Man, there's like a thousand songs I could listen to over and over, but these are some that I've been listening to over and over for years, and have been recently as well.
I'm a huge Sly and the Family Stone fan, always have been- I know they aren't cool these days, but I've always loved them. This song,
Runnin' Away is one of my favorites, and it's a sad song from a band that is often thought of as kind of one dimensional. At this point Sly is starting to collapse into drugs and madness, and I'm not sure who he thinks he's addressing in this song, but it really sounds like him giving a warning to himself. Even better, the woman playing the trumpet (Cynthia) is using her instrument as an almost vocal counterpoint to what Sly is singing about, as if she's talking to a person she loves (she had a kid with the guy) with her instrument, and she gets the last word in at the end... it's just a very vocal, very human line of music that lasts only a little bit, and has never quit amazing me. If you had an instrument and only a few notes and a little time to communicate to someone you loved who you saw destroying themselves, it would sound something like this, I've always thought.
And then this tune... I like power pop, and I like rock and roll, and I think this is about as well constructed pop song as has ever been done, frankly. It's sensitive and bold and charming and hopeful and I know it's weird that an old man like me would like it so much, but shit, if a song can conjure up an innocence in the past that didn't really exist then I would say that the Rubinoos with
"I Want To Be Your Boyfriend" is as good as it can be. I liked it when I was young, and wished I could be as bold and hopeful as this song is, then I got older, and I actually became a little bit of that. Maybe this song helped.
So, I can still remember the first time I heard this song, I had gone out to buy some CDs and drinking and when I got back home, I was playing them, and most of them were bullshit. Then all of a sudden I had this song on- it's the second song on the album- and I remember looking at my CD player and all of a sudden realizing that music I had always suspected existed did, in fact, actually exist. There it was, all of a sudden, the Stooges with "
Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell" and I just loved it. Gender bending cover, bold and unashamed sexuality
(which only increased on the next song on the album), brash and dumb lyrics that kicked off with "All right!" I had a new way of thinking about sex presented to me, and I sat there and listened to Raw Power over and over and over again until I had absorbed it.
Back in those days, everyone knew that if you were talking about Destiny's Child, you were talking about Beyonce, LaTavia, LeToya, and Larry.