Greatest Rock and Roll Artists, #80-61

And now, the continuation of the Greatest Rock and Roll Artists.

80.  Tom Petty:  It is difficult to think of someone who embodies what rock and roll should have looked like in the 1980s more than Tom Petty.  With sly music videos, a return-to-roots emphasis on guitar, and a voice with a detectable Southern drawl, Petty accomplished a one-generation-after version of rock that didn’t seem derivative or a throwback in any way.  I need to put a good word in for his best record producer, Jeff Lynne, who managed to get Petty’s gritty sound polished to an icy sheen.  (And also because Lynne is the only Traveling Wilbury not represented on this list.)

79.  Dave Matthews Band: When I worked at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center many summers ago, every single year, like clockwork, we would brace ourselves for two Dave Matthews Band performances on consecutive nights, with capacity crowds and lovely and civil (though totally baked) audiences.  While his days as a radio mainstay are long over, the DMB continues to crank out records and play concerts for the faithful.  But more than this, DMB has created a community of fans, a subculture, that is second in the history of rock only to the Grateful Dead (with a tip of the hat to Phish), and to this effect, their concerts are constructed in such a way that one will rarely get the same show twice.  With plenty of room for improvisation and a deep back catalog to draw from, the cannabis-smelling DMB devotees still come back for more, like the titular ants marching.

78. Heart: Led Zeppelin in long, black skirts, the members of Heart, led by Nancy and Ann Wilson, learned the lessons of their forebears, with mystical lyrics, blues-based guitar, and ethereal vocals.  Almost certainly the best female rock singers (as opposed to country singers like Ronstandt and soul singers like Aretha), Heart’s string of late 70s hits- “Barricuda”, “Magic Man” and so on– stood on their own.  Their late 80s songs descended into all kinds of problems– from recording Diane Warren songs to filming Ann Wilson from the neck up because of her weight gain– but if I can pardon Chicago and Genesis and virtually everyone else on this list for their Reagan/Bush-era transgressions, the same has to go for Heart.

77.  Roy Orbison: You know how your heart flutters a bit hearing that opening guitar lick when “Oh, Pretty Woman” comes on the radio?  That is Orbison’s legacy- that of a top-class guitarist who was also the first rock singer to truly use his voice as an instrument.  Many of his songs employ an operatic feel that makes his records stand out among his contemporaries, in “Dream Baby” and especially “Running Scared.”  Orbison’s skill, both as a songwriter and a musician, give his material something lacking from the others of his era– drama.  But the drama was purely musical– Orbison performed standing ramrod straight, and would have never shaken his ass to get girls to scream at him.  The Beatles originally wrote “Please Please Me” in an Orbisonian falsetto, but abandoned the idea when they realized they just couldn’t pull it off. This is a man who, in a completely meritocratic world, should have been exponentially more famous than his contemporary Elvis, because Roy was exponentially more talented.

76.  Van Morrison:  There is so much more to this man’s catalog than the ubiquitous “Brown Eyed Girl”.  His 1960s albums were among the first to explore the mystical, as seen in “Moondance”, and the entire Astral Weeks album.  With a voice so honky-tonk you would never guess that he was British, Morrison managed to write the best baritone saxophone piece in rock history (“Domino”), and pioneered the use of stream-of-consciousness lyrics in popular music.

75.  Hall and Oates: You probably think I am just pulling your chain at this point, don’t you?  But consider the body of evidence.  They took the pop music baton during that precarious time between the death of disco and Michael Jackson and Madonna coming into their own.  Like the Four Seasons (#65), they were the best show topping the charts during rock and roll’s darkest hours.  In H&O’s case, they peaked during the absolute quagmire of a quadrennium between 1979 and 1983.  “Kiss on my List” is probably the most infectious song I have ever heard, and set up crucial groundwork that led to “Rich Girl”, “You Make My Dreams” and “Maneater.”  Are they historically significant, and did they change how rock and roll was done?  No, but their body of work is strong– commercially-oriented, but authentic and consistently listenable, and that counts for a lot, especially in the early 80s.

74.  Peter Gabriel: I was only an infant back then, but I can only imagine what it would have been like to watch swill like Christopher Cross on MTV, and then have Gabriel blow everybody out of the water with something like “Sledgehammer.”  Gabriel is worthy of inclusion on this list for two reasons.  One is for his work to make rock music a truly “world music” phenomenon, with the use of non-Western instruments and philosophies, and the other is for his work to make rock a more visual compelling medium.  This is partly achieved through his music videos, to be sure, but also in his live performances, which just might include him singing “Solsbury Hill” while riding a bicycle across the stage.  But consider a big hit of his like “In Your Eyes”, which is lyrically striking, while also sonically intriguing and inventive, while being pleasing to the ear.  Gabriel proved, as his abandoned mates in Genesis would also discover, that the line between progressive rock and adult contemporary is gossamer-thin, far more than the devotees of either genre would dare suggest.

73.  The Kinks: If The Beatles were hardwired to write songs like “Good Day Sunshine” and “With a Little Help From My Friends”, the Kinks, headlined by the Davies brothers, were destined to be the Bizzaro Beatles, exploring the shady sides of life, and the less-traveled corners of the British Invasion.  If The Beatles eschewed sex altogether, and the Rolling Stones hinted strongly at it, the Kinks came out full barrel with “All Day and All of the Night” and “You Really Got Me,” two songs that reach the taproot of teen desire.  Their music moved into some truly strange situations (most notably “Lola”, rock’s first transvestite), but also some poignant ones as well– no song captures what I love about London and finding your own place in it quite so well as “Waterloo Sunset.”

72.  Lionel Richie:  A smooth-singing hit machine from the 1980s, Richie took the non-threatening pop sound of the Commodores and refined it into something greater as a solo artist.  While the Commodores were, as one reviewer put it, funk music for dudes who sat when they peed, Richie broadened the appeal, and took those same sensibilities to rock’s female demographic.  (By the way, have you noticed that most lists like this go unerringly for rock music that guys like?  It is like having female fans is the kiss of death for rock credibility.  Unfortunate, that.)  One of my favorite zen moments from the 1980s was when Lionel guest-starred on Reading Rainbow, and Levar Burton asked him what the song “All Night Long” was about.  Richie looked at him incredulously for a moment before replying, as slowly as he could, that “it’s about a party that lasts…all night long.”  Between “Say You, Say Me” and “Hello”, you get some of the great heartbreak songs of the era by an underrated crooner.

71.  Indigo Girls:  Brainy and thought-provoking, the Indigo Girls are the best of a series of politically-conscious, folk-based female artists to have come into their own in the 1980s and 1990s.  10,000 Maniacs, Tori Amos, Jewel, Ani DiFranco, Sophie B. Hawkins, Shawn Colvin, and Meredith Brooks all owe a debt to them for representing this vital niche.  Rock and roll, and its critics, tend to be dreadfully misogynist, and a group like the Indigo Girls rarely gets their due, but every interested party should give their catalog a good, honest listen.  I am, to be honest, still finding things out about this group, but every little bit I hear from them, I like a little bit more.  Remember, my list is a work-in-progress, and is ever in flux.

70.  Grateful Dead:  How do you rank a rock band that isn’t so much a musical listening experience as it is a way of life?  The Grateful Dead managed to become a certified subculture in America, full of ordinary people coming out of the woodwork in tie-dye or bear-patterned t-shirts.  You can’t just listen to their music to appreciate them, you have to immerse yourself in the Deadhead style of living for any of this to make the least bit of sense.

69.  Earth, Wind & Fire:  Home of rock’s second-best horn section, EW&F ruled the airwaves on Afrocentric funk and Philip Bailey’s highwire tenor voice.  A fusion of the Spinners and Chicago, EW&F had an enviable list of hit singles and albums: “September”, “Fantasy”, “Reasons” and so on.  Two events made them super-respectable in my book– they featured prominently in an absolutely clueless video my RA showed me at Houghton, where a confused-looking mustachioed guy from an unaccredited Baptist college tried to make the case that rock and roll was satanic.  (EW&F’s Africa-and-horoscope-based symbology was the flimsy rationale behind their inclusion.)  Pissing off the Christian Right earns you exactly five Alex Voltaire credibility points.  Secondly, a number of rappers and R&B artists sample these guys like its their job, most notably the Black Eyed Pea’s “The Way You Move,” making a case for their enduring relevance and credibility.

68.  Little Richard: “Elvis and all those other guys might have pioneered rock and roll,” Little Richard once boasted, “but I designed the blueprints.”  Classic Little Richard– saturated with braggadocio, but nevertheless ringing true.  Richard’s bawdy, campy rhythm and blues tracks became rock and roll staples.  Like jazz, the very name of rock and roll is laden with sexual intonations, and Richard’s songs are ripe with possibility and insinuation.  Is “Long Tall Sally” a call girl ?  What does “sure like to ball” mean in “Good Golly Miss Molly?”  Is the line “A wop bop a loo wop a wop bam boo” in “Tutti Frutti” trying to tell me something I’m not intuitively aware of?  While never a commercial success, even in rock’s heyday, and never charting after the 1950s (one reason why I rate him so low), Little Richard was the first truly outlandish rock star, and the first to use the medium to do something more suggestive than harmlessly wiggling one’s hips.  (A lot of Elvis bashing on this blog, but I assure you, it’s only going to get worse from here.)  It got a little hard to take Little Richard seriously after he abandoned rock and roll for the gospel for the 3rd time in a decade, but he set an awful lot of interesting precedents, and he taught Paul McCartney how to scream.

67.  Red Hot Chili Peppers: Neil Diamond:  You know what?  This is my list and I shouldn’t embarrass myself by writing about artists I felt compelled to include, but have never really listened to and don’t especially care about.    Now, Neil Diamond I can write about.  If you are reading this, Betsy, this one goes out to you.  Originally considered “the Jewish Elvis”, he wrote pleasant-enough hits like “Cherry Cherry” and even shopped tracks like “I’m a Believer” to the Monkees.  But he really hit his stride around 1966 and 1970, with a number of lesser-charting hits that were nevertheless some of the most interesting single releases from rock’s strongest two-year period.  When I say this, I am thinking of tracks like “Shilo”– writing a song about your childhood imaginary friend could be disastrously mawkish, but when Neil does it, it is touching and poignant.  Ditto “I Am I Said”–  an intriguingly existential and autobiographical piece, and one of the first attempts at world music, the African-inspired “Soolaimon.”  But the good times didn’t last–  Neil entered the Hot August Night phase of his career when the decade ended, wore shiny tunics on stage, and the nature of his material changed drastically.  He started dueting with Barbara Streisand, wrote drivel like “Forever in Blue Jeans”, and most unforgivably of all, wrote the soundtrack to the Jonathan Livingston Seagull film.  A great shame, that.

66.  REM:  Intimate, quirky and honest, REM emerged from the University of Georgia scene to embark upon a pop music journey that lasted through the 1980s and 1990s.  With some interesting political detours that were topical in the 1980s (“Exhuming McCarthy”), REM made the personal salient with tracks like “The One I Love,” “Everybody Hurts,” and a song that ended up on everybody’s mix tapes at some point in their lives, “Losing My Religion.”  I want Michael Stipe to sing my dissertation some time– if the guy from the B-52s is unable to do it.  REM’s greatest accomplish, bar none, is getting Generation X to show something resembling human emotion.

65.  Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons:  My favorite group from my least favorite era in rock and roll history.  One of the saddest periods in the rock milieu was that twilight zone between the first generation of rock stars dying/being drafted into the army/joining the ministry/going to jail (Buddy Holly, Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, respectively), from about 1959 to 1964 when the British Invasion began in earnest.  Into this dubious scenario, doo wop and novelty records entered the fray.  The Four Seasons tempered and expanded the former category, infusing it with blue-eyed soul and branding it into the popular consciousness with Frankie Valli’s once-in-a-generation falsetto.  What I find laudable is how they explored different sounds within their genre without changing their essential sound– early hits are predictably doo-wop (“Sherry”, “Big Girls Don’t Cry”), but they went for more British Invasiony material “Let’s Hang On” and even tried to do multi-part suites (“Opus 17/Bye Bye Baby”), before thriving, implausibly, in the 70s with soulful material like “Who Loves You” and the immortal “Oh, What a Night (Late December, 1963).”

64.  ABBA:  When I heard that ABBA had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I was initially angry.  Then, I was confused.  Then, I was hungry and cranky.  But finally, after some delicious tandoori chicken and naan, I achieved acceptance.  Consider the narrative power behind their songs (putting aside, for the moment, their infectious catchiness and their bubblegum sensibilities)- they made an entire musical out of their catalog without stretching too much.  No other group has pulled that off, while retaining global popularity.  ABBA won me over despite every modicum of cynicism I possess.  When I took a one-hour flight from Delhi to Benares a few years ago, one of my fellow travelers from Buffalo noted how I had spent the entire flight listening to the Mama Mia soundtrack on the in-flight entertainment system and was bopping my head along the entire while.  So, I give up, and I, for one, welcome our new Nordic overlords.  Move over Annie Lennox- Swede dreams are made of these.

63.  David Bowie: Good.  Innovative.  Fascinating as hell.  But badly, badly overrated.  (sorry, Morgan).  The original VH1 list had him in the top ten.  Inexcusable.  He created an okay-ish alter ego, Ziggy Stardust.  “Rocket Man” probably couldn’t have existed without “Space Oddity”.  And it is always fun to hear him trade vocal licks with Freddie Mercury on “Under Pressure” and Bing Crosby on the so-incongruous-its-jawdropping “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth.” But that’s it, man.  If any of you want to make a case that Bowie is better than this, I’m willing to listen, but I am just not seeing it.

62.  Jethro Tull:  Okay, so they recorded two of the 1970s’ best albums (Thick as a Brick and Aqualung), made progressive rock listenable and respectable, and all they are remembered for is somehow being awarded the first Hard Rock Grammy at Metallica’s expense?  A tragedy.  Rather than recalling Jethro Tull for an award they should not have gotten and did not deliberately seek out, let’s remember the incredible level of religious allegory shown in Aqualung, the clever storytelling in Thick as a Brick, and Ian Anderson, the only man to make the flute badass (with apologies to Will Ferrell.)  Bonus points for making a Christmas album people would actually want to listen to.  Unlike…

61.  Chicago:  I am through beating a dead horse.  I have spent the last 15 years convincing everyone within earshot of Chicago’s merits, and most have remained stubbornly unconvinced.  None of you will listen, but I will repeat my case in brief.  They attempted to fuse rock and roll with the movemental features of classical music and the improvisational elements of jazz.  There’s lots of times when this did work (“Ballet for a Girl in Buchanan”, “Introduction”, “Questions 67 & 68″, “Dialogue Part I and II”, “Elegy”), and many times when it didn’t (Chicago VII, the “Memories of Love” suite).  Politically, they deserve credit for having one foot in the jazz world and another foot in the New Left movement– no other group achieving chart success hated Nixon quite this much (“State of the Union”, “A Song for Richard and his Friends,” “I Don’t Want Your Money”, “Harry Truman”, “While the City Sleeps.”)  By 1975, drugs, drink, floozies, and exhaustion all took their toll, and the band was never the same, churning out records of increasing banality, finally resulting in a bad disco album (Chicago 13), a bad new wave album (Chicago 14), ten years of recording songs by David Foster and Dianne Warren, and twenty years of Oldies tours, poorly thought-out Christmas albums, greatest hits compilations, Vegas engagements, and QVC appearances.  But their first 6 studio albums are among the best work from rock’s best decade, the 1970s (not a typo), and I stand by that.  You would be hard pressed to find a better synthesis of music-theory creativity and commercial intuition.

One Score: The 20 Women of the U.S. Senate

When the 113th Senate is called into session tomorrow, and the new senators who triumphed in the 2012 election take office, this august body will reach a new milestone– 20 female senators.  And this was accomplished despite a number of female senators– including Olympia Snowe and Kay Bailey Hutchison– retiring.  In a way, this seems like an insubstantial achievement; for a group that comprises over half of the U.S. population, 20 is hardly parity.  But even within my lifetime, this is a great stride forward.  When Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) joked that, for the first time, there was a line in the Senate women’s bathroom, she revealed that a group that has historically been on the margins of power are no longer…um…stalled.

To fully understand this, let’s get onboard our time machine vehicles (the moving platform is going at the same speed as your vehicle.  Please keep our arms inside at all time, and refrain from flash photography.  Thank you.)  At mid-century, women in the Senate were not unheard of– but often women only set foot on the Senate floor dressed in black.  Widows of expired senators were commonly appointed to fill the terms of their husbands.  You could see this trend in Vera Bushfield in the 1940s, to Maurine Neuberger in the 1960s, to the immaculate Muriel Humphrey in the 1970s, to Jocelyn Burdick in the 1990s, to Jean Carnahan in the 2000s (and yes, I knew all that off the top of my head.)  It was only with Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith, first elected in 1948, that women came into their own in the Senate.  For 24 years, Smith made her mark on the institution, not just as the “token female senator,” but as a tough hawk on Vietnam, a staunch civil libertarian,  a conscientious intra-party threat to Joseph McCarthy, and even a longshot candidate for the Republican nomination in 1964.  Yet, for years, either Smith (1949-1973) or Nancy Kassebaum (1979-1997) often held a lonely distinction as the only woman in the entire Senate– which is especially troubling, given how many Senate deals were made in cloakrooms, cigar-filled drawing rooms, or even adjacent urinals, all spaces that were tacitly male.

Things changed a bit in 1992, lauded as “the Year of the Woman”, with Kay Bailey Hutchison, Patty Murray, Barbara Boxer, Carol Mosley Braun, and Dianne Feinstein all entering the chamber.  It couldn’t have come to soon– the Senate was already conspicuously male, and the lack of female perspectives got especially ugly during the Senate Confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas in 1991.  There, an all-male Judiciary Committee grilled Anita Hill mercilessly over her charge that she had been sexually harassed by Thomas while serving as a law clerk.

Many faced tall odds to get there– Hutchison noted how she had been 1 of just 5 women from her class of 500 from the Texas School of Law, but couldn’t get a job– every firm she sought out assumed she would become pregnant and quit.  Instead she worked at a television station.  Blanche Lambert Lincoln, who first ran in 1998, faced charges from opponents that she couldn’t serve as senator effectively while looking after her young twin boys.  (And Lincoln was the first female senator elected with young children still at home.)  Patty Murray was a preschool teacher who got angry at the condescending manner of Washington state senators when lobbying for an education bill.  Throughout the 90s and beyond, women transitioned from solitary voices in the Senate to a true coterie.  One of the books I read for my doctoral exams was Nine and Counting, a book on the current women in the Senate, published in 2001, discussing how the female senators work in an astonishingly functional and mutually supportive manner, meeting regularly for meals and coffee, effortlessly weaving together the personal and the political.  The dean of senatorial women, Barbara Mikulski, who has been in the Senate since 1987 and recently surpassed Margaret Chase Smith as the longest-serving women in Senate history, holds a welcoming seminar for incoming women.   They work in ways that belie the current dysfunction we have witnessed with the fiscal cliff negotiations, yet they remain  ideologically diverse– Barb Boxer is one of the Senate’s most vocal liberals, while incoming Deb Fischer is joining a number of staunch conservatives from the prairie states.

12 years after Nine and Counting, that number has more than doubled.  (For the record, I think a number of these current 20 are presidential or vice-presidential material.  So pay close attention to the careers of Kelly Ayotte, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar.)  “Binders full of women” jokes aside, there are plenty of substantive contributions these 20 have already chalked up.  Snowe and Collins, both of Maine, have anchored the Senate’s dwindling caucus of moderates.  Dianne Feinstein has authored the Guns Free Schools Act.  Barbara Boxer made my All-Star Senate (remember that from a year ago, long-time readers?).  So, here’s to you– and let’s see if we can’t get the number a little closer to 50  at some point, shall we?

In case you were wondering who the 20 women of the 113th Senate were:

1. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
2. Susan Collins (R-ME)
3. Patty Murray (D-WA)
4. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
5. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
6. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
7. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
8. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
9. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
10. Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
11. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
12. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
13. Kay Hagan (D-NC)
14. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
15. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
16. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
17. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)
18. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
19. Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
20. Deborah Fischer (R-NE)

Greatest Rock and Roll Artists, #100-81

I remember when rock was young…or perhaps, not quite so young, watching VH1 when I was in high school, in the midst of those halcyon days when VH1 actually aired programming pertinent to vintage rock and roll.  In this belle époque, free from Flavor of Love, and Megan Wants a Millionaire, VH1 aired its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of Rock and Roll.  I watched transfixed, and it introduced me to a number of interesting musicians in the pantheon, including Crosby Stills & Nash, David Bowie, and many others.  I recently found out, via sporcle of all things, that VH1 released a new list of the top 100 last year, and included a number of new artists to that list who either weren’t around in 1998, or whose legacies were still very much up for grabs.  My primordial nemesis, Rolling Stone magazine, approached a similar task in recent years, selecting 100 “Immortals” of rock and roll.

Not one to let a ranking of any sort go unanswered, I am attempting here my own list of the 100 Greatest Rock and Roll Artists.  I write this knowing that no such list is completely objective, and that my knowledge of both the artists included here and those left off is imperfect and incomplete.  There’s a lot of great music to which I am unfamiliar.  This is a list reflective of my time and my biases, as someone enamored of 60s pop and 70s AM-radio hits who zoned out during much of the music that was popular during his adolescence.  But here is my criteria:

• Body of work– This includes not only the quality, but to an extent, the breadth of what the artist accomplished.  Were they able to sustain success for a reasonable period of time, and if not, is there a very good excuse for why they didn’t?
• Endurance– Is their work still listenable today for reasons beyond its nostalgia value?
• Influence on the development of rock– this is a touchy category, to be sure, and it is used badly by many to further their favorite choices when they did not achieve commercial success.  But are they, at the very least, not an artistic dead end?
• Commercial Success– this is not used by many rankings, but I think it is somewhat pertinent here.  If the record-buying public bought droves of Chicago and ABBA records (two groups hated by critics), this ought to be taken into account in tandem with other factors- nobody can judge music quite like the people who bought records when it first came out.

Okay, got all that?  Given the nature of the criteria, my list is short on “critics’ pets” (so no Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, or Velvet Underground), historically significant-but-unlistenable outfits (so no Sex Pistols), and groups with small, but fanatical and irritating cadres of fans (KISS, the Smiths, and especially Rush).  Instead, there’s a lot of groups here not on the VH1 and Rolling Stone lists that have fallen through the cracks with the passage of time and are not highly regarded by the astoundingly small and endogomous clique that usually makes these lists– hence the inclusion of America, Lionel Richie, Hall and Oates, Doobie Brothers, and others along those lines.  Finally, my definition of rock and roll is generous and liberal, but it is not elastic without bounds.  70′s soul, British pop, rockabilly, and Top 40 songs with R&B influences deserve consideration.  Outright county, blues, jazz, and rap fall outside this schema– so apologies to fans of Run DMC, Eminem, Hank Williams, Albert King, Miles Davis, and Robert Johnson, meritorious though they are.

100.  Don McLean: I’ll admit it– he doesn’t quite achieve longevity, and if it weren’t for “Vincent”, he would have been a one-hit wonder.  Yet, writing the seminal “American Pie”– the cornerstone of the rock and roll mythos, ensures him a place here.  By the way, don’t neglect the rest of his catalog, which has some very fine work from the 1970s singer-songwriter genre.

99.  Alanis Morissette: Back in 1995, you could not turn on the radio for 15 minutes without hearing something from Jagged Little Pill.  An angsty response to Pearl Jam, Beck, and similar bands, she had a foot in the alternative world while still holding her own on Top 40 radio.  And, of course, I’ll never get over the fact that “You Oughtta Know” was written for Full House’s Uncle Joey- David Coulier.

98.  Carl Perkins: On the list of artists that inspired The Beatles, Carl probably ranks only behind Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly.  Perkins deserves a great deal of credit for almost singlehandedly inventing the genre of rockabilly, and creating space where the country-and-western and rock and roll worlds could intersect.  He most famously wrote “Blue Suede Shoes”- but consider the rest of his rich catalog, evocative of his backwoods upbringing: “Sure to Fall (In Love With You)”, “Lend Me Your Comb”, and “Movie Magg.”

97.  The Ronettes: The accolades should go not so much to the Ronettes (although their lead vocalist, Veronica Bennett, was quite capable), but to their producer, Phil Spector.  Now, if you have heard only a quarter of what I have heard about Phil Spector (and I have heard very little of all there is to tell), you would be prepared for any  outrageous anecdote, and any indication of sociopathic behavior.  But despite his mercurial nature and probable inclination toward homicide, Spector was a producer for the ages, creating a rich multi-layered sound that pushed the limits of what rock and roll could achieve sonically.  And with the Ronettes’ come-hither voices, particularly in “Be My Baby” and their Christmas records, Spector achieved this to its greatest effect.

96.  TLC: Few outfits brought hip-hop to the masses quite so persuasively as TLC.  A product of the genre’s proliferation of the early 90s, TLC achieved its most prolific success in the mid-90s, with the release of CrazySexyCool, an album that spawned “Waterfalls” (which I am almost certain was ripped off from a 1980 Paul McCartney song, but that’s another story entirely), “Creep”, and the so-dirty-I-cannot-believe-it-got-on-the-radio “Red Light Special.”  Their subsequent work was interesting, but didn’t quite achieve that level, but for a good long while, these three distinct personalities were the ones to beat for any aspiring young artists.  I remember returning home from a semester in London in May of 2002, and heard about Left-Eye’s death on the front page of the British newspapers– a testament to how global this group’s reach had become.

95.  Coldplay: Hmm..this list is a bit weighted toward recent-y guys so far, isn’t it?  Well, Coldplay continues to perform at some of the highest levels, although it is becoming increasingly clear that they peaked with “Viva La Vida”, Coldplay has used their music to explore the depth of human emotion.  It is no coincidence that Brian Eno, a pioneer in ambient music, has been their producer.  The emphasis is on mood, rather than melody– not that this band has been lacking in lyrical or melodic prowess.

94.  Supertramp: Seriously?  I put Supertramp on here?  Let me check my list here…(furious rustling of paper)…hmm…this is what happens when I rank thinks after drinking a hot toddy.  So, let me think of a rationale, here: Supertramp, particularly its frontman and keyboardist Roger Hodgson, made thought-provoking but radio-friendly hits during the often dark days of the late 1970s.  “The Logical Song,” for example, won the Ivor Novello award for the best music and lyrics in 1979.  But the entire Breakfast in America album is remarkable in celebrating and critiquing Americana at the same time- witness “Take the Long Way Home” and the title track.  This is also, incidentally, the last non-Kenny G. group to use the soprano saxophone regularly while still expecting to be taken seriously.

93.  Procol Harum:  It stretches imagination and memory to understand what an epochal track “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was in 1967, even by the high standards of that revolutionary year.  It inaugurated a whole generation of tracks that borrowed heavily from classical influences and demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of music theory.  Even more to the point, it set the tone for a lot of the psychedelic rock that came after, using church organs and harpsichords to evoke a foggy sense of mysticism and otherworldliness.  By the way, there’s plenty of other great tracks they did: put “Salad Days”, “A Salty Dog” and “Conquistador” on the turntable sometime.

92.  Weezer: They started out as an intriguing alternative band with songs like “Buddy Holly”, and remained relevant longer than anyone thought they would– as one commentator put it, the Weezer of the new millennium ended up being Weezer.

91.  Paul McCartney & Wings:  McCartney’s solo career doesn’t get nearly the respect it deserves.  Lennon and Harrison gain praise because their records most approach the singer-songwriter medium, while McCartney tended toward over-produced hits and, in his own words, “silly love songs.”  But, to quote Paul once more, what’s wrong with that?  You would be hard pressed to name anyone who produced good songs from 1970 to 1985 more consistently than McCartney, and Band on the Run never gets its due as perhaps the decade’s most listenable album.  While the Wings cohered as a unit, McCartney also pioneered the one-man-in-a-studio-going-troppo-and-doing-everything feel that people like Sufjan Stevens would eventually follow-  if you don’t believe me, go listen to McCartney and especially Flaming Pie.  Compare their solo output, and I think you will see that Lennon needed McCartney’s melodic instincts far more than McCartney needed Lennon’s iconoclasm.

90.  Doobie Brothers: They aren’t within sniffing (toking?) distance of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but the Doobies contributed a great deal to the 1970s, and were one of the few bands whose output was equally at home on commercial AM stations as it was on “serious” rock FM stations.  One of the few bands to actually have eras, you can enjoy the early records, characterized by “China Grove”, “Long Train Runnin’” and “Listen to the Music” as you can with the Michael McDonald era (“Takin’ it to the Streets”, “What a Fool Believes.”)  They might be the only multi-racial group on this list as well.  I’ll have to check.

89.  America: Another fantastic, fantastic group that has never gotten its due.  America is, in my own judgment, the only band that surpasses The Beatles in its ratio of good material to crap.  One of my informal criteria for this list is “who has a greatest hits album I could listen to all the way through”?  America fills this spot easily- with “A Horse with no Name”, “Don’t Cross the River”, “Ventura Highway”, and my favorite song from my favorite decade, “Sister Golden Hair.”  Blessed with three great songwriters- born-again Christian Dan Peek, John Denver-ish Gerry Buckley, and Neil Young soundalike Dewey Bunnell, there was no shortage of great material.

88.  The Spinners: The 1970s Philadelphia sound was a wonder to behold- a funkified combination of rich vocals, punchy horn sections and inspired soul that dominated airwaves.  One of the great artists in this field was the Spinners, who racked up a string of hits with a number of different vocalists, and their harmonies were complemented by their dance moves.  Go ahead- listen to “Rubber Band Man” and “Could it be I’m Falling in Love” and tell me they don’t belong here.

87.  The Hollies: How easy it is to forget that the Hollies were, by most measures, the 4th best group from the initial wave of the British Invasion.  While not as innovative as their superiors in the Beatles, the Stones, and the Kinks, they also knew and worked within their limits, with little studio experimentation, and thus few wanton artistic misfires.  While the early hits like “Carrie Anne” and “Bus Stop” are pleasant enough ear candy, they evolved into a talented group of songwriters that created some of the most ambient songs of their era- the murky “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” and the John Donne-ish “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”.

86.  Billy Joel: As he recovers from another nasty divorce and a stinging but mostly truthful Slate article eviscerating his music, Joel is an enigma.  One of the most talented melody writers of the 20th century, how does one reconcile his talent with the smarmy, self-congratulating, faux-authentic, patronizing and not infrequently misogynistic material in his lyrics.  And that’s before you consider the bad sci fi (“Miami 2071″)  the emotional manipulation that insults his listeners intelligence (“Leningrad”) or his need to out-Springsteen Springsteen and write panegyrics to the working joe (“Allentown”, “Downeaster Alexa”).  But look at what happens when Joel drops his pretension, his brazen quest for Long Island authenticity, and his delusions of adequacy- under the right conditions, Joel can produce one of the most touching ballads ever written (“And So It Goes”), or some delightful doo-wop throwbacks (“Keeping the Faith”, “The Longest Time.”)

85.  Peter, Paul & Mary: Speaking of authenticity, here’s the real McCoy.  (Sadly, the Real McCoy did not make this list.  If they had, I would  face a public shaming, a mass-unfriending on facebook and very probably a broken engagement.)  Born amidst the folk music bars of Greenwich Village, Peter, Paul & Mary took that scene and tempered it of its excesses.  (Tom Lehrer once pointed out that folk musicians are the types of people who think singing 50 verses of “On Top of Old Smoky” is twice as enjoyable as singing 25.)  I become distracted- PP&M added some sugar to the medicinal of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger’s reedy voices and made their work palatable for mass consumption.  Lots of people remember “Blowing in the Wind”, but give “When the Ship Comes In” a try.  But if folk music is about affecting and inspiring change and of bringing awareness to the crisis of our times, they not only sang about it, they lived it out, marching in Selma, performing at the March on Washington, and remaining a fixture on PBS.  As one of their song asks: “have you been to jail for justice?”  Maybe they haven’t (and at any rate, Peter Yarrow actually did go to jail, albeit for the wrong reasons), but in every way they lived out the change their music bespoke.

84.  Santana: Let’s forget about the money-grabbing 90s collaborations, and remember Santana for its spooky, evocative tracks and ethereal guitar solos from the late 1960s and early 1970s.  It touched a chord with its somewhat improvisational style and cool sonic effects.  At the same time, Santana is also responsible for one of the elements of 1970s music that I find most troubling- the close association of women and evil.  (You can see traces of this in, well, “Evil Woman”, “Some Girls” by the Rolling Stones, and every Eagles song ever written.)  (By the way, you caught me, I don’t know very much about Santana.)

83.  The Bee Gees: I am going to catch all kinds of flak from Mr. Stanley and a few other steady readers for this pick.  Let me make my case: disco has gotten a bad rap for entirely the wrong reasons.  Disco isn’t any more insipid than anything else that was on the radio during the late 1970s, and it was a fascinating mix of Philadelphia soul, and dance-friendly white pop (think K.C. and the Sunshine Band)- and culturally, an endlessly fascinating intersection of Afrocentric, Hollywood, and New York’s Erotic City cultures.  But how do the Bee Gees fit into this?  They link up the British Invasion to this phenomenon, and add the exceptional close harmonies that it seems only kinfolk can create.  Their early material was ambitious and adventurous (“New York Mining Disaster”, “I’ve Got to Get a Message to You”), before the Saturday Night Fever days that gave voice to the desperation (“Stayin’ Alive”) and cynicism (“Jive Talkin’”) that characterized an era that historian Alan Brinkley has called “The Age of Limits.”

82.  Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: Motown’s first bankable artist, Robinson began in the doo-wop idiom (“Get a Job”) before lending his voice to some of the 1960s best soul hits- “Tears of a Clown”, “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” and “The Tracks of My Tears”.  Robinson was the very voice of soul during rock and roll’s Detroit-based regency.

81.  James Taylor: Singer-songwriters get all kinds of hipster credentials these days and their music holds up.  Soft rock pioneers are decidedly less chic, tend to have long-lasting careers and give concerts attended by 50-year-old women named Debbie until the singer reaches extreme old age.  Taylor tilts more to the latter than the former, but he maintains elements of both.  His work is introspective, thoughtful and reflective, and isn’t afraid to tilt toward the sentimental when that’s what JT is feelin’ (“Shower the People”).  But the Taylor canon is a warm, familiar voice- not unlike the Berkshire Mountains from which he hails- in a rock and roll world of malcontents, criminals and jackasses.

ranking the beatles catalog, 2012

During my tenure on facebook, I posted a comprehensive list ranking The Beatles’ catalog.   3 years later, I will redo my ranking and post it here, for the consideration of my gentle readers.

Is this not, like many of my lists, and egotistical undertaking?  Perhaps, but the Beatles are now almost beyond questioning a component of the Western canon.  They are now as irreplaceable as Liszt and Schubert, and unlike these two great composers, remain popular among young people today.  There’s a good chance that any 15-year-old I encounter can name a few Beatles songs; in this sense, the revolution toward digitized music and downloads has been salutary toward them.  It has also been helped by their continued relevance in popular media.  The fascinating but deeply flawed Across the Universe film, the Rock Band game, Paul McCartney’s turn at the Olympics and the Grammys have all kept the group alive, as has their belated but well-heralded partnership with iTunes.

So, here is my ranking, but I need to explain, as always, some criteria and caveats.  First of all, this list includes every piece composed or arranged, and eventually issued by the band as an intentional, contemporary release.  To explain that convoluted sentence better, that means no cover versions like “Twist and Shout”, and none of the archival material that showed up on the Anthology series or Live at the BBC.  I did include the two new songs from the 1990s, but discarded the German versions of “She Loves You” (Sie Liebt Dich) and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” (Komm, Gib Mer Deine der Hand), as they are mere Teutonic redundancies.

Criteria.  Lots of other places have ranked the Beatles catalog.  You can see Rolling Stone magazine’s ranking of the band’s top 100 here, and a man calling himself JBev ranks the whole catalog here.  My own ranking is a combination of the song’s stylistic quality and evocative powers.  Songs that convey one thing transcendently well are ranked high.  “Please Please Me”‘s perfect encapsulation of raw teenage sexual energy, “Let It Be”‘s sense of hope, “Strawberry Field”‘s sense of self-discovery and introspection.  I penalized Lennon’s odes to ennui (“I’m So Tired”, “I’m Only Sleeping”), the band’s failed experimentation projects (“Flying”, “Revolution No. 9″), and songs that were put on the record just because they happened to exist at the time (“Cry Baby Cry”, “All Together Now”).  Additionally, I am perturbed by Rolling Stone magazine’s canonization of Lennon, which usually happens at the expense of McCartney’s brilliant and effortless melodicism.  Seriously, Lennon is easily the man who has shown up on the most RS covers, despite being dead for over 30 years.  We give, perhaps, too much credit to Lennon’s lyrical development (“I’m A Loser”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”), and not enough to McCartney’s equally significant breakthroughs in counterpoint and harmony (“Penny Lane”, “She’s Leaving Home”).

Beatles Song Ranking 2012:

 

1. Let It Be (Let It Be)
2. I Am the Walrus (Magical Mystery Tour)
3. Here Comes the Sun (Abbey Road)
4. Yesterday (Help!)
5. Strawberry Fields Forever (Magical Mystery Tour)
6. Eleanor Rigby (Revolver)
7. She Loves You (A-side single)
8. Help! (Help!)
9. If I Fell (A Hard Day’s Night)
10. Rain (B-side single)
11. Nowhere Man (Rubber Soul)
12. We Can Work It Out (A-side single)
13. Please Please Me (Please Please Me)
14. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (Help!)
15. Norwegian Wood (Rubber Soul)
16. A Hard Day’s Night (A Hard Day’s Night)
17. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End (Abbey Road)
18. Penny Lane (Magical Mystery Tour)
19. Revolution (B-side single)
20. The Long and Winding Road (Let It Be)
21. A Day in the Life (Sgt. Pepper)
22. Come Together (Abbey Road)
23. I Want To Hold Your Hand (A-side single)
24. Two Of Us (Let It Be)
25. Hey Jude (A-side single)
26. Getting Better (Sgt. Pepper)
27. The Inner Light (B-side single)
28. I Saw Her Standing There (Please Please Me)
29. I’ve Got a Feeling (Let It Be)
30. Blackbird (White Album)
31. Sgt. Pepper theme (Sgt. Pepper)
32. You’re Gonna Lose That Girl (Help!)
33. She’s Leaving Home (Sgt. Pepper)
34. And I Love Her (A Hard Day’s Night)
35. In My Life (Rubber Soul)
36. Octopus’s Garden (Abbey Road)
37. I’ll Follow the Sun (Beatles for Sale)
38. Birthday (White Album)
39. Hello Goodbye (Magical Mystery Tour)
40. You Can’t Do That (A Hard Day’s Night)
41. And Your Bird Can Sing (Revolver)
42. You Never Give Me Your Money (Abbey Road)
43. While My Guitar Gently Weeps (White Album)
44. Day Tripper (A-side single)
45. Back in the USSR (White Album)
46. Ticket To Ride (Help!)
47. She Said She Said (Revolver)
48. Something (Abbey Road)
49. Within You, Without You (Sgt. Pepper)
50. Dear Prudence (White Album)
51. Things We Said Today (A Hard Day’s Night)
52. Lady Madonna (A-side single)
53. For No One (Revolver)
54. Because (Abbey Road)
55. I’ve Just Seen a Face (Help!)
56. I Feel Fine (A-side single)
57. When I’m Sixty-Four (Sgt. Pepper)
58. It’s All Too Much (Yellow Submarine)
59. Eight Days a Week (Beatles for Sale)
60. Get Back ( Let It Be)
61. Here, There & Everywhere (Revolver)
62. With A Little Help from my Friend (Sgt. Pepper)
63. Sun King/Mustard/Polythene/Bathroom Window (Abbey Road)
64. Can’t Buy Me Love (A Hard Day’s Night)
65. I Should’ve Known Better (A Hard Day’s Night)
66. If I Needed Someone (Rubber Soul)
67. Dig A Pony (Let It Be)
68. Hey Bulldog (Yellow Submarine)
69. Real Love (Anthology 2)
70. The Fool on the Hill (Magical Mystery Tour)
71. Love You To (Revolver)
72. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite (Sgt. Pepper)
73. Across the Universe (Let It Be)
74. I Will (White Album)
75. Tomorrow Never Knows (Revolver)
76. Oh! Darling (Abbey Road)
77. Paperback Writer (A-side single)
78. All My Loving (With the Beatles)
79. Yellow Submarine (Revolver)
80. Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey (White Album)
81. Free As A Bird (Anthology 1)
82. I Me Mine (Let It Be)
83. Michelle (Rubber Soul)
84. I’ll Be Back (A Hard Day’s Night)
85. Got To Get You Into My Life (Revolver)
86. All You Need Is Love (Magical Mystery Tour)
87. Think For Yourself (Rubber Soul)
88. Magical Mystery Tour (Magical Mystery Tour)
89. Lovely Rita (Sgt. Pepper)
90. I’m Looking Through You (Rubber Soul)
91. I Want You (She’s So Heavy) (Abbey Road)
92. Obladi Oblada (White Album)
93. Helter Skelter (White Album)
94. There’s A Place (Please Please Me)
95. You Won’t See Me (Rubber Soul)
96. Happiness Is A Warm Gun (White Album)
97. It Won’t Be Long (With the Beatles)
98. Long Long Long (White Album)
99. Girl (Rubber Soul)
100. Revolution No. 1 (White Album)
101. Good Morning Good Morning (Sgt. Pepper)
102. Martha My Dear (White Album)
103. Ballad of John and Yoko (A-side single)
104. Drive My Car (Rubber Soul)
105. I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party (Beatles for Sale)
106. Sgt. Pepper Reprise (Sgt. Pepper)
107. The Night Before (Help!)
108. Glass Onion (White Album)
109. This Boy (B-side single)
110. I’m A Loser (Beatles for Sale)
111. It’s Only Love (Help!)
112. Don’t Let Me Down (B-side single)
113. No Reply (Beatles for Sale)
114. The One After 909 (Let It Be)
115. Wait (Rubber Soul)
116. Ask Me Why (Please Please Me)
117. Good Day Sunshine (Revolver)
118. Sexy Sadie (White Album)
119. When I Get Home (A Hard Day’s Night)
120. Piggies (White Album)
121. Your Mother Should Know (Magical Mystery Tour)
122. Mother Nature’s Son (White Album)
123. Do You Want To Know a Secret? (Please Please Me)
124. All I’ve Got To Do (With the Beatles)
125. Fixing A Hole (Sgt. Pepper)
126. I Want to Tell You (Revolver)
127. Don’t Pass Me By (White Album)
128. I’m Down (B-side single)
129. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (Abbey Road)
130. Every Little Thing (Beatles for Sale)
131. Julia (White Album)
132. From Me To You (A-side single)
133. I’ll Cry Instead (A Hard Day’s Night)
134. I’m So Tired (White Album)
135. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Sgt. Pepper)
136. Yes It Is (B-side single)
137. Savoy Truffle (White Album)
138. I’m Only Sleeping (Revolver)
139. Love Me Do (Please Please Me)
140. Honey Pie (White Album)
141. For You Blue (Let It Be)
142. Not A Second Time (With the Beatles)
143. Yer Blues (White Album)
144. Baby’s in Black (Beatles for Sale)
145. I Call Your Name (Long Tall Sally EP)
146. Rocky Raccoon (White Album)
147. Old Brown Shoe (B-side single)
148. Tell Me Why (A Hard Day’s Night)
149. I’ll Get You (B-side single)
150. What Goes On (Rubber Soul)
151. Don’t Bother Me (With the Beatles)
152. The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill (White Album)
153. Another Girl (Help!)
154. Anytime At All (A Hard Day’s Night)
155. The Word (Rubber Soul)
156. Her Majesty (Abbey Road)
157. Doctor Robert (Revolver)
158. All Together Now (Yellow Submarine)
159. Good Night (White Album)
160. P.S. I Love You (Please Please Me)
161. Thank You Girl (B-side single)
162. I Wanna Be Your Man (With the Beatles)
163. What You’re Doing (Beatles for Sale)
164. Taxman (Revolver)
165. Blue Jay Way (Magical Mystery Tour)
166. Why Don’t We Do It In The Road (White Album)
167. Cry Baby Cry (White Album)
168. Only A Northern Song (Yellow Submarine)
169. Tell Me What You See (Help!)
170. Hold Me Tight (With the Beatles)
171. I’m Happy Just to Dance With You (A Hard Day’s Night)
172. Revolution No. 9 (White Album)
173. Little Child (With the Beatles)
174. You Like Me Too Much (Help!)
175. Misery (Please Please Me)
176. Dig It ( Let It Be)
177. She’s A Woman (B-side single)
178. You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) (B-side single)
179. Wild Honey Pie (White Album)
180. I Need You (Help!)
181. Maggie Mae (Let It Be)
182. Flying (Magical Mystery Tour)
183. Baby, You’re A Rich Man (Magical Mystery Tour)
184. Run For Your Life (Rubber Soul)

7 elton john eulogies better than ‘candle in the wind’

While I’m on this line of thought, I cannot help but consider one of my favorite musicians who is remembered partly as a eulogist.  It has always bothered me that one of Elton John’s most well-known songs is “Candle in the Wind”.  It isn’t a good song at all, in my own judgment.  It was badly recorded, has a thin piano track, and worst of all, the song is more about lyricist Bernie Taupin’s teenage fantasies.  Any actual concern for the tragedy of Monroe, who died 50 years ago today, is disingenuous and affected.  Naturally, this was the song Elton John rehashed when called upon to sing at the funeral of Princess Diana of Wales back in 1997, leading Keith Richards to dismiss the pianist as “a eulogist for dead blondes.”  What I wish more partisans of 1970s music understood was how many great songs Elton wrote for the deceased that don’t get the level of publicity.  So, let’s explore…. 7 Elton John eulogies better than “Candle in the Wind”.

1.  “Skyline Pigeon”:  From Elton’s seldom-heard 1969 debut album, he brought back the song, ostensibly about rising above the ugly realities of life, when his friend, the young AIDS victim Ryan White, died in 1990.

2.  “Funeral for a Friend”: This instrumental begins one of Elton’s greatest albums, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, ironically the same disc that contains our whipping boy for this exercise, “Candle in the Wind.”  Elton wrote this progressive, synthesizer-laden track as an exercise in writing the sort of music he would want to play at his own funeral.  Nearly 40 years later, this is still a frequent addition to his concert setlists.

3.  “The Last Song”: Not the last song Elton wrote about AIDS, for sure, but it was the first.  In this track, Taupin actually writes the strongest lyrics of his career, telling about a dying gay man reconciling with his father on the eve of his passing.

4.  “American Triangle”  From the 2001 Songs from the West Coast, Elton and Bernie muse on the murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, left to die of exposure on a wire fence on account of his homosexuality.  As per the title, the song’s tragedy lies in that three lives were wasted by needless hate, not only Shepard’s, but his two killers as well.

5.  “Blues Never Fade Away”: On his most recent solo album, The Captain and the Kid, Elton reflects on how he lived on in spite of hundreds of bad decisions, while friends obscure and famous were felled by untimely or tragic circumstances.  “It’s like rolling dice in the belly of the blues,” Elton muses fatalistically.

6.  “Empty Garden (Hey, Hey Johnny)”: Elton remembers his friend John Lennon two years after his death.  Bernie almost ruins the song with some of his worst lyrics ever, courtesy of an overwrought gardening metaphor (“through their tears, some say he farmed his best in younger years”), but Elton’s pain and sense of conviction in the wake of Lennon’s murder carry the track.

7.  “Song for Guy”: When a messenger boy was fatally struck by a car during the recording of A Single Man, Elton composed this short piano instrumental as an elegant, understated elegy.

10 greatest eulogies of all time

While I get ready for another year in Singapore, I have compiled, for no reason in particular, what I believe to be the ten greatest eulogies delivered by or for famous men or women.  In this, I limit eulogies to those actually delivered at some kind of official memorial service.  This does not include write-ups by commentators, and does not include ex-post-facto addresses commemorating the dead (thus disqualifying what would otherwise be the finest eulogy of all time, Lincoln’s Gettysberg Address.)

10. John Culver eulogizes Ted Kennedy:   Several of Kennedy’s own eulogies: for his sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy Onassis, for his nephew JFK Jr., and especially for his brother Bobby, were in contention for this list.  But former Iowa senator surpasses him, telling an illustrative and poignant story of Kennedy, not when he was an aged senatorial lion, but when he was a young Harvard undergraduate, taking his provincial classmate on a sailing trip.

9. Pericles eulogizes war dead:  This speech was good enough to be part of the curriculum, on and off, from the 3rd century BC onward as part of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, is still widely read today.  With good reason.  This speech is foundational to the history of the West by making their death in battle part of a war of ideas rather than territorial gain or bloodlust.

8. Jawaharlal Nehru eulogies Mahatma Gandhi:  Nehru’s timely speech puts a longtime ally and not infrequent adversary to rest.  This is a pivotal text for the development of nascent Indian nationalism during the nation’s infancy as a sovereign country.

7. Mona Simpson eulogizes Steve Jobs:  Jobs’ sister, who did not meet him until in her twenties, gives some lovely insights into the life and outlook of her long-lost brother.  Her account of his last words is profoundly touching.

6. Kevin Costner eulogizes Whitney Houston:  Costner himself recognizes how little he and Houston had in common, but this does not stop him from sending off the songstress in grace and dignity.

5. Winston Churchill eulogizes George VI:  Churchill gives a magnificent reflection on wartime leadership (although it possibly feathered his own historical nest as well.)  I want it on record that I don’t like or respect Churchill very much; I’ve read too much of India’s history to give him very much of the benefit of the doubt.  But this is, nonetheless a worthy ode to my favorite British sovereign, and a persuasive defense of a constitutional monarchy.

4. Bill Bradley eulogizes Dave DeBusschere:  DeBusschere wasn’t the best basketball player the game has seen, but he was one of its greatest teammates and defenders.  Fellow Knick and ex-New Jersey senator Bradley shares his recollections on the meaning of comradeship and shared victory.

3.  Oprah Winfrey eulogizes Rosa Parks: The famous talk show host and media icon acknowledges just why one simple action from Parks opened doors for Winfrey and countless others.

2. John Cleese eulogies Graham Chapman: Cleese bids farewell to a fellow Python, and in the process, drops the first f-bomb in the history of British television.

1. Frank Oz eulogizes Jim Henson:  Oz focuses on one anecdote, Henson going to absurd lengths to make him an original Christmas present.  In doing so, Oz, the voice of Miss Piggy, Bert, Fozzie, and several other Muppets, demonstrates Henson’s childlike joy in his work.

50 states, 50 women, part ii.

Now, I will refer you to the capable hands of my fianceè, Heather.  Her blog will cover the remaining 25 states, in two parts.  The first part can be found by clicking here, and the second part by clicking here.  She very sensibly split her 25 into two separate posts, while I conglomerated my 25 together in one leviathan, can’t-read-it-in-one-sitting effort.

This was an immensely fun project to work on, and I appreciate how we took some different approaches.  My list has more politicians and entertainers, as is appropriate and perhaps expected, while hers has more activists and women’s pioneers in sundry fields.