Bet You Can't Listen to This One Just Once

Song 200: Today's playlist addition is Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana, written by Kurt Cobain. When I realized that I almost got to number 200 on the list without a Nirvana song, I knew what song number 200 would have to be. I liked Nirvana, though I wasn't quite as crazy about them as some of my friends, but when I heard this song, I knew I had to get the new CD as soon as possible. Certain songs come along that grab you in such a way that you just have to hear them again and again, and this song wrapped itself around my ears in that manner. I really liked the opening verse riff, and apparently so did Courtney Love, according to the official stories, because when she first heard it she asked Kurt if she could use it. Some of the lyrics on this song I really like, such as the baby's breath line and the priceless sarcasm of the forever in debt to your priceless advice chorus, while others really don't do much for me, like the eat your cancer line, but I don't let that interfere with my enjoyment of the track. The YouTube video here is the official award-winning music video that accompanied the song's release, and I feel like it has a few good moments, mostly when the guys are mugging for the camera, but I also feel that the song far outshines the video, and I don't care much for the scenes with the old man on the cross or the woman wearing the suit with human organs painted on it. Kurt sure did have very blue eyes, though, didn't he!

Trouble in a Small Town

Song 199: Today's addition to the playlist, regardless of whether YouTube lets me add it or not, is The Come Heres and the Been Heres by Chuck Brodsky, who also wrote the song. It's been 7 weeks since the last song by a personal friend on this list, so today's song is by my friend Chuck Brodsky. Chuck and I were both members of a Berkeley songwriter circle in the 1980s, and Chuck even did a background vocal for a recording I started then, which I still haven't finished (I have plenty of those). I learned this song from listening to Chuck's recent videos, and I didn't hear it back in the Berkeley days, so I'm guessing that he wrote it after that era, though I could be wrong. In this song he paints a pretty clear picture of the conflicts that can arise between long-time residents and newcomers in some little country towns. His title and his subject bear a close resemblance to a 1993 magazine article, so perhaps that's where Chuck found his inspiration, although it could be the other way around, depending on which came first, the song or the article, and again, I don't know for sure, but also, it really doesn't matter -- most Dylan fans know the tale of how Bob came to write a very striking song after reading a New York Times story. Anyway, no matter when Chuck wrote this song, it definitely resonates in the present day -- the older residents in the little town don't like the way the newcomers take over the school board, thereby ending the morning school prayer and leading teachers to start covering evolution and sex ed. I might have read a similar headline lately, and probably you have too.

Pure Magic

Song 198: Today's addition to the playlist is Crimson and Clover by Tommy James and the Shondells, written by Tommy James and Peter Lucia, Jr., though I'm currently having issues with adding more videos to that YouTube playlist. To my ears, this song is pure magic, and always was, from the moment I first heard it playing on local station WENE back in the winter of 1969. The record dominated the AM radio dial for 2 to 3 months, hanging on well into the spring, and no one I knew ever complained that they'd heard it too much. In fact, I can remember still hearing it on the radio in early June, and still feeling like I couldn't get enough of it. Though probably no one would have called TJ a particularly poetic lyric writer from his previous work, the words on this song have a very poetic feel, while at the same time they defy an easy and exact interpretation -- somehow when I hear this record, I feel like I know just what the singer means, but I also couldn't explain it. One side note worth mentioning is that this record was one of the first songs done on 16-track, which had become the industry standard by the time I booked my first multi-track recording session a few years later.

It Would Be Crazy to Leave This Song Out

Song 197: Today I posted Crazy by Willie Nelson, on the playlist -- a song that Willie also wrote. Not too long ago, I realized that I had gotten well into my second 100 songs on this list without including a single one by Waylon, Willie, Merle Haggard or Charlie Pride, and since I mention them all in the chorus of my song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, and I listen to their music quite a bit, I decided to start adding some of their songs to the list, starting with Waylon's Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? (Song 190) and Merle's Mama Tried (Song 191). This song marks Willie's first appearance on the list, and as it gets longer, more of his songs will certainly show up here. A couple of years before the Beatles turned my whole world around, I was hearing mostly folk and country during the times when my parents would play the radio in the car, which they didn't often do. The Ohio relatives we visited and stayed with in the summer during those years had a nice stereo and a good collection of country LPs, and during our visits they would let me play the records I liked. One record I played quite a bit was a double album of then-current country classics, and it included the Patsy Cline version of Crazy, so I got to hear it quite a bit then, and I liked it a lot. I didn't know anything about the story behind it, of course, and how Patsy couldn't even do the vocal on the first session, when she was still recovering from a car accident, and that she had to come back a week later to finish the vocal track, which she did in one take. I also didn't know that apparently Patsy didn't like the song a whole lot when she first heard it, that her producer talked her into doing the recording, and that she was surprised and amazed at how well the record did, all of which you wouldn't know from listening to the single. On another level of Crazy, one of the crazier things I did for a few years in the 1980s while living in Berkeley, CA, involved playing bass for a country bar pick-up band, and I can confirm that the audience always loved to hear this song. In places where the club had a juke box, very often the Patsy Cline single of Crazy would get played during breaks, so it didn't surprise me to learn that, according to the Amusement and Music Operators Association, as reported on Songfacts.com, PC's Crazy tops the official list of most-played juke box records -- after all, they'd be Crazy to pick a different song. On a side note, you can find the song video for As Long as Merle is Still Haggard by clicking on the title.