Reelin’ In the Ears

Great songs hook you quickly, and reel you in.  This is nicely illustrated by Guitar World’s The 20 Best Guitar Intro’s of All Time.

Day Tripper, Sunshine Of Your Love, Smoke On The Water, Heartbreaker, You Really Got Me …  Hendrix, Van Halen, Chuck Berry, Hetfield, Keef …   Some of the best riffs of all time courtesy the greatest riff-meisters of all time.

Most great songs have a ‘hook,’ something that grabs you, catches your attention, somehow makes you feel like you already know the song even when you’re hearing it for the first time.  Sometimes that hook is a riff, but not always.  Sometimes the hook doesn’t show up until part way through the song.  But looking at GW’s list, I’d have to say the winning formula has got to be to snag ‘em right away.

Comeback Kids

Guitar World’s 10 Best Comeback Albums of All Time proves that you can’t keep a good band down.

Even the best artists sometimes:

1) Take risks that fans don’t dig

2) Let success get in the way

3) Run out of ideas

4) Lose their way

5) Just get overtaken by something new and exciting

Or, as the list also illustrates, people die and stuff.  So bravo AC/DC!  Well done, Foo Fighters!

But most of the list is about a wake-up call, followed by a determined (and successful) effort to proclaim, “Not down for the count!”

U2, Metallica, Johnny Cash, Aerosmith, John Lennon, Deep Purple, the Stones, The Dixie Chicks …  they’ve all proven they had a lot more to give.

Good for them … and lucky us!

Got It Covered

Gibson’s 10 All-Time Greatest Covers Albums makes the point that great songwriters can also do very well covering material by other artists, thank you very much.  It contains the likes of Lennon, GNR, Bowie, Def Leppard, Patti Smith and Metallica.

The article points out that sometimes these recordings are just throw-aways; contractual obligations and so on, and I can think of a few examples where you can tell either the effort wasn’t there or heart wasn’t in the job.

But the list illustrates the passion and respect the artists felt for those that had come before.  After all, you don’t write songs before you’ve learned how to play, so you start by learning someone else’s songs.  And so these albums are also insightful in terms of influence.

One I would have added, by the way, is Run Devil Run by Paul McCartney, a great covers album that rivals Lennon’s – and that’s saying something.

Oh, Just Nevermind

Well, they say your musical tastes are pretty much chiseled in stone by the age of 16, so no big surprise that I only knew the names of 27 of Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the 90's, the decade when I left my 30’s – still kicking – and entered my 40’s, more or less screaming, I guess.

I mean, I probably recognize 80 or so of the artists by name, but the actual album names?  A paltry 27.  And that’s based on, you know, name recognition on the radio (possibly before I changed the station) or browsing for CD’s in the record store.

Remember CD’s?  In stores?

27.  Recognized.  By name.  Ownership?  Well, less than that.  A lot less.  And I bought a ton of CD’s in the 90’s.  A boatload.

Look:  I wasn’t entirely out of it.  I had some Nirvana, Petty, Oasis, Neil Young, REM, U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers.  That’s not so bad, right?  And, you know, I kinda liked Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Radiohead and Metallica.  That’s good, isn’t it?

And of course I love Dylan and Springsteen and The Stones, and they’re on the list (although come one, RS, Bridges To Babylon and not Voodoo Lounge?  Really?) – so, I was, like, not in a cave or anything.

But 27% sort of makes it official: I had given up.  I had grown old.  My score on the Top 10 (60%) is cold comfort.  Crap.

I always knew that rock/pop is for young people, but retreating to “well the music was better in the 60’s (or 70’s (for the most part), or the 80’s (at least for a time)) – even though it was – is, is, is oh nevermind.

No point in raging against the machine.  I’m not ready to die and I know I’m not out of time.   OK Computer, how we gonna handle this?