Here are my 100 favorite songs

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#49 When I Come Around - Green Day

[youtube][/youtube]

This song was in my top 10 at one point. I think most of the songs from here to the top of the list are songs I heard after this one, so it sort of makes sense - in an infinite world there's infinitely more songs to bump down your top ten in 1995 - but there is something about Green Day that just makes me sad these days when I think about them.

I have listened to Dookie a zillion times. I had a real copy in the CD player of my truck when I came back from Syracuse, I had a burned copy so my real CD wouldn't further deteriorate, God. I listened to it constantly. I've gotten a copy of everything they've done since and I don't even have fond memories of them any more. (Save for this song.)

Maybe it's because every small snippet of video I've ever seen of Billie Joe Armstrong makes him seem like the most insipid, sneering tryhard in rock, I don't know.

But I do like the classic simplicity of this song. Pretty much the same 10 second riff repeated throughout the course of the song, with a solo towards the end. It's a song anyone who ever made music could have thought of, but they didn't and that's the point.
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#48 Method Function - Bachelor Machines (Beatlof Remix)

Sorry, no Youtube, but you can hear it here:



The Bachelor Machines is the name of the musical act that is just my friend FullofKittens from caltrops.com. I have thrown a few parties since this song came out (NOT TO BRAG, HEH) and I have made sure to play this song once during every single one of them because at a certain time, when most people have had slightly less than two drinks, it, well... I'd like to say that it brings the house down, it gets everyone's toes tapping and the like, but no. It makes ME smile. It makes ME happy. And I'm the one that bought the pinata, whisky, turducken and craft beers.

A lot of you - no. Most of you - no. All of you question why we still keep the oil changed on ole Caltrops now that half the people who used to post over there left and the other half have nothing but disgust for the place. To me, I wouldn't have songs like this one in my life if not for the relationships formed by that silly purple website. It's been worth it.
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#47 Spirit of Radio - Rush

[youtube][/youtube]

I loved this song before it became the song signaling the end of the Don Rogers Show, but I loved it more (and listened to it in whole each time, except for the one show Don pissed me off and I left early) because it closed down the best damn fake radio show I've ever been allowed onto.

This is Rush's best song.
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#46 Do The Vampire - Superdrag

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None of you have ever heard this song before and that makes me cooler than you. I hadn't heard of it until my brother told me that Superdrag has more songs than just "Sucked Out," which all of you have heard and I would assume love.
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#45 Straw Dog - Something Corporate

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This is a fairly good representative of the sort of music that frontman Andrew McMahon writes when he's doing his best work, or at least the work I like the best. The listener is not quite sure what he is talking about, it's quirky and catchy and he has a way of looking back at life with a fondness and nostalgia that I wish I could join him with. I think he is the only person who can write lyrics that ask (literal) questions without me going HURR DURR when I hear them.
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#44 Diseases of Yore - MC Frontalot featuring Jonathan Coulton

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The most successful collaboration since Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.
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#43 Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes

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I was of the age where I got into Yes first because of the 90125 album (and later Big Generator) and then met friends into progressive rock and tried tracking down all their other, earlier stuff from there. I liked it all a lot (and there are Yes songs further up the list) but I really love how pure this song is. It's from one place, rooted in time forever.
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#42 Phoebe Cates - FenixTx

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Another great pop punk song and one that takes me back to having moved to Colorado and more or less reached some kind of stable living out here. I really thought that FenixTx would be, like, the co-Kings of pop punk for me with New Found Glory but that never ended up happening.
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#41 Love Will Find a Way - Yes

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Looking at my list, all the songs after this are not only songs that I think are really good, but they also bring back intense memories or feelings. I remember listening to this one over and over again on cassette tapes in the Pontiac 6000 my parents let me use when I came back from college, before I started community college, traveling as fast as I could around the Parkway along Lake Ontario.

I remember going to see Yes during their Union tour with Da King and the REAL Man, though the way the venue was setup you were basically going to socialize than concentrate on any music being played. (They were also very kind to cart me around for all the bands we saw out there.)

I love that opening riff all these years later.
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Okay, but 0:18 - 0:22. Nobody should ever look like that playing a guitar, much less a bass.

I hope they were trying to be ironic.
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Post by Flack »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:#43 Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes
I thought of Yes as a one hit wonder (this being the hit) for 30 years. I hadn't listened to a second song from Yes until I was 40. Great band, ahead of their time for sure.
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pinback wrote:Okay, but 0:18 - 0:22. Nobody should ever look like that playing a guitar, much less a bass.

I hope they were trying to be ironic.
That was Chris Squire, I am sure he had a mirthful contempt for the process of shooting a music video.

There is another song later in the list that he was a co-writer for and I would hope that as a human of the world you would respect it, even if you don't enjoy it. He passed away in 2015 and he is my absolute favorite bassist of all time.
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#40 It's Tricky - Run DMC

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The gateway song getting white kids like myself into hip hop.
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Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:
pinback wrote:Okay, but 0:18 - 0:22. Nobody should ever look like that playing a guitar, much less a bass.

I hope they were trying to be ironic.
That was Chris Squire, I am sure he had a mirthful contempt for the process of shooting a music video.

There is another song later in the list that he was a co-writer for and I would hope that as a human of the world you would respect it, even if you don't enjoy it. He passed away in 2015 and he is my absolute favorite bassist of all time.
I had a chance to see Jon Anderson after he was removed (fired) from Yes and then the band Asia which was more or less the other half of the band and they were incredible! Almost made up for having to see them at an Indian casino. Haha
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Post by Tdarcos »

Due to the 10 line limit the full response appears on Caltrops
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:#41 Love Will Find a Way - Yes
SHORT RESPONSE:

1. Yes' Owner of a Lonely Heart (your choice #43) is a much better song.

2. The choice of this title is both not fitting what they are singing and is likely to confuse people into thinking it's a cover of Pablo Cruise's song with the identical name from 9 years earlier:
[youtube][/youtube]

FULL EXPLANATION
http://www.caltrops.com/pointy.php?acti ... pid=185717
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#39 Space - Something Corporate

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I won't dwell on the lyrics or message, as that is a universal truth that I am sure we can all appreciate. I am realizing that I do tend to like songs that start off with like one instrument and the rest come in at once. Not something you can really search for on Pandora with, natch.

Man, this must have been a fun song to write and practice with the fellas. Every show needs a part where everyone just yells HEY at once.
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#38 Edge of Seventeen - Stevie Nicks

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i heard that Stevie Nicks misheard a girl say that she was the "age of seventeen" as "the edge of seventeen" and that inspired the song. That's the most beautiful mishearing in music. I can't begin to imagine what it was like to have this come on the radio in 1981 after what I assume was a five-song disco block.
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#37 Silent Sun I - Brokenkites



I think I enjoy this wonderful electronica song so much as it works equally well thinking that the world is ending or that your world is ending.
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Re: Here are my 100 favorite songs

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

#36 Fast Car - Tracy Chapman



I thought it would be a good thing to wait until the season was depressing enough to play this song and luckily Christmas came right on time. Also, the switch-over to the new BBS software destroyed this thread by breaking all the links, so that's good. I'll finish this even though I know nobody cares. As an aside it is interesting to me that I don't know that there has been a single dupe for a song on anyone's list. I don't know that the same thing would happen if we did this for movies or games. Music's pretty personal.
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Re: Here are my 100 favorite songs

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

#35 Watching You - Ether



This is the only version of the song I could find on Youtube. At least it is in extreme HD with audio quality to match. I ordered this CD off eBay because Ether seems like a band where one day all of their music will disappear. It is better if I don't talk about what I paid to get this CD. Later my friend that got me into this band said, "I could have copied that for you." It wouldn't be so bad if it was going to the band but, welp, eBay.

I realize that if I never got into Madness, I would never have gotten into Ether. That's bad, so the edited version of this list could very well have Our House here.
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