More Old School songs...

The link is to my second installment which is linked to the first installment so feel free to look back at the explanations, but here is the list so far.

I Was Made To Love Her -- Stevie Wonder
Lay Down(Candles In the Rain) -- Melanie
Ain't No Sunshine -- Bill Withers
The Letter(LIVE) -- Joe Cocker
You Keep me Hangin' On -- Diana Ross & The Supremes
Along Comes Mary -- The Association
With A Little Help From My Friends -- Joe Cocker
Elenore -- The Turtles

Those are in no particular order in case you wondered. Actually that how they show up in iTunes.

I have a few more songs I added to old school list.

The first song is "Lightning Strikes" by Lou Christie. Who is Lou Christie you ask? Well, do you remember hearing songs from back in the day with some dude that could sing notes so high that Mariah Carey would be jealous? The Lion Sleeps Tonight-high? Granted Mariah can sing higher but her testosterone levels are considerable lower... For now anyway.

Anyway this song is great because of the horns and woodwinds. Also, how this dude can go from regular singing voice to curl-your-hair high pitches is truly amazing. And since the song is about his uncontrollable urges, when he switches over the high voice that is him losing control. Pretty cool if you ask me.

I actually learned of this song from the radio station Piccu and I used to work for. In case some of you don't know, small radio stations rarely put live DJs on because live DJs require live pay. So computers and satellite feeds are the tricks of the trade. The computers play the commercials at specified breaks when the satellite feed kicks off for the local commercial spots. However, when you don't have any commercials, much like we did back then, you would put a song or two in to fill the 4 minute gap. It just so happened that Lightning Strikes was a filler and it played 20 minutes past the hour every other hour.

My next song is a favorite for those of us who dig The Big Lebowski. The song is "Just Dropped In (to see what condition my condition was in)" by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition. What makes this song cool is the effects on the voices and the utter spacey-ness, to make up a word. It's just nuts. Background vocals along with the bass and bells are cool. It has some good guitar work as well and creepy organ which was a 60's stamp of approval.

The third song of this group is "California Dreamin'" by the Mamas and Papas. You've heard it, you know why. It's a sing-a-long song really. In one of the half million ways Piccu and I can scare our father, Piccu did it by coming in hard on the "GOT DOWN ON MY KNEES" line and Dad has hated him ever since.

The last some I'm going to talk about really isn't obscure, but it follows the kind of music I'm looking for in that it has some emotion and rocks even though most of emotion is created with the music and not as much with vocals. The song is "Hush" by Deep Purple.

This song is a bonafied hit, but when you listen to it you can get the feeling that they just made it up as they went. Sure they probably planned it out a bit, but it has a sound like one of them said, "Screw it, let's just lay it down, or I'm quitting the band." It's like a big jam session and the drums and organ hook me. The drummer really orchestrates when the song moves and it builds through the drums until music builds up to the explosion. Best Deep Purple song EVER.