Vez's 20 Songs To Live By

[El Vez]

Twenty great songs that have enriched and, in one way or another, helped define my life.

1. Dyin' All Young, Chuck Prophet
Album: The Hurting Business

The guitar great from Green on Red has carved out a pretty dang great solo career for himself. No Other Love is maybe just a shade better record but this song, a mother's lament over a son that overdosed, is earth shattering and deserves to live forever.

2. Ride 'Em Jewboy, Kinky Friedman
Album: Sold American

The Kinkster maybe our last great rascal but this song will floor anyone expecting any kind of winking, politically incorrect novelty. A weird, haunting Holocaust ballad that defies description and deserves comparison to With God On Our Side and Stephen Foster's Hard Times.

3. Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler), Marvin Gaye
Album: What's Going On?

For me, this was Motown's high water mark featuring my all time fave Motown artist. Bitter, poetic and bursting with more soul than most people will ever fathom, this is one of the most eloquent and piercing protest songs ever written.

4. I'll Never Tell, Nicholas Brendon & Emma Caulfield (Buffy's Xander Harris & Anya Jenkins)

Joss Whedon's Once More, With Feeling is such an inspired musical from top to bottom (hell, even I dig it and I hate musicals!) but this song really stands out in large part to how well the two actors nail their parts. Written and performed in the style of a bubbly Astaire/Rogers tune, this is a deceptively dark song about how terrified both characters are of their upcoming marriage. And how can you not love a song that features the line "His penis got diseases from a Chumash tribe."

5. My Country, Randy Newman
Album: Bad Love

In my darker moments, I fear that this song will become my life.

6. Avalon Blues, Mississippi John Hurt
Album: The Complete 1928 Okeh Recordings

Hurt had the most soothing and gentle voice and a guitar style that was a work of art. "Avalon's my hometown/Always on my mind" is pure, undistilled homesickness and it's hard not to cry when you hear him sing those words.

7. Runaway, Del Shannon

Listening to the oldies stations as a kid when I'd go on trips with my parents, this song would always make the hair on the back of my neck stand up and send chills through me. Even then, I had this sense that there was something just a little extra special about Runaway and it can still spook me out whenever I hear it. An unforgettable song.

8. Madame George, Van Morrison
Album: Astral Weeks

They need to figure out a way to hang this at the Smithsonian.

9. Susan's Dream, Kurt Weill (as sung by umpteen different female vocalists that are banished in the Easy Listening ghetto with Englebert Humperdink)

Usually when I find myself paying attention to how a song is crafted, it means that I don't like the song that much and I'm just trying to keep from getting bored but with this one I was in awe of how perfect every single line and note of it in a way that I've never heard in another song.

10. 4th of July, Dave Alvin
Album: Out In California (it's also on Museum of The Heart and King of California, but this is my fave)

This song played a big, big part in snapping me out of a crushing depression so I have an eternal soft spot for it.

[El Vez]

11. That's How I Got To Memphis, Tom T. Hall
Album: The Ballad of Forty Bucks

Tom T. might just be my favorite country songwriter and this is one of his coolest, most perverse songs.

12. Memphis, Tennessee, Chuck Berry
Album: Any Chuck best-of worth a damn

Poetry.

13. You Belong To Me, Jo Stafford
Album: Again, any halfway decent compilation

I love this song and Stafford is unjustly forgotten today. A great voice and an unbeatable song.

14. The Sins of Memphisto, John Prine
Album: The Missing Years

Wanna know why Prine is 100x better than all the other aging folkies put together and then cubed? A dipshit like Arlo couldn't even fathom writing something this weird and wonderful and sad and funny.

15. A Film Called (Pimp), Common
Album: Water For Chocolate

Funniest hip hop song ever.

16. No Time To Cry, Iris DeMent
Album: My Life

Dave Alvin and Merle Haggard think this is as good a song as any written in the past sixteen years. You can't get any more bona fide than that.

17. 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, Richard Thompson
Album: Rumour & Sigh

A heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

18. The Part You Throw Away, Tom Waits
Album: Blood Money

Very underrated gem from one of the great man's best records.

19. Sunny Afternoon, The Kinks
Album: Face To Face

Still my favorite thing that Ray Davies has ever done.

20. Kinder Murder, Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Album: Brutal Youth

A piledriver of a song and a major thrill to hear him play it live.

[Mike Boom]

Awesome El Vez.
Ive been playing a lot of Chuck Berry lately - you forget just how he wrote the book and "Memphis Tennessee" is exhibit one.

"1952 Vincent..." is just such a beautiful song, beautiful, sad and funny all at the same time and when he sings

"But he smiled to see her cry
And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride"
and
"And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride"

grown men all over the world shed a tear into their beers.

"Madame George" is just such so magical and mystical, in a very very real street way. You cant help wondering what the fuck exactly is going on in this song - is she a he? What are the cops busting the place for? What does she throw out the window? Their is an air of hookers drugs and drag and then it all dissolves into that long goodbye and it doesnt even matter what its all about anymore and you just get carried away on its sweet sad ride.Transcendent.

"Sunny Afternoon" is what awaits every and any man that ever has been or will be left by his girl - sitting in the backyard on a sun lounger surrounded by empty beer cans, the Kinks on the stereo , and piles of dishes in the sink, thinking , lifes not sooo bad despite it all , fuck it , and ALMOST believing it ,at least for a little while.