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.)
Showing posts with label More Favorite Albums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label More Favorite Albums. Show all posts
This is almost certainly one of the best albums ever by an artist old
enough to be eligible for AARP. Cash describes it as “a mini-travelogue of the
South, and of the soul”; all of the tracks are co-written by Cash and
producer/arranger/multi-instrumentalist/husband John Leventhal (with an assist
from ex-hubby Rodney Crowell on “When The Master Calls The Roll”). It won three
Grammy awards, including Best Americana Album, and also packs quite a punch
when performed
live.
Deciding between The Association’s first two albums for the list was
almost a coin flip for me. Their debut, And
Then … Along Comes The Association, was a hit, largely on the success of
their first two singles, “Along Comes Mary” and the even-more-successful
ballad, “Cherish”. While the band’s overall sound was quite similar on Renaissance, the latter flopped
commercially.
What happened? Well, it helps to pick a good lead single. “Pandora’s
Golden Heebie Jeebies” is by no means terrible, but it’s even stranger than its
off-putting title. Not surprisingly, it peaked at #35 on the Hot 100, compared
to #7 for “Along Comes Mary” and #1 for “Cherish”. It wound up leaving such a
sour taste that “No Fair At All” (the second single), which is every bit as
good a ballad as “Cherish” or “Never My Love”, didn’t even make the upper half
of the chart.
For me, Renaissance does the
most to spotlight the versatility and overall talent level of the band. All 12
of the songs are written by band members, and five of the six members
contribute at least one song. The same five also each handle lead vocals on at
least one track. And it’s not as though there’s any filler; each can stand quite
nicely on its own.
Despite the name of their superlative 1993 compilation (which happens
to feature four songs recorded live at The Barns At Wolf Trap), Los Lobos is
much more than Just Another Band from
East L.A.
If I had it to do over again, this album would definitely have found
its way into my top 25. For me, this is their masterpiece, so much so that it
was painful for me to decide which tracks NOT to include in my list of
favorites. There’s one traditional Mexican number, and three cuts by Cesar
Rosas, whose tracks add some raw grit (and often some up-tempo fun) to the band’s
LPs. The rest of the songs are co-written by Louie Perez and David Hidalgo (with
help in one case from co-producer T-Bone Burnett). Hidalgo is one of the most
underrated guitarists around; one
observer has described his work as follows: “Blues bends, smoky R’n’B, the
rattle of country-swing and rock’n’roll – he’s a master of (almost) all styles,
bending them and twisting them to make his own.”
A strong sense of social consciousness permeates the Hidalgo/Perez
compositions – it’s no accident that Just
Another Band from East L.A. contains a great live version of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s
Going On”. While they display a sharp eye for individual stories on “One Time
One Night” and “The Hardest Time”, they also show (in “The Mess We’re In”) that
they understand the bigger picture:
