I’m pretty sure that everyone knows by now that Richard Wright of Pink Floyd passed away this past week. Pink Floyd is not a band I normally list up here, mainly because while I liked their stuff, I was never really a fanatical Pink Floyd fan. But even I can appreciate the monumental influence Floyd had on the music industry. So today’s list is dedicated to Richard Wright.

I can say that there was a couple points in my life that I did listen to a lot of Floyd. Like any other teenager in 1979, my and my friends instantly fell in love with The Wall. We listened to that album incessantly, mostly while intoxicated on certain smokable items, if you catch my drift. We would sit in my basement bedroom (affectionately named The Swamp after Hawkeye’s tent in MASH…I was a HUGE fan of the original book.), smoke endlessly, and listen to the record on a cheap record player I had found and fixed. It was heaven. It even inspired us to grab a tape recorder, and record a few songs of our own. Considering I couldn’t play the drums, and my best friend couldn’t play the guitar, and neither of us could sing, we managed to come up with something that, if out stoned little minds, sounded amazing. Go figure.

The other was in the Navy. My best friend was a HUGE Floyd fan, and loved Dark Side Of The Moon. I spent a lot of time at his house (he was one of the few married guys I knew, and his kids were great kids. It felt like a little “normalcy” when we hung out there), playing cards, drinking, and just listening to music with him and his wife. Over the course of the weekend, I would invariably hear that record play. Hearing it now brings back some great memories.

So, here’s to you Richard Wright. That great big rock band in the sky just got a hell of a lot more talented.

1. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
2. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
3. Pink Floyd - Fearless
4. Pink Floyd - Us And Them
5. Pink Floyd - Brain Damage
6. Pink Floyd - Bike
7. Pink Floyd - Have a Cigar
8. Pink Floyd - One Of These Days
9. Pink Floyd - Hey You
10. Pink Floyd - The Great Big Gig In The Sky

Not really mellow today for any other reason than the past month has been crazy beyond what I could imagine. I’ve traveled far too much, gotten run down enough that my asthma has flown completely out of control and left me gasping for air most of the time. I had emotional up’s and even worse downs, and today, have to take my wife in for a “procedure”. She had a biopsy that was inconclusive, and “procedure” is a neat little medical term that really means we have to cut a little deeper, dig a little deeper, look a little harder. Non of that calms my nerves. of course. But I need a little mellow in my life right now…and I figure today is as good a time as any to start.

The trip I took this past week was very nice…as a father, especially a father that is watching the years go by way to fast, it was good to have both my baby girls in the same place at the same time. No matter how much time I have with them, it’s never going to be enough. While that makes me in a way sad, it’s also nice to see them both starting new, exciting and big chapters. My oldest start law school next week, and my youngest is now officially in junior high school, and will be a teenager next month. Both are turning into the fine women I had hoped they would be the first time I looked down in the crib at them.

So, there your go…my reasons for being mellow are numerous and varied. Some external and out of my control, some internal, made all the more vivid by introspective thought. Today’s list kind of reflects how I’m feeling. Enjoy!

1. Bob Dylan - It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
2. Suzanne Vega - Language
3. Patti Smith Group - Frederick
4. Talking Heads - (Nothing But) Flowers
5. The Wallflowers - One Headlight
6. The Charlatans UK - Blackened Blue Eyes
7. Velvet Undeeground - Pale Blue Eyes
8. The Dandy Warhols - Sleep
9. Marshall Crenshaw - Mary Ann
10. The Jam - That’s Entertainment

Ok, so first of all, where in the hell have I been in the past two weeks? Trust me, it’s a long and bizarre, and exhausting, story. Basically, I have been traveling for my job 25 out of the last 30 days, usually putting in 16 hours a day, and not only running my project, but also providing technical guidance and oversite to another account. I’ve been told to prepare a certification package for my next certification, which will enable my to advance to an executive level. The package is about 50 pages in length, and I have until October 1st to get it written and submitted.

My travels took me from Pittsburgh, PA, to Boulder, CO, home for a day, and then back to Pittsburgh. In the past two weeks, I’ve learned two things. First, that I really need to have this blog…as a creative outlet, a place to vent, and as an excuse to step back for an hour and listen to great music. The second thing I learned? Well, that lesson was in the form of an extremly nice surprise.

When I travel, I usually scan the dial for a decent radio station. Usually, I end up frustrated, and end up plugging in my iPod. Well, I learned this week that Pittsburgh has maybe the best radio station that I’ve heard since the early days of Q101 in Chicago. The station, 91.3, sits at the end of the dial, and plays music so good it made my daily drive through the hills to and from work a pure pleasure. Honestly, this is like a college radio station on steroids. I would never have thought Pittsburgh could have such a great station. Today’s list is actually music that was played last week on 91.3. It’s a diverse list, but all good in my mind. The great thing is that you can listen to their site over the internet, and you can peruse their playlists. If just a perfect little radio station! Enjoy, and damn it’s nice to be back!

1. The Pretenders - Talk Of The Town
2. Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll
3. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Born on the Bayou
4. Bjork - Earth Intruders
5. Beck - Gamma Ray
6. Andrew Bird - Lull
7. Siouxsie & the Banshees - Christine
8. The Jesus and Mary Chain - Somtimes Always
9. Pearl Jam - Crazy Mary
10. The Beatles - Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

I am so late in posting this it’s ridiculous. Usually, I write this stuff up the night before, and it posts automatically. Unfortunately, I am so far behind at work, I’ve been working late into the evening almost every night. Not good for the old marriage, I can tell you that. But ever worse for this blog. Normally, I wake up feeling good about the coming day, but lately, I’m so far behind that I really just want to run and hid for awhile, and hope everything works out by itself.

Anyway, I posted some 60’s stuff a couple weeks back, and thought it might be fun to revisit that era…60’s and early 70’s. So I reached into the deep recesses of my mind and picked out a few songs that I really like, and that make me feel good just listening to. Especially Lake Shore Drive. If you’ve ever spent anytime in Chicago, then you know the song. It instantly brings back all the great memories of living in Chicago, the city I love perhaps more than any other in the world. I wasn’t born there, but I will always consider it home, and some of the best things in my life happened in that great city.

Another song on the list I always loved was The Pusher. Steppenwolf had bigger hits, but never better ones. From the opening riff to the last chord, it’s a song that really would have been very much at home in the 90’s alternative scene. I could imagine Alice In Chains covering this song and knocking it out of the park.

So, I’m off to work, on another busy day trying to get caught up. I hope it’s going a little better for you all! Enjoy!

1. The Mamas & The Papas - California Dreamin’
2. The Who - Behind Blue Eyes
3. The Byrds - Eight Miles High
4. Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit
5. The Animals - The House Of The Rising Sun
6. The Monkees - Last Train To Clarksville
7. Steppenwolf - The Pusher
8. Del Shannon - Runaway
9. Mungo Jerry - Summertime
10. Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah - Lake Shore Drive

Today is the last day of my posting some songs I really really love to listen to…songs that easily don’t really fit into a theme. Today’s post is a pretty solid example of just varied and sometimes bizarre my taste in music can be. I like the old stuff, like White Rabbit, and some 70’s rockers, like Heart (NOT Heart from the mid-80’s…honestly, that crap REALLY sucked bad.). I don’t often post a lot of it, but for awhile, I really got into 70’s glam rock. T. Rex and Mott The Hoople have some seriously cool tunes here on this list. Of course, I always will have much love and respect for the great music scene of Northeast Ohio, the place I grew up and was exposed to great music of all types.

Maybe the craziest, weirdest, most bizarre band is Dresden Dolls. I was aware of them for a few years, but never paid them much attention…until I happened to catch a video of them on YouTube. I was instantly hooked. Any band based on 1930’s Weimar Republic German Cabaret has to be given a chance. Amazing, crazy, wild stuff, definitely off the beaten path. But I love it, God help me, I love it so. Enjoy!

1. U2 - One
2. Heart - Crazy On You
3. Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit
4. T. Rex - Ride A White Swan
5. Mott The Hoople - Honaloochie Boogie
6. Pere Ubu - Electricity
7. Josef K - Sorry For Laughing
8. The Beatles - The Ballad Of John and Yoko
9. The Feelies - Paint It Black
10. Dresden Dolls - Missed Me

Sometime about 1985 or so, I went through this phase where I got really into music from the 60’s. By the mid 80’s, punk and post punk had kind of played itself out, at least in my mind, and new wave just really wasn’t doing it for me. There were the bands I heard on the college radio station at Kent State, but I even got a little bored with that. Then somehow, I started listening to a bunch of stuff from the 60’s, and it was good. It started me on about a 3 or 4 year journey where I kind of stumbled through the 60’s, listened to a lot of old blues records, and really got into old school ska.

So, I thought I would through up some of the tunes I really dig from the 60’s. Starting with Jimi Hendrix’s May This Be Love, my personnel favorite from Are You Experienced, which is maybe my favorite 60’s album. The song is absolutely timeless in it’s appeal…I played it for my 12 year old daughter who thought it was a perfectly wonderful song. Speaking of timeless classics, Janis Joplin’s Summertime is it. I know she had some bigger rockers, but this is the song that has always done it for me. She was never better than this, and considering how great she was, that’s saying a lot.

The Pretty Things are a little band I didn’t really know too much about, and honestly, I still don’t. A friend gave me a mix tape with a couple of their songs on it, and while I loved those songs, I never took it further did more digging into them. I have a feeling that if I did, I would find an immensely great band. Note to self: Find more of The Pretty Things.

Finally, The Animals were a band I came across by following Eric Burdens career; I started listening to some of his stuff from War, and then wound up with The Animals. The rest of the list is stuff I could listen to all day…The Beatles Helter Skelter is without a doubt just a crazed rocker…I remember watching that Manson movie when I was a kid, and that song plain scared the hell out of me because of it until I got older. But it’s the highlight of the Beatles. I put the Stones Paint It Black up here, even though I MUCH prefer The Animals version of the song. But hats off the the Stones….it’s a great tune. Anyway, welcome back to the 60’s, or at least my version of it. These are just a few of my favorite things…enjoy!

1. The Jimi Hendrix Experiance - May This Be Love
2. The Rolling Stones - Paint It Black
3. The Animals - It’s My Life
4. The Beatles - Helter Skelter
5. The Pretty Things - S.F. Sorrow Is Born
6. The Byrds - Eight Miles High
7. Janis Joplin - Summertime
8. Steppenwolf - The Pusher
9. Bob Dylan - Masters Of War
10. Blue Cheer - Summertime Blues

Old Bill Shakespeare once said “If music be the food of love, play on”. Never were truer words spoken, or written. My love of music is well documented here. Yet in spite of that, I actually came pretty close to shutting down the blog today. As much as I love it, it just seemed irrelevant. In light of this past weekend, a lot of things do. See, in a life of great moments, I had one of the top five this past weekend. I’ve watched the sunset and rise in the middle of the oceans. Stood in the shadows of the Sphinx and stood on the great Pyramids of Egypt. I’ve walked the streets of Isreal. Yet watching my baby graduate was such an amazing moment, it’s really changed me forever. I dare any man who has watched if baby girl do something like that to tell me otherwise.

Fortunately, I was talked down from the edge by someone I consider a pretty good friend. However, I am going to take next week off, while I enjoy a week with my baby girl on her dream vacation. So this week, I am gong to be a little selfish, and post some of the songs I consider my favorites of all time. They are the songs I can’t live without. They all have a special meaning to me, and I want to share it with you all.

1. The Velvet Underground & Nico - Sunday Morning - The first Velvet Undergound song I ever heard. It remains my favorite to this day. I can listen to that album all day long.
2. David Bowie - Five Years - Listening to the stuff Bowie did in the early 80’s, I was curious as to why he was considered great. this song answered that question in my mind. Doesn’t matter that he didn’t do too much I considered great after 1980. Ziggy will live forever.
3. Sweet - Love Is Like Oxygen - I remember hearing this song on a car radio in the 70’s at a gas station. At the time, we were forced in to listen to country music in my house. Never rock. This song was my first clue there was a bigger, better world out there waiting to be discovered.
4. The Beatles - A Day In The Life - The greatest song The Beatles ever did. My friends and I would sit and get stoned in the late 80’s to the Beatles. As a young teen, John Lennon was a god. He was shot the day after my birthday. I was watching Monday Night Football at the time, and I remember I went to my room in the basement, and cried.
5. Queen - Killer Queen - Glam rock never knew a greater talent than Freddy Mercury. His command of an audience was complete, as anyone who saw him sing Radio Gaga on Live Aid can attest to. Kids, want to know what great is? Watch this clip. There’s 200,000+ plus in Wembley, and he controls them like a puppet master. I watched this performance live on TV, and will never as long as I live forget it.
6. The Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UK - Johnny Rotten opens this song with a menacing snarl and laugh, and it only gets better from there. This song made my head explode the first time I heard it in a record shop in Kent, Ohio. It started a love affair with punk that continues to this day.
7. Joy Division - Transmisssion - I first heard the next two songs in the same record shop. I had no clue what it was I was listening to, but it changed my work for ever. These two songs are some of the finest songs ever, and they changed for ever the way I listen to music. The older I get, the more I live Joy Division. RIP, Ian…your music will live forever.
8. Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
9. Blondie - Heart of Glass - My introduction to Blondie, I’m ashamed to say. But I quickly bought everything I could find of theirs. Just a perfect band, and a prefect object of lust for a teenage me.
10. Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street - My favorite song of all time. Odd choice, isn’t it? In 1978, three things reached a loner kid in the 8th grade. One was reading SE Hinton’s The Outsiders. The second was reading When Legends Die. This was the third. For some reason, it reached me. I still love it, and sing every word of it. By myself, of course.
11. Jackson Browne - Running on Empty - This song gave me hope that someday, I could escape the desperately drab, poverty stricken world I was raised in. This past weekend, while dining with my sisters and my neices and nephews, I pointed across the street from the restaurant to an empty parking lot. “Thats where they handed out the government cheese in the Reagan years. Sometimes thats all we had to eat for a week was cheese sandwiches.” That spoke volumes to the our children, and forever put to rest their questions of just how poor we were as kids.
12. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb - I loved it when it came out. We got stoned to it as teens. After my world fell apart, I lay awake at night, listening to this song, and promising myself I would somehow pull myself up and make something out of myself. I did. It was the hardest thing I ever did. In 1986, all I owned in this world was one pair of jeans, a tshirt, underwear, socks, and one pair of sneakers. It was what I wore to Navy boot camp. 21 years later, I live a life I better than the best life I ever dreamed of back then.
13. Iggy Pop - Lust For Life - I’m worth a million in prizes, indeed. Never been a funner song to listen to.
14. The Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil

- Just a perfect song, in my opinion. I’m not a huge fan of the Stones, but this is flat out one of the best rock songs ever. Every time I hear it, I can’t help but to sing it.

Tune in tomorrow for day two. This is just the beginning.