As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Saturday, May 7, 2016

#118 Long May You Run – The Stills-Young Band (1976)


 
I’m not normally that big on car songs, but this one is a classic, and is for me the best thing that Neil Young has ever written (and there’s certainly some stiff competition).

#117 Put Your Records On – Corinne Bailey Rae (2006)


 
Although this one still shows up on WXPN (and on whatever SiriusXM channel my dentist had on yesterday afternoon), I was a little shocked to find out that it actually made the Billboard Hot 100 ten years ago, peaking at a modest #64 but hanging around for 19 weeks. The perfect slow groove for a sunny spring or summer day, this song is to the year 2006 what War’s “All Day Music” was to 1971.

#116 I Do – The Marvelows (1965)


 
Irresistibly infectious, this is undoubtedly the greatest Chicago soul record of the 1960s that wasn’t written by Curtis Mayfield. (The J. Geils remake released in 1982 isn’t bad either.)

Monday, May 2, 2016

Marti Jones & Don Dixon – Kentlands Arts Barn (Gaithersburg), 4/30/2016


Row 5, Seat 6 (center, about midway back)
 
Sublime 100-minute performance by the 1980s WHFS mainstays in an intimate environment: 10 or 11 rows in the theater with 9-10 seats per row – sort of like a house concert if the house had a theater in the top level. Highlights included “The Night That Otis Died” as the second song (followed by Otis’s own “These Arms Of Mine”), three tracks from Jones’s recent You’re Not The Bossa Me (including the hilarious “Keep It To Yourself”), and some of Marti’s classic radio “hits”, such as “Tourist Town” and “Any Kind Of Lie”. They closed the main set with “Follow You All Over The World” and encored with Dixon’s “I Can Hear The River” (since they referred to the theater as “the best place for music on this side of the river”). Having been married for 28 years, the couple’s between-songs banter also added a lot to the experience; I now know, for instance, that her daughter and her boyfriend live with the two of them and raise snakes.
 
Local singer David Kitchen opened with a 35-minute set, which I might have enjoyed more had his vigorous guitar strumming not overwhelmed both his vocals and the excellent lead guitar work of accompanist Anthony Pirog.