Ms. Bockle’s 3 Favorite Songs.
|Before I heard the theme of this week’s post, I started to make a list of songs I’d been hearing on my favorite radio station–KFOG, with a view of adding them to my iPod so that it wouldn’t always be a chance hearing while driving.
So, these songs aren’t my OLD favorites, nor have they taken the place of tunes sung by Freddie Mercury, the Four Tops, Beck or Graffiti 6 in my heart. My heart is just expanding.
What is it about my new tunes that gets my feet, bum and shoulders all a wobbling? Most times it’s the drums. But then, I love me some bass. Ahh, and then there’s the fantastic tunes coming from the guitar. My favorite wind instrument is the saxophone–recently heard that being played by Bruce Springsteen’s E Street band on Youtube.
In fact, I’m gonna go out on a limb and list the one song I heard, just by chance on Youtube when I was looking for something else. The video of Bruce Springsteen playing You Never Can Tell meets all my requirements for enjoying music to the nth degree. There’s a focus on the piano, the different horns–SAXOPHONE–with Bruce the boss grinning (and sweating) and dancing the whole time. I’ve listened and watched that video (together with a couple million other people) at least three times now.
My number two tune is One Headlight by the Wallflowers, and it gets into my top three for a few reasons, and not just because the soloist is rather dishy. Most of the time, when I hear a song that sticks, it ain’t the lyrics that gets me outa my chair and on the floor. It’s a combination of mainly drums, and an awesome strumming of the guitar. A few of the lyrics in One Headlight make it special–like ‘die of a broken heart disease’, or ‘drive home with one headlight’, or ‘got to be something better than in the middle’, but it’s not the words, really: it’s the sheer rhythm.
I’ve been grabbed in the last few months by the band Revivalists singing Wish I knew You. This song resonates with me because of its intense rhythm and incredible energy–keyboard, drums and the brilliant singing by David Shaw. Course I like the idea behind ‘wishing I knew you when I was young’, (like 35), but aside from that–if I hear this song any place, any time, I’ll start to dance (even if I’m just sitting in my car). Oh, and did I say David Shaw in the same sentence with energy? A couple weeks ago he was in concert, and during his performance gashed open his head, and was so into his tune that he didn’t know he was bleeding. There are photos of him still dancing and singing with his face all covered in blood–8 stitches worth!
I believe the one thing that ties these tunes together is the love the singer has for his art comes shining through, grabbing me and making me–and a million others–feel a part of the experience.