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Theme From "Route 66" - Nelson Riddle
Riddle didn't actually write this, but it's his orchestra laying it down. It literally feels like you're tooling along the road, with a huge Studio City orchestra painting Americanascapes with a wide brush. The fact that it made it onto an Ultra-Lounge CD proves it's got the moxie and it swings. |
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The Pascagoula Run - Jimmy Buffett
Island Boy Jimmy just sounds like he's always having a good time (which, with enough margaritas in you, is inevitable). There's some fun synth keyboards, which give it that tropical feeling, and a fun, sandy stomp beat. |
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Lady Madonna - The Beatles
I remember McCall and Craig Schuster (of Cannabis Moose) jamming on this piano-heavy B-side. The harmonies are great (see "see how they run"!), and it's a basic jam, but it's every bit a classic Beatles tune, and it's a gas to play. |
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Road Food - The Guess Who
It starts out simply enough, but Burton Cummings never leaves his songs ordinary past the first couple of bars. What an extraordinary rock voice. I picked up the Ultimate Collection after seeing them live, and the sharp-11 chord at the end of the guitar solo is just perfect. Perfectly out-of-place, which makes it perfect--one that'll give you whiplash. |
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Just You 'N' Me - Chicago
I heard this one at Breve Espresso in St. Louis between Sunday morning church services, and Doug Flagg (aka the Bishop) was singing along. The first part sounds like typical Chicago soft rock (think "If You Leave Me Now"), but there's a killer breakdown section where it's just sizzling drums and a Rhodes with the tremolo cranked. The tune ends on a major-7 flat-5 chord, giving it a slightly unfinished dangling preposition. |
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Caroline I See You - James Taylor
On JT's latest release (his first since the Grammy-winning "Hourglass"), the wind-down occurs at the top of this track. Dave Grusin arranged and conducted a gorgeous, childlike orchestral intro that feels like Christmas morning. I get goosebumps. Once the 12/8 rocking chair kicks in, the unmistakeable Sweet Baby's voice takes me home. Mmmm, Dave and James--hopefully not for the last time. |
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Rosanna - Toto
A perfect slice of power pop. This rock shuffle bobs and weaves through the changes, driven by piano, guitar, and amazing vocal harmonies. It's a great tune to drive or boat to. And I love the funky, honky-tonk piano jam at the end. |
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Slingshot - Dave Weckl Band
We saw Dave Weckl at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis a number of times, and once he released his then upcoming Perpetual Motion, this heavily keyboard-driven piece (courtesy of Steve Weingart) got chronically stuck in my head. Sometimes, you just have to feed it to make it go away. |
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Two Tickets To Paradise - Eddie Money
I heard this one on the radio, and it inspired me to write a song called "Nonstop To Utopia", a piece which I'm still quite proud of. Years later, I heard it in a mix on Mark Sweetnam's boat during a ski day away from the office. In that moment, it worked perfectly. |
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Between You And Me - dc Talk
Here's the ever-morphing dc Talk ripping off Seal. It's blatant. However, it's a beautiful song, and even if the formula's not their own, they use it well. Seal or not, it oozes soul and good vibes. I guess it proves you can take shamelessness full circle and have it work in your favor. |
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Hip To Be Square - Huey Lewis & The News
You cannot be a child of the 80s and not like Huey Lewis. He's taken classic 50's love songs and given them an 80's twist. And this one is the jam (strangely absent from his best-of album). I hadn't heard it for a long time, until I checked out "American Psycho", and it underscores a bloody murder scene with Christian Bale and Jared Leto. Black comedy indeed. |
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The Liaison - Acoustic Alchemy
My first exposure to AA was from this album, The New Edge. This track has the feel of the soundtrack to a spy movie. Stunning guitar work atop a bed of synth and hustling rhythms. A very cool feeling--kind of like fall in Minnesota. |
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Cold Morning Light - Todd Rundgren
The very beginning of this song sounds like a chime used by either Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Whichever it is, I always expect it to keep playing into this song. Todd bends everything on Something/Anything?, one of my all-time top favorite albums. It's a pretty little tune. |
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Manhattan - Eric Johnson
This is the ultimate urban crawling theme song. It's got that big, bright, streetlamp-lit feel of slick streets, with style and finesse courtesy of Eric Johnson. From the same album which yielded "S.R.V.", it's got strong chords, and it feels like it should be scoring the opening credits to a New York-themed movie. Mission accomplished. |
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The Change - Steven Curtis Chapman
SCC worked a wonder when he released his cutting-edge Speechless, packed with meticulous production and rhythm loops, to ecstatic reviews in 1999. He's got everything a good Christian needs, but it's all for naught if he doesn't have the change occurring in him. The chords are predictably Steven Curtis, but it's a time-tested formula, and he's got the rights to it. |
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The Moment Of Truth - Dave Grusin
Grusin wrote a phenomenal urban score to "The Fabulous Baker Boys" in 1989, at the height of GRP Records (of which he is the "G"). As with his stellar piano work in "The Firm", Grusin soars on this reflective, pensive piece, which resolves to a place of warmth. Where he comes up with these masterpieces, I will never know. |
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What The ... Are We Saying? - Lenny Kravitz
The quiet denouement of the previous song gives a wide berth for the low, dark groove of Kravitz's political timebomb (or, rather, the "F-bomb", which is substituted by the "..." for cleanliness). The changes threw me the first couple times I listened--which had me coming back. The ending is utterly haunting, with the echoing noises and lead synths snaking around in verminous ways. |
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Everything Counts (Live) - Depeche Mode
This track wraps up DP's Singles 86>98 album in a cool, crowd-pleasing performance. I've never seen Depeche Mode, so I'm sure there are purely awesome visual elements that went along with this song. The crowd sing-along section is what got caught in my head: "everything counts in large amounts". I can't make out the rest of the words, but it's all good. |
