166. "Jubalee" by Benji Hughes

This was the first Benji Hughes song I heard. I was playing poker at a friend's place, his Sirius was playing, and this song was announced by a deejay with a bit of paused reverence in his voice. I remember feeling just a twinge of anticipation because it wasn't normal to hear that slightly awed tone in a deejay's introduction. The song played. Poker vaporized.

The voice... the absolutely spectral, dancing musical phrasing of the verse melody, the macabre soundscape, the sophisticated descending chord progression... Not just a standard descent either, but this lurching, lurking fall by strange, slightly too-large intervals with batty inversions.

Then the chorus burst, and my hairs stood.

A smashing chorus of cymbal-laden drums, wildly bending guitar harmonies, and an even more jagged, interval-enjambing melody, still in that ghostly, grunting double-tracked voice. The chord changes bent in unnatural ways, the musical equivalent of a body dropped 10 stories into the roof of a clown car.

Then the guitar solo began, this howling, gnashing emittance amongst cathartic drums and vampiric keyboards, and I had to leave the poker table and take a break from being any form of a person. I just got my pocket notebook the hell out so I could write down this musician's name the moment the song was over. And I didn't want it to be over.

The lyrics, as with most Benji Hughes songs, were instantly memorizable because they were so well crafted for clarity, both aurally and conceptually. They tell a little tale of sad love between circus freaks, just pathetic enough to be humble, just fateful enough for these characters to be operatic. In the climax line, the internal rhymes, consonances, and assonances are some of the most ambitiously and competently executed poetry in all rock music I've heard: 

"And as they kiss they seem to miss that that little dogs and elephants are staring."

The entire lyric sheet is full of deft, daft sound and wordplay.

Musically and lyrically, the song is an utter gem.

And Benji Hughes is barely acknowledged for his feats.

165. "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry

It is a simple 12-bar blues progression from the era of the most classically pure rock n' roll music. A time before the n' roll disappeared.

But this is no average song from 1958. This was a musical Sputnik.

Let's be deadly serious: The lyrics of this song are better than Bob Dylan. We have here, in ultimately singable rock n' roll word choice, a ground-breaking tale not just about some teenager or some rebel, but about a MUSICAL rebel, a practitioner of the cutting edge science of rock n' roll. This song (single-goddamn-handedly) codified the mythos of overnight, rock n' roll fame resulting from unstoppable passion and talent. Then it actually achieved this revolutionary feat as it sang about it. It is the single greatest called shot since Babe Ruth pointed to center field. It is the single greatest legend of American spiritual actualization told since Whitman chanted "Song of Myself."

The guitar playing on this song was, I'll be plain, genius. It transfigured Jimi Hendrix, made him want to be who he became, and Jimmy Page too, and down the line. But it's not just a history lesson. Listen to those simple, beautiful licks, from the opening on through. Even if we take them for granted as some of the most standard patterns in guitar grammar now, you still have to appreciate the unmistakable combination of finesse and rawness in the take.

The vocal melody is a treasure, blues-tinged where Elvis leaned gospel, surly, dangerous. But also fun, alive, catchy, charismatic.

The chorus is ecstatic. It is the unfettered call and response between one of the best chorus vocals of all time and some of the best guitar fretting of all time, performed (and written) by one guy, a savant, genius, radical inventor of new human consciousness who may have had his personal faults but did nothing less than reveal a new path for our species. 

He handed us music as a life choice, a spiritual path, not just a radio noise.

164. "Jingo" by Santana

The guitar is divine, of course. Soaring, passionate, imbued with frenetic discovery.

The Latin percussion was my fascination as a young guy. The science and the scintillation of it, twined in one.

This ecstatic band made music with no shirts and closed eyes.

163. "Jealous Guy" by John Lennon

Doesn't matter how sweetly pretty the melodies and piano part are in this song, nor its core intent: If John Lennon released this song today, we would have crucified him all over again.

His first mistake was admitting fault. We feast on weakness, Johnny.

162. "Jane" by Ben Folds Five

Doesn't it sadden you when an absolutely astounding album is released, only for sales to tank among the basic populace, and the band essentially disowns it - or in the case of the incomparable Ben Folds Five, actually breaks up over it?

That's what seems to have happened following the release of Ben Folds Five's The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, a textured, ambitious rock masterpiece that will get you absolutely stomped for playing at a tailgate or Tough Mudder mobcult.

And it is a blot on our frail species that such a thing happened. But it's in the past.

All I can do now is sternly link to "Jane," the album's miniature wonder of angular chord progression, melody, touch drumming, bass feel, glowing keyboard, and overall atmosphere.

"The truth still shines."