.  Definitely more discussion of the “Hardest Working Man in Show Business” later.

Here are (some) of my favorites:

Please, Please, Please
Funky Drummer
Super Bad
King Heroin

The next up in amazing, yet tragic artists is Janis Joplin, the “Howlin’ Wolf of the Women” Much more to discover here, but here are some of my favorites after a quick listen of her greatest hits:

Summertime
Bye, Bye Baby
Piece of My Heart

I listened to The Who’s Tommy yesterday and I can see why it is still a big deal today. Hard to pick out some favorites, but I will try after a brief listen:

Sparks
Pinball Wizard
Welcome

Finally did gave a full listen to Live at Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash. I will give some favorites but it’s best to just listen to the entire album.

Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart
Cocaine Blues
25 Minutes To Go
The Wall

Another resource that helped me today was Rolling Stones’ “500 Greatest Albums of All-Time.” Gonna take my sweet little time getting through this.

Note: The songs I highlight usually won’t be the songs that made these groups super famous (trying to dig a little deeper), but hey, sometimes you just can’t deny a classic.

So yesterday I started my musical journey backwards. These are artists/bands I got songs from:

• Black Sabbath
• The Yardbirds
• Sam Cooke
• Diana Ross & The Supremes
• The Shirelles
• The Who
• Booker T and The MG’s
• Cream
• Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Donny Hathaway
• Elton John
• Etta James
• The Drifters
• Elvis Costello
• Gram Parson
• Janis Joplin
• Miles Davis
• Ricky Nelson
• The Sex Pistols
• Santana
• Roxy Music
• Lynyrd Skynyrd

First Takeaways:

This is lot of damn music! It is going to be difficult to go through it all. I wish there was a way to coherently listen to two or three songs at a time (not talking about a mashup).

Black Sabbath was the shit. I mean they had some classic cuts. Master of Reality could be one my favorite albums of all-time. When I was younger watching “The Osbournes,” I always wondered how Ozzy got all that money, now I understand.

Favorite tracks so far:

Sweet Leaf
Children of the Grave
Solitude
War Pigs
Hand of Doom

Booker T and The MG’s made a lot of damn songs. It will take me a few days just to get through their stuff. What I have gone through has been pretty good so far. I am noticing a lot of familiar tracks, but then I learned that they were a house band for a record company, so it all makes sense now.

Favorite tracks so far:

I Got A Woman
Downtown
Georgia On My Mind
Soul Man
Something

Diana Ross & The Supremes were obviously hit makers, but their songs have stood the test of time. Unfortunately there are some artists that are so good that it is bad, and I a lot of the Motown stuff just got played out before I was even born. However, I am coming back and giving it another chance. There’s a part of me that wished I could have grown up when Motown was in their prime so I could hear these songs without any product and movie being attached to them, but then again I wouldn’t want to grown up in that time, well, because of all the overt discrimination.

Favorite tracks so far:

Come See About Me
Back In My Arms Again
You Can’t Hurry Love
Reflections

Cream. Geniuses. Wish they would have stayed together longer.

Favorite tracks so far:

I Feel Free
Spoonful
Badge

Sam Cooke has one of the greatest voices of all-time:

Favorite tracks so far:

If I Had a Hammer
You Send Me

A great start, but that’s all it was haha, LONG way to go.

Thanks to these two lists from Rolling Stone to get me started:

100 Greatest Artists of All-Time
100 Greatest Singers of All-Time

This isn’t the lists to end of all lists, but it’s a great place to start the journey.

2010 was the year where I went crazy with music. Being able to pull off a Top 365 Songs of the year list wasn’t even possible three years ago, so how do you top that? Well, my goal is to go backwards.

For the past two years I have had this sick feeling that I only own about 5% of the music I love. There are so many years of music that I haven’t even touched that I just get scared that there are at least 1,000 songs out that could easily be my top songs in my library. So I am jumping in the time machine and going back to find all the music I know I love.

The past 24 hours have already confirmed that I might be doing the right thing.  Discovering more songs from Black Sabbath, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Sam Cooke, Hank Williams, The Shirelles, Janis Joplin, Santana, The Temptations, Roxy Music, The Yardbirds, and the list goes on and will go on.

I know this will take a lot of work, but when you are doing something you love, it doesn’t feel like work. I am glad I have a blog to share my musical discoveries with you. But this isn’t a one-way process, please feel free to let me know what classics you love!

After all, music was meant to be shared… :)