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In Your Eyes Album: So (1986) Games Without Frontiers Album: Peter Gabriel (third) (1980) by Peter Gabriel According to Gabriel, the lyrics of In Your Eyes could refer to either the love between a man and woman or the relationship between a person and God. The West African musician Youssou N'Dour sang backup on this track, giving it a distinctive vocal texture. Gabriel learned about him in 1984 when N'Dour was performing in England. They became friends and collaborators, with a mutual respect for each others' music. N'Dour joined Gabriel on the So tour and was very well received - he was part of an extended version of "In Your Eyes" and also sang on "Biko." In 1991 Gabriel performed the song in N'Dour's native country of Senegal before a crowd of 70,000. This was featured in the 1989 movie Say Anything in a scene where John Cusack plays this from a Boom Box he holds over his head to win the heart of Ione Skye. Cameron Crowe, who directed the film, was going to use Billy Idol's "Got To Be A Lover," but it didn't work with the scene. Crowe got the idea to use this when he played a tape from his wedding which had the song on it. Because it was a deeply personal song, Gabriel did not want to let him use it, but when Crowe called and sent him a tape of the movie, Gabriel loved it and gave his approval. The producers of Say Anything (see a still) were charged about $200,000 to use the song, but it was worth the price as it became one of the most famous scenes in movie history. The scene became a cultural touchstone, which was a little strange for Gabriel. He told Rolling Stone in 2012: "I've talked to John Cusack about that. We're sort of trapped together in a minuscule moment of contemporary culture." Gabriel combined various real and electronic instruments to create the song. He worked the Fairlight CMI synthesizer and the Linn drum machine, and also played piano. Other musicians on the track, along with N'Dour, were: David Rhodes - guitar, backing vocals Jerry Marotta - drums Richard Tee - piano Larry Klein, Tony Levin - bass Manu Katche - drums, talking drum, percussion Ronnie Bright - bass vocals Jim Kerr (from Simple Minds), Michael Been - backing vocals A special 7:14 mix of this song was released to radio stations by Geffen Records. It features extended singing by Youssou N'Dour. This promotional copy also included a 6:15 version of the song, and an 8:36 of Gabriel's "Biko." Peter Gabriel produced the So album with Daniel Lanois, who had worked on U2's 1984 album The Unforgettable Fire and after finishing up with Gabriel, started work on The Joshua Tree. Lanois will develop an understanding of a song on an emotional level and craft the production accordingly, which lyricists like Bono and Gabriel appreciate. In a Songfacts interview, he explained what this song means to him: "'In Your Eyes,' Peter had this idea that by looking into someone's eyes, you would see, quite specifically in the lyric, the doorway to a thousand churches. I think it's as simple as that - the power of commitment and care and love will be stronger." This is one of the few slow songs that gets consistent airplay on rock radio. It was not very popular when it came out, but continues to get constant airplay on a variety of formats, as listeners never seem to tire of it. Peter Gabriel's elaborate concerts are highly choreographed, but with "In Your Eyes," he made sure there was lots of room for improvisation. His keyboard player on the So tour, David Sancious, told how it came together. "We were rehearsing the song and Peter said he wanted to extend the ending," said Sancious. "There was going to be a break where I'd just play something, make up something for like eight bars. It's just a drumbeat and piano. Manu Katché is playing the drums and would give me a signal to come back in. So that was different every night and he very much enjoyed it when I would come up with different things. It was a gospel-y kind of break and then it went back to the chorus of 'In Your Eyes.' And there were other points where I got to do little different things that weren't the same every night, and he enjoyed that." In 1994, Gabriel did a version of "In Your Eyes" live, which appears on Disc 2 of the double CD set of Secret World Live, and lasts 11:34. On this version, he improvises a lot in the song with the backup singers. According to Daniel Lanois, the drums on In Your Eyes add a lot of flavor and power the song along. "Everything on that record was cut to a beatbox initially, as was the case with 'In Your Eyes,'" he said. "Manu Katche from Paris - a great drummer - played that beautiful drum part. So that 'down push,' it's an old carnival beat - it keeps it motoring along. Even though it's quite a contemplative song, it has a little bit of carnival in its engine that keeps the zip in the step going and keeps you interested in the lyrics." When Guitar Player magazine questioned whether David Rhodes was upset over his 12-string being buried beneath synthesizers, the guitarist replied: "I think that's fine. Often, I prefer that. I think sometimes it can be unnecessary to have a lot of definition between instruments. All the instruments should blend to make the song work, to build the atmosphere. The fact that you can't hear your part, a particular sound, shouldn't worry you at all. A lot of guitarists enjoy playing very loud and doing big solos. I'm not into that." He added: "The idea of making things work appeals to me a lot more. I approach things texturally and build them up, giving the music space to develop. With Peter, we use a lot of effects, so that it sounds as little like a guitar as possible." Peter Gabriel wanted to use "In Your Eyes" as So's final track, but its prominent bassline meant it had to be placed earlier on the vinyl edition to give the phonograph stylus more room to vibrate. This restriction was no longer an issue for later CD releases, so the track was placed at the end. In addition to Say Anything, this was also used in these TV shows: The Righteous Gemstones ("Better Is The End Of A Thing Than Its Beginning" - 2019) It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia ("The Gang Gets Romantic" - 2019) The Last Man On Earth ("Not Appropriate For Miners" - 2017) The Flash ("Gorilla Warfare" - 2015) Lilyhammer ("Out Of Africa" - 2013) The Goldbergs ("The Ring" - 2013) Glee ("Girls (And Boys) On Film" - 2013) Cold Case ("Family" - 2005) American Dad! ("It's Good To Be The Queen" - 2006) Felicity ("Pilot" - 1998) And in these movies: Yes, God, Yes (2019) Deadpool 2 (2018) The Rocker (2008) Co-producer Daniel Lanois explained to Sound On Sound how a small musical toolbox created a dynamic album. "It's a mysterious album," he said. "What's interesting about that record, is that if you listen closely there aren't that many unusual instruments on it but it sounds sonically innovative. In Your Eyes was created with a fairly limited supply of tools, if you like. Most of the keyboards are acoustic piano, Yamaha electric piano and Prophet 5 - an old Prophet 5 polysynth, one of the very first ones to come out. Also an old Fairlight Series II with some good sampled sounds. Yet So has a variety of sounds and you don't get the feeling that it's the same things over and over again. It's another lesson in the theory of the small toolbox and learning to love your tools. Learning the difference between that setting and this setting and not necessarily using wildly different instruments or components to come up with variety but using a concentrated small area and drawing a lot from them." The singer/guitarist Jeffrey Gaines recorded a popular version of In Your Eyes that got a lot of airplay on Adult Contemporary radio and appears on his 2001 album Always Be. Gaines writes most of his own material, but his cover of "In Your Eyes" has become his best-known work. When we asked him about performing a song written by someone else, he replied: "The conviction I have within that material is my joy of singing." The rock band SR-71 did a cover of In Your Eyes that appears on their 2004 album Here We Go Again. They performed it live at the Gravity Games that year. The lyric of Games Without Frontiers repeated at the beginning and end is "jeux sans frontieres," which is French for "games without frontiers." It is frequently misheard as "she's so popular." Games Without Frontiers is about the childish antics of adults, which are especially prevalent when their countries are competing in the Olympics. Gabriel wrote this before the US boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980, an event that reinforced the theme of adults acting like children over silly games. Kate Bush sang backup - that's her singing "jeux sans fronteires." Bush was a last-minute addition to the song. "We had someone else sing the 'Jeux Sans Fronteires' line, and we realized the accent wasn't so great," recalled co-producer Steve Lillywhite, who wouldn't identify the original vocalist to Uncut. "So Peter decided to ask Kate down. It was easy, and great fun. No more than half an hour." Gabriel got the idea for Games Without Frontiers from a 1970s European game show of the same name where contestants dressed up in strange costumes to compete for prizes. A version of the show came out in England called "It's a knockout," giving him that lyric. This was Peter Gabriel's first UK Top 10 as a solo artist. It had an interesting impact on his American distribution: Gabriel's first two solo albums were distributed in America by Atlantic Records, but they rejected his third album (which contained this track), telling Gabriel he was committing "commercial suicide." Atlantic dropped him but tried to buy the album back when "Games Without Frontiers" took off in the UK and started getting airplay in the States. At this point, Gabriel wanted nothing to do with Atlantic and let Mercury Records distribute the album in America. The whistling is Gabriel along with producers Steve Lillywhite and Hugh Padgham. In 1991, Gabriel's performance of Games Without Frontiers from Holland was beamed to Wembley Stadium in England as part of "The Simple Truth" concert for Kurdish refugees. The video includes film clips of Olympic events and scenes from the 1950 educational film Duck and Cover, which used a cartoon turtle to instruct school kids on what to do in case of nuclear attack. Part of the lyric goes: Andre has a red flag Chiang Ching's is blue They all have hills to fly them on except for Lin Tai Yu Andre could refer to Andre Malraux (1901-1976) the French statesman and author of the book Man's Fate, about the 1920s communist regime in Shanghai. Red flag may refer to Malraux's leftist politics. Chiang Ching could refer to Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) Chinese leader of the Kuomintang who opposed the Communists - hence, the rightwing Blue Flag. Chiang's forces lost the civil war in 1949 and fled to Taiwan, where they set up a government in exile. Lin Tai Yu may be Nguyen Thieu (1923-2001), South Vietnamese president during the height of the Vietnam War. After the Communist victory of 1975, Thieu fled to Taiwan, England, and later to the United States where he died in exile. The lyric could refer to the fact that while leftist politicians like Andre Malraux had a secure position in France, and rightist leaders like Chiang Kai Shek had a secure country in Taiwan, those caught in the middle like Nguyen Thieu were pawns in the Cold war and had no secure country. This could also be a reproach to either Thieu or his United States backers, saying that he was now a nobody. A remix by Lord Jamar was used for the theme for the 2009 Winter X Games. The new version was dubbed "X Games Without Frontiers." Gabriel recorded a German-language version of the album titled Ein deutsches Album. Hearing Gabriel singing about Adolf building the bonfire in German makes the song sound a lot more sinister. The song plays at the end of the season 1 finale of The Americans, which is set during the Cold War. Another Peter Gabriel tune, "Lay Your Hands On Me," was used in a season 5 episode.

Life's Been Good Album: But Seriously, Folks... (1978) Rocky Mountain Way Album: The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get (1973) by Joe Walsh "Life's Been Good" is a humorous look at the spoils of fame and fortune associated with being a rock star. Walsh pokes fun at the lifestyle of wealth and fame, and the spoiled mentality - how it's not him who has changed, but everyone else. In a 1981 interview with the BBC, Walsh explained of Life's Been Good: "I wanted to make a statement involving satire and humor, kind of poking fun at the incredibly silly lifestyle that someone in my position is faced with – in other words, I do have a really nice house, but I'm on the road so much that when I come home from a tour, it's really hard to feel that I even live here. It's not necessarily me, I think it paraphrases anyone in my position, and I think that's why a lot of people related to it, but basically, that's the story of any rock star – I say that humbly – anyone in my position. I thought that was a valid statement, because it is a strange lifestyle – I've been around the world in concerts, and people say 'What was Japan like?', but I don't know. It's got a nice airport, you know... so it was kind of an overall statement." Walsh lived up to Life's Been Good, indulging in the hedonism he sang about long after it was released. "I started believing I was who everybody thought I was, which was a crazy rock star," he told Rolling Stone in 2017. "It took me away from my craft. Me and a lot of the guys I ran with, we were party monsters. It was a real challenge just to stay alive." Life's Been Good is the last song on the But Seriously, Folks... album. On the original album version, the music fades away into silence, then about 30 seconds later there is a really funny secret message from Joe Walsh, who says, "Wha-oh... here comes a flock of wanh-wanhs!", followed by a chorale of "wannh," "wanh," "wahn" (collectively sounding like a bunch of ducks or sheep). The cover of the But Seriously Folks album shows Walsh eating a meal... under water. In the same BBC interview, he said: "I had to do that a couple of times, but I did go down to the bottom of the pool, and almost drowned... but it was fun. Not at the time, but it was fun to do. We weighted everything down, but it was very involved and it took a long time, and I was real proud of it. As long as you have access to art, or visually presenting something with your record, I would like to use that, pursue it and try to make it an integral part of the music. It was hard to do, but when I look at it, I can't believe it either, I can't believe I was stupid enough to do that, but I was proud of it. I won't be repeating it, I can assure you!" In 1979, Walsh announced his campaign for President of the United States, promising "Free gas for everyone" if he won (he didn't). Don't blame me. I was thirteen years old, so I couldn't vote. A famous line in this song, "My Maserati does 185," was used as the title to a 2005 episode of the TV series Entourage. After leaving his group the James Gang at the end of 1971, Joe Walsh moved from Cleveland to Boulder, Colorado, where he wrote Rocky Mountain Way, which celebrates the scenery and lifestyle of Colorado. In some ways, the song is a rocked-up version of John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High," which was released the previous year. Both songs use the famous Rocky Mountains as a focal point for the virtues of Colorado. Joe Walsh left the James Gang just as they were building momentum, having scored minor hits with "Walk Away" and "Funk #49." Splintering the band as they were on the verge of stardom didn't go over well with Walsh's bandmates or their record company, but Joe felt creatively limited in the 3-piece band and wanted out. Colorado put him near James Gang producer Bill Szymczyk, who continued to work with Walsh and produced this album. "Rocky Mountain Way" reflects Walsh's range of emotions after making the big move. He explained in the book The Guitar Greats: "I got kind of fed up with feeling sorry for myself, and I wanted to justify and feel good about leaving the James Gang, relocating, going for it on a survival basis. I wanted to say 'Hey, whatever this is, I'm positive and I'm proud', and the words just kind of came out of feeling that way, rather than writing a song out of remorse. It was special then, and the words were special to me, because the words were like, 'I'm goin' for it, the heck with feeling sorry for this and that', and it did turn out to be a special song for a lot of people. I think the attitude and the statement of that have a lot to do with it – it's a positive song, and it's basic rock'n'roll, which is what I really do." When Walsh moved to Colorado, he formed a band called Barnstorm, whose first, self-titled album came out in 1972. Their next album was The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get, which contained this track. The song was co-written by the group: Rocke Grace (keyboards), Kenny Passarelli (bass), Joe Vitale (drums), and Walsh. The music was written before Walsh added the lyrics. As for Barnstorm, they played up to their name and did over 300 gigs in 1973. The band broke up after the two albums, which have since been more commonly credited as Joe Walsh solo works. Rocky Mountain Way was one of the first songs to feature a talkbox, which allows a guitarist to make distorted vocalizations with his mouth. Peter Frampton is probably the most famous talkbox practitioner, and his use of the device is prominent on his famous 1976 album Frampton Comes Alive. Walsh is a big baseball fan, and this song has become associated with the game because of the lyrics "Casey's at bat," which is a reference to a famous baseball poem. When the Colorado Rockies baseball team formed in 1993, "Rocky Mountain Way" became a popular song at their stadium, Coors Field, where the song is played after a Rockies win. Joe Walsh described writing the lyrics to this song during an interview with Howard Stern. Walsh explained he had the track recorded but had no ideas for lyrics. He had been living in Colorado after leaving the James Gang over creative differences with the direction of the music. He was mowing his lawn and looking at the Rocky Mountains and the lyrics came to him. He ran inside to write the lyrics but forgot to shut off the lawn mower. The mower ran into his neighbor's yard and ruined the neighbor's garden. "It was a very expensive song to write," Walsh said, implying he had to pay to repair the damage to the neighbor's yard. He said the lyrics describe his anxiety about leaving the James Gang and his excitement about a solo career.

"I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)" Album: The Nightfly (1982) by Donald Fagen "I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)" is a song written and performed by American Donald Fagen. It was the first track on his platinum-certified debut solo album The Nightfly, and was released in September 1982 as its first single. It charted within the top 30 on the Billboard Hot 100, Mainstream Rock, R&B Singles and Adult Contemporary charts. Fagen, along with musician Walter Becker, led the rock band Steely Dan during the 1970s. Between 1972 and 1981, Steely Dan had ten Top-40 singles, including the top-ten hits "Do It Again" (1972), "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" (1974) and "Hey Nineteen" (1980). In 1981 Becker and Fagen parted ways. Fagen's first album as a solo artist, The Nightfly, was released the next year. The "I.G.Y." of the title refers to the "International Geophysical Year", an event that ran from July 1957 to December 1958.: 217  The I.G.Y. was an international scientific project promoting collaboration among the world's scientists. Fagen's lyric discusses the widespread optimistic vision of the future at that time, including futuristic concepts such as solar-powered cities, a transatlantic tunnel, permanent space stations, and spandex jackets. The song references the vision of postwar optimism in America and the Western world. The "76" referred to in the song is 1976, the U.S. Bicentennial year. "I.G.Y." has been covered by British singer and musician Howard Jones, who included a version on his 1993 greatest hits album The Best of Howard Jones. The gospel a cappella group Take 6 covered "I.G.Y." as the title track on their 2002 release Beautiful World. The lyric of Fagen's original song was modified to recast the song with a gospel message. In 2004 Marcia Hines recorded a version for her album Hinesight. The song was also used in a scene from the Simpsons sixteenth-season episode "Future Drama" when Homer and Bart are flying around in the 'imperfect Hovercar'. French DJ Producer Alan Braxe sampled this song for the remix on Benjamin Diamond's "In Your Arms (We Gonna Make It)" Donald Fagen – vocals, synthesizer, synth-harmonica Greg Phillinganes – electric piano Rob Mounsey – synthesizer, horn arrangement Anthony Jackson – bass Hugh McCracken – guitar James Gadson – drums Jeff Porcaro – additional drums Roger Nichols – drum/percussion programming Starz Vanderlocket – percussion Randy Brecker – trumpet Dave Tofani – alto saxophone Michael Brecker – tenor saxophone Ronnie Cuber – baritone saxophone Dave Bargeron – trombone Valerie Simpson, Zack Sanders, Frank Floyd, Gordon Grody – backing vocals "I.G.Y." Standing tough under stars and stripes, we can tell This dream's in sight You've got to admit it At this point in time that it's clear The future looks bright On that train, all graphite and glitter Undersea by rail Ninety minutes from New York to Paris Well, by '76 we'll be A-OK What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free Get your ticket to that wheel in space while there's time The fix is in You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky You know we've got to win Here at home we'll play in the city Powered by the sun Perfect weather for a streamlined world There'll be spandex jackets, one for everyone What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free On that train, all graphite and glitter Undersea by rail Ninety minutes from New York to Paris (More leisure for artists everywhere) A just machine to make big decisions Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision We'll be clean when their work is done We'll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free

Federal Funding is the first song on Cake’s 2011 album Showroom of Compassion. The song features a slow, moderately-funky beat, a low single-string guitar riff, whining analog synthesizers, group vocals, and trumpets. Lyrically, it discusses both the positives and negatives of government. Lead singer John McCrea is quoted as saying “There are certain things only government can do, and I think it would be selfish and shortsighted to indiscriminately shut everything down, privatize it all, etc. Although it might be emotionally satisfying for many people, it is probably not the adult thing to do.” Cake’s website also featured “The Federal Funding March” in which high school and college marching bands could submit videos with the winner being featured in a future Cake music video. Unknown to most of their fans, the band Cake is named after the verb, not the noun. Rather than referring to desert, the band says the name refers to the point "when something insidiously becomes part of your life. We mean it more as something that cakes onto your shoe and is just sort of there until you get rid of it." Cake's 2001 album Comfort Eagle was a huge success but the band was forced to cancel a number of live dates in light of the September 11 attacks. The band was planning on doing a second tour of Europe at the time but instead decided that it might not be a good idea to travel overseas. They played their planned US gigs and also streamed a show from the Yahoo! office in California online. Cake singer John McCrea is a big fan of the forgotten '70s band Bread. McCrea expresses his love for the band by saying "I think Bread was one of those bands that got overlooked at the time by people that were into music. But the songs are beautiful and you can't argue the geometry of the music." Cake says the key to their unique sound is, ironically, cheap guitars. Guitarist Xan McCurdy elaborates: "McCrea's guitar is a s--tty old starter guitar from the '60s. They probably made a million of them off an assembly line. We never get the exact same tone twice." Pete McNeal, who drummed for Cake from 2001 to 2004, was sentenced to 15 years to life in California state prison for child molestation on December 2, 2014. The incident occurred during a Thanksgiving party McNeal attended, where he allegedly molested a 3-year-old girl. 1991- John McCrea Lead vocals, guitar, piano, vibraslap Vince DiFiore Trumpet, keyboards, melodica, guiro, vocals Greg Brown Guitar 1991-1997 Gabe Nelson Bass guitar, vocals 1991, 1997- Paulo Baldi Drums, cowbell, tambourine, vocals 2004- Xan McCurdy Guitar, vocals 1997- Pete McNeal Drums 2001-2004 Federal Funding Cake Written by: Mc Crea John M, Mccurdy Xan Dieudonne, Nelson Christopher Gabriel Album: Showroom Of Compassion Released: 2011 You'll receive the federal funding, you can add another wing You'll receive the federal funding, you can add another wing Take your colleagues out to dinner, pay your brother to come and sing Take your colleagues out to dinner, pay your brother to come and sing Sing, sing, sing You'll receive the federal funding, you can have a hefty grant You'll receive the federal funding, you can have a hefty grant Strategize for the presentation, make them see that you're the man Strategize this presentation, make them see that you're the man-a-a-an Man, man, man-a-a-an-a-a-an, ma-ma-ma-a-an You'll receive the federal funding, you can pass the simple test You'll receive the federal funding, you can pass the simple test You can access information, make them see that you're the best You can access information, make them see that you're the be-e-est Best, best, be-e-est, be-e-e-e-est Yow One, two, one, two, three, four Man, man, man-a-a-an-a-a-an, ma-ma-ma-a-an Man, man, man-a-a-an-a-a-an, ma-ma-ma-a-an

MIND CONTROL 101 Introduction to Psychological Warfare GF33 27 1955 US Army "[US Army] Introduction to Psychological Warfare - GF33-27 (1955)". Time Stamps posted below for all the topics discussed in the video. Declassified files on U.S Army tactics. The military applications of PSY-OPS and effective use of propaganda to control a nation. Lot's of information on how Psy-Ops was used in Korean War as well as Normandy Landings. all audio sources are horrible that I could find. I did the best I could to clean it up. TIME STAMPS: 00:48 - 1:40 (Intro to PSY OPS.) 1:41 - 2:45 (History of propaganda and how it's used to disseminate U.S foreign policy) 2:46 - 5:51 (Military applications of PSY OPS and how to influence the enemy) 5:52 - 8:25 (Different types of PSY OPS tech used in the battlefield) 8:26 - 11:15 (How "area studies" are used to exploit other nations based on religious, political & ethnic differences giving eg: like Korean war and Normandy Landings) 12:41 - 15:09 (Examples of use of propaganda AGAINST the U.S - and how U.S soldiers are trained to resist propaganda)

Pretzel Logic Album: Pretzel Logic (1974) by Steely Dan "Pretzel Logic" reached number 57 in the Billboard charts. Steely Dan FAQ author Anthony Robustelli describes "Pretzel Logic" as a bluesy shuffle about time travel. Fagen has stated that the lyrics, including anachronistic references to Napoleon and minstrel shows, are about time travel. According to Robustelli, the "platform" referred to in the song's bridge is the time travel machine. But Something Else! critic Victor Aaron describes the lines "I stepped out on the platform, the man gave me the news/He said, 'You must be joking son, where did you get those shoes?'” as a memorable putdown line. Steely Dan biographer Brian Sweet hypothesizes that the first verse was inspired by the band's distaste for touring, particularly the tours of the American South on which their record label had sent them the previous year. The Brownsville Herald writer Bobby Alvarez felt the song was about Steely Dan's "quest for stardom" and represented their philosophy about themselves—that whatever they have not done or experienced in the past doesn't matter anymore since the past is gone. Billboard described "Pretzel Logic" as a "bluesy rock hit" and praised the vocals, production, and the "catchy instrumental refrain." CashBox said that "the accent here is on a funkier jazzy melody than 'Rikki.'" Record World called it "a blues construction trimmed with hall-filling harmonies" and said that "The group's ability to meander and yet keep to a hooky home base once again proves their mastery of rock thought processes." Rolling Stone critic Bud Scoppa describes "Pretzel Logic" as one of the album's most conventional songs, calling it a "modified blues." Aaron regards it as Steely Dan's song that remains most faithful to the blues, but acknowledges that a few non-blues chords are incorporated into the refrain. Scoppa particularly praised the electric guitar improvisations for their originality and for pedal steel guitar parts that don't sound like country music. Scoppa credited Jeff Baxter for this, although according to Steely Dan biographer Brian Sweet, Walter Becker played the guitar solo. This is one of the first Steely Dan songs to feature Becker as a lead guitarist. Eduardo Rivadavia cites "Pretzel Logic" as one of several songs on the album on which Steely Dan hones their trademark sound, "as sweetly infectious as it was deceptively intricate, dark and witty." Alvarez rated it one of the best songs on the album. Donald Fagen – lead and backing vocals, Wurlitzer electronic piano Walter Becker – lead guitar Dean Parks – rhythm guitar Plas Johnson – saxophone Ollie Mitchell – trumpet Lew McCreary – trombone Michael Omartian – acoustic piano Wilton Felder – bass guitar Jim Gordon – drums Tim Schmit – backing vocals In 1987, it was covered by Hiram Bullock on his album Give It What You Got. A live version by INXS was performed during the Moontan Double J Concert At Manly Vale Hotel, October 1980 show. A recording is available on the compilation Stay Young 1979–1982. The New York Rock and Soul Revue covered it in 1991, led by Donald Fagen. The song was performed by the Warren Haynes Band, the solo project of The Allman Brothers Band and Gov't Mule leader Warren Haynes, which he started in 2010. A staple of the band's live shows, often running over ten minutes in length and featuring multiple solos from band members, it appears in this form on their 2012 album Live at The Moody Theater. Pretzel Logic is the third studio album by Steely Dan, released by ABC Records on February 20, 1974. It was recorded at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, California, with producer Gary Katz. The album was Steely Dan's last to be made and released while the group was still an active touring band, as well as the final album to feature the band's full quintet-lineup of Becker, Fagen, Denny Dias, Jim Hodder, and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (who subsequently left to join The Doobie Brothers), though it also features significant contributions from many prominent Los Angeles-based studio musicians. A commercial and critical success, the album's hit single, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", helped restore Steely Dan's radio presence after the disappointing performance of their previous album. Pretzel Logic was reissued on CD in 1987, and remastered in 1999, to retrospective critical acclaim.

Undead Album: Swan Songs (2008) Bullet Album: American Tragedy (2011) by Hollywood Undead Undead was originally released as a song entitled "Out The Way." It not known why this revised version was re-titled. The synthesiser riff was borrowed from Ozzy Osbourne's debut single as a solo artist, "Crazy Train." Undead was featured in commercials for the live action film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Undead was produced by Danny Lohner who is best known for his work with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Lohner also helped produce "Sell Your Soul." Johnny 3 Tears of Hollywood Undead explained the album title to Artist Direct: "We came up with Swan Songs because there's an irony to it. A swan song is supposed to be the last noise a swan makes before it dies. Even though it's our first record, I thought that it would be cool because of the irony of it. In all honesty, I never know what's going to happen with us, so I thought it was a fitting title. It's very complete, representing the lifespan of something. If we never made another record again, I think we would've done something that most bands haven't done; even though it's only a 14-track record, but it covers a lifetime." "Bullet" is a song by American band Hollywood Undead. It was recorded as the sixth single and eleventh track from their second studio album American Tragedy (2011). The song was produced by Griffin Boice. This song is one of the few songs by Hollywood Undead to feature a member other than Danny or Deuce as the clean vocalist. Charlie Scene performs the chorus of "Bullet," in addition to "Rain" from Notes from the Underground. The song has received positive reviews from critics due to its cheerful tone and uptempo beat that directly contrast its dark lyrics about suicide and self-harm. "Bullet" was written by Lewis Edwards. The song contains verses by Terrell and Ragan, and a b-section and chorus sung by Terrell. The song was produced, recorded, and mixed by Griffin Boice at the Beat Suite in Hollywood, California. The lyrics detail a teenage male's trouble with suicide. The chorus, which the song opens with, implies past attempts at suicide for the protagonist: "My legs are dangling off the edge, the bottom of the bottle is my only friend. I think I'll slit my wrist again, and I'm gone, gone, gone, gone! My legs are dangling off the edge, a stomach full of pills didn't work again. I put a bullet in my head, and I'm gone, gone, gone, gone!" The protagonist continues in the verses to describe the decomposition of his life, stating that his "two best friends" are "a bottle of pills" and "a bottle of Gin". We then learn he is at the top of a twenty story building, and that the polishing of a bottle is "pushing [me]" off and he describes how asphalt has never "looked so soft". The protagonist begins to express concern that his mother found his suicide note and had called the police. He starts realising he needs to move fast, as he hears "sirens and they're off in the distance" and that he's "more scarred than my wrist is". He states that he's going to purchase a suit, because "when you go to meet God ya know you wanna look nice." The pre-chorus states that "So if I survive then I'll see you tomorrow" and the chorus plays again. Johnny 3 Tears takes the second verse from a third-person point of view of another young man who had an abusive family life. The young man's father had apparently abandoned him, which left his mother guilt-struck, and he had gone astray in a way that is not specified. It is, however, stated that he "Climbed to the roof to see if [you] could fly". This ends the verse, and goes into the pre-chorus and chorus. After the chorus, Petra Christensen sings the outro stated by J-Dog in a Hollywood Undead live cast in January promoting the release for the band's latest album. Rick Florino of Artist Direct had a list of ten reasons readers needed American Tragedy, with number three being the track "Bullet". Florino explains that "Hollywood Undead snap from faint acoustic guitar into cinematic rhyming about suicide. It's as infectious as it is intense." He states that the ending refrain featuring a little girl "is utterly powerful." He also stated that "Bullet" is "the kind of song that could save some kid in the crowd," and closed his review stating that the song is "heart-wrenching genius." In his official review, Florino again referenced "Bullet" stating it was one of "two moments that make [American Tragedy] a classic," stating that "After an acoustic intro, the song tells a potent and poignant tale of longing for suicide. However, it's the sunniest and catchiest tune on American Tragedy" and that the band's genius lies "in that dangerous space between unforgettable and unsettling." He compared Johnny 3 Tears' verse to being as soulful as Jonathan Davis of Korn. The album as a whole garnered five out of five stars. Charlie Scene – clean vocals, rapping, guitar, composer, writer Johnny 3 Tears – vocals, composer, writer Petra Christensen – end vocals on Bullet J-Dog – synthesizers, keyboards, composer, writer Danny – composer, writer, background vocals Griffin Boice – production, recording, mixing, guitar, bass guitar, programming, percussion, composer, writer Sean Curiel – drum recording assistant Ken Dudley – additional recording Daren Pfeifer – drums Undead Undead Undead Undead (Undead) You better get up out the way Tomorrow we'll rise, so let's fight today You know I don't give a fuck what you think or say 'Cause we gon' rock this whole place anyway (Undead) You better get up out the way Tomorrow we'll rise, so let's fight today You know I don't give a fuck what you think or say 'Cause we gon' rock this whole place anyway Look up and see that motherfucking writing on the wall When you see J3T thirty deep, he's down to brawl Fuck the haters I see, 'cause I hate that you breathe I see you duck, you little punk, you little fucking disease I got H-U tatted on the front of my arms The boulevard, brass knuckles in the back of the car 'Cause we drunk-drive Cadillacs, we never go far But when you see us, motherfuckers, better know who we are I got one thing to say to punk-asses who hate Motherfuckers don't know, but you better watch what you say From these industry fucks to these faggot-ass punks You don't know what it takes to get this motherfucking drunk I'm already loud, maybe it's a little too late Johnny's taking heads off of all faggots who hate 'Cause I'm a God, motherfucker, there's a price to pay Yeah, I'm a God, motherfucker, and it's Judgment Day (Undead) You better get up out the way Tomorrow we'll rise, so let's fight today You know I don't give a fuck what you think or say 'Cause we gon' rock this whole place anyway (Undead) You better get up out the way Tomorrow we'll rise, so let's fight today You know I don't give a fuck what you think or say 'Cause we gon' rock this whole place anyway I'm getting used to this nuisance of fags who badmouth this music How fucking stupid and foolish of you to think you can do this You cowards can't, you never will, don't even try to pursue it I took the chance, I paid the bill, I nearly died for this music You make me wanna run around pulling my guns out and shit You're tempting me to run my mouth and call you out on this, bitch How ignorant you gotta be to believe any of this? You need to slit your wrists, get pissed, and go jump off a bridge What, you can't see the sarcasm in the verses I spit? What, you think I just got lucky, didn't work for this shit? Bitch, I've been working at this ever since I was a kid I've played a million empty shows to only family and friends What kind of person would diss a band that deserves to get big? I'd hate to be that person when my verse comes out their kid's lips That shit's as worse as it gets, this verse is over, I quit Signed "Charlie Scene" on your girlfriend's tits (Undead) You better get up out the way Tomorrow we'll rise, so let's fight today You know I don't give a fuck what you think or say 'Cause we gon' rock this whole place anyway (Undead) You better get up out the way Tomorrow we'll rise, so let's fight today You know I don't give a fuck what you think or say 'Cause we gon' rock this whole place anyway White boys with tattoos, p-pointing right at you We're breaking everything, r-rowdy like a classroom Pack of wolves 'cause we don't follow the rules And when you're running your mouth, our razorblades come out B-but you always press and you know I never stress With Loki DMS, J-Johnny to my left Got Phantom and the rest who are down to rep the West I grew up on drive-bys and LA gang signs So what the fuck you know about being a gangster? And what the fuck you know about being in danger? You ain't doing this so you know you're just talking shit Mad at all of us 'cause every song is a fucking hit (Undead) You better get up out the way Tomorrow we'll rise, so let's fight today You know I don't give a fuck what you think or say 'Cause we gon' rock this whole place anyway (Undead) You better get up out the way Tomorrow we'll rise, so let's fight today You know I don't give a fuck what you think or say 'Cause we gon' rock this whole place anyway (Undead) motherfucking time to ride, ride (Undead) see you duck when we drive by (Undead) motherfucking time to ride, ride (Undead) won't you punks just die, die, die? (Undead)

Psychiatry & Mind Control Part I Psychiatry, Mind Control, Psychotronic, microwave, voice in head

Wake up meat sacks. One of the major points of this video's aesthetic is that this technology is at minimum 80 years old.

I Am The Highway Album: Audioslave (2002) by Audioslave On this early Audioslave track, frontman Chris Cornell is claiming his self-worth after being taken for granted in his relationships. "I am not your rolling wheels, I am the highway," he sings. He determines the only person he can rely on is himself, but the road to independence is a long one: "I put millions of miles under my heels, and still too close to you I feel." Ann Wilson of Heart recorded this for her 2018 album, Immortal. The collection of cover songs paid tribute to musicians who recently died (Cornell committed suicide in 2017). Wilson connects "I Am The Highway" to Cornell's inability to deal with fame. She told Tone Deaf: "The expectations that were put on him being the voice of a generation and a superstar of the 90's and 2000's and stuff was too much for him." Wilson released a statement explaining why she chose this particular song to honor Cornell: "The song is strong, confident, spiritual. It's about a person who refuses to be tied down to the mundane, who is constantly looking for freedom and independence on a more universal scale, not just ordinary everyday reality. It was the cry of a soul, and it's a beautiful song. Chris and I were friends; we had a lot in common, we were both outsiders in a way. He left us with amazing music." The song opens with the lyric "Pearls and swine, bereft of me," which is a biblical reference to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 7:6, which states: "Do not throw pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet." In other words, don't share anything of value with someone who refuses to appreciate it. Cornell began playing an acoustic version in the middle of the band's live sets and the positive response gave him the courage to bring the approach to some of his other tunes, which prompted his solo acoustic Songbook tour in 2011. He told Walmart Soundcheck: "That song in particular was the first one I stood up in front of a lot of people and played acoustically in Audioslave shows, and it was a kind of scary thing to do. It was an important thing that the band backed me up doing it." This peaked at #3 on the Alternative chart (then known as the Modern Rock chart) and #2 on the Mainstream Rock chart. This was used on the teen drama One Tree Hill in the 2006 episode "Can't Stop This Thing We've Started." Pearls and swine bereft of me Long and weary my road has been I was lost in the cities Alone in the hills No sorrow or pity for leaving I feel I am not your rolling wheels I am the highway I am not your carpet ride I am the sky Friends and liars don't wait for me I'll get on all by myself I put millions of miles Under my heels And still too close to you I feel I am not your rolling wheels I am the highway I am not your carpet ride I am the sky I am not your blowing wind I am the lightning I am not your autumn moon I am the night The night I am not your rolling wheels I am the highway I am not your carpet ride I am the sky I am not your blowing wind I am the lightning I am not your autumn moon I am the night The night Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah

Evil Ways Album: Santana (1969) Black Magic Woman Album: Abraxas (1970) Santana Evil Ways was originally recorded by Willie Bobo in 1965; it was written by Bobo's guitarist, Sonny Henry. Bobo was Latin Jazz percussionist who was a big influence on Santana and played on some of their tracks in the late '70s. "He was one of the first guys who tried to merge Latin music and blues together on record," Carlos Santana said in The Guitar Greats by John Tobler and Stuart Grundy. "He did it before us, because we were doing it on the street, and he was already doing it on records." Gregg Rolie, who joined Journey in 1973, sang lead on this. Carlos Santana, whom the band is named after, rarely took lead vocals but got plenty of guitar solos. His solo in Evil Ways is about 90 seconds long. Santana made a huge impact at the Woodstock festival, where they included "Evil Ways" in their set. They hadn't released their first album yet, but had made a name for themselves playing live shows on the West Coast. Their manager, Bill Graham, got them on the bill, playing the same day as their San Francisco cohorts The Grateful Dead. Their first album, Santana, was released two weeks later amid the raft of positive press from Woodstock. The rhythmic chant track "Jingo" was issued as the first single from the album, reaching #56 in the US. "Evil Ways" was the next single, and it climbed to #9. "Black Magic Woman" was a hit for Santana, but few people know that it's actually a cover of a 1968 Fleetwood Mac song that hit #37 in the UK. Peter Green, who was a founding member of Fleetwood Mac, wrote the lyrics. Many also don't know that Santana started out as a blues band, just like Fleetwood Mac. "I used to go to see the original Fleetwood Mac, and they used to kill me, just knock me out," Carlos Santana said in the book The Guitar Greats. "To me, they were the best blues band." Santana put their own spin on the song, incorporating Latin textures, but they kept the basic sound from the original intact. The 1:49 instrumental at the end is called "Gypsy Queen," and was written by the Hungarian jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo. It was omitted from Santana's 1974 Greatest Hits album, even though radio stations usually play "Black Magic Woman" and "Gypsy Queen" as one song. The original version is based on a blues song Peter Green wrote for Fleetwood Mac's first UK album called "I Loved Another Woman." Mick Fleetwood called the original version, "Three minutes of sustain/reverb guitar with two exquisite solos from Peter." The royalties generated by Santana's cover of this song helped sustain the song's writer, Peter Green, after he left Fleetwood Mac. Green gave most of his money away when he left the band, and would have found himself destitute later in the '70s if he didn't get checks from his old hits. After this was released, Peter Green befriended some people who were into black magic. In an interview with Cameron Crowe of Rolling Stone magazine, Christine McVie said these were the people who turned him on to acid, which led to Green leaving Fleetwood Mac. Santana keybord player Gregg Rolie sang lead on this. He joined Journey in 1973. For this song's solo, Santana played across the Latin rhythm on his Gibson Les Paul Special through the amp and rode the volume knob throughout the track to add sustain and distortion as required. "Black Magic Woman" was the first single from Santana's second album, Abraxas, released in September 1970. In August 1969, they delivered one of the most memorable performances at Woodstock and released their debut album just two weeks later. Thrust into stardom, they toured constantly and didn't have much time to write new songs, so they included two covers on Abraxas; their version of Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va" was the second single from the album, and also a hit. Their first three albums all fulfilled the promise of their Woodstock performance and made them one of the biggest bands in America, but in 1972 they started to fracture and went through a number of lineup changes. The band reinvented themselves many times over the years, with guitarist and namesake Carlos Santana the constant. In 1999, at a career nadir, they released one of the best-selling and most-acclaimed albums of that era: Supernatural. 1967- Carlos Santana Guitar, vocals Gregg Rolie Keyboards, vocals David Brown Bass 1967-1971 Michael Shrieve Drums Mike Carabello Percussion Jose Chepito Areas Percussion Neal Schon Guitar 1971- Coke Escovedo Percussion 1971- Tom Rutley Bass 1971- The group formed in the Latin District of San Francisco. They are named after group leader Carlos Santana, and were originally known as the Santana Blues Band. It's one of the few popular groups named after a guitarist in the band (The J. Geils Band and Van Halen are others). They appeared at both the original (1969) and second (1994) Woodstock. When they played the 1969 festival, they hadn't yet released their first album - their manager, Bill Graham, pulled some strings to get them on the bill. They went on sooner than expected, catching Carlos in the middle of a mescaline experience. "I was praying to God to keep me in time and in tune," he said. Their performance was one of the most acclaimed and thrust them to stardom. As Graham predicted, it went to their heads: Carlos embraced an extravagant rock star lifestyle, but soon changed direction and went down a more spiritual path.

My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) Album: Rust Never Sleeps (1979) Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) Album: Rust Never Sleeps (1979) Cortez the Killer Album: Zuma (1975) Cinnamon Girl Album: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969) Neil Young & Crazy Horse Young alludes to three specific artists in the lyrics of My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue): "Rock and roll is here to stay" - This is the title of a 1958 song by Danny & the Juniors, a vocal group best known for their hit "At The Hop." They proclaim, "Rock 'n roll is here to stay, it will never die." "The king is gone but he's not forgotten" - "The King" is Elvis Presley, who died in 1977, two years before this song was released. "This is the story of a Johnny Rotten" - Johnny Rotten (real name: John Lydon) was lead singer of punk rock pioneers The Sex Pistols. He often seemed hell-bent on self destruction to ensure he would burn out and not fade away, but ended up having a very long and productive career. Around 1977 Neil Young formed a band called The Ducks that included Jeff Blackburn. The band played for a $3 cover charge in the hip Santa Cruz club environment. "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)" came out of this period and Jeff Blackburn received co-writing credit on the track with Young. Jeff Blackburn recalled to Uncut magazine: "We were old friends going back to the '60s. I was playing in Santa Cruz with John Craviotto and Bob Mosley (Moby Grape) who were a great rhythm section, when Neil ducked into it. That was a great summer. We played about 30 shows with The Ducks, we played every night. It really was a mighty month. Neil and I swapped ideas. We both had material, we had ideas and things came together as we were rocking together pretty good. I had a song with the line, 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It's better to burn out than it is to rust.' Neil liked that and the whole rust thing came from that line - rust never sleeps. Not many people share a credit with Neil Young. It's hard to say why I got one, you'd need to ask Neil. But you never know what he's going to do next." Young released two versions of the song on the album: an acoustic rendition called "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)," and an electric version called "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)" that he recorded with his band, Crazy Horse. Both versions were included on the single, with "Hey Hey, My My" the A-side, which is what most radio stations play. The electric version has slightly different lyric and omits the famous line, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." "My My, Hey Hey" is on the first side of the album, which is all acoustic. My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) was the first track on Rust Never Sleeps. Young released a concert documentary with that title the same day as the album. Kurt Cobain's suicide note contained a line from My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue): "It's better to burn out than to fade away." That line has become one of the most famous song lyrics of all time. When Young was asked by Time magazine in 2005 about the line and Cobain's death, he said: "The fact that he left the lyrics to my song right there with him when he killed himself left a profound feeling on me, but I don't think he was saying I have to kill myself because I don't want to fade away. I don't think he was interpreting the song in a negative way. It's a song about artistic survival, and I think he had a problem with the fact that he thought he was selling out, and he didn't know how to stop it. He was forced to do tours when he didn't want to, forced into all kinds of stuff. I was trying to get a hold of him - because I had heard some of the things he was doing to himself - just to tell him it's OK not to tour, it's OK not to do these things, just take control of your life and make your music. Or, hey, don't make music. But as soon as you feel like you're out there pretending, you're f--cked. I think he knew that instinctively, but he was young and he didn't have a lot of self-control. And who knows what other personal things in his life were having a negative impression on him at the time?" Def Leppard used the burn out/fade away line at the beginning of their song "Rock of Ages." This was included on Live Rust, a concert album recorded later that year. Young performed these concerts with giant amps and microphones on stage as props. A line from this song, "rust never sleeps," was used as the album title. Young got the line from Mark Mothersbaugh, who is a member of the band Devo. Neil Young performed My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) as a duet with Devo and Booji Boy in his movie Human Highway. The full duet is about twelve minutes, and takes place during a hallucination scene in the movie. The movie itself is only good as a B-grade movie, but the live footage of Devo in costume and Neil Young together is worth the price on the video. In the 1986 movie Highlander, the villain Kurgan quotes this song to people inside a church: "I have something to say! It's better burn out, than to fade away!" By this he means to glorify his ongoing perilous battle for immortality as opposed to living a normal humble life. This is quite an obvious metaphor for being a rock star. The song explicitly deals with the struggles of being a rock musician. As quoted on Hyper Rust, Neil Young said, "The essence of the rock'n'roll spirit to me, is that it's better to burn out really bright than to sort of decay off into infinity. Even though if you look at it in a mature way, you'll think, "well, yes ... you should decay off into infinity, and keep going along." Rock'n'roll doesn't look that far ahead. Rock'n'roll is right now. What's happening right this second" Stephen King quoted the lyric "Out of the blue and into the black" in the epigraph to his 1986 horror novel, It. In the story, an evil entity disguised as a clown emerges from hibernation every 27 years to terrorize the town of Derry, Maine. In the film adaptation's 2019 sequel, It Chapter Two, King makes a cameo appearance as a shopkeeper who wears a Neil Young Harvest Moon T-shirt. Director Andy Muschietti told the Dutch online newspaper NU.nl he was surprised when the author seemed annoyed by the garment. King, who was in the midst of a cocaine addiction when he wrote It, said he wasn't really a Neil Young fan and was probably high when he quoted him in the novel. Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) is an alternate version of Young's song "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)," which also appears on the Rust Never Sleeps album. The lyrics are slightly different, and "Hey Hey, My My" is electric, while "My My, Hey Hey," is acoustic. Young recorded this with the band Crazy Horse. It was the first time Young recorded with them since Zuma in 1975. In the biography of Neil Young, Shakey by Jimmy McDonough, Neil points out that this song came about when he was jamming with the band Devo. The phrase "rust never sleeps" was uttered by Mark Mothersbaugh, and Neil, loving the impromptu line, acquired it. >> The lyrics refer to "The King" and Johnny Rotten as rockers whose legacies live on. The King is Elvis Presley, and Johnny Rotten was the lead singer of The Sex Pistols. In The Complete Guide to the Music of Neil Young, Young explains why the line "rust never sleeps" appealed to him. "It relates to my career; the longer I keep on going the more I have to fight this corrosion. And now that's gotten to be like the World Series for me. The competition's there, whether I will corrode and eventually not be able to move anymore and just repeat myself until further notice or whether I will be able to expand and keep the corrosion down a little." Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) is the last song on the electric side of Rust Never Sleeps. The first side (first five songs on the CD) are acoustic. The song has become a standby of Young's live performances, being played at nearly every live show throughout his career, often as a closing song. John Lennon expressed his disagreement with the "burn out or fade away" sentiment in a 1980 interview with Playboy: "I hate it. It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. If he was talking about burning out like Sid Vicious, forget it. I don't appreciate the worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison - it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive." Young responded to the quote, saying that he was describing the paradoxical nature of the rock-and-roll lifestyle, not advocating it. Cortez the Killer is about Hernán Cortez, the Spanish conqueror of the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs lived in what is now considered Mexico, and Cortez had an army of 600 sail from what is now Cuba to the Aztec town of Tobasco (yes, where the hot peppers and the name of the sauce originally came from). The Aztecs thought Cortez was a god and bowed before him. They let his army roam free. Cortez, however, became wary of their good nature and took their leader hostage. He then captured and killed many of their people. He also unwittingly brought new diseases to the Americas, which the natives had no immunities towards. On top of all this, he built what is now Mexico City with slave labor. He returned to Spain a hero. Neil Young's Cortez the Killer brings an interesting alternative viewpoint to the history of Cortez' invasion. While not a complete history of Cortez or the Aztecs, it's title alone gives you a very good idea of how Young viewed the invasion. Young's romantic imagery near end of the track highlight the emotional toll (lost romance, etc.) of the invasion. Peace is a theme of this song. From verse six: "But they built up with their bare hands, what we still can't do today" indicates that even in the most barbarian times there was still peace, and in present day, as sophisticated as it may be, there is anything but peace. The Aztecs were peaceful, representing sort of a utopian nonviolent society. Cortez and the Spanish brigade used trickery to beat the Aztecs, people who had never committed any offensive acts towards the Spanish. The Spanish could represent the status quo society, completely antonymic from the amicable Aztecs. Neil Young's ex-wife Pegi is also a singer/songwriter. When we spoke with Pegi and asked how personal experiences inspired her songs, she told us: "I think there's little kernels of our lives in many of our songs, unless you're writing 'Cortez' or something. It must have been in another life my husband was an Incan warrior." The last verse of Cortez the Killer switches from a third to a first-person perspective, characterizing the faceless, historical figure of Cortez into someone romantically pining for an unnamed somebody: "And I know she's living there, and she loves me to this day. I still can't remember when or how I lost my way." Since the song was written around the time of his split with wife Carrie Snodgress, there's speculation that it's at least partially autobiographical. However, when Jimmy McDoncough, author of the young biography Shakey, questioned the singer about this, Neil simply said: "Its not about information. The song is not meant for them to think about me. The song is meant for people to think about themselves. The specifics about what songs are about are not necessarily constructive or relevant. A lot of stuff I make up because it came to me." Cortez the Killer fades out after around seven and a half minutes. According to Neil's father in the book Neil and Me, this was because an electrical circuit had blown, halting the recording process. This caused a final verse to be lost; Neil, however, opined that he "never liked that verse anyway." While an official recording of the lost verse was never released, the singer added the lines, "Ship is breaking up on the rocks. Sand beach... so close" to the end of the song while on his 2003 Greedale Tour. This song has one of the longest intros in rock: Young's vocals done come in until 3:22. During a show in Manassas, Virginia on August 13, 1996, Young told the audience that he wrote this song after eating too many hamburgers in high school. "One night I stayed up too late when I was goin' to high school. I ate like six hamburgers or something. I felt terrible... very bad... this is before McDonald's. I was studying history, and in the morning I woke up I'd written this song." The song's slow, rambling vibe was partly down to rhythm guitarist Frank Sampedro's drug use. Sampedro recalled to Uncut: "When we recorded 'Cortez,' I had just smoked some angel dust. The whole song I thought the second chord, D, was the first chord. So I emphasized that every time round, while Neil was leaning on the first chord, E minor. I think that helped keep a really slow tune moving along." Young has never said who the Cinnamon Girl is, as he prefers to leave lyric interpretations to the listener. In the liner notes of his Decade compilation, he stated: "Wrote this for a city girl on peeling pavement coming at me thru Phil Ochs eyes playing finger cymbals. It was hard to explain to my wife." Phil Ochs was a folk/protest singer active in the '60s who had issues with his mental stability (although his paranoia about the FBI turned out not to be far off). Young's wife at the time was Susan Acevedo; they were married for just one year at this point. Though Young would not identify his muse, the bit about finger cymbals is a reference to '60s folk singer Jean Ray, who performed with then-husband Jim Glover under the name Jim and Jean. Phil Ochs, a close friend of a couple, penned the title song to their second album, Changes. Brian Ray, Paul McCartney's guitarist and Jean's younger brother, claims Cinnamon Girl is indeed about his sister. Jean, herself, said she inspired another Neil Young song from the Everybody Knows This is Nowhere album: "Cowgirl in the Sand." In the book Shakey, Young copped to having a crush on Ray. When asked if she is the Cinnamon Girl, Young said, "Only part of the song. There's images in there that have to do with Jean and there's images that have to do with other people." Young recorded this with his band Crazy Horse. It was originally released on the Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere album in 1969. Young put out an alternate version as a single in 1970, which did well partly because he was getting exposure as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. In Neil Young: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, Neil Young talked about poaching the band The Rockets for the formation of Crazy Horse, who he first recorded with on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: "The truth is, I probably did steal them away from the pother band, which was a good band. But only because what we did, we went somewhere." He later goes on to say, "That's the hardest part, is the guilt of the trail of destruction that I've left behind me." In the same work, it is also mentioned that "With songs such as 'Cinnamon Girl,' 'Down By The River,' and 'Cowgirl in the Sand,' Crazy Horse clearly gave Neil Young the kind of sympathetic and almost telepathic backing he needed." Neil Young went on to declare Crazy Horse "the American Rolling Stones." The band Type O Negative did a remake on of Cinnamon Girl their 1996 album October Rust. The song was also covered by Smashing Pumpkins on the Reel Sessions bootleg. That's Danny Whitten singing high harmony on this this song with Young. Whitten was a singer/guitarist in Young's backing band Crazy Horse, which released its own album in 1970 featuring a few Whitten compositions, including "I Don't Want To Talk About It," later a #1 UK hit for Rod Stewart. Whitten spent his last years battling a heroin addiction, and in 1972 died after overdosing on alcohol and Valium. The liner notes to Decade reveal that "Down by the River," "Cinnamon Girl," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" all in a single afternoon - while sick with a 103 degree temperature. Also, they were recorded after being together with the band Crazy Horse for only two weeks." Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot recalled to Uncut magazine in 2021: "What I remember about 'Cinnamon Girl' is the four of us playing it - me, Ralph (Molina), Danny (Whitten) and Neil and realizing, 'Oh yeah, we can do this.' There's Danny's guitar, there's Neil's voice and guitar, and Ralph and I just need to keep the beat. When you are inside a song like that, it's something beautiful. It sounded good and I liked it, then we got to the bridge and I loved it! We were able to get very psychedelic; we could slow it down and it got bigger and even more beautiful. I don't think we worked on it for long, we really did just play it once or twice before we got the take." When legendary British DJ "Whispering Bob" Harris made his BBC Radio 1 debut on the August 19, 1970 episode of Sounds of the Seventies, "Cinnamon Girl" was the first record he played. In 2020, a video appeared on YouTube showing Young encountering a fan in a public park. Using the fan's guitar, he gives a brief tutorial on how to play "Cinnamon Girl."

We Got The Beat Our Lips Are Sealed Album: Beauty and the Beat (1981) The Go-Go's The Go-Go's were an American all-female rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1978. Except for short periods when other musicians joined briefly, the band has had a relatively stable lineup consisting of Charlotte Caffey on lead guitar and keyboards, Belinda Carlisle on lead vocals, Gina Schock on drums, Kathy Valentine on bass, and Jane Wiedlin on rhythm guitar. They are widely considered the most successful all-female rock band of all time. The quintet emerged from the L.A. punk rock scene of the late 1970s and in 1981 released their debut album Beauty and the Beat. A first for an all-female band writing their material and playing their instruments, the LP topped the Billboard album chart and remains an achievement yet to be matched. Beauty and the Beat is considered one of the "cornerstone albums of US new wave" (AllMusic), having broken barriers and paved the way for a host of other new American acts. It yielded two of the Go-Go's four biggest Hot 100 hits—"Our Lips Are Sealed" (no. 20) and "We Got the Beat" (no. 2)—and, after a long and steady climb, reached number one in the chart dated March 6, 1982. The album stayed at the top for six consecutive weeks, eventually selling over two million copies. The group, credited as simply Go-Go's on all of their US releases, was nominated for the Best New Artist award at the 24th Annual Grammy Awards. The Go-Go's broke up in 1985, with each member embarking on a solo career and Carlisle being the most successful, having several top-5 singles through the late 1980s. They reconvened several times in the 1990s, releasing a new album in 2001, God Bless the Go-Go's, and touring. They received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011. Though the band's 2016 performances were billed as a farewell tour, the band remained active on an ad hoc basis for several years afterward. Head Over Heels, a musical featuring the songs of the Go-Go's, ran on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre from 2018 to 2019. The group was inducted into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, and shortly after that announced their disbandment. Formed in Los Angeles in 1978 as the Misfits by Charlotte Caffey, Belinda Carlisle (vocals), Jane Wiedlin (guitar, background vocals), the Go-Go's also included Margot Olavarria on bass and Elissa Bello on drums. They were formed as a punk band and had roots in the L.A. punk community. They shared a rehearsal space with the Motels and Carlisle, under the name "Dottie Danger", had briefly been a member of punk rock band the Germs. After she became temporarily ill, she separated from the Germs before ever playing a gig. The band began playing gigs at punk venues such as The Masque and the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles and the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco alongside bands such as X, Fear, the Plugz and the Controllers. Charlotte Caffey (lead guitar, keyboards, background vocals) was added later in 1978, and in the summer of 1979, Gina Schock replaced Bello on drums. With these lineup changes, the group began moving towards their more familiar power pop sound. The group frequently met at a Denny's on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and it was there they chose the band's name. In late 1979, the band recorded a five-song demo at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, and in 1980, they supported the British ska revival groups Madness and The Specials in both Los Angeles and England. The Go-Go's subsequently spent half of 1980 touring England, earning a sizable following and releasing the demo version of "We Got the Beat" on Stiff Records, which became a minor UK hit. In December 1980, original bassist Olavarria fell ill[17] and was replaced with Kathy Valentine, who had played guitar in bands such as Girlschool and the Textones. Valentine had not previously played bass guitar. Carlisle also related in her autobiography, Lips Unsealed, that according to the band's view, another reason for Olavarria's dismissal from the Go-Go's was that she frequently missed rehearsals, due largely to her dissatisfaction with the band's move away from punk and toward pop. In late 1982, Olavarria sued the remaining band members for wrongful removal. The lawsuit was settled in 1984. Olavarria later joined Martin Atkins' band Brian Brain. The Go-Go's signed to I.R.S. Records in April 1981. The following year, they toured with The Police on the Ghost in the Machine Tour. Their debut album, Beauty and the Beat, was a surprise hit: it topped the U.S. charts for six weeks in 1982 and eventually received a double platinum certification. The album was also successful outside the U.S., charting at No. 2 in Canada, where it received a platinum certification, and No. 27 in Australia. In 2003, the album was ranked No. 413 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. "Our Lips Are Sealed" and a new version of "We Got the Beat" were popular singles in North America in early 1982. During this period, the Go-Go's started building a fanbase. In 1982, the group was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Go-Go's guitarist Jane Wiedlin wrote Our Lips Are Sealed with the British musician Terry Hall, who was lead singer of The Specials. In an interview with Wiedlin, she told the story: "In 1980 we were playing at The Whisky on Sunset Strip, and The Specials were in town from England. They came to see us, and they really liked us and asked us if we would be their opening act on their tour. I met Terry Hall, the singer of The Specials, and ended up having kind of a romance. He sent me the lyrics to 'Our Lips Are Sealed' later in the mail, and it was kind of about our relationship, because he had a girlfriend at home and all this other stuff. So it was all very dramatic. I really liked the lyrics, so I finished the lyrics and wrote the music to it, and the rest is history. And then his band, The Fun Boy Three, ended up recording it, too - they did a really great version of it, also. It was like a lot gloomier than the Go-Go's' version." Speaking about her relationship with Terry Hall, Wiedlin adds: "Like I said, he had a girlfriend in England, and they were talking about getting married and all this stuff. So I don't know how I got in the picture. And, you know, that's something that I did as a teenager, maybe I was 20. That's something I would never do now, knowingly enter into a relationship with someone who was with someone else. I mean, it was completely screwed on my part. Although I think when people do that, you really have to look at the person who's in the relationship, and they have to take the burden of the responsibility as well. Anyways, it was one of those things with the tragic letters, 'I just can't do this.' You know, 'I'm betrothed to another.' All that kind of stuff." Jane Wiedlin sings the "hush, my darling" interlude on this song. She was a stalwart backing vocalist in the group, but was never allowed to sing lead. When she asked to do lead vocals on "Forget That Day," a song she wrote for their third album in 1984, she was rebuffed and left the group before the album was completed. The band didn't last much longer, breaking up in 1985 before releasing another album. "We'd been together about two years when I wrote Our Lips Are Sealed. Some of the songs from the very beginning were songs that ended up part of our repertoire. Others fell by the wayside. I remember when I wrote it, I was really afraid to show it to the band in case they didn't like it and all this stuff. But luckily they did like it." "We Got The Beat" was written by guitarist Charlotte Caffey, who drew inspiration from some Motown beats, specifically one that mentioned the name of her group. Caffey said, "I thought it would be very clever to do 'Going To A Go-Go.' I thought, Well, let's try working this out as a cover song. Which is really funny when I think about it. I was listening to it a lot one day, and later that night, the song came to me within five minutes. I don't even know if it has anything to do with listening to that song, but this whole idea came to me. It was one of those things that just went right through me and came out my hand; I wrote it down, recorded it a little bit, and then brought it into rehearsal a few days later." This plays in the opening scene of the 1982 movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where we meet the main characters in their natural habitat: the Ridgemont Mall. The song doesn't appear on the soundtrack but got a lot of attention from the film. Other movies to use the song include: Brimstone & Treacle (1982) Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001) My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) Poms (2019) The song ties into the album title, Beauty And The Beat, which was Belinda Carlisle's idea. The group's first album, it was recorded in New York City with producer Richard Gottehrer, the man who gave us "I Want Candy." The Go-Go's were based in Los Angeles, so during this time they stayed together in suites at the Wellington Hotel in New York City, causing lots of mischief and having way too much fun. The group brainstormed ideas for the cover and decided to go with a spa theme, showing the girls wrapped in towels with cream on their faces. Their art director, George DuBois, took the photos in the hotel, with shots of each member in the bathtub for use on the back cover. According to Kathy Valentine, their manager, Ginger Canzoneri, got the towels from Macy's and returned them after the shoot. They used Pond's cold cream on their faces. This opens the musical Head Over Heels, based on the music of The Go-Go's, which played on Broadway in 2018. When an oracle, played by Peppermint of RuPaul's Drag Race, foresees a beatless future for the Elizabethan-era townsfolk of Arcadia, they respond with the tune We Got The Beat. Belinda Carlisle – lead vocals, percussion (1978–1985, 1990, 1994, 1999–2022) Jane Wiedlin – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1978–1985, 1990, 1994, 1999–2022), lead guitar (1978) Charlotte Caffey – lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1978–1985, 1990, 1994, 1999–2022) Margot Olavarria – bass (1978–1980) Elissa Bello – drums (1978–1979)

Should I Stay Or Should I Go Album: Combat Rock (1982) Train In Vain (Stand By Me) Album: London Calling (1979) bonus track... The Clash Should I Stay Or Should I Go is one of the more popular songs by The Clash, this one uses a very unusual technique: Spanish lyrics echoing the English words. Singing the Spanish parts with Joe Strummer was Joe Ely, a Texas singer whose 1978 album Honky Tonk Masquerade got the attention of The Clash when they heard it in England. When Ely and his band performed in London, The Clash went to a show and took them around town after the performance. They became good friends, and when The Clash came to Texas in 1979, they played some shows together. They stayed in touch, and when The Clash returned to America in 1982, they played more shows together and Ely joined them in the studio when they were recording Combat Rock at Electric Ladyland Studio in New York. In a 2012 Songfacts interview with Joe Ely, he explained: "I'm singing all the Spanish verses on that, and I even helped translate them. I translated them into Tex-Mex and Strummer kind of knew Castilian Spanish, because he grew up in Spain in his early life. And a Puerto Rican engineer (Eddie Garcia) kind of added a little flavor to it. So it's taking the verse and then repeating it in Spanish." When we asked Ely whose idea the Spanish part was, he said, "I came in to the studio while they were working out the parts. They'd been working on the song for a few hours already, they had it sketched out pretty good. But I think it was Strummer's idea, because he just immediately, when it came to that part, he immediately went, 'You know Spanish, help me translate these things.' (Laughs) My Spanish was pretty much Tex-Mex, so it was not an accurate translation. But I guess it was meant to be sort of whimsical, because we didn't really translate verbatim." According to Strummer, Eddie Garcia, the sound engineer, called his mother in Brooklyn Heights and got her to translate some of the lyrics over the phone. Eddie's mother is Ecuadorian, so Joe Strummer and Joe Ely ended up singing in Ecuadorian Spanish. About two minutes in, you can hear Mick Jones say, "Split!" While it sounds like it could be some kind of statement related to the song, Joe Ely tells Songfacts it had a much more quotidian meaning. Said Ely: "Me and Joe were yelling this translation back while Mick Jones sang the lead on it, and we were doing the echo part. And there was one time when the song kind of breaks down into just the drums right before a guitar part. And you hear Mick Jones saying, 'Split!' Just really loud, kind of angry. Me and Joe had snuck around in the studio, came up in the back of his booth where he was all partitioned off, and we snuck in and jumped and scared the hell out of him right in the middle of recording the song, and he just looked at us and says, 'Split!' So we ran back to our vocal booth and they never stopped the recording." The line, "If you want me off your back" was originally the sexually charged line "On your front or on your back." In April 1982, the famed '60s producer Glyn Johns was brought in to slash the album down and make it into a mainstream-friendly single-LP. In addition to cutting parts of songs out, he insisted that Mick Jones re-record this line, fearing that US radio stations would not touch a record with such a sexually suggestive line. These sessions as a whole were in bad blood, with Jones furious that his original mixes of his songs were being massacred against his will, and it was this combined with other factors (such as the return of controversial manager Bernie Rhodes) which resulted in the breakdown of the band and Jones' sacking in 1983. For the most part, Mick Jones has refused to assign meaning to the lyrics. He said in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh: "'Should I Stay Or Should I Go?' wasn't about anything specific and it wasn't pre-empting my leaving The Clash. It was just a good rocking song, our attempt at writing a classic." But in a 2009 Rolling Stone article on The Clash, the magazine asserts that Jones wrote this song about his girlfriend Ellen Foley, who acted on the TV series Night Court and sang with Meat Loaf on "Paradise By the Dashboard Light." She told Songfacts in 2021: "I really don't know if it's about me. It's a very good song though, whomever it's about." It was also speculated that the song is a comment on Jones' position in the band, pre-empting his sacking in 1983 by over a year and a half. Strummer pondered this in interviews, as did Jones. "Maybe it was pre-empting my leaving" he noted in 1991, although he did conclude that it was more likely about a "personal situation" - presumably his relationship with Foley. Psychobilly is the punk version of rockabilly; it's a fusion genre which also gets a nice sound out of elements of everything from doo-wop to blues, but with that punk edge to it. "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" resembles early punk, almost retro style, and so could be called rockabilly. More than anything, it compares very nicely with The Cramps. "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?" is possibly one of the most covered Clash songs by dint of being one of the most popular. Some of the groups to cover this song include Living Colour, Skin, MxPx, Weezer, and The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. Anti-Flag covered the song at various festival dates in 2012, and more memorable versions exist by Die Toten Hosen and Australian pop star Kyle Minogue. It even shows up in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Polkas On 45" medley - a takeoff on the "Stars On 45 Medley." As a UK #1 single, what song did it replace as #1 on the UK charts? "Do the Bartman" by The Simpsons. Speaking of charts, while this song was their only #1 in the UK, The Clash got even less respect in the US; their highest chart on the Billboard was #8 for "Rock the Casbah". That's amazing when you consider how much airplay they get on the radio. Introduced into The Clash's live set in Paris in September 1981, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" sat awkwardly in the set after Jones was fired - it was a hugely popular song so fans expected it to be played, but its author and singer was no longer in the band. For a while in 1984 it was performed with new guitarist Nick Sheppard singing lead vocals, with the song developing into an aggressive Metal thrash with bellowed Punk-style vocals. In the end The Clash Mark II dropped the song altogether, although not before they also added some nasty lyrics about Jones (as was common in the post-Jones Clash, sadly). Two much more representative versions are the version of the song filmed at Shea Stadium in 1982 (supporting The Who) for the music video, and the version from Boston in 1982 that features on the From Here To Eternity live compilation. Ice Cube and Mack 10 did a rap remake of this song for the 1998 Clash tribute album Burning London. This was re-released as a single in February 1991 after it was used in a Levi's jeans television ad. It went to #1 in the UK, but didn't chart in the US. Cheekily, Mick Jones used a vocal sample from this track on one of his post-Clash projects, Big Audio Dynamite. You can hear it on their song "The Globe." This is a key song in the '80s-themed Netflix series Stranger Things. It was first used in the second episode (2016), where the character Jonathan Byers introduces it to his younger brother, Will, to distract him when their parents fight, telling him it will change his life. When Will gets abducted into an alternate universe, the song becomes a way for him to communicate, and a source of comfort. The song is used several times throughout the series. To secure the rights, music supervisor Nora Felder had to explain to the band how it would be used. Through scene descriptions, she convinced them they would honor the song. On December 22, 2007, several prominent musicians, including Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers, put on a tribute show for Strummer, who died of a heart attack in 2002. It was titled Cast A Long Shadow and held in the Key Club in West Hollywood, California. English band Love And Rockets played "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" twice, calling the audience up to sing along the second time. Despite the title, the words "train in vain" don't appear in this song. The predominant lyric is "stand by me," but that's the title of a famous song by Ben E. King. The title of The Clash song comes from the train rhythm in the song combined with the theme of being lost. It's also a reference to Tammy Wynette's 1975 hit single "Stand By Your Man" ("you say you stand, by your man, tell me something, I don't understand"). On the original vinyl copy of the album, "Train Is Vain" isn't listed on the tracklisting on the sleeve. The story is that the song was recorded for an NME promotional flexi-disc once the London Calling sessions were done, and the flexi-disc idea then fell through, leaving the song with no home. The band hastily tacked the song onto the end of the album just before vinyl pressing, but the sleeve had already been designed and there was no time to add it to the tracklisting. The only clue of it's existence is in the run-out groove on Side 4, where the name is carved into the vinyl. On all subsequent releases (including the CD copy) "Train In Vain" is included on the tracklisting on the sleeve. According to NME magazine (3/16/91), this isn't listed on the sleeve credits for London Calling because it was originally going to be a flexi giveaway with NME magazine. Unfortunately, the idea proved too expensive and the track went on the album instead. Clash guitarist Mick Jones sang lead vocals on this song. The lyrics appear to reference the end of his on-off relationship with Viv Albertine, which he also explored on the London Calling track "I'm Not Down." "Train In Vain" also contains a pointed reference to his flat being burgled in early 1979 and to his feelings of depression ("I need new clothes, I need somewhere to stay"). This was the first US Top 40 hit for The Clash. They had only one more - "Rock The Casbah" in 1982. The album cover was designed as a tribute to Elvis Presley's first album. The words "London" and "Calling" are displayed the same way "Elvis" and "Presley" were on his 1956 debut. Instead of a photo of Elvis, however, the text frames a shot of Clash bass player Paul Simonon smashing his bass during a show at The Palladium in New York. That bass was later displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The song became a firm live favorite for the band, introduced to their live set in December 1979 and played consistently until Mick Jones was fired in 1983. The music video is taken from one of these many live performances, a February 1980 show in Lewisham filmed by Don Letts and featuring an amusing introduction from Joe Strummer: "We'd like to take the soul train from platform one... and if you don't want to come, there's always the toilet!" You'd think a big hit like "Rock the Casbah" or "Should I Stay or Should I Go" would be the most covered Clash song, but it's actually "Train in Vain." Cover versions exist by Third Eye Blind, Ill Rapture, Dr. Haze/DJ X-Cel, The Sabrejets, Dwight Yoakam, Annie Lennox, The Manic Street Preachers, Jones Crusher and Kirsty MacColl. The Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde was on the scene when the band recorded this at Wessex Studios. Mick Jones explained to Daniel Rachel (The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters): "It wasn't about Chrissie Hynde but she was upstairs and there was a window from the pool room where she could look in. I was singing it to Chrissie." This R&B-flavored tune introduced The Clash to a new audience. "We couldn't believe how popular it became, especially in America," Jones said. "That broke us in there. They thought it was a regular R&B song, then they found out it was The Clash."

Truckin' Album: American Beauty (1970) Touch of Grey Album: In The Dark (1987) by Grateful Dead The '60s was a time for traveling and discovering your place in the world. Sometimes what you found was an empty existence that just keeps repeating itself day to day. Having to deal with everyday life when you were always waiting for some kind of revelation to expand your consciousness was often depressing. In Truckin', The Grateful Dead deal with the banality by continuing their search for epiphany. They just keep truckin' on. "Truckin'" is the Grateful Dead's coming-of-age story. In Anthem To Beauty, a documentary covering the making of the American Beauty album, Dead guitarist/vocalist Bob Weir talks about the romance of striking out on the road. He says it was a rite of passage for young people in the 1960s - as it perhaps still is to some degree today, though the internet has robbed much of the mystery of the road. "Truckin'" covers the Dead's navigation through that rite of passage. "We were starting to become real guys," Weir says, "and really enjoying the hell out of it." For the Dead, that rite became a way of life. The band never made a ton of money from record sales, and their unique legacy was made by touring. Also in Anthem, Phil Lesh talks about how the Dead's touring in 1970 preceded the "rock and roll bubble," when groups were isolated from fans and regular folks. The Dead were flying coach, riding busses, and staying in modest hotels. There were no handlers to protect them from the public or from the authorities. That manner of living was exciting in its way, but it could also get downright boring after a while, with long hours spent in hotel rooms and waiting for transportation to the next show. This is why the song has a line going, "Get tired of travelin' and you want to settle down." Even though the song is autobiographical for the Dead, it also means a lot to the lives of many Deadheads and children of the '60s in general. Part of what defined that generation was the thirst for freedom and adventure, which led to lives on the road (and some people staying there too long). Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir are the credited writers on this track along with their lyricist, Robert Hunter. During recording, Hunter fed Weir one line at a time. The line, "Busted, down on Bourbon Street" refers to an incident on January 31, 1970 when members of the band were arrested in a drug bust that netted 19 people in New Orleans. The group was in town to play two shows at a club called the Warehouse, and the raid happened the morning after their first show at the French Quarter hotel where they were staying. Lesh, Weir and drummer Bill Kreutzmann were all arrested along with crew members and fans of the band who had joined them at the hotel. The story made the front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune the next day, and drew national attention, with Rolling Stone running an article on the incident. Owsley Stanley, a Dead associate known for his pioneering work with LSD, was also arrested and labeled the "King of Acid" in the Times-Picayune piece. According to the Rolling Stone article, the band paid for bail and legal fees for all 19 arrested. In its original conception, the song was supposed to evolve as the band progressed. Robert Hunter envisioned them adding verses for significant events as time went on, but then came to realize that it simply wasn't going to work that way. The song ended up staying the same, though the band would improvise jams during live performances. In Behind the Hits by Bob Shannon and John Javna, Hunter said he started writing the song in the band's home base of San Francisco, wrote some more in Houston, and then wrapped it up in Florida, which would bring the song all the way from West Coast to East. In the same book, Hunter mentions that the line "sometimes the light's all shining on me" came from the rest of the Dead, not from himself, and that the band tinkered with his melody a bit so the final product sounded less like Chuck Berry than he had originally written. Over at Dead.net, David Dodd reports a rumor that the lyric "arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street" originally started with "garlands of neon," and that Hunter had chosen the word "garlands" as a prank to tongue-tie Weir. Weir eventually gave it up and went with the more singable "arrows of neon." Despite the emblematic "what a long, strange trip it's been" line, the band had only been together for five years when "Truckin'" was recorded. The band members were also in their 20s or early 30s, hardly the grizzled old veterans that the line implicates. In Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads, Hunter says that the "long strange trip" referred also to his decade of performing that preceded his time with the Dead. The line has become almost a cliché today, but it originated in "Truckin'," and it meant a lot not only to the band but to the '60s generation. The hippie counterculture flung its participants through five years of transformation and madness that were very rare. With tens of thousands of young people slinging on backpacks and hitting the road, they lived a lot of life in a short span of time, and came out feeling the road had been longer than mere chronology might suggest. The Dead first played "Truckin'" as the opening song for their August 18, 1970 performance at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. They also debuted American Beauty songs "Operator," "Brokedown Palace," and "Ripple." The final performance was at Maryland Heights Missouri's Riverport Amphitheatre on July 6, 1995. Dead frontman Jerry Garcia died a little over a month later. The Dead released the song as a single, backed with "Ripple." It reached #64, making it the highest-charting single on the album. "Sugar Magnolia" hit #91. Dallas - got a soft machine Beat writer William S. Burroughs wrote a novel titled The Soft Machine in 1961. It's the first part of his Nova Trilogy and is wild and bizarre even by the standards of Burroughs, who was one of American literature's wildest, most bizarre writers. How this book (too winding and strange to even attempt to summarize coherently here) would be used to represent Dallas is truly a mystery, but the connection seems pretty certain. Burroughs and the Beats were the precursors to the hippies, and Hunter was a well-read fellow. Truckin', got my chips cashed in Keep truckin', like the doo-dah man A person cashes chips in at casinos and similar gambling venues. You get money for your chips. People cash in their winnings. In the book Skeleton Key, Hunter states that the "doo-dah man" refers to "Camptown Races" by Stephen Forster, which contains the refrain "doo-dah, doo-dah." Once told me you got to play your hand Sometime - the cards ain't worth a dime These gambling allusions refer back to the opening line about having chips cashed in. Gambling has been used as a metaphor for life so much in popular culture that it's become a trope all its own. The peak was probably in 1978 with Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler." What in the world ever became of sweet Jane? She lost her sparkle, you know she isn't the same Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine All a friend can say is, "Ain't it a shame?" Mary Jane is a common phrase for marijuana, which has led many to see this as a reference to the drug and possibly to the way that the '60s counterculture went sideways and destroyed itself. The hippies started out using weed, mushrooms, and LSD - "head drugs" seen by the culture's proponents as being harmless or even spiritually and psychological beneficial - but by 1970 many had veered into hard drug territory. Cocaine, speed, and heroin turned the good times bad for many casualties of the era. Robert Hunter said the verse was meant to parody commercials of the 1940s, which frequently used jingles, specifically mentioning a Pepsodent commercial. The Golden Road, a Dead quarterly that ran from 1984 to 1993, mentioned that "truckin'" was a dance step popular in the 1920s and '30s. Others have note that "truckin'" used to be slang for sex. Interesting stuff, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence from the Dead themselves that these things apply to the song. The band members discussed the meaning of "Truckin'" pretty openly and without ambiguity, and none of those hidden meanings were ever hinted at. "Truckin'" is an upbeat song on a generally melancholic album. Phil Lesh was still mourning the loss of his father, and Jerry Garcia's mother was in critical condition following a car accident. That grief is palpable on most of American Beauty, but it doesn't touch "Truckin'" so much. According to Hunter's account in Skeleton Key, American Beauty was also the Dead's attempt to flow with the times. They'd made their name in the psychedelic era (embodying that moment in music history more indelibly than any other act) and had then followed the "back to roots" call of The Band, Dylan, CSN&Y, and The Byrds with Workingman's Dead in June 1970. With American Beauty, they were trying to rise with the tide of "commercially safe" music. "Truckin'" turned out to be the most salable tune of that effort, which is kind of funny considering that it specifically mentions the rather "unsafe" Bourbon Street drug bust. The song is played in the key of E with a 12/8 time signature. On Touch of Grey Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics, as he did with many Dead songs, although Jerry Garcia wrote the line, "Light a candle, curse the glare." This is according to the book Box Of Rain, which was written by Hunter and is a collection of his published songs. In the book, it is "A Touch of Grey" and has an asterisk next to the line Jerry wrote. Robert Hunter started writing the lyrics to Touch of Grey in 1980, and the Dead first performed it on September 15, 1982 at a show in Landover, Maryland. They played it sporadically over the next few years, and finally recorded it for their 1987 album In The Dark. According to David Dodd in The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, the line "Light a Candle, curse the glare" is a play on Adlai Stevenson's 1962 reference to Eleanor Roosevelt's death. He said, "She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness." The line, "The Ables and the Bakers and the Cs" refers to the first two words in an older version of the military communication alphabet, "Able" and "Baker." The modern version starts with "Alpha" and "Bravo." The song is about the band aging gracefully. The phrase "Touch Of Grey" is a reference to getting older, as for most people, their hair starts getting grey as they age. Aging gracefully is a challenge, especially in the music industry. According to Dead drummer Mickey Hart, Robert Hunter wrote the lyric as a pick-me-up. "When he wrote 'Touch Of Grey,' we were struggling," Hart said. "But it became an anthem to us. It perked us up." This was The Grateful Dead's first and only hit song. They never set out to be on the radio, enthralling fans with their mind-bending musical landscapes and confounding critics with their interminable jamming. Their large and loyal following ensured that their albums sold well and their concerts were full. For many of the Dead faithful, it was strange hearing the group on pop radio and seeing them on MTV, but the song fit well with their canon and was clearly not an attempt to chase the '80s trends. The song did change the dynamic of Dead discovery. Most fans were turned on to the band by listening to their classic albums or going to a concert with a seasoned follower, but now there was a new poseur class who came on board for "Touch Of Grey." The line, "I will get by, I will survive," became a mantra of resilience in the Dead community. When Jerry Garcia fell into a diabetic coma in July 1986, it looked like the group could be finished; when he returned to action in December, the group opened with "Touch Of Grey," reassuring fans that they would indeed get by. Following Garcia's death in 1995, various incarnations of the band and associated acts like Ratdog and Phil Lesh & Friends have played the song. A notable performance came on the final night of their Fare Thee Well tour on July 5, 2015 in Chicago when Trey Anastasio and Bruce Hornsby each sang a verse. When the band returned that year as Dead & Company with John Mayer in the fold, the song went back into rotation. The band made a video for this song, which was the first one they made for MTV. Directed by Justin Kreutzmann, they shot it after a concert at Laguna Seca Raceway in California on May 9, 1987, which let them use a real audience. The crowd was re-admitted after the shoot was set up; they saw the band run through the song in human form, and also as skeleton likenesses. This footage was combined to create the clip. The video was included on Dead Ringers: The Making of Touch of Grey, which was sold as a home video. The Dead were known for varying their setlists so that every show was different, and they didn't change this tradition even when this song was on the charts. Instead of catering to newcomers by playing their hit single at every concert, they only played it when they felt like it. The Mighty Diamonds covered this in 1996 on Fire On The Mountain, an album of reggae versions of Grateful Dead songs.

Aggression As A Trait Is Constitutional

Back To The Future 322. A short film inspired by my environment...

Runnin' Down A Dream Album: Full Moon Fever (1989) American Girl Album: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (1977) by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers In Runnin' Down A Dream Tom Petty sings about driving into the great wide open, with nothing but glorious possibility in his path. Petty started running down his dream of being a rocker in 1961 when he met Elvis Presley. Petty, 11 years old, came to the Ocala, Florida, set where Elvis was working on the film Follow That Dream - a title Tom took to heart. In a brief encounter, Petty saw how Elvis captivated onlookers and made the girls go crazy. Petty became fascinated with Elvis and set out to follow his path. The animated video was inspired by a comic strip called Little Nemo In Slumberland by Winsor McKay. Each strip told the story of one of Nemo's dreams, and at the end, he always woke up. Full Moon Fever was listed as a Tom Petty solo album even though members of The Heartbreakers played on it. Petty had another band at this time as well: the Traveling Wilburys, which included Jeff Lynne, who co-produced the album and played many of the instruments. Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell wrote this with Petty and Jeff Lynne. The three of them worked on the album at Campbell's house. Petty and Campbell were very impressed with Lynne's production techniques, and learned a lot from the experience. Campbell gave an example of Lynne's style: "We'd put the mics up on the drums, and he'd walk out and take the microphone over the drum and he'd turn it away from the drum facing the corner, and he'd go 'OK, record it like that.' Sure enough, 99% of the time he'd be right. We'd go, 'Yes sir, Mr. Lynne.' We learned so much from him about arrangements and countermelodies and all kinds of stuff." The line, "Me and Del were singin,' little 'Runaway'" is a reference to the 1961 Del Shannon hit "Runaway." Shannon is credited on the album for "barnyard noises," which can be heard just after this song ends on the album. Under the animal noises, Petty says, "Hello CD listeners. We have come to the point in this album where those listening on cassettes or records will have to stand - up or sit down - and turn over the record or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we will now take a few seconds before we begin Side 2. Thank you, and here is Side 2." Those noises were made by Shannon and Jeff Lynne; Petty used them as an interlude to mark the middle of the album, because you don't have to flip over a CD. This section was included only on CD versions of Full Moon Fever, but survived the transition when the album was released digitally. In 2007, the documentary Runnin' Down A Dream was released. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, the film chronicles the career of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played Runnin' Down A Dream at the halftime show of the Super Bowl in 2008. Rather than the usual medley of hits, the band played four full songs, the others being "American Girl," "I Won't Back Down" and "Free Fallin'." The song is used in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where it shows up on the radio station K-DST. In 2023, another Full Moon Fever track, "Love Is A Long Road," soundtracked the trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI. A track from the first Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album, "American Girl" was never a hit, but it became one of their most popular songs. Part of its lasting appeal is its intrigue, as it is the subject of an urban myth that reads as follows: The University of Florida is located in Petty's hometown of Gainesville, Florida. A dorm at the school, Beatty Towers, provided the backdrop to a popular urban legend at UF as well as the story behind "American Girl". The story was that there was this virginal, All-American, debutante sort of girl, blonde locks and all, who decided to take hallucinogens for the first time while in her room at Beatty Towers. This being the 1960's and the age of limitless possibilities, it was pretty common to do something like that, especially in a college setting. Apparently, the girl thought she could fly, so she exited through the window and arrived face first on the concrete below. Some modern minstrels like to add that she jumped from the 13th floor, but this is probably part of campus lore. This incident was a big deal in Gainesville, which was still a picturesque Southern college town. It represented the end of innocence experienced by baby-boomers during the 1970's. Using it as inspiration, Tom Petty wove a captivating and poignant song based on this story for his first album and the rest is history. Expanding on the concept of innocence lost, this song speaks volumes and resonates even today. Beatty Towers are by State Road 441, which is mentioned in the second verse. Tom Petty said of American Girl: "I wrote that in a little apartment I had in Encino. It was right next to the freeway and the cars sometimes sounded like waves from the ocean, which is why there's the line about the waves crashing on the beach. The words just came tumbling out very quickly - and it was the start of writing about people who are longing for something else in life, something better than they have." Mike Campbell has been The Heartbreakers' guitarist since they formed the band. Here's what he told us about this song: "We used to have people come up to us and tell us they thought it was about suicide because of the one line about 'if she had to die,' but what they didn't get was, the whole line is 'if she had to die trying.' Some people take it literally and out of context. To me it's just a really beautiful love song. It does have some Florida imagery." In our interview with Mike Campbell, he said: "We cut that track on the 4th of July. I don't know if that had anything to do with Tom writing it about an American girl." Roger McGuinn recorded this on his 1977 album Thunderbyrd. McGuinn was a member of The Byrds and a big influence on Petty. He once joked that this number was a Byrds song he'd forgotten. Petty told Mojo magazine January 2010: "'American Girl' doesn't really sound like The Byrds; it evokes The Byrds. People are usually influenced by more than one thing, so your music becomes a mixture. There's nothing really new, but always new ways to combine things. We tried to play as good as whoever we admired but never could." Even though Petty and his band were from the US, this caught on in England long before it got any attention in America. As a result, Petty started his first big tour in the UK, where this was a bigger hit. This was featured in the 1991 movie Silence Of The Lambs. It was used in a scene where a female character is listening to it in a car before she meets Buffalo Bill, a serial killer who abducts her. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers opened their Live Aid set in Philadelphia with "American Girl." At one point in the song, Petty gives a little smile and flips off someone in the crowd. The concert was broadcast live to an audience of millions, so this was certainly one of the most-seen one-finger salutes in history. The Goo Goo Dolls played this at the 2001 "Concert For New York," a benefit show organized by Paul McCartney. Classic rockers like The Who and David Bowie were big hits among the crowd of police officers and firefighters, and they responded very well when The Goo Goo Dolls played this. Petty gave his reaction to the performance: "I was watching the 9/11 concert in New York and the Goo Goo Dolls played 'American Girl.' I could see the crowd cheering in this really patriotic context. But it was just a story when I wrote it. In my mind, the girl was looking for the strength to move on, and she found it. It's one of my favorites." Petty credits their producer, Denny Cordell, with helping him understand the importance of crafting a story in the lyrics to American Girl. Petty says Cordell told him, "When you put a little truth in a song, it elevates things." In the Bob Dylan tradition, Petty doesn't have a typical singing voice, but as heard in American Girl, he writes compelling lyrics that he delivers with conviction. This song opens the 2004 movie Chasing Liberty. Other films to use the song include Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and That's My Boy (2012). Among the TV series that have used it: Scrubs ("My Own American Girl," 2003) Cold Case ("Bad Night," 2005) The Sopranos ("Join the Club," 2006) Parks and Recreation ("Harvest Festival," 2011) The Goldbergs ("Shopping," 2013) Petty and the Heartbreakers played American Girl to open their set at the halftime show of the Super Bowl in 2008. This was featured in an episode of the TV show Scrubs called "My American Girl." Petty told Mojo that the girl in this song was not based anyone in particular. "She was a composite, a character who yearned for more than had life had dealt her." Hillary Clinton used American Girl at her campaign rallies when she was running against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. The choice was based solely on the title, as they lyric about desperate longing wasn't the message she was trying to get across. American Girl was the last song that Tom Petty ever performed. His final gig was at the legendary Hollywood Bowl on September 25, 2017 and the rock veteran closed his set with "American Girl." Petty died a week later at UCLA Santa Monica Hospital on October 2, 2017 following a cardiac arrest. The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas admitted to ripping off this song on their 2001 hit "Last Nite." "Good for you," Petty replied, admiring his audacity in admitting it. "It doesn't bother me." In Francis Ford Coppola's directorial debut film, Dementia 13 (1963), protagonist Louise Haloran (played by Luana Anders) remarks, "Especially an American girl... you can tell she's been raised on promises." Petty never publicly confessed to getting the line from that film, but it would be a mighty strange coincidence if it was by chance.

Red House Album: Are You Experienced? (1967) All Along The Watchtower Album: Electric Ladyland (1968) by Jimi Hendrix Running about 13 minutes depending on the rendition, "Red House" is a scorching blues number where Hendrix sings about returning home to see his girl, who lives in a red house. When he gets there, his key won't work, and he realizes she doesn't live there anymore. Instead of wallowing in his misery, he turns back and decides to pay a visit to her sister. According to the book Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight, Jimi worked up Red House in New York City when he was still a struggling musician. He was staying in a friend's apartment that was decorated almost completely red, which gave him the lyrical inspiration for this song. There have been lots of rumors about the origin. These are the most pervasive: 1) One of his girlfriends in Seattle lived in a house painted red. 2) It comes from a Hopi legend about a mysterious red city. Red House is a very intricate song that demonstrates Hendrix' mastery on guitar. It's one that earned him the respect of many musicians, including Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. Gibbons says he was "completely turned upside down" when he heard it. Hendrix recorded this in a call-and-response blues style where each line is repeated twice. This style dates back to the field hollers workers would sing to pass time in the American south. This was not included on the original US release of Are You Experienced?; the omission of Red House tweaked Hendrix, since it was one of his favorites. He often performed the song at his concerts, constantly changing the arrangement. Hendrix recorded many versions of this song. The first release was on the UK version of his debut album, Are You Experienced? The original studio version of the song is 3 minutes, 49 seconds. Here's the timeline of the studio versions: Version 1: Recorded December 13, 1966, includes studio chat by Chas Chandler and Jimi, released on the original UK version of Are You Experienced? and on the 1997 30th Anniversary CD re-issue. Version 2: This version The same basic recording as version 1 but with a different vocal take by Jimi recorded March 29, 1967 and a different mix with more guitar echo. The studio chat introduction was mixed out, and the song released on the US version of Smash Hits in 1969, on the 1993 CD re-issue of Are You Experienced? and on The Ultimate Experience CD in 1993. Version 3: Recorded October 29, 1968 and introduced by Jimi as played by the Electric Church, it was released on Variations On A Theme: Red House CD in US only in 1989, released on Blues CD in 1994 and retitled "Electric Church Red House." This song was covered on the 1997 G3 Live In Concert album, where it was performed by Hendrix acolytes Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson. This appears on the City Of Angels movie soundtrack, and was used in a scene in the movie where Meg Ryan, who plays a cardiovascular surgeon, requests a nurse to turn on Jimi while she's operating on someone. Hendrix performed Red House at many of his famous festival appearances, including Woodstock and the Isle of Wight. All Along The Watchtower was written and originally recorded by Bob Dylan in 1967, but it was the Jimi Hendrix cover that made the song famous. Many other artists have covered it, including Eric Clapton, Neil Young, U2, Dave Matthews Band and The Grateful Dead. Dylan was so impressed with Jimi's version that Dylan for years played it the way that Jimi had recorded it. This was Hendrix' only Top 40 hit in the US, where his influence far outpaced his popularity. He charted a few times in the UK, where he rose to fame before making a name for himself in America. All Along The Watchtower was recorded while Hendrix played with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hendrix on guitar, Noel Redding on bass, and Mitch Mitchell on drums. For this song, however, Redding was not on bass; Hendrix did it. Redding was also the guitar player for his band Fat Mattress, which Hendrix referred to as Thin Pillow. Hendrix often felt that Redding did not put his heart into the bass and was concerned that Redding concentrated more on Fat Mattress than he did on the Experience. Things like these led to him being replaced by Billy Cox. The original version of All Along The Watchtower is very slow. Jimi Hendrix' version had a large impact on Dylan which made him make his own version "heavier." Hendrix said: "All those people who don't like Bob Dylan's songs should read his lyrics. They are filled with the joys and sadness of life. I am as Dylan, none of us can sing normally. Sometimes, I play Dylan's songs and they are so much like me that it seems to me that I wrote them. I have the feeling that Watchtower is a song I could have come up with, but I'm sure I would never have finished it. Thinking about Dylan, I often consider that I'd never be able to write the words he manages to come up with, but I'd like him to help me, because I have loads of songs I can't finish. I just lay a few words on the paper, and I just can't go forward. But now things are getting better, I'm a bit more self-confident." Hendrix had been working on and off with the members of the band Traffic as he recorded Electric Ladyland. Traffic guitarist Dave Mason caught Hendrix at a party and the two discussed Bob Dylan's newest album, John Wesley Harding, containing "All Along The Watchtower." Hendrix, long fascinated with Dylan, decided to cover the song on the album. On the resulting track, Mason plays rhythm on a 12-string acoustic guitar. In an interview with Mason, he explained: "Hendrix just happened to be sitting in one of those semi-private clubs in London. He was there one night just sitting alone, and it was like, "F--k, I'm just going to go over and say hi and talk to him." Mason recorded All Along The Watchtower himself in the Hendrix arrangement for his 1974 self-titled album. He also made the song a mainstay of his concerts. Mason says it's a deceptively simple song: "It's just the same three chords, and they never change." This was used in an episode of The Simpsons when Homer's mother was telling him a story that took place in the '60s about why she had to leave him. In a 2008 poll conducted by a panel of experts in the Total Guitar magazine, All Along The Watchtower was voted the best cover song of all time. The Beatles' rendition of "Twist and Shout," first recorded by the Top Notes, came second, followed by the Guns N' Roses version of the Wings song "Live and Let Die" in third place. All Along The Watchtower was used in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump shortly after the title character arrives in Vietnam. It's rare to find a list of the greatest rock guitarists without Jimi Hendrix on it, and this song is often cited as proof of his genius. In 2020, Rik Emmett of Triumph ranked it #1, calling it, "Still the greatest guitar recording that ever made the Top 40. A legendary guitarist making a defining statement. Plus, the epic transfigured Biblical setting of a Bob Dylan song? As good as it gets." Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones handled percussion on the track. In the intro, he played a vibraslap, a modern-day jawbone that creates a rattling sound when it's struck. The rattle also opens Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train."... Brian Jones death rattle...

Love My Way Album: Forever Now (1982) Here Come Cowboys Album: Mirror Moves (1984) by The Psychedelic Furs Furs frontman Richard Butler had a specific audience in mind when he penned the lyrics to Love My Way. He explained in an interview with Creem in 1982: "It's basically addressed to people who are f--ked up about their sexuality, and says 'Don't worry about it.' It was originally written for gay people." To the best of our knowledge, Love My Way is the most popular song featuring a marimba as a lead instrument. The Forever Now album was produced by Todd Rundgren and recorded at his studio, Utopia Sound. It was his idea to use the marimba on this track, and he played it. The demo of the song had a different instrument for those sections, but Rundgren had a marimba in the studio and thought it would be worth a shot. "It turned out that the little musical theme just sounded perfect with the marimbas, and became a signature element of the song," he said in an interview. "So it just was a question of availability. It's not like I had to go rent some marimbas. I happened to have them." The lead single to their third album, "Love My Way" was the first Psychedelic Furs song to chart in America, where it reached #44 thanks in large part to exposure on MTV. To that point, most Americans only heard the band on college radio or at listening stations in independent record stores. When the song caught on in the States, the band moved there because they found the audience more receptive and they liked what New York had to offer. Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles sang backup on this track, but you would never peg the "Happy Together" singers as the backing voices. Producer Todd Rundgren used them essentially as an instrument, creating a wash of vocals under the chorus and at the end of the song. The dreamy, heavily tinted video, directed by Tim Pope, was the first by the band to get significant airplay on MTV, which launched a year earlier. Like many new wave British bands, Psychedelic Furs had been making music videos from the jump and had refined the form by the time MTV went on the air. Their videos didn't rely on subplot storylines where actors would portray characters in the songs. Instead, they typically showed just the band, offset by some abstract imagery. The Forever Now album marked a change in direction for the band, which had slimmed down to a quartet after losing saxophone player Duncan Kilburn and guitarist Roger Morris. Their first two albums were produced by Steve Lillywhite, but Todd Rundgren was at the controls for Forever Now. Richard Butler doesn't write love songs, but he does write songs about love. He told Songfacts that "Love My Way" is a great example. This song is included on the Valley Girl (1983) soundtrack. It was used in the scene when Nicolas Cage surprises Deborah Foreman in the bathroom at a party. Because of issues with music licensing, this song and others hits from the soundtrack, like Men at Work's "Who Can It Be Now?," have been replaced with other songs on the DVD release. Love My Way also appears in the 1998 movie The Wedding Singer and in a 2009 episode of the TV series Hung. When Rich Good filled in for guitarist John Ashton on tour in 2009, he quickly learned how passionate fans were about this song. He remembered in an interview with a now-defunct unofficial Psychedelic Furs website: "We got some rather heated responses when we didn't do 'LMW' for the first dates of 2009. I believe violence was threatened… You can't please all the people all the time." Love My Way features in a dance party sequence in the 2017 movie Call Me by Your Name where we see Armie Hammer bust out some awkward moves. It collected 177,000 audio and video streams in the US in the week ending November 30, 2017 following the film's release, according to Nielsen Music. That marked the song's largest ever streaming week. Written by the Butler brothers of The Psychedelic Furs (lead singer Richard and bass player Tim), "Here Come Cowboys" is one of the few songs by the band that takes a political lean, with Richard taking aim at US President Ronald Reagan and his law-and-order cohorts. In an interview with Artist magazine, Butler said that Reagan was the main cowboy, but the song is also "an attack on TV heroes." Tim Pope directed the Here Come Cowboys music video, which cuts between shots of the band performing the song and scenes from rural America, including sheriffs, rodeos, and, yes, cowboys. It's one of the few videos where you'll see star wipes. (Why have hamburger when you can have steak?) Mirror Moves was the fourth Psychedelic Furs album. Drummer Vince Ely left before they started making it, so their producer, Keith Forsey, stepped in behind the kit. Psychedelic Furs are from England, but by this time, Richard and Tim Butler had moved to America, which explains the very America-oriented lyric. The song was released as a single but failed to chart. Hopes were high that Mirror Moves would be the US breakthrough for the band, but the only single to chart was "The Ghost In You" at #59. 1978- Richard Butler Vocals 1978- Tim Butler Bass guitar 1978- Duncan Kilburn Saxophone 1978-1982 Paul Wilson Drums 1978-1979 Roger Morris Guitar 1978-1982 Vince Ely Drums 1979-1989 John Ashton Guitar 1979-2008 Paul Garisto Drums 1986- Rich Good Guitar 2009- Mars Williams Saxophone 1986- Amanda Kramer Keyboards 2003- The Psychedelic Furs were born amidst the chaos of the late-'70s punk scene in England when bands like The Sex Pistols were chewing scenery and spewing vitriol to the delight of disgruntled teens. But the Furs, formed by brothers Richard and Tim Butler, resist the constant stream of labels thrown at them and their unique blend of sound. Tim explained in an interview: "People for years have been trying to lump music into different categories. Music is just music. I can remember when we first came out, people were asking, 'How would you describe yourself? Punk? Or alternative? Or new wave?' Why pigeonhole people? It's just music." Although the Furs' music has been memorably featured in '80s teen flicks like Pretty in Pink and Valley Girl, Tim Butler leans toward a different genre. He told That Music Magazine his favorite film from the decade is John Carpenter's The Thing. Unfortunately, there are no songs from the band in the horror movie.

Aint Life Grand Album: Aint Life Grand (1994) Blue Indian Album: Til the Medicine Takes (2001) by Widespread Panic Ain't Life Grand is the fourth studio album by the Athens, GA-based band Widespread Panic. It was released by Capricorn Records and Warner Bros. Records on September 6, 1994. It was re-released in 2001 by Zomba Music Group. On July 3, 2014, the band announced that Ain't Life Grand would be reissued on vinyl in August 2014. The band got minor airplay for their cover of Bloodkin's "Can't Get High," as well as their own "Airplane." They performed the song '"Ain't Life Grand'" at Morehouse College for Good Morning America. The band began rehearsing for the album by recording pre-recording sessions at John Keane's home studio like their first album, Space Wrangler. They were so pleased with the results that they decided to use the sessions for Ain't Life Grand instead of going into the studio on a future date with their producer Johnny Sandlin. John Bell – guitar, mandolin, vocals John Hermann - keyboards, vocals Michael Houser – guitar, vocals Todd Nance – drums, vocals Domingo S. Ortiz – percussion Dave Schools – bass guitar Guest performers David Blackmon – fiddle Eric Carter – vocals Adriene Fishe – vocals John Keane – guitar, pedal steel, vocals Dwight Manning – oboe Ain't Life Grand Widespread Panic Watchin people roll by Wonderin where they're goin Hey, what's your job What are you knowin Drivin to the grocery store Pull my money out Passin by the liquor store Throw my money down Ain't life grand Ain't life grand My wife's got the blues Now I've got them Gonna bring her a kiss Make those blues run Ain't life grand Ain't life grand Sun came out the other day Through those dusty clouds And in my mind I was a child And it felt good! Ain't life grand (x4) Blue Indian Widespread Panic Oh, Pappy left a chair like he's still sittin' there Once I almost saw him make his move Brave Indian who never changes his mood In a painting on the wall right there Oh, how long 'til the morning wakes Oh, how long 'til the medicine takes Oh, Sally buffalo in the apartment just below Just a bein' without a care Oh, children from my brood they come and bring me food Maybe open up a window for air Oh, just now I smell the cornbread bake Oh, now, now, now I feel the medicine take Just like home Where the stray dogs go through it all Still right here, still just here, Brave little friend Well, we got a party goin' on many spirits strong Ain't preacher just a happy to meet ya Half a bottle 'neath the bed keep our spirits fed My hat's off to you, to you and you And now our brave friends, too, dancing circles through the room And a broom and a radio and a twistin out a dos-e-do Brand new day, the whole world's goin' Whole room's goin' so Just now, don't hesitate (hesitate) Oh, taste the morning break (morning break) Sweet, sweet, young honeycomb (honeycomb) On, now, now, now just like home (just like home) Oh, just like, just like home Where the stray dogs go Oh, oh, rest my bones Like a fresh skipped stone to it all Still right here, still just here, Still just here, brave, brave friend

“The divine in human nature disappears and interest, greed and selfishness takes it place. When a Republic begins to plunder its neighbors the words of doom are already written upon its walls.” Albert Pike , Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry