The Best of Me

Inspired by Matt's muxing, I wanted to make a digital mix tape of my own. Unfortunately, I don't have the mp3s for these, so this is more of an annotated link list than a mix tape. What follows is a highly-conceptual, audiobiographical, memoir of a playlist featuring my favorite song from every era of my life so far. Sort of a reverse "Best Of" in semi-chronological order. I don't know why anyone would care about this, but I thought it was a good idea for me to have this all written down somewhere. Maybe you all should write yours down, too. We're starting, I guess, some time in 1986? I'm maybe 3 years old, tops.

The Bangles - Walk Like an Egyptian
My older sister owned the record. I would sing along to what I thought was the chorus: "Walk like a magician." I got indignant and embarassed after someone tried to correct me. The first song I remember ever playing in my house.

Bobby 'Boris' Pickett & The Cryptkickers - The Monster Mash
On the B-side of a cassette of Halloween sound effects. I'd listen mostly to the full ninety-minutes of clanking chains and howling wolves, but then I'd turn the tape over and listen to the songs. Also featured were "Purple People Eater" and the Ghostbusters theme. This song is probably why Oldies 106.9 was the most-played preset station in my Mercury Topaz over a decade later.

Barry Louis Polisar - Don't Put Your Finger Up Your Nose
First album I ever owned. Literally played it until the tape wore out. I remember learning that the button on my dad's stereo that would make the tape play was the one with the arrow pointing towards the bathroom. Sample lyric: "Don't put your finger up your nose / Because your nose knows it's not the place it goes." Googling him, I found out that Barry wrote the song that plays during the opening credits of the film "Juno". This means that at age 5 my taste in music is at its "Indie"-est.

Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al
To this day, I can sing every lyric of every song on the Graceland album, probably even the ones Ladysmith Black Mambazo sing in Swahili. The album played constantly in my parents' gray minivan and when the Graceland tour came to Hershey Park, it was the first concert I ever attended. I fell asleep, but my parents woke me up for this song. Best lyric to sing-along to as a kid and today: "He ducked back down the alley / With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl."

Tim McGraw - Indian Outlaw / Garth Brooks - Ain't Goin Down
The two tentpoles of my time as a country boy in the back of the new red minivan. I still say that Garth Brooks is one of the greatest American songwriters of all time. As someone once said, he's like "Led Zeppelin with a big belt buckle; Aerosmith with a can of Skoal". Tim McGraw, not so much, but he had some ridiculously punny redneck lyrics that, at 13, I thought were hilarious. "Indian Outlaw" narrowly beat out "I Like It, I Love It (I Want Some More of It)" for inclusion.

Green Jelly - Three Little Pigs
I guess it was really the music video that struck me more than the song, but this is one of the only songs I can remember enjoying in my middle school days. The hardest metal song I have ever liked.

Cake - Sheep Go To Heaven
I didn't like music in middle school. I would watch MTV in the mornings before school some days, but would just as often watch Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (not because I liked it! because it was funny! I think!) A friend giving me a ride home from high school freshman year was the first one to play this song for me. I downloaded Napster to find more Cake and they paved the way for Harvey Danger's Flagpole Sitta and the other terribly embarrassing songs I listened to throughout high school.

Dolly Parton - White Limozeen
I don't remember whether I liked this song ironically or because I thought it was genuinely entertaining, but when I saw Dolly Parton kinda-rapping on a Comedy Central airing of an old SNL, I knew that I was seeing something special. If I was picking my favorite Dolly Parton song, it would definitely be "Islands in the Stream", but this song is so much cooler because it's so much weirder.

Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
Matt's influence on both my ears and lungs starts here. Back in the minivan, the parents had a Best Of Bruce something or other in their binder of scratched CDs that I never really got into. It sounds lame, maybe, but hearing this song, this whole album, after 9/11 was my first indication that there was something to music other than just having fun. The first song to make me cry. Can still make me cry. The day Matt accidentally snapped his copy in half I almost cried.

Frank and Nancy Sinatra - Somethin' Stupid
Just a fun song that I found in college and really liked. Frank Sinatra saved my grandmother's life. As a young lady, she worked at a bank at the bottom of a hill. Frank was performing that evening at a theater at the top of the hill. Apparently, as he was just arriving and my grandmother was leaving work for the day, a rack full of costumes came loose from its moorings and started rolling wildy down the hill, headed straight for my grandmother. Ol' Blue Eyes sprung into action, chased the cart down and stopped it just moments before grandma got creamed. She hadn't seen the cart coming, and when she finally heard the commotion and turned around, she was so startled to see Frank Sinatra standing there that she fell over. If that laundry rack had found its mark, I might not be here today.

The Rolling Stones - Loving Cup
May be the most fun ever put on tape, but that honor could also go to any of a dozen other Stones songs that are like pure, raw joy/hate/love/sex/disco/blues/cocaine/sawdust amazingness.

Human League - Don't You Want Me
When I got my wisdom teeth out, I was prescribed percocet. Nothing on the label indicated that the pills would make me highly and irrationally emotional. Driving to a friend's house, this song came on the radio and became the second song to make me cry. Deep, deep sobs.

Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
So I had been hanging out with J and Matt for about 3 months, enduring the nasally drip drip drip of Bob Dylan like water torture on my brow. Finally, of all the songs, it was "Buckets of Rain" that broke through and helped me to start enjoying Bob Dylan songs. I'm still not sure exactly why I like him, but I know it has something to do with the fact that he was writing and singing music that seemed like it had always been a part of the North American continent. Like he was mining it out of the earth somehow, then taking that fossil and putting a little bit of funk into it. Highway 61 Revisited is my favorite Bob Dylan song because it seems especially ancient and modern and serious and whimsical all at once and it's gotalotta boogie in it.

Lil Mama - Lip Gloss
A ridiculous, all-clapping, hand jive of a song that is sweeter than hummingbird food. Probably Barack Obama's daughters' favorite song last year, not counting the High School Musical soundtrack. Definitely my favorite song last year.

MGMT - Weekend Wars
My favorite modern song of today. MGMT is a band out of Brooklyn that makes me think of The Stones. This song makes me think of whiny-voice Mick Jagger, one of my favorite Mick Jaggers. I'm not sure what kind of staying power this band has in my mental jukebox, but for right now they're in heavy rotation.

Harry Nilsson - I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City
This song is, I guess, one of those songs I've always known and everyone has always known, but until J recently burnt it to a disc for me I didn't really get a kick out of it the way I do now. Guy's got a beautiful voice and this is a great, breezy summer in New York song. It hits most of my softspots: poppy as shit, kinda corny, kinda country, lyrics I can understand. Like all these songs, some of which I hadn't heard in years before today: who knows how long I'll like it for, but for the time being, it's my favorite.