96. "Fire" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience

I grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota. When I was in 6th grade, elder of my grade school, I remember the day we were all crowded into the gym for a very stern but bright talking-to by a man in a green military jacket. He had a few guys with him wearing pointy sunglasses and these wild brown-colored camouflage suits and helmets that I'd never seen before on our army guys. I was already pretty news-curious, and I had a basic inkling that my country was going to war against a man named Saddam Hussein. 

The war was covered in a groundbreaking way by the news, with cockpit cams showing our gun ships ripping through the feeble Iraqi forces every night during supper. The night that reports came in of an Iraqi missile striking one of our military bunkers and killing a number of our troops, I actually felt good about it. I thought the Iraqis, after getting beaten so badly, finally got to score some points against us (I was in 6th grade). 

Those guys in brown camouflage suits were out on the playground at recess after the gym speech, passing out samples of MREs, heavily favoring the chocolate. I had no inkling that as a 36-year-old father, my current president would be firing missiles into Syria based on the abominable chain of events touched off by these men. They were just patient, smiling army guys with invisible eyes handing out bitter chocolate to my classmates.

This is the kind of place North Dakota was and still is. 

Just a few years later, that war was "won," and I was in middle school. Every morning, in home room, my school forced us to watch a morning "kids" news show called Channel One. Channel One itself was pretty innocuous (it was the first gig of Lisa Ling). But we weren't just watching Channel One. The news program was intercut with a full spate of commercials, just the kind of free market madness you'd expect from my simple, conservative town of origin. They were heavy-weight consumerist commercials too, for things as obvious as Oxy acne pads to things as absolutely wacko as new cars. We had car commercials piped into us in our middle school home rooms.

One morning during Channel One, a brand-new car commercial made its debut. The marketers really wanted us teens to feel the excitement of their product, so they set their slick footage of a car speeding along a deserted road to a fast, thrilling rock song that instantly filled my soul with the light of the very cosmos itself. The car absolutely vaporized from my sight. I had never heard the song before. I had no idea it was "Fire" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I didn't know who Jimi Hendrix was.

All I knew was that this song was dazzling almost 100% because of its superhuman drumming. These were drums of a kind of high-flying power I'd never conceived of before. They carried the verses entirely. The guitar and bass only snuck in with a three-note punch once a measure, then just got the hell out of the way for this knotted thicket of snare and kick drum to snarl out over everything. In the chorus, everything just exploded together, and I was in love with the whole thing. But even here, it was really the drummer's song, with fill after fill after hyper fill cartwheeling between the changes.

I was absolutely lost in this song. Things in my brain were actively being rewired for life.

Then something snapped me out of the trance.

Some kid a few rows over was... drumming - on his desk - to the song. Not tapping absently. He was competently mirroring the drum part on the commercial. Unconsciously. Involuntarily. Effortlessly. With just his fingers there on his desk. It was the coolest thing I'd ever beheld.

"I will be this kid," I decided that instant. My hands had never touched any instrument but a clarinet, but I was a drummer now.

There will be plenty of future opportunities for me to talk about Jimi Hendrix, his musicianship, his songcraft, his unique story, and the talents of his bandmates.

For now, I wanted to tell the story about how my conservative hometown messed up, brought me "Fire," and helped me love the drums.

95. "Finger Bib" by Aphex Twin

There are many, many, many different ways you can go surveying the multifarious creations of one-man aural juggernaut Aphex Twin. You can go as abstract, ambient, aggressive, or tuneful as you want. All you need is time. Just press play. 

As for my favorite thing I've heard from this electro-Mahler, I am comfortable saying "Finger Bib."

It's not as challenging as the ambient works, not as edgy as the buzzsaw Come to Daddy period. Instead it's about as "pop" as you can get out of Aphex Twin, with honest, finished melodies in a cheeky pentatonic scale. The meter breaks up as the piece develops but doesn't fly too far out there, and it all gives way back to the happy main theme anyway. It's far less beat heavy than many Aphex Twin pieces, which is usually kind of a calling card, but I could care less.

Of all the excellent sounds deployed, the intensely oscillating sound of the lead synth is the real brain smiler here. There is so much innocence in its sound quality to go along with the airiness of the melody's quick phrasing. Also listen to the dissonances in the accompanying chord pattern, putting even his most accessible stuff off-kilter.

Of the hours of worthy challenges Aphex Twin has painstakingly designed over a distinctive career, this little chamber piece is one I always have time for.

94. "Fields of Gold" by Sting

One of my best memories of my young father was that he always played music in the car with my brother and me, and he made sure to call out things in the songs he thought were important: An especially excellent drum part or fill, the way a guitar was played, a melody, or just the message of a song's lyrics. I said important, not just cool. He didn't do this just because he thought these parts were neat; he pointed them out with particular seriousness as though they served as moral lessons. An excellent drum part was cool; it was also a demonstration of the passion and discipline necessary to engage in life in general.

Some of his music choices: Questionable. (James Taylor... man.) But some of his biggest musical heroes from that time were the Police, and that I could get behind. When Sting went solo, my dad was completely on board, you might even say worshipful. And so in my early teenage years, I remember Sting's new album Ten Summoner's Tales playing at a high volume in my dad's car.

I still love the sound of that album - the high end is so prominent and bright sounding. It creates a sheen I think Sting wanted post-Police. I love the ambitious conceit of having each song be "tale" in a series told by apparent "summoners." (There are at least two references in this concept: First, the idea of a series of tales told by mystical pilgrims was done to illustrious effect in the Middle English epic poem The Canterbury Tales. Second, "summoner" sounds very close to Sting's legal surname "Sumner.") I love the poetic power of the conceit in execution, and the genres and stories of these songs are all over the map. The best, most enduring of these is "Fields of Gold," a song about the magnificence of all that endures.

This is a 3.5 minute ballad with very little crescendo, filled with sound. The instrumentation includes intermixing classical guitars, steady bass, soft shaker, atmospheric synth strings, and elegiac solos by Northumbrian small pipes (says Wikipedia) and harmonica. The guitar pattern that undulates within the later verses is maybe my favorite touch, conjuring an impression not just of memory but the feeling of memory.

There are no choruses in this song, just verses that end in the same lyrical refrain. The lyrics tell the story of a relationship that develops with each verse. First, youthful attraction. Second, a greater commitment. A middle bridge functions as an aside about the reservations of long-term commitment. The third verse is an epilogue in the ensuing years of the tale, with the next generation beneath that enduring sun, among the same fields of gold. Other than the excellent efficiency of advancing time so far in only three verses, my favorite poetic touch is his personification of the sky as a "jealous" extension of the sun itself, suggesting that, for all the power and long life of the sun, it still peers into our lives through the window of the sky, coveting our companionship and the powerful rhymes and significances of our successive generations.

It all would add up to nothing but footnotes if the melodic craft of the song were not otherworldly. The melody is simple, hummable, but purely beautiful and making sophisticated use of phrase repetition for effect. The repetition idea pays off as each turn is used to add increasing passion in the delivery. And of course, the verse, containing internal repetitions, is itself repeated with subtle variations three times - a nod to the cyclical ideas of the lyrics - formal concept reflecting meaning, sound and sense in unity. In short, the song is art.

There are plenty of other times for rocking. This is a song for the quiet late-summer long sun.

93. "Fell On Black Days" by Soundgarden

Grunge music had a cool idea: Let's take punk simplicity and kind of make it a little more metal. "Fell On Black Days" is the height of this idea.

The guitar core of the song starts out with very low complexity, a pretty, dark blues riff in 6/4, and drums and bass just mirroring the guitar. The only thing higher order is the blues singing by Chris Cornell, one of his signature performances. His ideas and improvisations are so imaginative, finished with diabolical skill.

By the end, we are in a very different song. The backing instrumentation is blasting, metallic guitars escalating low-end chords and drums churning with heavy cymbal and fills. The shrieking vocals here are Chris Cornell's peak as a musician. He hit some superb crescendos after this, but none had the magical authenticity and dramatic timing of "Fell On Black Days."

This song is destined for its crescendo. It's the grunge "White Rabbit."

92. "Father Figure" by George Michael

I am no authority on the messaging happening in this song. I suggest checking out an extensive thought piece by Rolling Stone here: http://www.rollingstone.com/…/george-michael-father-figure-…

The song gets described as soul- or gospel-inspired, but where does the signature minor-modal instrumental scale fit into that theory? Sure there are some simple parallels to soul (the sensual delivery of the verse melody) and gospel (the choir harmony in the choruses) here. But there is truly only one musical school here: Pop. 

The synth layering, the defined clarity of the perfect melodies (often employing evocative minor and pentatonic scales) - these were the hallmarks of the peak of pop music in the 1980s, the greatest pop music decade. It was its own new heritage.

Need proof? This pop sound was a breathtaking new development in its original time. But after a short deviation into '90s rock, there was a quick, fervent revival of these '80s sounds across the musical landscape. Almost all music released now owes a debt to the sounds the inventors of the '80s devised.

"Father Figure" was an Ur song of this foundational movement, an inspiration rather than a song siphoning off inspirations of its own. It is the father of an entire younger generation of songs.

The melody of the backing singers after the middle instrumental gets me every time. I simply must harmonize.