Boomer Top 5

Top 5 songs about crazy, paranoid times

1.     Lunatic Fringe, Tom Cochrane

2.     Kid Charlemagne, Steely Dan (…yes, there’s gas in the car!....)

3.     Life During Wartime, Talking Heads

4.     Eve of Destruction, Barry Maguire

5.     Grab Your Gun, John Hiatt

 

 

Tom Cochran is better known for his Life is a Highway, especially after the cover by Rascal Flatts. One guy; two amazing songs which will live for a long, long, long time.

 

The entire Royal Scam album is a treatise in paranoia, but Kid Charlamagne is just laden with end-of-world, on-the-run imagery.

 

Barry Maguire’s angry screed is a Sixties classic. Maguire, fresh from folky froth with the New Christy Minstrels, almost spits out this song in anger. It’s something to see, and it expresses how we felt then, and more recently.

 

Grab Your Gun is a tip-of-the cap to the brilliant Hiatt, one of the most prolific songwriters of the last twenty years. Bonnie Raitt helped him immensely with her cover of his Crazy Thing Called Love, but oh man, he has got talent, the raspy voice and a lot to say.

Top 5 songs with a xylophone

1.     Born To Run, Bruce

2.     Hungry Heart, Bruce

3.     Gone Daddy Gone, Violent Femmes

4.     Cynical Girl, Marshall Crenshaw

5.     Moonlight Feels Right, Starbuck (Ok, ok; a little cavity inducing, but we needed a 5^th xylophone song! Find me a better one!)

 

Springsteen’s use of xylophone adds a subliminal marching band/high school joyous feel to his songs. As much as high school mostly sucked, we still feel the need to keep it in some sort of romanticized amber, a time capsule of our youth.

Top 10 long – exhausting, at times -- but ultimately great songs

1.     Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin

2.     Rosalita, Bruce Springsteen

3.     Hey Jude, The Beatles

4.     Suite Judy Blue Eyes, Crosby, Stills and Nash

5.     Hotel California, The Eagles

6.     Livin’ for the City, Stevie Wonder

7.     Whole Lotta Love, Led Zeppelin

8.     Angry Eyes, Loggins and Messina

9.     Move on Up, Curtis Mayfield

10.                        Hot Lanta/In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, Allman Brothers

 

Long songs, longer list. And there are more great ones, and we put the Allmans 10^th, just to be fair; those two songs could be 1 and 2 in our book.

 

This list could be re-sequenced many ways and we’d be fine with that. The two on here that you may be scratching your head about our #8 and 9. If one of the judges of a great long song are a smile when the song begins, as opposed to dread (which, we admit, does sometimes hit us with the opening vocals of Hey Jude), then Angry Eyes is a great song. And it just gets better, with alternating vocals, a great sax solo, a fantastic resolution and more.

As for Curtis’ Move On Up, some of you may remember the seminal Groove Tube, which, to us, was the precursor to Saturday Night Live, and not just because it starred Chevy Chase. Well, Move On Up was the music behind the hilarious opening piece. It has one of the greatest extended drum and percussion solos of all time, with great bass and horns, and better yet, it is also a brilliant song about empowerment, as Curtis was known for.

top 5 Led Zep songs

Top songs that aren't Stairway to Heaven or Whole Lotta Love, that is; ones that kinda surprise each time:

1.    All of My Love

2.    Your Time is Gonna Come

3.    Ten Years Gone

4.    Ramble On

5.    Immigrant Song

Top 5 songs with a color in the title

1.     Purple Haze, Jimi Hendrix

2.     Purple Rain, Prince

3.     Whiter Shade of Pale, Procol Harum

4.     Back in Black, AC/DC

5.     Mellow Yellow, Donovan

 

Honorable mention: Blue Suede Shoes, Carl Perkins; Green-Eyed Lady, Sugarloaf (with one of the tastiest organ solos in the extended version); Blue, Joni Mitchell; Yellow Submarine, Beatles; Blue Money, Van Morrison; Green Tambourine, Lemon Pipers (a guilty one-shot wonder pleasure, with a color in their group name, too!); Cherry, Cherry, Neil Diamond (ok, a girl’s name…still…)

Top 5 groups with a color in their name

 

1.     Pink Floyd

2.     Red Hot Chili Peppers

3.     Deep Purple

4.     Green Day

5.     Savoy Brown

top 5 Michael Jackson songs.....not!

Love 'em..but sick of it all right now!!!