35. “Bombtrack" by Rage Against the Machine

Continuing the theme of first songs on first albums as mission statements: Rage Against the Machine gave us an ironic take on this with “Bombtrack.”

Rage Against the Machine made three albums of original music, spanning from 1992 to 1999. In that seven-year period, the sound of the band evolved very little, sticking with the heavy pentatonic-based riffing, beat-boxing whammy pedal solos, and ever-frantic scream-rap being spit from the ready mouth of Zach de la Rocha. So it's little surprise that “Bombtrack” serves as an excellent mission statement for the band. It “established" a template only in the sense that the template changed essentially zero through every song in the band’s discography.

This could be a negative if their formula didn’t have the benefit of some of the most imaginative heavy riffs devised for an electric guitar. The songs were a series of riffs, each building to an incisive mantra before shifting gears into the next riff section. The dramatic advantage of this style shows the line between politics and performance and the eerie symbiosis they have. It turns out that heavy, aggressive metal riffs repeated on a long building loop to a shrieking climax mirrors the patterns of some of the most manipulative of political speaking practices. And so as the guitars, bass, and drum repeat each breathtaking musical idea, de la Rocha has a prime opportunity to infect them with his incessant sloganeering, equally on repeat. The drama of these songs is in how long a segment can repeat before changing, what that change will be (inevitably awesome), and what the new political rant will be to overlay it and ride the section out to peak fury.

Also, it wasn’t an issue that their style barely changed, because the dudes who got into this music the most were/are not really into the “self reinvention” idea so much as they are into the idea that they are the ones who are perpetually right in a world of decadence and compromise.

Paul Ryan is on record as a fan of Rage Against the Machine.

The band also pioneered the concept of joining a major conglomerate entity for the purpose of commandeering the wide reach of its media apparatus, with the goal of spreading a supposedly positive populist utopian philosophy through the spitting of aggressive bile about the society as-is, wholly absent-minded of the practicality of all people being able to fit happily into the utopian paradigm. In their day, they were heavily criticized by their most dedicated purists for this embrace of establishment infrastructure. Amongst those this concept used to most harshly offend, it has since found much more emphatic acceptance.

34. "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen

This is the only Queen song you will find on this list. I have listened to all their classic 1970s albums, and sure I've appreciated them. The guitar work, especially the classical-inspired compositions, are admirable. There are just too many sections of standard '70s riffing with too little personality for my breath to be taken away, no matter how fantastic a vocalist Freddie Mercury was. 

It seems cruel to say this, because clearly much work went into the many parts and arrangements of Queen songs, but “Bohemian Rhapsody” seems to be the only song they really, really, really sat down and focused on. In this peak time of epic rock songs, it feels like they realized they needed to come up with their signature epic song or risk being disregarded by every ‘70s dude who would come to inspire the characters of Dazed and Confused. Ironically the title of that film was taken from a Led Zeppelin song, and Led Zeppelin stood out as an a-typical example of ‘70s rock, while the ethos of the film Dazed and Confused is a low-risk, Deep Purple-style music to loaf around to on a smoke-stained shag carpet. It’s like how Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band sounds very little like the prototypical psychedelic album, while something like Piper at the Gates of Dawn is far more conforming and, in my vicious opinion, much more dated as a result. This paragraph has spawned me many enemies. I take pride in it.

But back to this song!

I needed Wayne’s World to introduce it to me as a kid. Thank you, Wayne’s World, for so many things, but especially this. (Wayne’s World is the odd Sgt. Peppers to the conforming Dazed and Confused, if I can stick that knife in one more time.) 

The attention and care given to this song is just so plain on every level. The lyrics are clear and instantly memorable. In many Queen songs preceding this, the vocals are rushed, tough to discern, and ultimately lost as part of the memory’s foreground. The singing melodies here are so much like other Queen songs but finally finished to exquisite resolution. There are passages of imagination and daring that are wholly unique among all songs that came before - the a cappella opening, that whole middle wildness, the guitar solo, the hard rock ending...

The opening is a deceptive concoction of perfectly formed lyrics dictating unique melodies almost free of regular meter. The lyrics also lend themselves to the soft style of singing them. The use of the first word “is” allows the singers to open their mouths and begin with the softest of vowel sounds, so that the music seems to just start as a small spring from out of darkness. The words emanate from there, curling into the air with sound and melody complimenting excellently, but leaving plenty oxygen left to breathe. It took such effort to make it seem so effortless.

The middle phantasmogorical section is such boggling magic that I don’t even feel like barking about it. When I try to imagine where things like this come from, I remind myself that these guys were professional musicians with nothing to do but devote every last thought to these little songs, in the name of prolonging their livelihood. Their creative radars were constantly on and probing the fabric of existence for cues to the next revelation.

The guitar solo by Brian May is of exceptional lyricism. It is that type of brilliant musicianship that produces an indelible and virtuosic performance but is also very basically hummable by the folks who hear it on the radio. If he had descended much deeper into flurries and abstractions, it would have been beyond regular humans’ abilities to reproduce; if he had strayed into more simplified phrasing, it would have become a pandering embarrassment. Oh, and this whole solo also leaps forth as the instrumental extension of the most pained lyrics of this whole pained song: “Sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.” Again, sound and sense unbelievably married.

The hard rock ending may be mistakenly described as riffing simply because the distorted guitar plays over a standard ‘70s head-banging beat. But a riff tends to be a repeated idea. The heavy guitar climax of “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a single, non-repeating melody that reaches greater and greater orchestrated peaks until collapsing back into the tearful ending. Showing there was ultimate love and focus given to this song, even the last note is indelible, a soft gong crashing into a wash of analogue silence.

There are hidden great moments in this song that are less celebrated. To start the second verse, the drums and vocals punch in on the same beat. I get chills from the understated beat, formed off the simple ride cymbal and a standard kick/snare rock pattern, the drums excellently mic’d for a very subtle studio echo. The pacing of the song and the piano progression free this drum beat to be only the little it needs to be and know it is still cool. I haven't even discussed the verses themselves, but they're also so great.

I may be a blatant “greatest hits” cherry picker for Queen, but my seemingly selective love is deep and personal. I’ll go to the grave with this song one of the highlights of this mortal coil.

33. "Blew" by Nirvana

The first song on a first album has a tendency to be a mission statement. 

The Beatles led off with "I Saw Her Standing There" and just continued creating hits from there. 

Nirvana stormed in with "Blew," a de-tuned rumbler of some kind of hard rock, and things only got weirder. The solo sucks enough that you maybe think, "I want to listen to a whole album of this?" And the solo truly is saying, "You want to listen to a whole album of this?"

The really funny thing about "terrible" Kurt Cobain guitar solos is that he reproduced them note-perfect live. He composed those slop-bags of sounds, and must have rehearsed them devotedly.

32. "Black Water" by The Doobie Brothers

This was not supposed to be the Doobie Brothers' greatest hit. The lead singer on the song was not their usual lead singer Tom Johnston; instead it was the guitarist and secondary vocalist Patrick Simmons, who wrote the song on a lark after their producer dug the fantastic fingerstyle guitar lick that would ultimately anchor the song. It was buried as a B-side to what was supposed to be their hit single off their 1974 album. The single bombed, as did the following single. The Doobie future looked dim. They may have been exiled back to Northern California, playing perpetual manchild rock at the Hell's Angels parties they had sauntered out of.

Then the goddamndest thing happened. Far from Northern California, all the way on the other edge of our massive, flawed country, in Roanoke, Virginia, site of the European colonial settlement that vanished into thin air, there was a radio station. It just so happened that near this radio station, in those storied coastal environs, was a river called the Blackwater. And this radio station began playing "Black Water" off the new Doobie Brothers album based purely on this coincidence. The song isn't even about the Blackwater river; the Mississippi River is clearly stated in the first verse. Based on this chance airplay, requests for the song in this one region spiked dramatically, which led Warner Bros. to throw up a half-court shot at the buzzer and release this song as a new single, just to see what the hell these New Roanokeans had in terms of judgement that their doomed colonial predecessors lacked. And it caught on in Minneapolis. From that auspicious victory, it just took over music in 1975, the year of Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Month Python and the Holy Grail. It peaked that spring at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

I know the 1970s had Watergate, but the burying of "Black Water" is an underrated coverup from the time. But unlike nefarious election dirty tricks, great music will always find the light of day.

What didn't they think was good enough about this song? The sublime finger-strummed guitar lick that burrows into your long-term memory on a single hearing? The invigorating harmonies in the choruses? The positively life-affirming counterpoint of the famous a cappella ending? What failed to please them?? I cannot refuse this song. When it plays in my presence, it has the floor. I try to sing all the counterpoint vocal parts at the same time, every time, even though this is idiotic. 

Maybe I'm just partisan because I come from Minneapolis, a market apparently ripe for the taking by this superb recording. We are the first city of the Mississippi River, so we maybe swell with a little pride hearing the Huck Finn-inspired references to Our river. I wasn't really paying attention typing that last bit because I was listening to that guitar lick in my head again.

31. "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen" by Santana

I close the first month of this challenge with a song in the Great Song Pantheon.

Say, did you know that "Black Magic Woman" was actually written and first recorded by Fleetwood Mac? Their song only lacks the two key features that make the Santana song iconic: Santana's guitar, obviously, and the percussion section. It's amazing how a song can change by just executing it all wrong.

Santana took this smarmy "Latin" number by an English pop group and turned it into one of the coolest songs we have produced as a culture.

I'm really at a loss talking about the guitar. I play guitar, but I am very limited. In my experience, I write music (I should say wrote because I haven't written a song in 10 years), work super hard on the changes, the singing melodies, lyrics, percussion... and then I have to beg competent guitarists to collaborate with me and make it whole.

So how can I comment on the guitar work of Carlos Santana? I'll just say he covers a lot of ground in a three-minute song. He brings us into this song with allure, arrives at the signature opening melody, and then is content just to embellish around the verses, before he flies off on the fantastic solo. (There are no choruses in this song! Just the intro, three smokey verses, and the dynamic middle instrumental, with the extended "Gypsy Queen" jam to end. That gets me geeking out.) Every note is expertly fluid and interesting far beyond being finger gymnastics.

What truly hit me was the conga. The conga player's name is Michael Carabello. When I was young, his work on the this song, especially the "Gypsy Queen" section, legitimized this instrument for me as not just a drum but a study. I picture the Woodstock footage of this band, ecstatic, sweating, eyes closed, these thin young boys with billowing hair. I hear those congas, that life force, the blurred hands popping the skins awake. What fun music is to play... just the single definition of fun. I don't look down on non-musicians, but I honestly can say you don't know what you're missing if you've never been able to release in song with a group of like-minded individuals. And to be lucky enough to be able to participate in a group like Santana back in the original flush of genius... What certain, unknowable fun.