This week, I heard five or six songs (fully realizing the fixation on five - I see it too). They contain some of the most personal, soul etching lyrics. They may not mean a whole lot to you, but they shaped the hell out of me. In no particular order, but number one is number one for a reason.
5) "Lashing out the action, returning the reaction. Weak are ripped and torn away."
Are there songs by Metallica that are better? Maybe. Opinions vary. However, this was the first lyric I had ever heard, from the band whose every album would be owned by me, in almost every medium available, at one time or another. Except "St. Anger" and "Lulu"... I don't know what the hell was going on with those... Can't all be winners - the weak are ripped and torn away.
This song, "Battery" starts off with an acoustic melody. I remember my friends in 9th grade warning me how "Heavy" this band was. You hear this opening, and you think, "How hard can it be?"... Then it REALLY starts. If you had not heard of them before... you had never heard anything like this...
This song is seen as a shout out to the "Bay City Bangers", the earliest supporters of the band. In their early days, they routinely played a club, the Old Waldorf, 444 Battery St. in San Francisco. "Cannot kill the family, Battery is found in me."
This song is drive. It is power. It is a nuclear fusion reactor compressed into 312 seconds... It is perfect for the gym. It is perfect for yardwork. It is the song for gritting your teeth, and getting the fucking job done - whatever the job may be.
I remember driving Shelby Summers to an after school skirmish in our senior year of high school and this is the song he wanted to hear to get psyched up. My trusty cassette was at the ready.
This, like a lot of the entries, marks a sonic way-point in my life... There is "Before Metallica" and there is "After Metallica".
The is probably my favorite album, every note perfection, the mixing and production is impeccable. This is the album, if stranded on a deserted island and could only pick one, I would choose as my go to. Much like Charlize Theron is my go to if ever stranded on a deserted island and could only pick one...
4) Tie... ""Hey, Hey Mama said the way you move, Gon' make you sweat, gon' make you groove."
and
"You ain't seen nothin', til your down on the muffin, Then you're sho' to be changin' your ways."
Ann Wilson of Heart said, "Robert Plant, when he sang that... he WAS sex."
The song was off of Led Zeppelin's "IV". Much like "Battery", it was my introduction to Led Zeppelin. I had heard "Stairway To Heaven" on the radio... And mentioned to my brother's friend that it was a great song... and he tossed me this cassette. Thanks, Huggins. Changed my life forever.
Within a year, I was listening to the last song on that album as I waved bye-bye to my virginity. I am pretty sure it was the same cassette.
This track was bluesy. This track was rock. This track was just nasty. In 1999, "The Guitar" magazine ranked this the 7th greatest, "Riff of the Millennium".
Of course, the song is about an aging canine that hung around the studio while the album was recorded. The elderly dog's only routine activity was "visiting" a bitch two houses away.
Again... Before Led Zeppelin... After Led Zeppelin. And this was my gateway drug.
_____
Steven Tyler never wrote a truer lyric than the one in bold above... I remember every detail about the day, NAY the moment, my life changed forever. I remember gazing upon the object that would bring the greatest joys... and the deepest sorrows...
I didn't even really engage in any activity with it... I just marveled. Looked at it. Might have poked at it like you would, if you weren't sure such a magical thing could exist...
I could feel changes, yes, physically of course, but not just sequestered to the lower abdominal area... No, I could feel synapses rewriting themselves. Brain chemistry altering. Things that moments before were absolutely critical to my happiness and well being were reduced to trinkets... baubles... inconsequential.
Having an older brother, I had seen magazines containing pictures of scantily clad or no clad women. This was different. Shit. Got. Real!
I don't recall the next time I heard "Walk This Way"... But I remember it making a fuck tonne of more sense. I then heard songs I had heard a million times before, and they were brand new... A deeper level of understanding had emerged.
I had applied the "Vagina Filter"...
"Oh... It's is not about a flower... He's talking about a chick!!! HOLY SHIT BALLS! I get it NOW!"
And it was as the great philosophizer Tyler had declared. I had been "down on the muffin", and yes... I was most definitely "sho to be changin' my ways."
3) "Baby, I'm yours, and I'll be yours until the stars fall from the sky."
This is the feels... All the feels. This song has been a part of my life since it began. This is my parent's song.
The song will slay me almost every time. Mostly due to Barbara Lewis' insane vocals. There is a sincerity that comes through in her delivery. She means that shit. She ain't fucking playing.
I have discussed this tune with Mom. "Why this one? The sixties were littered with love songs."
Mom asks me, "What's the first word?"
"Baby."
"Exactly... And the next word is 'I'm', but by putting the other person first, this song was unique."
The one thing I have learned from being around people who have been in a loving relationship for FIFTY PLUS years is just that... It is not just about you. It is love when you put the other person first AND they do the same for you.
Where you would normally say "I am gonna do X... I have done X before... Never had a problem doing X before". When you stop and say, "Hey... I would like to do X, but how will make them feel?" Shit... you just might have fallen in love. There is no cure and it will, statistically speaking, end badly. JOY!
A lot of the songs from the mid-60's were singers declaring the THEY love or adore a special person. Who gives a damn how that special person feels about it...
I just know that from now, until 2 + 2 = 3, that if this song is heard by my mother or father, they stop what they are doing, they find each other, and they kiss.
2) "Question is, not does love exist, but when she leaves, where she goes."
From the album "Diver Down", the song "Secrets", this lyric will take me to Junior year, high school. Yes, it is about a girl. It is about a girl I never worked up the nerve to talk to. Not that it would have helped...
This is about regret to me. Unanswered questions will always fill me with regret. I have zero problem making a decision... IF I have the information needed to make said decision...
I think this song resonates to me so profoundly is because it played one winter night while I was cruising the mean streets of Augusta, Kansas. Augusta had a great cruise. You would see your friends. Again and again. Eventually you would park, say "Hey", find out where the parties were going to be.
You knew everybody's vehicle. You made mental notes of where you saw them last... In case... Ya know... You want to say "Hey" later...
It had to be November, 1988... Later in the evening... I remember the cruise had picked up after the Friday night football game. Saw her car on one or two orbits... Then she was gone... Without a trace...
Then the lyric hit...
If it were not the perfect lyric, manifesting in real life, at that moment... it probably would not remind me of her... Every damn time I hear the song.
1) "So. So you think you can tell, Heaven from Hell, blues skies from pain."
Yet another, "Ow... Right in the blood pump!" Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here"
I was discussing this one with Mom just last month. I played it for her. I told her I don't know why it caused the emotional reaction that it did.
She said, "You don't like seeing people hurt."
That is part of it... I mean, I have not had a hard life. Hell... I have had a stupid simple and easy life. I can honestly say that any hardships that have befallen my bumbling self were of my own doing.
I have made decisions that led to life not being as easy as it could be. In Augusta, I think I purposely made some less than stellar decisions out of sheer boredom.
This song... To me... It causes the distress because I can always think of a person, in my present or my past, who invariably seems to be zooming headlong to heartache or headache.
You know this person. They describe a fork in the road to you. They lay out the pro's and con's of each path before them. They ask you for your opinion, and you point out the path of least trial and tribulation... and you shake your head as they gleefully skip to the loo down the path leading to ruin.
You want to ask them... Can you tell the difference between Heaven and Hell? Can you tell blue skies from pain?
Now... the hardest thing... is being able to ask yourself the same thing. Am I able to tell the difference?
I do not like seeing people I care about hurt. This lyric reminds me that sometimes, they are going to hurt. And it reminds me that sometimes, you have to let them hurt.
_______________________________
As my Dad would be wont to point out, "If all the songs and lyrics are special, then none of them are."
I see his point... I would counter with, "Have you read the same book before, at different times, and it mean something different each time?"
He would then shut it down with, "No, that's your Mother with her Bible."
While true, situations dictate how things are perceived - and remembered. Thankfully, I have a good memory.. and a lot of songs.
Most of all you have to hide it from the kids,
d
This blog brought to you by six songs... aaaaand The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Guns N' Roses, Faith No More, Weird Al, Filter, Def Leppard, Type O Negative, The Winery dogs, Marilyn Manson, Ray charles, Eminem, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Alice In Chains, The Lemonheads*, Pantera, Orange 9mm, sublime, System of A Down, and AC/DC
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