The Persistence of Listen (A Rock 'n Roll Timeline) The Prelude, pre 1951

I get asked all the time if I know everything about music and the answer is a resounding NO! Nobody does, and there are many out there who share the same passion for music that know far more about it than I do. Don't get me wrong, I know a lot, but like anybody I have my preferences and I tend to spin around Rock and Country, Rap and R&B. If you ask me anything about Opera that didn't drop into my head from old Warner Brothers Cartoons (What's Opera Doc?) or much of any pop music that came out after the invention of Autotune, I'm totally lost. I have mad respect for Jazz Musicians and I recognize the foundational bits of the genre that were layered into the building blocks of Rock n' Roll, but if you go much beyond Django Reinhardt (Which I picked up from reading Harlan Ellison) or Chic Corea or The Yellowjackets, you will not find very deep waters. And Classical Fans, I cannot match the unbridled, mouth-frothing, bite the head off a bat, utter bugfuckedness (It's an Ellison word. You could look it up.) of you Classical Music Fans.

Like I said, I know a lot and I thought I might try an experiment of sorts. I wondered if I could pick at least 10 songs from every year starting at 1951, the year that the guitar became all unclean and fuzzy. Some years are longer than 10 songs but all are at least that long. These are just songs that I like, and the list is by no means complete (especially when we get to the 70's and 80's) and these aren't albums... we're talking singles here. Think of this as a cool rock radio station or a real juggernaut of a jukebox organized by the decade.

This first list is a mix of Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Jump Blues, and Up-Tempo Country  all of which I feel could fall neatly into the infinite mixtape of Rock n' Roll.

1. Pinetop's Boogie Woogie by Clarence "Pinetop" Smith, 1929.

2. Rhythm Is Our Business by Jimmy Lunceford, 1935.

3. Old Joe's Hittin' the Jug by Stuff Smith and the Onyx Club Boys, 1936.

4. Do You Wanna Jump, Children? by Count Basie, 1941.

5. Rock Me by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, 1938.

6. Caledonia (Caledonia Boogie) by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, 1945.

*7. That's All Right Mama by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, 1949.

8. Ravin' At The Haven by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, 1947.

9. Boogie Chillin by John Lee Hooker, 1948.

10. Saturday Night Fish Fry by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, 1949.

11. The Fat Man by Fats Domino, 1949.

12. Boogie at Midnight by Roy Brown, 1949.

13. Pony Express by Freddie Mitchell, 1949.

14. Hot Rod Race by Arkie Shibley, 1950.

15. Boogie In The Park by Joe Hill Louis, 1950.

16. Sugar Lump by Joe Liggins and His Honeydrippers, 1945.

17. R.M. Blues by Roy Milton and His Solid Senders, 1945.

18. The Honeydripper by Joe Liggins and His Honeydrippers, 1945.

19. Good Rockin' Tonight by Roy Brown with Bob Ogden and His Orchestra, 1947.

20. Rock It For Me by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb and His Orchestra, 1938.

21. Jim Jackson's Kansas City Blues by Jim Jackson, 1927.

*That's All Right Mama will crop up later in the timeline but for now It will have the honor of being RCA's first RnB record issued on the new 45 rpm format.

Rock n' Roll Timeline : The Prelude 1927-1950

The Persistence of Listen (Prologue to Dan's Rock 'n Roll Timeline)

As a prologue of sorts, ("Prologue to what?" I hear you ask.) (We'll get there.) I thought I might do a quickie list of important dates for American Pop Music. There are certain moments where the technology changes radically, or something happens where the performers change the way we listen to and appreciate the music. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it is a good place to dip your toes in.

1931 The Rickenbacker “Frying Pan” 

Created by George Beauchamp and made by Rickenbacker Electro, this is widely considered to be the first electric guitar. It was generally played as a lap steel but it wasn't a giant leap from this configuration to what came next.

1941 Les Paul’s “Log” 

Master guitarist Les Paul persuaded Epiphone to let him tinker around in their workshop on Sundays while production was shut down. The result was the first solid body electric guitar.

1948 The Fender Broadcaster (Telecaster) 

Leo Fender created a streamlined solid body electric guitar that proved popular enough to become the industry standard. The Telecaster helped to blur the lines between Blues, Jazz, R&B, Gospel and Country, and it's still popular today.

1948 Columbia Records introduces the first long-playing microgroove record. 

Spinning at 33 1/3 rpm, this bad boy allowed for a whopping 23 minutes of recorded sound per side. The first disc featuring the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, sounded the death-knell for its 78 rpm predecessors which only allowed for around 5 recorded minutes per side.

1949 RCA Victor introduces the 7” Vinyl disc with a big hole in the middle of it. 

45 rpm records were RCA Victor’s attempt to compete with Columbia Record’s new 33 1/3 technology. Even though the 45 rpm “singles” stuck around for a long while by pandering to the teenage market that craved, “just the single”, and they were the perfect size for the new jukeboxes, RCA Victor had to start producing 33 1/3 LPs by 1958 just to stay competitive.

1950 Here comes the Sun

Sam Phillips opens the Memphis Recording Service which would later become Sun Records. Sun Records would go on to record... well pretty much everybody.

1951 The Jukebox for the masses.

The JP Seeburg Company releases the first jukeboxes to use the new 45 rpm vinyl “singles”. The jukebox would eventually migrate everywhere people gathered, from dive-bars to Diners it would become an essential part of American culture for decades.

1951 Alan Freed’s Moondog Show. 

Cleveland radio D.J. Alan Freed popularizes the term rock ‘n roll to describe the mix of up-tempo Jazz, Jump Blues, R&B and Western Swing featured on his show.

1952 The Moondog Coronation Ball 

The first Moondog Coronation Ball, organized by Alan Freed, is held at the Cleveland Arena. It’s generally considered to be the first large scale rock concert.

1954 That's All Right

Elvis Presley records a cover of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” while screwing around between recording takes at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records recording studio. The combination of a pretty white boy singing African American Jump Blues and R&B resulted in a fiery apocalypse that changed music forever.

1959 The founding of Motown Records 

Detroit Michigan entrepreneur Barry Gordy Jr. signs an unknown doo-wop group called The Matadors to his new Tamla Records label. Later that year Gordy would change the label’s name to Motown and the band in question fronted by the legendary Smokey Robinson would change its name to The Miracles and the rest is history carved deeply into the foundational underpinnings of the American Pop Music scene.

1962 The Infinite Mixtape is born.

Phillips releases the Compact Cassette Tape to European audiences at The Berlin Radio Show. The new invention was released in The United States the following year. Cassette tapes allowed the listener to record their own songs in whatever order they liked and were extremely portable, allowing you to take your music anywhere

1964 The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. 

The Beatles made their American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing a three-song set (All My Loving, Till There Was You and She Loves You) followed by a two song encore later in the show (I Saw Her Standing There and I Want To Hold Your Hand.) This program was viewed by a record-breaking 73 million viewers, and it simultaneously launched Beatlemania in the United States and kicked in the doors for the “British Invasion” of American pop music.

1965 Dylan Plugs In

At The Newport Folk Festival, folk music’s poet laureate plugged in an electric guitar and launched into a blistering rendition of "Maggie’s Farm", dragging the insular folk music scene kicking and screaming into the broader realms of American pop music.

1979 Sony introduces the Walkman. 

Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka set a challenge to his engineering team to design a headphone friendly audio player so he could listen to music on long flights. The result was the Sony Walkman which was small, lightweight and extremely portable. The Walkman branding and structural paradigm lasted through the shift to Compact Disc and well into the digital age.

 

1981 MTV 

Debuting with the prophetically titled “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles, MTV followed a top 40 radio format that would lead to a shift in how the world listened to music and a radical change in how bands were promoted.

1984 The Compact Disc ruins everything.

Bruce Springsteen’s "Born In the USA" is the first album released in the United States on Sony and Phillips’ Compact Disc technology. While there were earlier releases in Japan, the release of this album signaled a paradigm shift in the way we listen to music in the United States. And, we got to catch up with the rest of the world.

 

1999 The Birth of Napster (while we're on the subject of the paradigm shift)

Created by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, Napster allowed users to share electronic copies of music stored on their personal computers over the internet. Even though their company was shut down by a tsunami of copyright infringement lawsuits, it heralded a major change in technology and the way we listen to music, sounding the death-knell of the American Recording Industry’s corporate system.

2001 The Apple iPod 

Replacing the Sony Walkman as the portable music player of choice, the iPod capitalized on the MP3 sound file format and dominated the market for the next 20 years until Apple’s iPhone became ubiquitous enough to discontinue the line. Today most people listen to music on their portable device of choice.

 

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Inside The Song #2

Still The One by Orleans

What can I say, I like happy up-tempo songs no matter how sugary and schmaltzy they are or how mind-numbingly overplayed they get. (I'm looking at you Walking On Sunshine!) Still The One was written by songwriter Johanna Hall after one of her friends threw down a challenge to write a song about staying together rather than the far more ubiquitous break-up tune. With music in place by her husband and writing partner John Hall, the song was recorded in 1976 by the soft rock hit-squad Orleans. The same group who one year earlier put the world to sleep with their mega hit Dance With Me.

Still The One was released on Orleans' fourth studio album Waking And Dreaming and the single eventually reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The following year country singer Bill Anderson covered it and the song topped out at #11 on the Hot Country Singles chart, proving conclusively that everybody except maybe Randy Bachman likes sugar.

Also in 1977 ABC, then the highest rated broadcaster in the country, used Still The One as its promotional jingle, firmly cementing its place in the brains of every Gen Xer who was ever baby-sat by a television.

Still The One is one of the few soft rock staples that doesn't immediately make you want to stick an icepick in your ears. It still crops up as advertising fodder from time to time, most recently in one of Applebees' 2020 television commercials, and it enjoys lots of air time on classic rock radio. Pop music never did have much in the way of bright, happy, stay together songs and in a post Taylor Swift world, Still The One maintains its status as a refreshing change of pace.

Still The One by Orleans

Still The One by Bill Anderson

Songs For The Neuro Spicy - The Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Overdoing Playlist

It occurred to me that 19 songs is simply not enough for this kind of list, so here's a bunch more to help keep pace with your brain while it's busy outracing Formula 1 cars for a better pole position.

Playlist Table of Contents:

1. Juicebox - The Strokes
2. Big Fig Wasp - King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard
3. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys
4. Uma Thurman - Fall Out Boy
5. Rock 'n Roll - Led Zeppelin
6. A Little Less Conversation (JLX 12" Extended Remix) - Elvis Presley
7. Pressure Drop - Izzy Stradlin and the Ju Ju Hounds
8. Jesus Built My Hotrod - Ministry
9. I Feel For You - Chaka Kahn
10. Wynona's Big Brown Beaver - Primus
11. Train In Vain (Stand By Me) - The Clash
12. Been Caught Stealing - Jane's Addiction
13. Chelsea Dagger - The Fratellis
14. Wake Me Up Before You Go Go - Wham
15. Hazy Shade of Winter - The Bangles
16. Sir Duke - Stevie Wonder
17. Judgement Day - Van Halen
18. Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne
19. Me and Mia - Ted Leo/The Pharmacists
20. Only You and I Know - Dave Mason
21. Gimme Some Lovin' - The Spencer Davis Group
22. Walk The Dinosaur - Was Not Was
23. Head On - The Jesus and Mary Chain

Songs For The Neuro Spicy - The Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Overdoing Mega Manic Mix

 

Songs For The Neuro Spicy - The Manic Playlist

I have a lot of friends who are neuro divergent and I've been asked on multiple occasions if I could come up with a playlist of music to listen to while one is in the manic part of a manic/depression cycle. Not being manic/depressive myself I wasn't sure about that part of the equation, however asking the internet hive mind for their go-to music while they're feeling manic resulted in a lot of up-tempo rockers and those I know. So here's a list for when you're feeling extra peppery. 

Playlist Table of Contents:

1. I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones
2. Let's Go Crazy - Prince
3. I Got You (I Feel Good) - James Brown
4. Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
5. Walkin' On Sunshine - Katrina and The Waves
6. (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding - Elvis Costello
7. Rip It Up - Little Richard
8. The Real Slim Shady - Eminem
9. Welcome To The Jungle - Guns 'n Roses
10. Great Balls of Fire - Jerry Lee Lewis
11. Leave Home - The Chemical Brothers
12. (Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below We're All Gonna Go - Curtis Mayfield
13. I'm Free (Freedom Mix) - The Soup Dragons
14. My Spine Is The Bassline - Shriekback
15. Bulletproof - La Roux
16. Egyptian Shumba - The Tammys
17. Venus Loon - T-Rex
18. Ballroom Blitz - Sweet

Songs For The Neuro Spicy - The Manic Playlist

Inside The Song

Inside The Song #1

-Lido Shuffle by Boz Skaggs

In mid 1968 after finishing the recording of their second album Sailor, singer and guitarist Boz Skaggs left The Steve Miller Band to pursue a solo career. He released the album Boz Skaggs in 1969 for Atlantic Records and when that underperformed he switched labels to Columbia.

Four years and four albums later, Skaggs finally produced a hit single with the song Lowdown from his album, Silk Degrees. But it was the second single, released nearly a year later that finally put Boz Skaggs on the musical map. That song served as the lynchpin that drove Silk Degrees to platinum status five times over.

Written by Skaggs and legendary session musician David Paich, Lido Shuffle was ubiquitous on '70s FM rock radio. Its driving shuffle beat and ear-wormy lyrics made it a great dopey pile of fun and it still gets buckets of airplay on classic rock stations decades later.

David Paich, Jeff Porcaro and David Hungate who anchored Silk Degrees, joined with fellow session players Steve Lukather, Steve Porcaro and Bobby Kimball to form the band Toto in 1977. Skaggs' next two albums, Down Two Then Left and Middle Man both went platinum, cementing his status as a rock legend. However, to date he has never re-captured the magic that made Lido Shuffle one of the great classic rock songs.

Lido Shuffle by Boz Skaggs

The Rotting Corpse of Lester Bangs and the New Rockers

I have this big end cut from a log right outside my back door. It's a leftover from a time long past when northwest forestry consisted of clear-cut logging, re-planting and clearing out the underbrush. A time when few people lost their houses and lives in rampaging out-of-control forest fires, and nobody in my mountain valley got sick from smoke inhalation. The log is a cool reminder that time marches inexorably onwards, and the best of each new generation builds on what the previous one set up for them, and the worst think that they are the first ones to have ever thought their thoughts. 

The log is where I go to smoke and pose like an out of shape Rodin sculpture while I contemplate the philosophical underpinnings of the sum total of life, the universe and everything. Ghosts of people long shuffled off this mortal coil come to visit me here. Some are cool and some are the opposite of that, but all of the ghosts are smart in their own way. I've never tolerated stupid people around me, let alone stupid hallucinatory phantasms. 

Today my visitor is Georges Polti. I really don't get on too well with him. He's 19th Century French which makes him insufferable by default, and I'm a Gen-X rock writer and pop culture critic which makes me twice as unpleasant and annoying. He's interesting to talk to even though I thoroughly disagree with his ideas about drama and story.

Today he's here to throw some shade around and generally pooh-pooh the state of modern rock music, reminding me that musicians only have twelve notes to work with and thus everything has already been done. Music is boring because it has no other choice.

"C'est de la merde!" He sneers at me through a heavy cloud of his malodorous pipe tobacco, redolent of Boudin noir and maybe burning dog hair. I hold up a hand in the universal signal of stop-right-there! He gives me a mildly offended look which may just be resting French face and I press forward with my thought.

"Look, I get it. You were weaned on that poor anonymous schlub that got his ecclesiastical smack-talk about there being nothing new under the sun ganked out from under him by people who wanted every semi-clever thing in that epistle to be attributed to King Solomon. Then you had the bad luck to be raised during an entire century buried in nihilistic whining! So, you're biased right out of the gate."

"And I really don't care that you and all your followers are stuck in an echo chamber of the last original story was created by William Shakespeare. Face it. You're just old and numb and you've lost perspective and empathy. Your idea that there's only thirty-six dramatic situations is dumb, just like the idea that there's only twelve musical notes is ridiculous. You're discounting the most important part of the artistic equation and that's voice."

The ghost of Georges Polti disappears in a huff of tobacco smoke and I'm left wondering if I'm just chiding myself for ignoring two generations of musicians that jump up and down on the shoulders of the giants that came before them, beating dead men at their own game. I stopped listening to the radio in 2018 because I thought there was nothing interesting to listen to anymore. I was wrong.

The kids get it, you see. Whether intuitively or through exhaustive study, the kids steadfastly refuse to trap themselves in mental oubliettes that result in things like Top 40 stations and Classic Rock radio. The new generations of rock musicians know the rules and they know how and when to break them.

Rock 'n Roll has always been a hybrid mix of everything. Like any form of art we either build on what has come before and combine the foundational blocks to create something new, or we give up and decide we like what we like and we refuse anything new, slipping into a repeating meme of the rotting corpse of Lester Bangs screaming, "Rock music used to be good!"

The ten bands on this playlist are my personal "suce-le" to the ghost of Georges Polti and his reductionist bullshit. From Blackberry Smoke who are the logical successors to and sometimes reincarnation of The Allman Brothers Band to Greta Van Fleet who regularly channels the voice of Robert Plant circa 1972, to The Interrupters who owe a karmic debt to Save Ferris and The Mighty Mighty BossTones, they all stand on the shoulders of giants and we are the better for it because these kids get it! They understand that Rock n' Roll will never die, it'll just change it up a little and keep on groovin'. The end result is magnificent and a fine reminder that the best part of life is listening to the new voices. 

Playlist Table of Contents:

1. Three Chords - Goodbye June
2. Highway Tune - Greta Van Fleet
3. Shakin' Hands With the Holy Ghost - Blackberry Smoke
4. Stone - Whiskey Myers
5. Watch Your Six - Sleeping Faceless
6. She's Kerosene - The Interrupters
7. I Am The Fire - Halestorm
8. Gasoline - Kicking Harold
9. Rolling 7s - Dirty Honey
10. Sweet Mountain River - Monster Truck

The New Rockers Playlist