Top 10 Desert Isle Albums

Why ruin a good thing?  Last time I listed the ten songs I would want on a deserted isle.  Now it’s time for the top ten albums.

I came of age in the rock era, so my list is skewered toward rock music. But I also snuck in some jazz, blues, country, and even Easy Listening.  After all, one needs a well-rounded diet to supplement the coconuts and sand crab.

Drum roll, please…let me know your thoughts, yea or nay, and some of your own choices!

Mom saw this in 1966 and wanted to know why I couldn’t dress like the Beatles

1. The Beatles, Beatles VI.  Several of my favorite Beatles songs are on this collection of singles, B-sides, and album cuts on the North American Capitol label: “Yes it Is,” “Eight Days a Week,” “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party,” and my fave Beatles cover song, Buddy Holly’s “Words of Love.”  It also has sentimental charm, being the second rock album I ever bought, and every time I listen to it I’m transported back to my salad days.
2. The Beatles, Rubber Soul (Capitol).  The first rock album I ever bought.  Like above, it’s a North America-only release with shuffled songs, but it’s another personal time machine.  I could be pressured into substituting the official EMI Rubber Soul that contains “Nowhere Man,” but I give this Capitol version a slight edge due to the inclusion of “It’s Only Love” and “I’ve Just Seen a Face.”
3. Velvet Underground, Velvet Underground and Nico.  I don’t doubt that if Lou Reed had died in 1970, he’d be ranked with John Lennon and Bob Dylan.  The best word to describe this record is “uncompromising.”  This is serious rock music for adults, filled with beauty, danger, and poetry.  The “banana album” directly influenced dozens of later, more successful artists, yet it was so daring and intense in 1967 that it was totally ignored.
4. The Doors, The Doors.  Like the record above, a thrilling debut album that threatened the peace and love vibes of the time, and where every song is a knockout.  The Doors made a lot of great music after this, but never attained the same heights.
5. Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited.  After the 1960s he continued to make good music (especially Blood on the Tracks) but his creative peak were three albums in the mid-sixties: Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.  This is my favorite of the three (not surprisingly the first Dylan I ever bought, back in college).  Try as you might, there’s no way to categorize this ragged hybrid of rock, blues, folk, and free-form verse that churns like a rickety steam engine and will be talked about as long as recorded music exists.
6. Beach Boys, Pet Sounds.  Actually a Brian Wilson solo album with the group name slapped on it, he was trying to top the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, and when Beatle Paul heard it he hatched the idea for Sgt. Pepper.  Four of Wilson’s greatest songs are here: “Wouldn’t it Be Nice,” “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” “God Only Knows,” and “Caroline No,” plus two beautiful instrumentals.  The only wrong move was inclusion of “Sloop John B,” which is starkly out of place, but acceptable on a desert isle.

Brian Wilson and a friend

7. Burt Bacharach, The Look of Love.  A three-CD boxed set.  Until buying this in 2008, I mainly associated Bacharach with his popular Dionne Warwick songs and film work (and the dentist’s office).  His Warwick songs are legendary, but just a few keys on his grand piano.  There’s a thing called “The Bacharach Sound,” and you can hear it on everything from “The Blob” (theme song to the 1958 cult monster movie starring a young Steve McQueen) on up to his 1998 collaboration with Elvis Costello.  The best description of this Sound came from his late daughter, Nikki, who said experiencing it is like “going to heaven on a velvet slide.”
8. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue.  Lots of jazz experts call this the greatest jazz album ever.  I’m more into rock, but I have a modest jazz collection, and I’m not going to disagree.  Kind of Blue was a studio improv experiment for Miles that explored modality, setting the stage for John Coltrane’s later work.  Like Joni Mitchell’s records, it’s best appreciated alone, late at night, in a dark room, with no distractions.
9. Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings.  I also have a modest blues collection, and there are few musical experiences as wrenching as a listening session with the king of Delta Blues.  He was an anomaly, dragged to only two recording sessions during the Great Depression when very few black musicians were active, then dying mysteriously.  Not only was Johnson a guitar virtuoso who sang like he was wrestling with all sorts of crazy demons, but as a blues lyricist he’s unparalleled.  He’s as close to an existential experience as you can get in blues.
10. Paul Groueff, Vest Pocket Soul.  I’m cheating here.  This guy actually hasn’t released a record (yet).  A few years ago I accidentally discovered his online Myspace page.  He’d uploaded 11 demos there, and after listening I was so impressed I wrote to him, then managed to find an app to extract and download his tunes to my computer, then ripped them to CD.  Groueff is hard to describe: a cross between Tim Buckley and Gordon Lightfoot might come close.  He’s not only an extremely talented guitarist, he’s also a fine writer/arranger, and his voice often ascends to a plaintive falsetto, creating what I call a “high, lonesome, Montana” sound. I think his Myspace page is now defunct.  And since he lives in an isolated cabin with no address on a mountain outside Bozeman, the only way to get his music is through Longitudes Records.

Honorable Mentions:  Hank Williams, 40 Greatest Hits; Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon; Small Faces, Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake; Kevin Ayers, Joy of a Toy; Neil Young, After the Goldrush; Zombies, Odessey and Oracle; Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland; Love, Love; Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas; Steely Dan, Katy Lied; Pentangle, Sweet Child; Bill Evans, The Village Vanguard Sessions; Lindisfarne, Nicely Out of Tune; Genesis, Foxtrot; and any of several Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, and additional Beatles, Dylan, and Velvets albums.  

Off to the dentist’s office on a velvet slide…

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Top 10 Desert Isle Songs

My blogging friend Mike at Ticket 2 Ride recently listed what he considered the ten best British rock bands.  For me, lists are like catnip to a feline. I’m an inveterate critic and love them.  “Best of” lists are great to create, and stimulate debate (rhyme intentional).

Taking Mike’s cue, I decided to formulate my own list, but instead advertise the ten songs I’d want if I become stranded on a desert isle—assuming my isle has electricity.

If stranded, I’d want lots of melody accompanying my surf and sun, and all of these songs are very melodic.  All except one were recorded in the 1960s.  Yes, I’m a product of my time!

So here goes…the soundtrack of my head and heart, listed in order of preference:

1. “Light My Fire” by the Doors.  The lyrics are juvenile (“wallow in the mire,” “love become a funeral pyre”).  But Ray Manzarek’s gothic organ, Robbie Krieger’s acid-dripped flamenco guitar, John Densmore’s jazzy snare, and Jim Morrison’s other-worldly vocals still give me chills since hearing this song on AM radio in 1967.  A bossa nova version by Jose Feliciano also was popular, and I can actually play that one on acoustic guitar, minus the solo…and acid.
2. “’Til I Die” by the Beach Boys.  Written by Brian Wilson (of course).  Even Beach Boys fans rarely mention this obscure jewel, featured on the Surf’s Up album released not long after Wilson’s masterpiece Pet Sounds.  Classic layered group vocals, an unusual calliope organ, simple but penetrating words, sad and haunting melody, and beautiful fadeout coda. It’s a heart-piercing song.
3. “Yes it Is” by the Beatles.  A John Lennon composition, the B-side to the “Ticket to Ride” single, with perhaps my all-time favorite vocal harmonizing.  It’s one of only three studio songs by the group where John, Paul, and George sang live three-part harmony (the other two being “This Boy” and “Because”).  Lennon dismissed it as a failed attempt to redo “This Boy,” but I think it’s a better song, colored by George’s volume pedal guitar.

Burt Bacharach, in a familiar pose

4. “A House is Not a Home” by Burt Bacharach-Hal David, sung by Brook Benton.  Okay, I’m a romantic, a softy, and this oft-covered Bacharach-David classic always chokes me up.  A Dionne Warwick version was released the same time, and both are good, with a very tricky bridge vocal, but I prefer Benton’s deep, aching rendition (and being male, the lyric hits me so much harder).  Luther Vandross did yet another, more exaggerated R&B version in 1981, and it became a big hit, but Benton’s interpretation has much more integrity.

5. “Wichita Lineman” by Jimmy Webb, sung by Glen Campbell. Webb was a master of melody. He also wrote “Galveston” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” for Campbell, as well as “Up, Up, and Away” for the 5th Dimension.  In addition to the melancholy arrangement and velvety strings, I love Campbell’s twangy guitar break.
6. “Itchycoo Park” by the Small Faces.  The British mod group’s only hit in America, reaching #16 in early 1968.  A lovely song for summer and a perfect example of “flower psychedelia.”  Ronnie Lane wrote most of it, but singer Steve Marriott contributed the memorable “It’s all too beautiful” section.  One of rock’s greatest bands, compatriots of the Who, but unfairly overlooked in the states.
7. “Orange Skies” by Love.  Another luscious summer song by the first integrated rock band (along with Butterfield Blues Band).  Like Small Faces, a seriously overlooked group, from L.A., who directly inspired the Doors.  Singer Arthur Lee was the leader, but guitarist Bryan MacLean, a former roadie for the Byrds, wrote several memorable songs, including this ingenuous beauty about “orange skies, carnivals, and cotton candy.”
8. “Penny Lane” by the Beatles.  I prefer mid-period Beatles (A Hard Day’s Night through Rubber Soul era), but a late-period Lennon-McCartney song is imperative, and this is my favorite, half of a double-A-side single and one of the two greatest singles ever released (the other being “Paperback Writer”/“Rain”).  Many people prefer the flip side, John’s “Strawberry Fields Forever,” but I like this Paul song for its buoyant melody and George Martin’s elegant orchestration.  (BTW, I rode a bus through the real Penny Lane a few years ago…on my way to Strawberry Fields.)
9. “My Cherie Amour” by Stevie Wonder.  Do you have a song where you remember the exact place and time you first heard it?  I heard this in the waiting room of the allergist’s office on Woodward Avenue in Detroit in early 1969.  (I told my friends about it later that day, but they didn’t appreciate my enthusiasm.)  It was the first 45 rpm single I ever bought, and I still have it stashed somewhere. I think everyone loves Stevie Wonder.
10. “Anyway,” music by Maggie and Suzzy Roche.  I discovered this minor miracle of a song by two of the three singing Roche sisters about 10 years ago.  I upload it to Facebook every Christmas.  The lyrics (author unknown) are a sort of non-denominational “prayer” about being honest, hardworking, forgiving, and maintaining faith.  The music consists of about seven or eight small, dissimilar arrangements that build in intensity, and end in a warm wash of mellotron.  Took me a couple listens, but now I’m hooked for life.

Like most lists, mine has many honorable mentions (in case a large wave pounds my Top 10 into the sand). Here are a few: “Don’t Go Away” by the Zombies; “You Baby” by the Turtles; “I Saw Her Again” by the Mamas and Papas; “Urge for Going” by Joni Mitchell (the Tom Rush version); “Northern Sky” by Nick Drake; “Running from Home” by Bert Jansch; “Blues Run the Game” by Jackson C. Frank (the Jansch version); and easily a half-dozen more Beatles and Bacharach songs.

Hopefully some of these songs will strike a “chord,” or perhaps lead you to investigation. Now, it’s your turn.  Click on “Comments” and send me your own desert isle list.

The Long, Downward Slide of the Republican Party

On January 28, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made a trip to Florida to meet with ex-president Trump.  The intent was to advertise to all that “We’re still with you.”  Reports are that McCarthy wanted to also “apologize” to Trump.  It’s still unclear what he wanted to apologize for.

A recent Politico poll shows 72 percent of Republicans think the recent U.S. presidential election was fraudulent.  Now, think about this: almost three-fourths of one of the two major political parties in the U.S. subscribe to a cockamamie conspiracy theory and support a former leader who, through his irresponsible and incendiary oratory, inspired an insurrection by white supremacists against the U.S. Capitol.

This in addition to four years of incessant bloviating, insults, lies, and just plain bad policy that has turned America into the wealthiest banana republic in the world.

I don’t know what these people are thinking.  Do they think?  But the black comedy we’re experiencing now, where GOP congressmen actively promote a political tactic the German National Socialist (Nazi) Party perfected called the Big Lie, refuse to publicly wear facemasks during a deadly pandemic, refuse to hold hearings on Supreme Court nominees (Merrick Garland, in January 2016), or who set off alarms by bursting through congressional metal detectors installed to protect legislators, has to begin somewhere.  When and how did this horror show begin?

To be fair, Democrats have also shifted from the middle in the last forty years or so.  However, most political observers agree that the shift is much more pronounced on the right side of the aisle and is less about policy than behavior.  Part of it is due to a powerful conservative-biased media that erupted during the Clinton presidency and is now a regular news/propaganda source for many Republican voters.  Columnist and GOP’er David Brooks recently observed that “a lot of these Trumpy Republicans, they run for office so they can get on FOX News, not to pass (legislation).”  That’s a lot of power—dangerous power— for a news network to wield, and it’s a major contributor to the gridlock we now see in Washington.  And FOX News is just one of many conservative outlets…shockingly, one of the more benign ones.

Another reason why the Republican Party has abdicated its responsibility as a guardrail of democracy is existential fear.  Authors Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, in their book How Democracies Die, trace this fear to a changing demographic precipitated by civil rights legislation in the 1960s.  The historically dominant white male demographic is shrinking, due to civil and equal rights, immigration, and an overall more tolerant and diverse secular and non-secular landscape in America.

No group wants to be squatting on the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder.  But white males, who predominate in the Republican Party, see themselves slipping downward.  This existential fear encourages extremism, embodied by, at best, election-year attempts at character assassination, and ever-increasing racist and xenophobic behaviors at worst.  And now, Big Lie tactics.

The slide began a long time ago: GOP strategist Lee Atwater’s self-admitted “naked cruelty” against Gov. Michael Dukakis (D-MA) before the 1988 presidential election; Republican politicians’ incessant attempts to scandalize Bill Clinton during the 1990s (Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewater, then the pearly gate of Monica Lewinsky, which resulted in the partisan weapon of impeachment for lying about sex); the now-discredited “Swift Boat” smears of 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry; GOP accusations that Barack Obama was a Muslim, or that he wasn’t born in the U.S. (which Trump spearheaded, quite successfully, before his own presidential run); the 2016 refrains of “Lock Her Up,” led by GOP leaders, including Trump, despite zero evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton.  And most recently, Trump’s attempt to smear Joe Biden through enlistment of a foreign power in digging up dirt on his political rival’s son (and which Trump was justifiably impeached for, despite Senate Republicans’ refusal to convict).

Maybe the slide began with the illegal activities of the Nixon re-election campaign committee (CREEP) that resulted in the Watergate scandal.

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So far in 2021 it’s clear that the Republican Party is still the party of Trump, with all the poison that such an association brings to American democracy.  Unless moderate Republicans (those few that are left) have the chutzpah to pull their party back to reality and decency—and if world history is any lesson—there are even darker days ahead for the U.S. than what occurred on January 6.

NEWSFLASH: a recently-elected GOP congresswoman from Georgia named Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on Facebook in 2018 that a Jewish-run banking firm deliberately fired a space laser to start a California wildfire in an effort to manipulate the stock market and benefit itself.  Ms. Greene is a QAnon supporter with a history promoting wacky anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. She also posted and liked Facebook comments advocating execution of Democrats. Despite this, Republican leaders, including fellow conspiracy-theorist and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (see above) have so far done nothing.