Born To Rock & Roll

A Side: “Eight Miles High”, The Byrds – And we kick things off with what is easily a Top 10 contender.  The best song about jet lag featuring a Coltrane-inspired 12-string Rickenbacker solo ever recorded. Bonus points for the Small Faces nod.

B Side: “Standing In The Shadows Of Love”, The Four Tops - Levi Stubbs’ tour-de-force vocal rips it up on the “Didn’t I…” bongo interludes and generally chews the scenery, but the orchestra tends to overwhelm the chorus, which is the next best part of the song.

Winner: “Eight Miles High”

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A Side: “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World”, James Brown - Like most James Brown songs, a good idea is beaten into submission through repetition, be it a groove or anything else.  And, like most James Brown songs, it’s best seen as well as heard – the visual provides half the impact.  That being said, anyone who can drive on his rims through three states while on PCP AND getting chased by cops – all because someone crapped in his private loo – gets our undying respect.

B Side: “(I Know) I’m Losing You”, The Temptations – A killer guitar riff, forboding brass, and David Ruffin laying it all out on the table vocally… Motown’s own Urkel provided the rough edges to the Temptations’ signature smoothness, never more so than here.  Check out the Faces’ version from a few years later, too – Kenny Jones absolutely unleashes on the drum solo.  Which, you’ll note, was not in the original.  But whatever.

Winner: A tough one, but the Temps get the nod.

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A Side: “Lady Jane”, The Rolling Stones – Don’t you love it when Mick gets all Elizabethan and sounds like a Victorian obscene phone call?  The best part of the song is the dual solo featuring Brian Jones on dulcimer and Keith on acoustic – simply sublime. 

B Side: “Gimme Some Lovin’” The Spencer Davis Group – Yeah, I know.  I’m sick of it, too.  Chalk that one up to 20 years of this being whored out to commercials and movies ranging from insurance to fucking Operation Dumbo Drop.  But if you listen to it with fresh ears and block out the damn Baby Boomer imagery, what you get is a rhythmic masterpiece, highlighted by a vicious Hammond B-3 organ and Stevie Winwood’s transcendent, joyous vocal.  He was only, like, 8 when they recorded this, too.

Winner: Gotta go with the fetal Winwood here - “Gimme Some Lovin’”

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A Side: “Thunderball”, Tom Jones - Ol’ Pineapple Head + John Barry’s orchestration + James Bond theme = global panty toss! 

B Side: “Gloria”, Shadows Of Knight – Well, Them did it just as well… so it’s just as well that we didn’t use their version, either.  A garage rock classic, no doubt, but it’s just their shit luck they didn’t get put up against The Association or someone else who’s not clad in really tight pants.

Winner: And we have our first no-brainer!  The A’Tom’ic One.

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A Side: “Walk Away, Renee”, The Left Banke – Wrist-slashing teen heartbreak on a Brooklyn block.  The only Baroque & Roll you’ll ever need to hear.  There are few songs finer than this, from any year.

B Side: “Midnight To Six Man”, The Pretty Things – Oooh, baby.  “Midnight To Six Man” is so friggin’ Mod it makes “My Generation” sound totally square in comparison.  Shockingly not produced by Shel Talmy, though as with most of Shel’s productions, Nicky Hopkins’ frenetic piano rattles and tinkles like a speed-addled skeleton.  And if you didn’t know already, Pretty Things guitarist Dick Taylor once played lead guitar and bass in “the Rollin’ Stones”.

Winner: In a battle of polar opposites, the Left Banke comes out triumphant.  Tough break for the Things.

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A Side: “Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?”, The Lovin’ Spoonful - Like most Spoonful hits, a perfect blend of folk and pop with a big dollop of bubblegum thrown in to glue it all together.  Of  course, one can’t help but think of Dylan playing this on the Peach Pit jukebox while trying to decide between Brenda or Kelly.  An inspired bit of soundtracking and a tune to back it up.

B Side: “She”, The Monkees – Released in early ’67 (but recorded in ’66!  ‘Artistic licence’, you know), the Monkees at their garage-stompingest with this tough little Boyce & Hart cookie.  A killer chorus and Mickey Dolenz’s excellent vocal provide the meat on the “Hey!” bones.

Winner: But really, what would you rather watch?  The Monkees or 90210?  Yeah, we’re with you, too: Monkees

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A Side: “It Takes Two”, Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston - A slight but engaging duet with the Funk Brothers fighting to be heard over the orchestration.  Marvin’s gutty vocal is the only thing keeping this from being complete fluff.

B Side: “Happy Jack”, The Who – Pop Art at its most vacuous.  The rest of the band fights to be heard over Keith Moon.

Winner: The only song on this list to feature a lead drum:  The Who!

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A Side: “Biff! Bang! Pow!”, The Creation - Pop imagery in red with purple flashes of raving.  A Shel Talmy tour-de-force produciton with – who else? – Nicky Hopkins holding it all together on piano.  All style, no substance, though.   

B Side: “96 Tears”, Question Mark & the Mysterians – One of the great keyboard lines in rock & roll and the former Rudy Martinez (he had his name legally changed to ‘Question Mark’) wants to hear you cry, goddamn it.  A classic piece of demented scorn.

Winner: ?, and it’s not even close.

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A Side: “No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach’s In)”, The T-Bones – A fun little tune that made for one hell of an Alka-Seltzer commercial.

B Side: “Try A Little Tenderness”, Otis Redding - That descending horn intro, Al Jackson Jr.’s metronomic snare clicks, Booker T.’s organ, and the greatest soul singer to have ever uttered a grunt take this 1932 standard and transform it into a throbbing, visceral masterpiece.  Arguably both Otis & Stax’s finest moment.

Winner:  The Big O. Insert “Otis eats Alka-Seltzer for breakfast!” joke here_____.

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A Side: “Moulty”, The Barbarians - Victor ‘Moulty’ Moulton drummed for Massachusetts’ own Barbarians.  Moulty was notable because he had a hook for a hand – which is saying something give that he was the drummer.  And how did Moulty lose his hand, you ask?  Why, from an accident which occured while building a bomb, naturally.  But here’s the deal – even though Moulty has a band, a Jedi-worthy prosthetic appendage, and what is without a doubt the greatest Boston accent ever captured on tape, he lacks a girl – a real girl – to make him the complete man.  And he tells us this with The Hawks (also Dylan’s band and, later, The Band) wailing behind him and chanting his name for good measure.  This is gospel music for the retarded and, to be perfectly honest, it’s truly glorious.  The fact that Moulty tried to inflict violence on the head of Laurie Records for releasing this as a single just makes it all the better.  “Don’t turn away”, indeed!   

B Side: “River Deep, Mountain High”, Ike & Tina Turner – Phil Spector’s magnum opus and Tina Turner delivering a vocal to which mere words can simply not do justice.  “Force Of Nature” would be a nice starting point, though.  Jesus Fucking Christ, if this isn’t the most exhilirating, exhausting, and maybe even frightening record ever made…

Winner: It breaks my heart to do this, Moulty, but really – we’re not fucking with Dead Ike and Incarcerated Phil on this one.  Point – TINA

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A Side: “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)”, The Monkees – “Look Out” packs the double whallop of being possibly both Neil Diamond and Davy Jones’ finest moment.  You want to know how to write a pop song?  You want to know how to seduce beat girls?  Here’s the answer.

B Side: “Got A Feeling”, The Mamas & The Papas – This trifle of a mood piece invokes images of not only eucalyptus-scented Laurel Canyon evenings but also the wicked hot Michelle Phillips.  Quite formidable, indeed.

Winner: Atmosphere is nice but Davy can sound all hot & bothered, too… “Mary… I love you.  Sandra… I love you”.  “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)” lives to see another, um, tomorrow.

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A Side: “I Can Only Give You Everything”, Them – Tremoloe’d buzzsaw fuzz guitar and a leering Van Morrison vocal… this is punk rock before the term was coined and it gives “Satisfaction” (on which it was clearly modeled) a run for its money.  If anyone can make the promise of a summer of love seem like a threat, it’s Them.

B Side: “Philly Dog”, The Mar-Keys – Not to be confused with labelmates the Bar-Keys, the Mar-Keys were the Stax in-house horn section’s nom-de-record.  Here, they team up with the MG’s for a fun little instrumental soul workout.  Mighty enjoyable, too.

Winner: Them, and I can’t argue with you to a-understand.

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Wildcard: “She Said, She Said”, The Beatles – The Beatles first foray into heavy “rock”, as found at the end of Revolver‘s first side – Lennon’s account of a bad trip with Peter Fonda, delivered through a lysergic gauze of dreamy vocals, distorted guitar, and some killer Ringo drumming.  Best that “She Said” stands on its own here – it would have slaughtered most of the competition.

Stay tuned for 26-50!