Posted by Cabeza | Posted in Jared's lists | Posted on 6:53 AM
- "Eight Days A Week" from Beatles for Sale by The Beatles
- "I Get Around" from All Summer Long by The Beach Boys
- "The Christmas Waltz" from Christmas Portrait by The Carpenters
- "Super Chicken" from Super Chicken by Sheldon Allman
- "Do You Love Me" from Do You Love Me (Now That I Can Dance) by The Contours
- "The Cold Miser Song" from The Without a Santa Claus by Cold Miser
- "Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away" from Chicago 16 by Chicago
- "Go West" from Very by The Pet Shop Boys
- "Theme from Rocky XIII" from In 3-D by Weird Al Yankovic
- "Sloop John B" from Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys
- "Road Movie to Berlin" from Flood by They Might Be Giants
- "It's Alright with Me" from We Are in Love by Harry Connick, Jr.
- "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" from God Shuffled His Feet by Crash Test Dummies
- "Lightning Crashes" from Throwing Copper by Live
- "Blue Rondo a la Turk" from Time Out by Dave Brubeck Quartet
- "Superman" from The Bruce Lee Band by The Bruce Lee Band
- "Bogoroditse Dievo, Raduysia" from Vespers by Sergei Rachmaninoff, performed by the Lake Washington High School Choir (1997)
- "All of Me" from August End by Jon Schmidt
- "America's Wang" from The Ska That Broke the Camel's Back by Button Hooked
- "Endless Love" from Endless Love by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie
- "Mess Around" from Mess Around by Ray Charles
- "We Used to Be Friends" from Welcome to the Monkey House by The Dandy Warhols
Like Shark, I've got way too much to say about these to put it all in an over-long post. So I'll stick some notes in the comments. Just know that I tried to order my list based on order of nostalgic memories, starting from the earliest, then working my way up through junior high, high school, and college. Trip.
#1 "Eight Days a Week" - This is the earliest memory I have of saying I had a favorite song. I think I decided this was my favorite when I was seven. My dad did me the favor of starting me on The Beatles from an early age.
#2 "I Get Around" - He also started me on The Beach Boys. This song serves a double purpose by not only hearkening to the oldies I listened to almost exclusively as a child, by also conjuring memories of Flight of the Navigator.
#3 "The Christmas Waltz" - It may be a bit early for Christmas... but this is one of the most nostalgic songs there are for me. Memories of Christmas shopping at Bellevue Square. Christmas smells. Very poignant.
#4 "Super Chicken" - My dad loved the George of the Jungle animated trio that used to play on Saturday mornings when he was a teenager. This was the second of the three cartoons that would play, and he used to sing us this song when we were kids. We thought he was crazy and hilarious. I never actually saw an episode of Super Chicken until I was a teenager.
#5 "Do You Love Me" - Just trying to round out the point about being raised on oldies. I can vividly remember rocking out on my Walkman to a cassette of this while doing Saturday chores.
#6 "The Cold Miser Song" - Not a huge fan of this animated Christmas classic, but I LOVED the Heat Miser/Cold Miser sequences when I was a kid. Still do.
#7 "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" - In addition to my dad raising me on oldies, my sister Jenn made sure I got an 80s music education. Ah, Peter Cetera.
#8 "Go West" - The transition from the 80s to the 90s. Fond memories of driving in the car with Jenn and Amy listening to this album, which by the way has the BEST album packaging in music industry history.
#9 "Theme from Rocky XIII" - Scrumpy D gets most of the credit for my junior high love of Weird Al. I can remember listening to a dubbed copy of this tape while we learned to sail in preparation for our big Boy Scout sailing adventure.
#10 "Sloop John B" - Brother Thulin, my old deacons quorum advisor, played this several times during our sailing trip through the San Juan Islands. He kept making it clear that it was not the worst trip he'd ever been on--he just didn't have any other sailing music. I was on the sloop Por Fin. Amazing memories.
#11 "Road Movie to Berlin" - Scrumpestuous D only gets partial credit for my discovery and love of TMBG. Most of the credit goes to my second cousin once removed Trista, who dubbed this album on cassette for Jenn, who then passed it on to her brothers. Now probably my least favorite of the TMBG albums, Flood opened my eyes and made me realize that music was a lot of things I had never considered.
#12 "It's Alright with Me" - Cole Porter song, but I first heard it from Harry. Junior high was also the time I started to discover jazz. S.D. again gets partial credit--this time much more--but I believe my earliest introductions were through Harry Connick, Jr., provided by my sister Amy. This album takes me outside to the lawn, mowing while I listened to this cassette cranked loud.
#13 "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" - In junior high I really wanted to get into the grunge scene, it being the mid-nineties in Seattle. I never could get into Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden... but I found some other alternative bands that I dug. Crash Test Dummies. I think I bought this tape off of a friend I had first period with in ninth grade.
#14 "Lightning Crashes" - Another alternative band I got into as I probed to discover more music. I stayed up late listening to this track a lot.
#15 "Blue Rondo a la Turk" - Back to Scrumpestuous D's influence. In high school he loaned me this album and I fell in love with Brubeck. My conversion to jazz was complete.
#16 "Superman" - This is the first ska album I bought. This track is more punk than ska, but you get the picture. I loved rocking out to this.
#17 "Bogoroditse Dievo, Raduysia" - This takes me back to choir with Captain Jim and some of my dearest friends from high school. We actually won a competition with this song and got recorded for a holiday CD released by the Bon Marche (since bought out by Macy's). Yes, I uploaded the recording of my choir to Grooveshark so you could all enjoy it.
#18 "All of Me" - I bought this album in high school after seeing Schmidt perform at EFY, but the track goes on here more for the post-mission EFY counselor nostalgia (still my favorite job I've ever had). Almost every EFY talent show featured some kid playing either "Waterfall" or this song, usually at break-neck speed. Why did they all think it sounded better ridiculously fast? Same question for Joplin's "The Entertainer."
#19 "America's Wang" - I got back into ska during college, mostly thanks to my roommates' band Button Hooked. They got a recording contract from a smaller than small-time label in Salt Lake and released one CD (which had zero distribution) before they broke up due to graduation. Fond memories of hearing band practice from all the way up on campus and seeing them perform at Muse Music.
#20 "Endless Love" - When I left for London on study abroad, Shark drove me to the airport early in the morning. He stuck in a CD he had burned, cued up this track, looked at me and said, "You're Diana Ross; I'm Lionel Richie." We belted our hearts out to this song and I took off for six months. Best brother bonding ever.
#21 "Mess Around" - A year after my study abroad, my friend Emily and I went back to Europe and did some touring. We rented a car in Paris and drove out to Normandy. On the drive we got really depressed by the deplorable state of French radio (mostly due to the deplorable state of French pop). The only thing we could find to ease our musical pain was the Ray soundtrack in a little record store in Caen. On the way back to Paris we listened to that CD probably five times rather than suffer the radio.
#22 "We Used to Be Friends" - Adapted for the opening credits to the short-lived series Veronica Mars. When I first moved to DC, Jenn had surgery and we spent tons of time sitting on her bed watching television and movies together while she recovered. This show was a favorite.
Man, I am lovin' this week's setlists already! A+ for awesomely random playlists and A++ for great insights into friends' personalities and histories!
Excellent. I almost included some Beatles, Weird Al and Crash Test Dummies, myself.
You'll always be my Diana Ross.