#115 "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty

Tom Petty is pretty cool. I don't think he's the greatest musician that ever lived, but he's produced a solid body of work over his long career. Not everyone can be a serious ground-breaker. Petty just writes good rock-n-roll tunes. Nothing wrong with that.

In 1989 Tom Petty released "Full Moon Fever," billed as his first solo album. A lot of people don't realize that it IS a solo record because it doesn't really sound that different from his other records. That's most likely because FMF features guitarist Mike Campbell, whose sound is so recognizable from The Heartbreakers. A few of the other band members appear on the album too, so I'm not too sure why it was considered a solo project in the first place. Whatever... I digress.

I've always liked the song "I Won't Back Down" because now and then you just need a good "Fuck You" tune. Petty's stubbornness is well-documented. He fought back when his record contract was sold from one company to another. He fought back when his label tried to hike the price on one of his releases under what they called "Superstar pricing." He fought once again when someone tried to use his song in a commercial without his permission. "I Won't Back Down" is kind of a tribute to his indomitable spirit.

"I Won't Back Down" is from the album "Full Moon Fever." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#114 "I Wanna Stay Home" by Jellyfish

In 1990 a band hit the airwaves who looked like some weird hybrid of Scooby Doo and The Partridge Family. Visually, it was hard to take them seriously, but Jellyfish's debut album "Bellybutton" was pretty good... a great mix of bubblegum, psychedelia, and pop.

My younger sister really got into Jellyfish. Maybe it was the dyed dreadlocks or the hippie fashion, but she wanted to listen to my "Bellybutton" cd all of the time. And sure enough, when Jellyfish came to town that same little sister asked me to take her. She was only fifteen at the time. The band was coming to the original 9:30 Club in DC, a legendary venue nestled in one of the many shady neighborhoods of our nation's capitol. I had mixed feelings, but remembering how cool it felt when my older brother took me to some of my first concerts, I thought I had to pass the torch.

When we got the tickets, my sister was pretty psyched. Honestly, we're not the closest siblings in my family. I think ultimately we're just very different. When my parents divorced, I probably tried to be a father-figure to her a little too much too. I'm sure that didn't bring us closer. So when I had my chance to be a cool big brother, I enjoyed it. I remember telling her, "Look... the 9:30 club is not exactly in a nice part of town. Stay close to me. Don't talk to anyone. Don't look at anyone. If anyone talks or looks at you, tell me. I'll take care of them." The entry into the main room of the club required you to walk down this narrow corridor. No matter who's playing there, it's always a freak show. The Jellyfish fans looked like the Mickey Mouse Club on acid, so I was definitely giving the clientele a wide berth. I remember walking down that corridor with Melanie in front of me, my hands on her shoulders guiding her through the crowd. It was probably overkill, but I was not going to tell my parents that I got my baby sister killed or stoned by taking her to a late-night concert in DC.

When the band came on, they put on a great show. Looking over at Melanie... she just had the biggest grin on her face. It was great. I mean... here she was at her first concert, but what was so great was that she was seeing this band from MTV right in front of her. The original 9:30 club was tiny, so it felt like it was just us and them in this little room. We were probably only five or ten feet from the stage. What a great first show. Later I told her, "Don't think all concerts are like this. You'll probably never get this close to anyone again." All these years later, I don't know if she ever has, but I'm sure she'll always remember that first Jellyfish concert. Hopefully in that memory will be one of me... looking out for her like I always did.

"I Wanna Stay Home" is from the album "Bellybutton." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#113 "I Must Belong Somewhere" by Bright Eyes

It sounds romantic, but I'll always remember a train ride into the south of France when I think of Bright Eyes.

I had heard "Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground" a number of years before. I'd read all the stuff about Conor Oberst being the new Bob Dylan... about how he was the emo king of poetic lyrics. I gave him a listen, but most of what I heard initially was a warbly, forced-emotional delivery and pretentiously-long album titles. So when "Cassadaga" came out in 2007, it didn't really register on my radar.

A kid I was traveling with that spring gave me the Bright Eyes "Four Winds" EP to listen to and something caught my ear. When we got back to the states a week later, the full length album was right about to come out. She promised me a copy as we were imprisoned on a nine and a half hour plane ride from Munich to Chicago and delivered on that promise shortly thereafter. I told her to give me a week to listen to it and then we'd compare notes. I ended up really liking the album and we talked about all the songs that we both enjoyed. It's a fairly long record and as we were going through the play-by-play, I all of the sudden went "Oh yeah... I LOVE the second to last song... I Must Belong Somewhere. It's so great." She confessed that of all the songs on the album, she thought I would really like THAT one. "I don't know why," she said. "It just sounded like a you song."

Conor Oberst IS a great songwriter... or at least a very good one. His lyrics are observant and intelligent and poetic and a lot of what popular music is not. That being said, he still has a long way to go before he becomes "the next Bob Dylan." While I find Oberst's lyrics to be literary, I don't always find them to be meaningful. He's got a great gift of stringing words together and often employs alliteration and other poetic devices to enhance his imagery, but sometimes I wonder if they're really anything more than fancy word play. "I Must Belong Somewhere" definitely shows a lot of this. Some of the ones I like are...

Leave the epic poem on its yellowed page.
Leave the grey macaw in his covered cage.
Let the traveling band on the interstate remain.

Leave the old town drunk on his wooden stool.
Leave the autumn leaves in the swimming pool.
Leave the poor black child in his crumbling school today.

The lines are so visual. Oberst's details are excellent. Every time I hear the line about the leaves in the pool I can totally see it. My dad used to say that when he read a Jack London story about being on a ship, he could feel the wind and the ocean spray on his face, feel the pitch and yawn of the boat, hear the crash of the waves, etc. I feel this same way about Oberst's imagery in this song.

"I Must Belong Somewhere" is from the album "Cassadaga." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#112 "I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You" by Colin Hay

Recognize the name? Vaguely? Yes, this is THAT Colin Hay... the singer from Men At Work... "Who Can It Be Now?"... the guy with the strange lazy eye. The 80's may be long gone, but Colin Hay is still working. I'm trying to avoid making a bad joke about that and his former band's name right now.

When the movie Garden State came out a few years ago, it was fairly successful. Among the many things it was applauded for was its soundtrack. If I'm not mistaken, the film's writer and director, Zach Braff, actually won a Grammy award for his compilation of songs. That's pretty cool. The cd is a mix of lots of great alternative bands, from Coldplay to The Shins, and also included other artists like Simon & Garfunkel and Iron and Wine. Nestled among the bigger names was this beautiful little song called "I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You." I don't necessarily remember it from the movie, but when I heard the soundtrack for the first time it just about killed me. Man... what a powerful song.

I've often said the simplest delivery allows for the heaviest impact. Don't dress up everything with special effects. When you cut your work down to its most basic form and you can still be effective, that's when you've really done something.

The lyrics to this song are just about missing someone's presence and about what a powerful impact someone can have on your life. I think the words kind of speak for themselves so I'm going to print them below. Sometimes you just need a good sad song. This is it.

I drink good coffee every morning.
It comes from a place that's far away.
And when I'm done I feel like talking.
Without you here there is less to say.
I don't want you thinking I'm unhappy.
What is closer to the truth
is that if I lived 'til I was 102,
I just don't think I'll ever get over you.
I'm no longer moved to drink strong whiskey
'Cause I shook the hand of time and I knew
that if I lived till I could no longer climb my stairs
I just don't think I'll ever get over you.
Your face it dances and it haunts me.
Your laughter's still ringing in my ears.
I still find pieces of your presence here
Even after all these years.
But I don't want you thinking I don't get asked to dinner
'Cause I'm here to say that I sometimes do.
Even though I may soon feel the touch of love,
I just don't think I'll ever get over you.
If I lived till I was 102
I just don't think I'll ever get over you.

"I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You" is from the Garden State Soundtrack. To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#111 "I Got A Woman" by Ray Charles

Whenever we have family or friends over to the house, I usually load the cd player with a rotation of Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Norah Jones, a Chess Records compilation, and Ray Charles. When I'm not playing jazz music and Frank Sinatra in an attempt to make my house sound like Maggiano's, the standard mix from above always does the trick.

Honestly, I'm not a huge Ray Charles fan. I guess that's almost un-American to say, being that Ray was like our nation's god-father or something, but I can give Ray Charles his due. The guy was massively talented and played a part in one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, "The Blues Brothers."

When "Ray" came out a while back, Ray Charles was everywhere. We'd always been familiar with the music, but now we found out about the life behind the genius. It was odd to hear about this old blind guy being a heroin addict and womanizer back in the 50's and 60's. That was like envisioning my grandfather doing the same thing!?!

I play Ray Charles in the house because even though he's not my favorite, he is a significant part of American culture. I'm not content to let my sons listen to KidzBop all day long. I've got two boys who can name the members of The Beatles, a band who broke up thirty years before they were born, who like The Clash, Elvis, Led Zeppelin, and more recently Burl Ives. Yes, unfortunately they occasionally watch Big Time Rush on Nickelodeon, but they are also familiar with the songs that formed the soundtrack of The United States for the past sixty years are so. I'm pretty proud of that.

"I Got a Woman" can be found on any number of Ray Charles compilations. To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.

#110 "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" by Prince

Prince is a total badass. I've only said that about one other person on this list: Bo Diddley. I won't say it about anyone else. Say what you want about The Purple One, but he is undeniably one of the most gifted musicians of our time.

Now I didn't include a picture of Prince here. I also won't include a copy of the song "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" in the jukebox either. Apparently Prince is fiercely protective of his image and his work and how it is used by others. I have the utmost respect for that.

What I've always liked about Prince is that he does whatever he wants. After "Purple Rain" made him the biggest name in American music in the mid-eighties, all anyone wanted was a sequel. He proceeded to release album after album of specifically NON-sequels, full of music that sounded nothing like "When Doves Cry" or "I Would Die 4 U" and sometimes wasn't even remotely radio-friendly. This confounded a lot of people. I thought it was great. Later he changed him name to some unique little symbol and shaved the word "slave" into his facial hair, all in an intricate legal maneuver to free himself from an ugly record contract. Again... people were baffled, angry, and irritated. I'll admit... I thought it was odd, but I respected the guy for being unique and for making a stand.

A few years ago Prince seemed to lighten up a bit. He performed at the Grammys. He did a greatest hits tour. He even showed up at the SuperBowl halftime show and did a Foo Fighters' cover!?! He rocked the HOUSE at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame too. Maybe the Purple One is mellowing out in his old age. Who knows! I'll always have a ton of respect for him though.

Oh... and on a side note. Prince made his name in Minneapolis in the late seventies and early eighties. He was a frequent performer at First Avenue, which is kind of shown in Purple Rain. And who else cut their teeth at that famous club? My boy Paul Westerberg and the Replacements!

"I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" is from the album "Sign 'O' the Times."

#109 "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog

In the summer of 1992, I spent a few days at the beach with one of my good friends. We weren't yet 21, but Kurt and I knew that a week with a bunch of Ocean City lifeguards was probably going to be a pretty good time. At that point, neither of us had a serious girlfriend. We hadn't graduated from college nor had embarked on important careers either. Five days at the beach most likely meant a lot of drinking, hopefully a lot of girls, a lot of visits to Tommy's Sub Shop, and a lot of good times. It ended up being a great trip.

One thing I'll always remember from that week is that when we first got there, Kurt's buddies were all out guarding and left their house to us. All we had was a case of Milwaukee's Best Light and the Temple of the Dog cd. We plopped down on some couches, put the cd on, put the case in the middle of the floor, and Kurt promptly announced, "We're not leaving this room until we drink that case of beer!" Though I was probably 230 pounds at the time and well-versed in mass alcohol-consumption, twelve beers was no mean feat. I got comfortable and got ready to get bombed. It was great.

Kurt and I always had ridiculous conversations about nothing. We'd known one another since elementary school, played on soccer teams together, and knew all the same people. We just had a lot of material to laugh about from over the years. I can remember fishing with him one time and spending what seemed like an hour talking about all the different sandwiches we'd eaten from Subway... what we put on them, what kind of bread we preferred, etc. Pretty deep stuff. We used to sit at his house playing video games and talking about girls... girls we hooked up with, girls we wanted to hook up with, girls we needed to hook up with. Typical guy nonsense, but it was always a good time.

I can't recall exactly what we talked about that first afternoon in OC, but I do remember that Temple of the Dog cd playing on repeat for a few hours. Whenever it got to Hunger Strike, Kurt and I would trade parts. I'd be Chris Cornell to his Eddie Vedder, or vice versa. We were belting it out too, so I'm sure that any passerby's must've gotten quite a feast for the ears... two drunken fools singing off-key to what would become a grunge classic. At one point I think we put the song on repeat for about ten or fifteen times and just blasted it over and over again. It's funny what we DON'T remember, and yet for some silly reason I can't get that afternoon out of my head. The rest of the week included run-ins with a handicapped guy whose piss-bag kept leaking, another guy whose nickname was "Pep" because his gigantic nipples were easily the size of sliced pepperoni, numerous sloppy trips down the boardwalk, the public drunk-bus stopping right at Tommy's Sub-Shop... our Shangri-La, and nights I don't even remember because the days were so much fun. It wasn't too long after that week that I met my wife and embarked on that part of my life. Looking back on it now, that time in OC was my last crazy stand as a single guy.

On a related note... when Lollapallooza came around Northern Virginia later that year, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were both on the bill and for one rare performance, the parts of those bands that formed Temple of the Dog got together and played Hunger Strike live. Some research told me that this was only one of three times that they ever did that. My buddy Kurt was in the audience that day and that was claim-to-fame for a long time.

"Hunger Strike" is from the album "Temple of the Dog." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.