A recent diary from bigjacbigjacbigjac dealt with music from 1970 and while researching music from this year, I was surprised at how much music I like came from this year. I was about to post a song in this diary as fortune would have it the clock struck 10 and Daily Kos stopped everything to update the the site. I suspect 1970 may have just been a phenomenal year for music and I hadn’t realized awesome it was.
Jack the Stripper/Fairies Wear Boots — Black Sabbath
While this song is not one of the hits from this album, I find it to be a real gem containing some of my favorite passages and moments on this seminal Heavy Metal album.
Right around 2:40 there is a guitar riff solo that I adore that culminates at 3:30 and it is my favorite Tony Iommi moment bar none. I’m sure everyone doesn’t share my enthusiasm but it is a special musical moment I wanted to point out in case you missed or had forgotten about it.
This song rocks my soul. I don’t know what Ozzy’s intent was but I especially dig that he wrote a song about Fairies Wearing boots and being absolutely bad ass. I assumed that the Fairies referred to the slur for homosexual males, and perhaps I am completely wrong, but I thought it was a total defiant give your middle finger to the authorities and arbiters of masculinity by making the fairies part of a leather wearing badassed motorcycle gang. Or perhaps Ozzy dropped acid and had been reading J.R.R. Tolkien and the Fairies are of the middle earth variety. In the end it doesn’t matter because it created some of the heaviest guitar riffage and it simply kicks ass.
The whole album Paranoid kicks ass and brings in comic book superhero, science fiction, and psychedelic qualities together. When I was in college, someone showed me the album jacket of this album and showed me how the crease in the album jacket was perfectly creased for rolling a joint and apparently it was not uncommon to find trace remnants of marijuana shake left over from past users of the album when they rolled joints using the album cover.
I was never a big marijuana enthusiast, but thought it was pretty funny that there was social history that went along with this album (at least according to the people I spoke with).
The next song from 1970 which blew my doors of was the Joe Cocker Leon Russel version of the Box Tops The Letter. I love what they did with the arrangement of this song and felt they took the original to new heights. I am a big Alex Chilton fan, but Joe Cocker owned this song. The Horn Section, back ground singing and the Piano add dynamics to the song that lift this song out of the stratosphere. This is the song I was going to post on bigjacbigjacbigjac diary before the Daily Kos system update prevented that.
There are lots of good songs from 1970, and I don’t want to hog up too many selections, so I opened this up to music from years that end it the number zero.
From 1980 there is
Bankrobber — The Clash
This song talks about aging and it gets really real. It dips its toe in the dub style. I love the background singing/chanting.
Break your back to earn your pay and don’t forget to grovel.
1980 Could you be Loved — Bob Marley and the Wailers
I like this song, it I find the message hopeful. YMMV
1960 Cathy’s Clown — The Everly Brothers
I love Everly brothers songs for the Harmonies. This song isn’t about being a winner and I dig that they had the gumption to write a song from other than the winners perspective. It’s ultimately about dignity. The Everly Brothers aren’t talking about resorting to domestic violence or some bullshit “crime of passion” as some other songwriters do. It is a healthy responses to love not working out, which is probably a big part of the human condition. Kudos to them.
Please share your songs from years that end in zero or whatever is moving you and feel free to share your thoughts what moves you about the music. What it means to you on a personal level etc.,
Welcome!