Is That Legal?

david bowie, ashes to ashes (i first remember hearing it at a bowie concert in '92 or so.) and the only other one that springs to mind -- violent femmes kiss off.

David Bowie's Rock n Roll Suicide - I just listened to it the other day off David Live, it anticipates that whole white-soul thing he would emmbrace with Station to Station.

Humble Pie's 30 Days in the Hole rocks as hard now as it did 30 years ago. It makes anything Bad Company did feel redundant.

A little more recent: XTC's Senses Working Overtime

Oh man. One that pops to mind immediately is Sia - Breath Me, simply because the first time I heard it, it was over the ending montage of the last Six Feet Under episode. When I heard it then, I was about to weep. Now, listening to it, at any time, will bring back those same shivers. For songs that have such an effect independent from other multimedia, definitly "The Only Living Boy in New York" by Simon and Garfunkle as well "Eyes of the World"" by the Grateful Dead.

Indigo Girls - Closer to Fine

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime

"On Your Radio" by Joe Jackson, specifically the Live 80/86 version.

It's a had-to-be-there choice, especially the line, "You look so sick when you're pushing me around." Inspired a timely change in my life.

Seaons in the Sun

Salisbury Hill - Peter Gabriel. Washington DC AIDS Ride (4 day bike ride from Raleigh to DC), June 1998. First song played as 1700 cyclists rode out of the gates at the NC Fairgrounds in Raleigh while hundreds of people cheered.
AND
Life in a Northern Town - Dream Academy. Last song played four days later as 1700 cyclists rode down Constitution Avenue to the Mall in DC on the other end; thousands of people cheering as we rode in.

"The Dream", by David Sanborn. First time I heard it was at the Newport Jazz Festival -- it still gets me every time.

For me, its XTC's This World Over and 10,000 Maniacs' The Big Parade.

Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues"; The Pat Metheny Group's "Are You Going with Me?" and "Praise"; Weather Report's "A Remark You Made"; Jeff Beck's "The Golden Road."

Your taste is commendable. A track from Squeeze's overlooked Play album?

- God Only Knows, yes, definitely for me too.
- I Just Wasn't Made For These Times (Beach Boys)
- Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before (The Smiths)
- Achin To Be (The Replacements)

This Woman's Work by Kate Bush

I'd also nominate The Flood from Peter Gabriel as well.

Visions of Johanna, Bob Dylan

Several people have listed Peter Gabriel songs. Mine is Mercy Street.

Cinnamon Girl, Neil Young
Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana
Nantucket Sleighride, Mountain
Gone Away, The Offspring
Darkness Darkness, The Youngbloods
San Andreas Fault, Natalie Merchant

1) Four Seasons in One Day, by Crowded House

2) The Life is the Red Wagon, by Jane Siberry

3) a case of you, Joni Mitchell

4) Passionate Kisses, Mary Chapin Carpenter doing Lucinda Wiliiams

5) I love, I love, by Dar Williams

6) A Song for the Asking, by Simon and Garfunkel

7) Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, by Pearl Jam

8) Can't Find My Way Back Home, by Blind Faith

Tom Paxton, "Who Speaks For Me?" from the album Bulletin, only released on vinyl and out of print. The first time I heard it I was driving (rare for me), and I started crying so hard I had to pull off the road until the end of the song. It still moves me the same way.

Ferron, It Won't Take Long, from "Shadows On A Dime", also out of print, and although it was released on CD copies go for $50 or more when they turn up on eBay. I heard her sing this alone and acoustic, tentatively, when she'd just written it and didn't know how the audience would react, and later with a full electric band and backup singers and 5,000 people dancing ecstatically and singing along. It's just as powerful either way.

The finale to "Les Miserable": "to love another person is to see the face of God" is a line I can't get through without breaking.

Stan Rogers' Mary Ellen Carter, especially if it's been a while since I heard it last: "And you, to whom adversity has dealt that final blow / With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go / Turn to and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain / And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!" (also "White Squall"

There's a whole other category of humorous songs that I still can't get through without laughing. . .

Don Quixote by Gordon Lightfoot.
Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens
Almost anything of Peter Gabriel's which I like, but Salisbury Hill come to mind more than most.

"Spark" by Tori Amos
"Precious Things" by Tori Amos
"Immrama" by Stellamara
"Mea Culpa" by Enigma
"Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica
"No Ordinary Love" by Sade
"Blue Parade" by Sarah Slean

My nominees:
Gold Medal - Old & Wise by the Alan Parsons Project
Silver Medal - Everyday Glory by Rush
Bronze Medal - 100 Years by Five for Fighting
Runner-Up - Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.

Everyday Glory should be required listening by any adults fixing to drag a child thru a divorce.

This is my first blog-peeking...
Many songs touch my heart, bring back memories. Too many to list, but thanks for asking.

Staying power? Ok, here we go: Giovanni Gabrieli's Sacrae Symphoniae, namely the Kyrie, from 1597. Oh, you mean staying power with me personally? Well, for the past 40 years, tears from a stone, blood from a turnip, and chills up my spine, same as the first day I heard it.

Jerry Butler's "I Just Don't Want To Hear It Anymore", one of the saddest and smartest unrequited love songs of all time, written by a fairly young Randy Newman.

"untouchable face" Ani DiFranco

I have the opposite reaction to songs for the most part. I can't hear "in your eyes" without thinking of "Say Anything" thinking of all the times I've been within a breath of being in love or any other common emotional experiences, though the first time I heard it, it was just a very relaxing song. I've known the song "brown eyed girl" since I was a child, but then for some reason I now associate it with my first love. Stay as pure as they were when first written, I don't know if thats actually a selling point for that song.

What a great question.
Redemption Song - Bob Marley
Hellzapoppin - Louis Armstrong
Rack'Em Up and many others by Jonny Lang
Easy Money and almost anything by Rickie Lee Jones, especially on Girl At Her Volcano

Monty Python's Galaxy Song as Sung by Clint Black (even if you don't like country)

Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner and anything (practically) by the dearly departed WZ

Hold On and a bunch of other Tom Waits' tunes
Swimming In Your Ocean - Crash Test Dummies
Thelonious Monk - almost anything
Telemann's Viola Concerto in G Major
Schubert's Trio in E Flat [Op. 100]
Bach's Partita No. 2, Sonata No. 2, Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 --to name three
Beethoven's Archduke Trio
Secret of Life other old stuff by James Taylor
Speedway At Nazareth -Mark Knopfler
Here Comes My Girl - Tom Petty
Watching the Detectives & Others by Elvis Costello
King of the Road - Roger Miller (?)
Little Red Corvette - Prince
O Mio Babbino aria by Puccini
It's Not Easy Bein Green - Kermit T. Frog
Saved By Zero - The Fixx
God I can't stop I'm out of control
I Wanna Be Sedated by the Ramones

Pardon My Logorrhea by PJ Scott