The No-Skip Songs (Part 2)

In Part 1 of the No-Skip Songs, I discussed how technology has changed the way we listen to music. As we've evolved from LPs to CDs to Walkmans to MP3 players, our ability to skip songs has multiplied. And now, in my mid-40's, I hit the Skip button on my iPod a lot. Either technology or age has made me a fidgety, impatient listener.

The No-Skip songs are tunes that consistently hold my attention, and I'm often surprised at which ones. Some I knew as a teen, but didn't consider a favorite then. Some are by artists I barely know. Some of my favorite artists are not represented (close friends will be shocked by the absence of Bob Dylan). But for whatever reasons, right now, these are (some of) my No Skip Songs.

Why 21 songs? My original No Skip playlist was 45 songs. But I cut it down to 21 - specifically to 80 MB - so that it would perfectly form a CD mix. Here we go, in no particular order:

Solsbury Hill [live], Peter Gabriel, Plays Live

There's a handful of songs on this list that I may have liked as a teen, but I get as an adult. We reach crossroads in our life, moments of confusion, and there's nothing purer than the moment of clarity when suddenly we know the right direction. May eagles fly into all our hilltop reveries and show us the way home.

I think that's why Solsbury Hill works better as a live song. Great singers are actors, too, and you can hear the yearning in Gabriel's vocals. He's going home.

Hey Jealousy, Gin Blossoms, New Miserable Experience

Seriously, I have no idea how this song got here. I couldn't name another Gin Blossoms song and have never owned a Gin Blossoms album.

As for the feeling of jealousy, it is completely alien to me. I like it when other guys check out my wife. Damn right, she's with me. Give me Hamlet and Macbeth over Othello any day. But what can I tell you - this song comes on, I ain't skipping.

Redemption Song (live in Pittsburgh), Bob Marley, Songs of Freedom

Recorded shortly before his death, this live version gets me before it even starts. There's a little guitar intro, a joyous shout from Bob, and then, "Yes, this little song is called old pirates, you know, redemption song".

Knowing his body is already racked with the cancer that will get him soon makes the hopeful vocals more poignant.

Tumbling Dice, The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main St.

The Stones in general hold up for me. I have no use for The Who anymore and little use for Zeppelin, or most of the big classic rock bands of my youth. There will always be a place in my heart for them but they are almost always skipped.

But a bunch of Stones song pass the Skip Test. Angie, Gimme Shelter, Can't You Hear Me Knocking. On a larger No-Skip list, they'd be well-represented. In fact, Dice only only edged Knocking on this list because it's shorter, and fit in my 80 MB.

Cry Love, John Hiatt, Walk On

Twenty years ago, an acquaintance made me a mix that changed my listening habits. On one tape I was introduced to Graham Parker, A Tribe Called Quest, and a host of other songs and artists I didn't know.

One of those guys was John Hiatt, and this song provided the ultimate "Who is this guy?" moment. I've since dug deeper into Hiatt, but this remains my favorite.

Thunder Road, Bruce Springsteen, Live 1975-1985

The only song on this list to crack the Top 100 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of Top 500 Songs of All Time (#86). The album Born to Run has the famous cover shot of a guitar-slung Boss and a sax-blowing Big Man. But this live version from The Boss's 1975 shows at The Bottom Line in New York is a reminder that Springsteen's classic 1975 record was drenched in piano. I wonder if E Street keyboardist Roy Bittan, who was equally spectacular on Dire Straits' Making Movies, is annoyed at that album cover.

Double Trouble, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Gimme Back My Bullets

If you have any interest in the depths of my teen obsession with Skynyrd, click here. Suffice to say, I was a hard-core fan. I knew every song on every album, knew the band lineup changes, had the original Street Survivors LP (real fans know what I'm talking about)

But if you asked me in 1981 to name my favorite Skynyrd songs, I'm not sure this would have made the Top 10. In fact, the Bullets album in general spent the least time on my roundtable. But for some reason now, when I hear that great opening guitar intro, I'm hooked.

What'd I Say, Pt. 1 & 2,Ray Charles, Rhino Hi-Five
I think my introduction to Ray Charles was through the Columbia House record club. You old folks remember - 13 albums for a penny. Back before Napster changed everything, the closest you can get to music piracy was joining, quitting, and re-joining Columbia House. And with so many albums to choose from, I'd start picking some old guys with whom I was only vaguely familiar.

Well, Ray Charles' Greatest Hits blew me away. Unchain My Heart became a staple on all my mixes. But somehow I missed this song until the movie Ray, and it assumed an immediate place on my No-Skip list. It's still there.

Even the Losers, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Damn the Torpedoes

If you ask me who my favorite artist is, I'd probably say Bob Dylan or Van Morrison. Favorite band? The Beatles. But if push came to shove - if I was really being placed on the metaphorical desert island and can only choose the collected works of one artist, I just may choose Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Oh, I know, he doesn't have the street grandeur of the Boss or the ragged poetry of Dylan or the lyric mysticism of Van or the revolutionary inventiveness of the Beatles. But damn it, he has a million No Skip songs. I could've chosen any of a dozen, but threw this one on there because hey, even the losers get lucky sometimes.

Rhymes and Reasons, John Denver, Greatest Hits
That's right, John Denver. You got a problem with that? Seriously, put on this song, think about 9/11, and try to skip it.

And Your Bird Can Sing, The Beatles, Revolver
I know what you're thinking. Hey Jude. Let It Be. A Day in the Life. Yesterday. How the heck did this fairly obscure middle-period song get on the No-Skip list?

I'm not sure exactly. But try this on for size: in August 1965, the Beatles released Help! Four months later they released Rubber Soul. And nine months after that, Revolver. 12 months, 3 classic albums. Oh, and ten months after that, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, often considered the greatest rock album ever made.

Compare that to U2, the undisputed rock kings of the 80's. It took them 7 years to release 4 albums (Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree, Rattle & Hum and Achtung Baby). Or Bruce Springsteen, who spent 8 years on Born to Run, Darkness, The River and Nebraska.

Of course, greatness isn't measured in number of albums. But the Beatles' albums had 12 - 14 songs on each one, and little gems like Bird are scattered throughout. For some reason, this song represents for me the most extraordinary creative burst of my lifetime, musical or otherwise. Or maybe it's just a cool ditty.

Okay, that's enough for now. Part 3 with ten more songs will be out in less time than it takes an 80s rock star to produce a masterpiece.

History In Rock & Roll

This piece started out as one thing, and ended up as something else entirely.

I intended to write something about the use of history in rock and roll…or to be more precise, the lack of it. Other forms of art – movies, novels, paintings – have drawn heavily on history for inspiration. But rock and roll, not so much.

And when it does, I thought, it usually screws it up. Think of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by the Band. A great song (especially the live version) but historically inaccurate:

Back with my wife in Tennessee,
When one day she called to me,
"Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E. Lee.”

I thought, those silly Canadians, Robert E. Lee wasn’t in Tennessee during the Civil War.

Bob Dylan liked to sprinkle historical figures in his lyrics (“Napoleon in rags”), but he mangled a Lincoln quote in Talking World War III Blues:

Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time,
But all of the people can't be all right all of the time.
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.

You thought wrong, Bob. What Lincoln is reputed to have said is, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”


And my favorite, Billy Joel’s The Ballad of Billy the Kid. If you’ll allow me to quote at length.

From a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia
Rode a boy with a six-gun in his hand
And his daring life of crime
Made him a legend in his time
East and west of the Rio Grande

Well, he started with a bank in Colorado
In the pocket of his vest, a Colt he hid
And his age and his size
Took the teller by surprise
And the word spread of Billy the Kid

One cold day a posse captured Billy
And the judge said, "String 'im up for what he did!"
And the cowboys and their kin
Like the sea came pourin' in
To watch the hangin' of Billy the Kid

Well, he never traveled heavy
Yes, he always rode alone
And he soon put many older guns to shame
And he never had a sweetheart
But he finally found a home
Underneath the boothill grave that bears his name

Billy the Kid was not from Wheeling, or any other part of West Virginia. He didn’t rob banks. He didn’t ride alone. He killed with a Winchester rifle, not a Colt. He wasn’t captured by a posse, and he wasn’t hung. To paraphrase Mary McCarthy, every word is a lie, including “and” and “the”.

Clearly, I thought, rock lyricists have issues with history.

Digging in the Archives
To make my case stronger, I trolled through my own 5000 song iTunes catalogue, looking for more evidence of rock’s indifference to history. And I confess, I found the opposite. More lyricists than I realized had tackled history, some quite accurately.

For example…

Mr. Churchill Says, The Kinks
Bastille Day, Rush
Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling Stones

The first two are among the most straightforward of the history rock songs in my collection. The Kinks capture England during the Battle of Britain. He even mentions historical figures like Beaverbrook, Mountbatten, and Montgomery. Rush captures the class warfare - as well as the beheadings - of the early French Revolution.

The lyrics of both are fairly uninspired, though Neal Peart turns a neat phrase with "See them bow their heads to die, as we would bow as they rode by".


Sympathy is the ultimate rock and roll romp through history. It starts on Calvary, takes us through the Hundred Years War, the Russian Revolution, the Blitzkrieg, and the assassinations of the Kennedys.

My only quibble with the song is this lyric:

I watched in glee while your Kings and Queens

Fought for ten decades for the Gods they made.

Presumably the "fought for ten decades" refers to the Hundred Years War. While many wars were fought over religion, this wasn't one of them.

Oliver’s Army, Elvis Costello
Not a history song at all, but one that requires knowledge of history to understand. The song is about mercenary soldiers, and Oliver refers to Oliver Cromwell, who rewarded his mercenary soldiers with land in Ireland - something Elvis Costello (aka Declan McManus) would be familiar with. "Mr. Churchill" is a stand-in for England.

Children's Crusade, Sting
Russians, Sting

History Will Teach Us Nothing, Sting

Gordon Sumner, the former schoolteacher, is clearly the songwriter most obsessed with history, and the idea that the past can - though often doesn't - teach us about the future.

Children's Crusade is about the young men slaughtered in WWI ("Young men, soldiers, Nineteen fourteen"); Russians is about the Cold War; History Will...is more of a political song:

Convince an enemy, convince him that he's wrong

Is to win a bloodless battle where victory is long

A simple act of faith, in reason over might

To blow up his children will only prove him right

History will teach us nothing

Buffalo Soldiers, Bob Marley

There isn't a lot of history in this song, but what little there is seems accurate. More importantly, Marley captures why history is important in this lyric:

If you know your history,
Then you would know where you coming from,
Then you wouldnt have to ask me,
Who the eck do I think I am.

You said it, Bob.