Piss Me Off

I agree with you completely in that i'm not a massive fan of Led Zeppelin's more famous songs. Whole Lotta Love, Immigrant Song, Black Dog, they just don't do much for me. Stairway meanwhile isn't worth mentioning.
I think Ramble On is my fave at the mo.

__________________
Last FM
Rate Yr Music
Muxtape

Davey Moore

Many great artists struggle with the pain of addiction. I have an addictive personality and I can understand what addicts go through, and thankfully I haven't gone to the extent some people do. Here are five songs that really touch a cord within me, about addiction.

Neil Young - The Needle and The Damage Done

YouTube - Neil Young - Needle and the Damage Done

This song is absolutely beautiful. Neil Young's voice is haunting.

The Velvet Underground - Heroin

YouTube - the velvet underground - heroin (acoustic live)

Personally I think this live version is more haunting than the studio recording. Don't know which I prefer overall. Depends on mood probably.

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

YouTube - Pink Floyd The Wall - Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

Absolute classic.

Johnny Cash - Hurt

YouTube - Johnny Cash Hurt

Haunting, I like it more than the Nine Inch Nails version(the original)

__________________
Praised be man, he is existing in milk
and living in lillies-
And his violin music takes place in milk
and creamy emptiness-
Praised be the unfolded inside petal
flesh of tend'rest thought-
Praised be delusion, the ripple-
Praised be the Holy Ocean of Eternity-
Praised be I, writing, dead already &
dead again-

JayJamJah

Really Good Blog.

I enjoyed the Zeppelin videos a lot, thanks for compiling them. Also thought your Beatles Let it Be post was excellent.

lucifer_sam

The Rain Song is from Houses of the Holy, not Physical Graffiti.

Neil Young is a great songwriter to note, especially when you mention his addiction. I think this was whom Kurt Cobain empathized with the most. Sweet thread.

__________________

Davey Moore

Part I

I know, I’m insane, a madman, off my rocker! How can a music fan list their 100 favorite songs? Rolling Stone needed 500 and they are pretentious liberal douches! Well guess what, I’m leaping into the nooks and crannies in my mind, finding every cell and holding a giant meeting. Here is where my brain cells met:



This list is not in any particular order, but these songs are my top twenty favorite songs.

After hours of fighting, weeping, and screaming, a top twenty list has been decreed and hereby forwarded to a most deserving public.

A Day in The Life – The Beatles
YouTube - The Beatles -- A Day in the Life

An epic, sprawling, rambling, tender masterpiece, where Lennon and McCartney collide to make music magic. John and Paul ultimately prove in this song it is not the lyrics that matter, it’s the delivery. Just look at these lyrics like you were looking at a poem. Boring. But when you hear them sung by Lennon, they’re haunting.

Tea for the Tillerman – Cat Stevens
YouTube - Tea for the Tillerman

When I first heard this song, when it was over, I was sad. Why is something so beautiful, so very short? My interest was piqued when I heard it in Harold and Maude, and then on the final episode of Extras. Another song that is just hauntingly beautiful (repetition alert, I seem to use “hauntingly beautiful” a lot. Moar vocab expansion needed.)

Chelsea Hotel #2 – Leonard Cohen
YouTube - Leonard Cohen - Chelsea Hotel#2

I am so glad I got into Leonard Cohen. He is the only songwriter I’ve heard with songs that can go toe to toe with Dylan lyrically. This song is a wistful ode to one of his former lovers, Janis Joplin.

Redemption Song – Bob Marley
YouTube - Bob Marley - Redemption Song

Who could wish for a better epitaph? Bob Marley may have gone too early, but this song is without a doubt a worthy ending to a monumental career. The lyrics are broad and bring up themes of slavery, freedom, fear of the future, and most importantly, redemption, which is in my opinion, the greatest theme found in human artistic creation. To be lifted from the darkness out into the light, to be given a second chance.

Eleanor Rigby – The Beatles
YouTube - The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby (1966)

When I first heard this song, I was swept up in it completely. In my mind, Paul’s top achievement, short, bitter, and deals with another of the most powerful themes in human creation, loneliness.

Heroin – The Velvet Underground

When you hear this song, you absolutely believe that Lou Reed knows what he’s talking about. This is a beautiful, rambling odyssey through the exhilarating ups and downs of addiction. To love something and to hate it at the same time. That is addiction, that is Heroin.

Visions of Johanna (live) – Bob Dylan
YouTube - Bob Dylan - Visions Of Johanna

I live in an American small town. When I first heard these opening lyrics, I was struck dead in my tracks:

It captured the atmosphere of where I live so well. The mood of his live renditions of this song, with just his acoustic guitar, is like a tired sadness, as if all Dylan wants to do is to settle down and stop being called Judas by those who worshiped him.

Perhaps the greatest lyrics ever written, it uses a technique I like very much, where it sort of hops around from one scene to another. One of the most profound songs ever written. The version in the video is from his compilation album, Biograph.

A Whiter Shade of Pale – Procol Harum
YouTube - Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale - 1967 (HD Stereo) (this is an amazing remaster of this song)

When I first heard this song, I thought it was good, but not great. But then I started to listen to it more and more, and it transformed into a masterpiece right in front of me. It was sad like a funeral song, happy like a sweet memory. The organs are like an audio manifestation of what nostalgia should sound like, bittersweet, filled with a sort of haze.

Strangers – The Kinks
YouTube - Strangers - The Kinks

Why isn’t this song more popular? Why isn’t this band more revered than Led Zeppelin? Sometimes, pop culture just totally writes certain bands off. The Kinks are one of them. Listen to this song, now.

Baba O’Riley – The Who
YouTube - Baba O'riley

Does this song really have to be explained? It’s one of those universally loved rock songs. I’ve met people who say they don’t like Stairway To Heaven, but not anyone who hasn’t liked Baba O’Riley. One of the most powerful pieces of music ever written, period.

Let It Loose – The Rolling Stones
YouTube - Let It Loose

Another song that I don’t know why it isn’t more popular. Beautiful. Like I said in my review of Exile on Main Street, “it’s got a really sad feeling to it, like it should be the theme song for a guy in his forties, sitting and drinking at the bar, smoking a cigarette and asking himself where all the years have gone.” It sort of makes me think about my life.

Day Dream Believer – The Monkees
YouTube - DAYDREAM BELIEVER

I don’t care, bash me all you want, this is pure, unashamed pop music at its best.

It’s Alright Ma(I’m Only Bleeding) – Bob Dylan
YouTube - Bob Dylan - It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

What a great contrast between two songs. This is song is pure profound poetry, while the last one was pure fun and melody.

Venus in Furs – The Velvet Underground
YouTube - velvet underground - venus in furs

I honestly don’t know how they even got to this sound in the studio. If anyone knows of a song that sounded like this before this song, please tell me. Maybe something Indian or Arabic. Regardless, it’s hypnotic.

Brain Damage/Eclipse – Pink Floyd
YouTube - Pink Floyd - Brain Damage/Eclipse

Even though these are two tracks, they are seamlessly blended, and sound incomplete without each other. The laughing voices was an absolutely brilliant choice by the band. If I’ve been holding back my emotions for a while, I try to listen to these songs, since they sort of release them. It doesn’t matter what emotion it is, it triggers a chemical response within me. One of my favorite lyrics of all time:
Gimme Shelter – The Rolling Stones
YouTube - Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones

Strangely enough, whenever the Sixties took a turn towards the dark side, The Rolling Stones seemed to thrive on that chaos. This song is one of the best examples. It’s also a great example of a song being propelled into the stratosphere by a background singer. That lady takes a really good chorus and turns it into the best chorus I’ve ever heard. WAR, CHILDREN, IT’S JUST A SHOT AWAY, IT’S JUST A SHOT AWAY.

Dead Flowers – Townes Van Zandt
YouTube - Dead Flowers

I’d never heard of Townes Van Zandt before this, but all I know is he turned a so-so Rolling Stones song into something that made me want to weep.

Walk On the Wild Side – Lou Reed
YouTube - Lou Reed - Take A Walk On The Wild Side

This is the hippest, coolest song I’ve ever heard. The bass alone is enough to make me want to buy Rayban Wayfarers and read Allen Ginsberg. I've done both. I am slowly realizing I am perhaps a tool.

The Wind Cries Mary – Jimi Hendrix
YouTube - Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary

Musically and lyrically, this is my favorite Hendrix song. His lyrics were surreal, but not so surreal that you think “Oh, he’s just high.” It’s tender and sad.

Changes – David Bowie
YouTube - david bowie - changes

Once again, when I first heard this song, I stopped listening to it before the genius part. Sometimes my ADD gets the best of me. But now that I listen to it over and over again, its Bowie’s best. It deals with one of life’s inevitabilities, change and time. Time’s a great teacher, but in the end, it kills all its pupils.

21-40 is forthcoming

__________________
Praised be man, he is existing in milk
and living in lillies-
And his violin music takes place in milk
and creamy emptiness-
Praised be the unfolded inside petal
flesh of tend'rest thought-
Praised be delusion, the ripple-
Praised be the Holy Ocean of Eternity-
Praised be I, writing, dead already &
dead again-

sleepy jack

Solid list and oddly enough those are my favorite Bowie, Marley, Van Zandt, AND Cohen songs.

__________________
I'm not blind, I believe in you.

Fyrenza

further back than that

Bob Dylan FTW
the whiniest most off-key super-star singer EVER

Piss Me Off

My favourite by a mile out of this lot. A friend of mine told me a rumour that the backing singer, when you hear her voice crack at one point, had a miscarriage due to singing too hard. He may have been telling porkies but... wow.

__________________
Last FM
Rate Yr Music
Muxtape

Davey Moore

You know what, I heard that story, but it was different. I didn't know if it was this song or The Great Gig In The Sky from DSOTM, but I heard that during this or Great Gig, the lady's water broke because she sang so hard. Also, after you hear her voice crack, you hear someone go "woo!"

__________________
Praised be man, he is existing in milk
and living in lillies-
And his violin music takes place in milk
and creamy emptiness-
Praised be the unfolded inside petal
flesh of tend'rest thought-
Praised be delusion, the ripple-
Praised be the Holy Ocean of Eternity-
Praised be I, writing, dead already &
dead again-

shiseido_red

YES, I agree about A Day in the Life... would have to be one of my favourite songs and would definitely be in my top 20. I personally think this is also one of song's from The Beatles that perhaps would have had influence on some of the more recent progressive rock.

__________________