"If all you got to live for is what you left behind / Get yourself a powder charge and seal that silver mine."
"Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo"

Yeah, I suppose I'm an undying Deadhead, even as I invoke them to remind us that the show must go on. Face it: so much great music being produced now, and the last decade had its share of marvels. Who but a stuck-in-the-Woodstock-mud hippie or a Classic Rock Meathead could not to realize that?

Spend some hours listening to the delectable musical landscapes of tangled emotions and release which grace Tucson's 92.9 the Mountain...at http://www.929themountain.com/main.html...or in between their Maoist political screeds, check out the musical selections from 91.3 KXCI community radio...or anything from the list below. Then check your pulse if you still feel that this batch doesn't match some of the best pop music produced in previous decades. Any of them leave "Stairway to Heaven" in the shade (since I'll take nuanced emotion and human insight over Tolkienesque bombast and a galvanic guitar solo any day).

* "If I Ain't Got You" - Alicia Keys

While it ain't got the endless raging signification of "Like a Rolling Stone" or the slab-of-soul-delivered-on-a-platter of "Purple Rain," this little ditty by the Hell's Kitchen prodigy nee Alicia Augello-Cook nails my prize for best song of this decade. More than that, it's one of the most moving pop songs of any era. "What's not to like?" - as Dylan himself puts it. Meanwhile renegade Texan philosopher Dr. Kenneth Smith gripes that, "One has to explain to men, as if they were children, what intrinsic and transcendent values would even mean. Twenty minutes later they have forgotten." Alicia Keys reminds men and women alike of the meaning of what really matters (without the condescension), in world befouled by self-aggrandizing piratical sociopaths (Bernard Madoff, anyone?) and other forms of scum, villainy, and legions of misguided lost souls. Just when you thought the halcyon days of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" would never be repeated, she proves that yes, Virginia, a contemporary musician can combine artistic greatness, epic sweep and mass appeal....in other words, a great song with great popular success to match.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju8Hr50Ckwk


* "When the Stars Go Blue" - The Corrs and Bono

This one, a cover of an otherwise untranscendent tune by Ryan Adams, is the best thing either these Irish lassies or lad will ever do....which is really saying something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV_dbCF1jOA


* "Wake Up" - Arcade Fire with David Bowie

Multi-instrumentalist preppy Canucks with an aging but (in this case at least) still vital Thin White Duke. A moving rumination on impermanence, death and the bittersweet cost of survival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wEBmLht5g


* "Phantom Limb" - The Shins

Who knows what they're even singing about? And who cares, with a tune this melodically luscious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkITsv3Nk6M


* Nick Luca - "Sick of Love"

A jolt of pure vitality and integrity from Luca: former fixture of the a Tucson music scene, Wavelabs Studios maven and touring partner of X's John Doe and desert Cow Punk eclecticist Howe Gelb. Blows away 99% of anything on the radio.


* "Game of Love" - Santana featuring Michelle Branch

Mere pop music, my ass. So was Fleetwood Mac. This tune not only takes off...it goes somewhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yoGTVzgow8


* Jenny Owen Youngs - "Coyote"

When since Paul Westerberg's irreplaceable Replacements has a vocalist/lyricist dug so deep into emotional ambivalence and demanded such no bullshit insistence on authenticity? "One two three, I hate me / There's no one else who I know how to be / Four five six, oh your body makes me sick / Don't take it away from me just yet."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysfVszt3maM


* "I Met a Girl" - Wheat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEeJ_xWid0


* "Island in the Sun" - Wheezer

An idyllic daydream...a 3 minute plus non-narcotic shot of bliss...drifting in the zone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnAy_ba-3Pg


* "Never Let You Go" - Third Eye Blind

I suppose that this one has to count as a guilty pleasure, because of this band's sheer commercial appeal and complete lack of avant-garde cachet. But screw that, this song releases so many endorphins in me...(even if it's not quite "You Get What You Give")...that I'd have to harken back to the irresistible joys of the 70s for comparison, like Manfredd Mann's Earth Band's version of Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light" or "Band on the Run."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwYEvz5W1gU


* "You Never Know" - Wilco

Dear Mick and Keith: How many decades since you wrote a number this damn good?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSQjcAxbR0


* "Anywhere You Go" - Shawn Colvin

Speaking of zero avant-garde credentials, my favorite musician of the 90s didn't do much in the 00s. This one is a wonder, however: A musical zen koan. "Just chop wood and carry water."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5YkeZMYOF4


* "Right as Rain" - Adele

Holy crap, can she sing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5DMmOLkLQI


* "Better in Time" - Leona Lewis

Yes, Simon Cowell is a shameless schlockmeister. Fat chance though that any of his minions on American Idol could match this luscious chanteuse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrNoDUblAtE


* "Mr. Brightside" - The Killers

Fat chance also that any new band has touched the Replacements for their previously mentioned virtues. These sexually ambiguous Mormons come close, though. The Hold Steady? As if.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGdGFtwCNBE


* Tegan and Sara - "When You Were Mine"

I better shut up before I get too effusive in my praise...this paired down masterpiece deserves plenty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFOa5qnpPQk


* Snow Patrol - "You're All I Have"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8AQPGKcZOk


* Counting Crows with Vanessa Carlton - "Big Yellow Taxi"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtJPs8IDgU

The shoulders of giants...

As I implied in my first post, I'm not going to expend energy listing every single founding father of rock and roll. Here are a few indelible performances by a few of the best, however...


Woody Guthrie

"This land is your land"



"At my window sad and lonely"
- Billy Bragg & Wilco, from recovered lost lyrics by Woody Guthrie





Robert Johnson

"Crossroads"





Louis Jordan

"Jumpin' At The Jubilee"


"Caldonia"




Ray Charles
- The man who was the bridge between r & b, soul and rock and roll - at his raucous best.
"Mess Around"






Elvis Presley
- He's too obvious as the catalyst for the cultural earthquake that was rock and roll for me to list his classic early work. Below you'll find my favorite song by the truck driver from Tupelo who shares my birthday...

"Suspicious Minds"





Fats Domino

"Ain't that a shame"

The rock canon...yes, damn it, the canon

As if the internet and the offline world it intersects needs another fan-boy favorite music blog. Well that's not what this is, or at least it's not its intent.

Here's the deal: anybody with ears to listen and eyes to see will notice that we live in the midst of a situation of overwhelming musical choices and skull-shattering complexity...and precious little quality. So who the hell am I as a self-appointed "music maven" to help guide my readers to the holy grail of quality music? Good question, and one I've answered before over at:



http://tsmintonblog.blogspot.com/



or to be more precise:

"How to get thousands of hours of free (and legal) music online, with free record guides to boot"
http://tsmintonblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/soundz-t.html

My goal with this new sub-blog of T.S. Minton is to help canonize work which thoughtful critics and astute listeners have recognized and touted over the previous decades of popular music history. Some great work has gotten lost amid the cacophony. My job is to point out music which you might like too, even if you're unaware of it. I'm not here to evangelize for genres I know little about and don't dig much (classical, metal, most country, rap, techno etc. etc.). And I'm not out to become an anal-retentively comprehensive source for every hiccup of rock history.

Instead, I want to showcase You Tube videos of music that is so indescribably hot shit; so melodic and well-crafted and moving; so exciting and protean that if you didn't know about it before this blog, you'll wonder how you lived without it. Of course it will help if we have a few common denominators in terms of taste. If you poke around critic Robert Christgau's A+ list...

http://robertchristgau.com/get_gl.php?g=A%2B

and agree with most of the choices you're familiar with, then this blog will probably be of some use to you. In most cases I won't waste anybody's time with anything less than what I consider an A+ piece of music. You of course may disagree with my individual choices, but here are my standards: a song that is the best of its genre by a superior creator; a mini-masterpiece that you can't get enough of and that enriches you on each re-listening; the musical equivalent of what William Faulkner was getting at when he demanded that literature deal only with "the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."

Or else I'll point to music so ecstactically joyous that you'll say, "Who gives a shit about critical standards!?!" (Ever figure out what the lyrics to "Jet" by Paul McCartney and Wings mean? Ever care?)

Now let's be clear that I have a few nitpicking points I'll pick with Christgau in future posts, and I don't expect every reader to agree with my choices. I'll count myself a success if I can educate a few readers on a bit on the music that critics like Christgau, for all his considerable pretentions and oft-times wrongheadedness, has turned me on to over the years. In other words, if you didn't know about it before and it becomes an important part of your life, then I'm helping to pass it forward. Please do the same.

Bruce Springsteen - "Radio Nowhere"
- in which Brucie Boy expresses some similar sentiments (regarding the surfeit of choices and dearth of quality)...




I was tryin' to find my way home
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite
Crushin' the last lone American night

This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?

I was spinnin' 'round a dead dial
Just another lost number in a file
Dancin' down a dark hole
Just searchin' for a world with some soul

This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?

I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm
I just want to hear some rhythm

I want a thousand guitars
I want pounding drums
I want a million different voices speaking in tongues

This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?

[Instrumental]

I was driving through the misty rain
Yeah searchin' for a mystery train
Boppin' through the wild blue
Tryin' to make a connection with you

This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?

I just want to feel some rhythm
I just want to feel some rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm
I just want to feel your rhythm