Rolling Stone's Top 500 - Part Six
aka, where I thought about typing out the whole title of Fiona Apple's sophomore album, talked myself out of doing so and then talked myself right back in.
Hit Rewind: 1-20, 21-40, 41-60, 61-80, 81-100
Day 48 - 3/19/2021
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin (101)
I did not expect to be headed down an exploration of folk song traditions with this album, but I tripped and stumbled down the Wikipedia rabbit hole for the origin story of “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” and dear reader, I am here to report that it is fascinating. Though originally and subsequently often attributed as an arrangement of a traditional song, it was actually written by Anne Bredon, a folk singer from Berkeley, California. Bredon performed it on a radio show where another folk singer - Janet Smith - heard it. Smith taught it to Joan Baez. Yes, that Joan Baez. Baez went on to record it; her recording of the song was admired by Jimmy Page. Yes, that Jimmy Page. Page then brought it to Robert Plant on their first meeting and that is how it ended up on the Led Zeppelin album, a far cry from a folky radio show - but maybe not really. This is a long way of saying that “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” is a song for the ages and I am not the only one who feels this way.
The Clash - The Clash (102)
This absolutely feels like a Friday afternoon album but the refrain of “I’m So Bored with The USA” feels less accurate when what I’m really bored of is the small corner of the world I’ve spent my life in the last year and I’d really like to just go anywhere else without having to stress as much, to have the luxury of being bored with the whole of this country instead of just this patch.
Day 49 - 3/22/2021
3 Feet High and Rising - De La Soul (103)
I had a brief existential crisis about impermanence this morning while trying to figure out how to listen to this album. I went into a tailspin after discovering that’s not really possible because it’s not streaming in full anywhere, I don’t already own it, and I don’t have a spare $50 to throw at buying a CD I’d then have a hard time even playing. I then spiraled further thinking about what it means that so much of my own listening habits have shifted online and what that means for the future of tracking down songs I’ve loved across my lifetime when that may not actually be a possibility. I had a brief side freakout / moment of silence for the acoustic Tom Waits covers a guy I briefly had a crush on in middle school made and uploaded to myspace for me more than a decade and a half ago because those are most definitely lost to the digital void.
I was eventually able to find a way to listen to what I think is most of this album, but my eye is still twitching a little bit.
Sticky Fingers - The Rolling Stones (104)
I love this album for a decent number of reasons, not the least of which is that listening to “Dead Flowers” gives me an excuse to look up photos of Keith Richards and Gram Parsons (who is speculated to have played a role in the songs creation, if through sheer will of influence alone) hanging out.
At Fillmore East - Allman Brothers Band (105)
As a rule, I generally dislike live albums because the clapping and cheering and stilted banter almost always feels like a “you had to be there to get it, you had to see it to appreciate it” thing. All of that said - I didn’t hate this but still wish I’d been tasked with a non-live Allman Brothers number here.
Day 50 - 3/23/2021
Live Through This - Hole (106)
The snarl. The yell. The moments of quiet that pull you in just to rip the rug out from under you a couple beats later so you’re kicking and throwing your arms around to get your balance back until you find it and find that now you’re just kicking and throwing your arms around because it feels good to do so. This album is rad and loud and I apologize to my downstairs neighbors for the fact that I put it on fairly early in the morning and stomped and flailed around my house in a way that was probably also loud but not that rad.
Day 51 - 3/29/2021
Marquee Moon - Television (107)
About a year and a half ago, I went through a real phase with this album where it was almost the only thing I listened to for about a month and though I’ve put that behind me, putting it on now is like a comfort blanket if comfort blankets were effervescent and knitted together with some of the coolest guitar lines instead of made from yarn. There is a moment in “Friction” where Tom Verlaine pauses between syllables on the last word of the phrase “I start to spin a tale, you complain of my diction,” and yes, it might be a small moment of innuendo, a little juvenile even, but it also feels just effortlessly cheeky, intoxicatingly cool. The opening and recurring riffs of the titular track are likely imprinted on my soul at this point. This is an album I love.
When the Pawn… - Fiona Apple (108)
At first I thought I might just type out the entirety of this album’s title here and call it a day for this section, but I realized on listening to it for the first time in a while that that doing so would likely be interpreted as making a (worn out, overtold and overblown) joke out of this album when it is anything but. From the opening notes it reminds you that Fiona Apple isn’t to be dismissed. The line “..and maybe some faith would do me good,” from the first track sets the stage by asking you to think about believing. And then, when the music comes in in full force at the 3 minute and 30 second mark and becomes all horns and strings, all vaudeville but in a cool way, you are reminded that to believe in something is to go into the big top, is a three ring circus, is a high-wire act and there is no better ringleader/lion tamer/tightrope walker of emotions than Fiona Apple and “When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right…”
Transformer - Lou Reed (109)
Has anyone made a medley of the Lou Reed song “Wagon Wheel” and the Old Crow Medicine Show song “Wagon Wheel” yet? (The first is rumored to maybe have been written with David Bowie’s assist and the second comes with a chorus that apparently originated from an old Bob Dylan bootleg.) If not, why not? Do I need to start a Lou Reed cover band with banjos? Please don’t make me do that.
Day 52 - 3/30/2021
Court & Spark - Joni Mitchell (110)
This album this morning felt more like a sign of the coming spring than even the flowers that are starting to bud on the trees out my window. Joni Mitchell singing “Help me, I think I’m falling in love too fast..” sets new growth on a pedestal, makes it intoxicating and exciting but a little terrifying, too. If that’s not the promise of spring after a long and strange winter, I’m not sure I know what is.
Control - Janet Jackson (111)
I started this album while I walked a few blocks to pick up my lunch and it was hard to not dance down the alleys. I finished listened to it while shoving food in my face at my desk, repeatedly hitting refresh on the vaccine appointment scheduler page of a local grocery store chain because this year, like last, really makes no sense. This second activity is a disservice to this album and to Janet (Miss Jackson, if you’re nasty…) but at least it gave me a way to continue trying to dance through this disaster.
Day 53 - 3/31/2021
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John (112)
Today I discovered that this album (coming in at one hour and sixteen minutes) is exactly the amount of time that it takes for me to get cakes made, baked, out of the oven to cool, frosting made and the kitchen cleaned up. And yes, I did this all before nine a.m. because sleep hasn’t been a thing much lately, but at least when there is not sleeping there is Elton John and cake.
The Queen is Dead - The Smiths (113)
I had forgotten just how much joy the song “Frankly, Mr. Shankly” brings me. In particular the line - “Oh, I didn’t realize that you write poetry. I didn’t realize you wrote such bloody awful poetry…” is one that I hope to use in conversation someday, though it is, admittedly quite rude. The line from the same song that goes “I’m a sickening wreck; I’ve got the twenty-first century breathing down my neck” gets stuck in my head often, though this has been the case for so many years now that sometimes it floats around in there completely divorced of context and I don’t always remember where it came from - just that time is coming for me.
Is This It - The Strokes (114)
Until their 2020 album was released, The Strokes always felt like a band I was adjacent to, not fully invested in. Don’t get me wrong - I think this is a phenomenal album and one I’ve listened to a ton in the nearly 20 years since it came out. It’s just always been something I’ve been proximal to, not caught up in. One too many degrees of separation. When The Strokes played a free show at SXSW a decade after this album came out, I wasn’t one of the 30,000 people who tore down a fence to get closer - I was a couple miles away, working that night- working like I was most nights back then. Even if I hadn’t been, though, I don’t know that my cooler, Casablancas-loving friends would have even invited me to go with them. Though my ennui has now caught up with that which is expressed in this album, I’ve never felt quite as interesting as the people I know who love it. I get it now, but I still haven’t smoked enough cigarettes or spent enough nights wandering city streets to feel like I’m not a little too square for this album’s distinct brand of cool.
Day 54 - 4/18/21
good kid, m.A.A.d city - Kendrick Lamar (115)
For the last few weeks and for reasons still too painful to try and put direct words to, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it might take to pull even a small good thing out of a big terrible one and if it’s disrespectful to even try. So when Kendrick Lamar asks “if I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it?” on “Poetic Justice”… I’ve got to say that today the answer is no, I don’t think I would. I want to. I want to think that beautiful things can claw their way out of desolate spaces but it feels like a lot to ask, it feels like a question mark today. Would you trust it? As Lamar goes on to declare - “love is not just a verb, it’s you looking for a maybe,” and there are a lot of maybes floating around in the air right now but today I’m left wondering what it takes to reach out and grab one of them, what gets left behind.
Day 55 - 4/19/21
Disintegration - The Cure (116)
When I put this on this evening, I was excited to hear “Friday, I’m In Love” but the fact of the matter is that that song is not on this album at all which meant that even though this is an excellent album, and one I am glad to have listened to tonight, I cried in the shower to “Pictures of You” instead of dancing around my room to “Friday, I’m In Love”. And the fact of the matter is also that it is a Monday and I am not in love and even though a yearning part of me wishes that the opposite were true on both counts, it was a very good cry.
Day 56 - 4/25/21
Late Registration - Kanye West (117)
Of all of the absurd thoughts that have run through my brain today, the most absurd of all may be the moment when I wondered if, perhaps, the fact that I will probably never be able to afford a house in the town I grew up in unless I marry a man who makes much more money than I ever will is the price I must pay for all of the times my friends and I listened to “Gold Digger” on loop in college.
Hotel California - The Eagles (118)
I recently bought a shirt that reads “It’s Not Very Chill to Hate The Eagles”, not because I love them and want to call other people out for the error of their ways. No, I bought it because I have tended to be dismissive of them and largely just refer to them as Linda Ronstadt’s backing band and I thought it would function as a good reminder to myself to chill out and just let the music wash over me from time to time. I’m not wearing that shirt today, and I think some of my goodwill probably has to do with finally making time to move dirt around and put some flowers in the earth while I listened to this album, but I gotta say I’m feeling more chill than I have in weeks and I maybe kinda loved this.
Day 57 - 4/27/21
Stand - Sly & The Family Stone (119)
This morning, when I opened my eyes two hours before my alarm was set to go off and knew there was not a chance I’d be going back to sleep, the first thing I said was an expletive six times in quick succession. Which is a round about way of saying that listening to this album was not really something I thought would go well given its general vibes and my general vibes were decidedly not aligned. But. I was wrong. In the haze I’ve been in lately, I’d sort of lost sight of the fact that sometimes listening to music that is the exact opposite of how you feel is the way to step a little bit closer to the way you want to. Sometimes, the thing to do when you want to crawl back in bed and whisper expletives to yourself and to the world, is to instead get up, dance while you brush your teeth, maybe actually eat breakfast that isn’t warm garbage or just a cup of caffeine, and as directed to do a the top the fifth track - sing a simple song.
Moondance - Van Morrison (120)
I know I already wrote about Van Morrison’s performance in The Last Waltz, but the thing I didn’t mention then is that the song that he performed those high kicks in was “Caravan” which is on this album. And the thing worth mentioning now is that that performance is something I still think about almost every week. And another thing that’s worth mentioning is that the thing about Moondance is that the person singing from track to track doesn’t always seem like it’s really the same person, and I get that sometimes it can be hard to be the same person day after day, track after track, so that inconsistency doesn’t seem so much a bad thing as it seems like a true one. And the last thing I want to mention here is that the version of Van Morrison on this album that I identify with most is the one that sings “Caravan”, the one who is going to have to kick sometimes and it’ll probably be awkward often, the one who will always be the one to ask you to turn it up, turn it up, little bit higher, turn it up, always one more time.
Another twenty albums down in the quest towards 500. This one felt like a particularly varied one, and a good one, though if we’re honest, they’re probably all good ones.
Until next time - when I’ll completely make a hypocrite of myself by proclaiming that it is a wonderful thing that this list includes Greatest Hits collections when the one in question is Hank Williams’ (comes in at 132) when I have complained that every other collected works encountered so far was a violation of rules that don’t exist…