[Note from the Beagle Man: Once a year we move doggie matters
to the back burner and turn to my other obsession, rock-and-roll. (Oh, yeah, there’s sports, too, of course. That’s pretty much it . . . that’s my life. A bit narrow, maybe . . . but works for me.) What follows is the “pre-read” for the new-and-improved Top 300 that was distributed Labor Day weekend to the live audience at Herman Beach in Amagansett — our old friends Leslie and Mike plus twelve young dudes who did a helluva job celebrating Robby’s 22nd birthday. The new list will be revealed in its entirety in this blog over the next few days . . .]
Never say never.
This is one of the truest aphorisms ever coined — but it seems I have to keep relearning it. When I released my first Top 100 back in 2012, and friends asked if I planned to revise it as the years went by, I said “NEVER!” I said I went with my gut, and I’m gonna stick with it. I said I was sure my list would hold up over time.
It didn’t.
I’ve been living with that original playlist — as well as its 2013 and 2014 successors (101-200 and 201-300) — for a few years now. Those compilations have been the soundtrack for three cross-country road trips, and countless Montauk weekends. And there were some selections, some positions, that were just . . . WRONG.
Here are some of the factors that induced me to revise my Top 300:
• I went overboard on stuff that was currently popular the first time around. Too much Lady Gaga, Adele ranked too high, etc.
• I allowed peer pressure and fan reaction to keep me from putting some truly great songs (Patti Smith’s “Gloria,” for one) near the top, where they belong
• I felt compelled to represent certain genres (e.g. soul/Motown) that I once loved but that just don’t do it for me anymore
• Likewise, I didn’t want to overlook some favorites from my rock-and-roll youth, but finally realized they should stay in my rock-and-roll youth (Del Shannon’s “Runaway”; Bobby Darin’s “Dream Lover”) Ditto for some tunes I was devoted to from more recent times (Keith Carradine’s “I’m Easy”).
So this time around I went in fresh. And I put the songs where they deserved to be. For me. Didn’t matter where I ranked ’em last time. As a result, some songs fell off the earth. Others made quantum leaps to the top 25 . . . even the top 10.
I’m not gonna say I’ll never update the latest version of My Favorite 300. It might still be flawed. Maybe Patty Smyth & Scandal got the halo effect from their concert a couple of weeks ago at the Talkhouse, where Patty dedicated not one, not two, but three songs to our table after I’d emailed her that Matt used to air-guitar and lip-sync to “Goodbye To You” on MTV when he was 2 years old. Also: It’s an open secret that I’m in love with Trish Murphy, the silver-throated Austin singer-songwriter who played a private concert for Carol’s Big Birthday Bash. Did her music get over-represented because of this? Who knows.
All right. About Mt. Rushmore.
The illustrations were done by Robby’s friend, the one-and-only Colin O’Shea, who also designed Kemba’s logo for The Duck Dog Speaks. The idea came from my ultra-imaginative oldest son Matt, best known as Creative Director of Greg & Kelly’s wedding (#KellygotHerMan). Matt and I were listening to my original Top 300 this past April on LA/XC-4 as we cruised through Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota, and that prompted him to ask who’d be on my rock-and-roll Mt. Rushmore. I knew right off the bat that The Boss, the Stones, and Tom Petty were in, but who was the fourth face? Neil Young? John Mellencamp? John Fogerty? Ohmygod . . . could it be Taylor Swift?
So I went back over my 2014 rankings and calculated, by number of songs in the Top 300, that there was a four-way tie for fourth among the names I just mentioned. When I re-did the list for the new presentation, though, Neil Young pulled to the head of the pack with 8 songs. BUT . . . that includes two of his songs with Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and I’m not sure if that’s kosher. T-Swift has 7, so if you take away those 2 CSN&Y from Neil, that puts Taylor ahead, 7 to 6. Hmmm . . . The truth of the matter is that I was still fine-tuning the list until minutes before the “reveal” — so I had Colin prepare the 4 different versions of Rushmore you see in this post. We’ll resolve this controversy once and for all later in the week . . .
Two final notes:
1. Everyone knows that for the last several years I’ve been heavily into country. A lot of followers complain that country gets way too much love on my list. Some of them even say country’s a whole separate genre, and shouldn’t even be considered. Here’s the thing, though: It’s my list, and country’s still rock-and-roll to me. So deal with it.
2. As I say every year at this time (yes, you knew this was coming): If you don’t like my choices, make your own damn list!
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