Words Seem Out Of Place

Lou Reed's solo career was anything but predictable and while often brilliant, it could also be generously described as inconsistent. When he was inspired, he created some truly outstanding music during the decades after he quit the Velvet Underground. When that creativity faltered though, well, he made music like "My Red Joystick." The early 1980s were a peak period for Reed. He was working with one of the all-time underappreciated guitarists, former law student and rabid Velvets fan Robert Quine.  The Blue Mask (1982) is the essential studio document from this era, a revealingly personal album where Reed is brutally honest about his life, his past, his alcoholism, his fears and his anxieties. The album still hits hard all these years later. Like The Who's (and thus Pete Townshend's) nakedly honest The Who By Numbers , The Blue Mask is absolutely crucial for understanding where the artists were emotionally during those years. Then in 1984 he released the...

A brief programming note: This series was formerly known as The Essentials , but I never quite loved that name, probably because most of what I write about here consists of things I consider essential, so almost every post could fall under " The Essentials. " So, cribbing the name of a killer Stevie Wonder album, I'm rechristening this series Songs in the Key of Life , which seems like an appropriate title for the songs I'm writing about here. They're life bringers, these songs. Johnny Thunders was one of the more important figures in punk's formative years. His buzzsaw-like guitar sound was heavy, dangerous, and fast, plus a huge influence on the wave of punk rock guitarists that followed. What we call the "punk rock sound"—distorted, slashing guitars and sneering, nasally vocals combined with a rhythm section on the verge of falling apart at any minute—can be traced back to proto-punk bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Iggy Pop...

A brief programming note: This series was formerly known as  The Essentials , but I never quite loved that name, probably because most of what I write about here consists of things I consider essential. So, cribbing the name of a killer Stevie Wonder album, I'm rechristening this series  Songs in the Key of Life , which seems like an appropriate title for the songs I'm writing about here. This is the first of what I hope will be semi-regular explorations of songs that move me in some way, that make me think or smile or feel instantly better when they come on. They're songs I can't get enough of, ever. We all have 'em, they're our essential songs,  our jams . They make life that much sweeter for the few minutes we're listening to them. These songs also tend to have a connection to certain memories, people, or places in our lives, which helps make them so essential. These essays won't be done in any order, instead I'll just write about the songs I...

"Stolen Car" by Bruce Springsteen and from his album  The River is a song that haunts you, in my case for years now. I'm pasting in the lyrics in their entirety because they're so strong they can be read independently of the song and still be moving. But within the context of the song, they're extremely powerful because of the despair in Springsteen's vocals. He imbues the song with what feels like years of baggage that's accumulated inside the narrator's head to the point of making him sag and practically collapse under its weight. I met a little girl and I settled down In a little house out on the edge of town We got married, and swore we'd never part Then little by little we drifted from each other's hearts At first I thought it was just restlessness That would fade as time went by and our love grew deep In the end it was something more I guess That tore us apart and made us weep And I'm driving a stolen car ...

Am I going soft? My love for this song might indicate that I am indeed losing my edge. But I can still rant about inane music and presidential candidates alike with equal vim and vigor. So I don't think it's about going soft, but rather about life changing and me changing along with it. Since having kids, my wife and I have occasionally listened to a 1970s soft rock channel on Pandora during dinner. It helps keep things mellow when the kids are refusing food or playing with food or throwing food. One song that keeps cropping up is "We Just Disagree," written by Jim Krueger and a late 1970s hit for Traffic's original guitarist Dave Mason. Although I heard the song countless times on the radio as a kid, I didn't know who Dave Mason was until I discovered Traffic as a teenager. Traffic became one of the few psych-rock groups I still love today (Pink Floyd being another), while "We Just Disagree" sort of faded out of memory. But back in the 1980s the ...