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.)

Friday, May 9, 2014

#62 Tennessee -- Arrested Development (1992)



Like #63, I vividly remember the first time I heard this one. In April of 1992, the annual SUGI conference was in Honolulu, for the first (and probably only) time. Since I wasn’t sure I’d get over there again, I went over a few days early and rented a car so I could do some sightseeing.

Oahu has two parallel highways that go from Honolulu across to Kailua on the other side of the island. Since there’s a mountain range in between, a portion of each highway goes through a tunnel. I first heard “Tennessee” on my drive between Honolulu and Kailua – can’t quite recall whether it was on the way over or the way back, but I think I just barely heard the end before getting to one of the tunnels.

Probably not a lot of visitors to Hawaii would list “listening to the radio” as one of his/her highlights, but I was fortunate to be over there while the legendary “Radio Free Hawaii” was on the air. As a web site dedicated to the station put it: “Radio Free Hawaii's claim to fame was that its programming was determined by weekly votes submitted to the station by listeners from all over the state using a ballot system. … The music represented by listener votes spanned all genres... rap, pop, rock, alternative, country, Hawaiian, jazz, classical, ska and more.” In addition to Arrested Development, I remember hearing tracks by House of Pain and Cypress Hill. Topping the listener request chart, however, was The Partridge Family’s “Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque”. It’s hard to get more eclectic than that.

 


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