Don't Tread On Me

Happy Memorial Day!
Featured songs in this post include: "Dig" by Incubus, "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" by Chicago, and "Don't Tread On Me" by Metallica.

Don't Tread On Me - This is an appropriate song to feature on Memorial Day. Aside from being the unofficial start of Summer, today is a day to remember all of those who have put themselves in harm's way, even sacrificed their lives, for our freedom. It's a debt we can never repay. War is a horrible thing to be avoided; but, warriors should be revered, honored, and glorified. It takes remarkable courage to lay your life down in service of others. So, while you enjoy your barbecue today, say a prayer and give thanks for the brave men and women in the service, and those who came before them.

These are the best songs on my iPod related to servicemen and women - it's dominated by Iron Maiden. Over the course of the band's career, they have continually returned to this theme. I've left more of their songs off the list than I've included, actually.
10) These Colours Don't Run - Iron Maiden
9) Don't Tread On Me - Metallica
8) Battle Cry - Triumph ("I think the loneliest man in the world is a soldier.")
7) Citizen Soldier - 3 Doors Down
6) Aces High - Iron Maiden (The Battle of Britain)
5) Paschendale - Iron Maiden (The horrors of WWI trench warfare)
4) The Trooper - Iron Maiden (The story of one infantryman participating in the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War)
3) The Longest Day - Iron Maiden (DDay)
2) One - Metallica (About a man completely destroyed, but not killed, by a landmine)
1) Hammerhead - The Offspring (Homage to a Marine)


Dig - As promised in my last entry, I have to feature this song. I love how the song describes a growing couple - keeping each other in check, knowing that they'll always be there for each other. I've quoted it to my wife a few times. She continues to think I'm an idiot who should come up with his own words. Which isn't entirely unjustified.
"When weakness turns my ego up
I know you'll count on the me from yesterday.
If I turn into another,
Dig me up from under what is covering the better part of me.
Sing this song.
Remind me that we'll always have each other
When everything else is gone."

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? - This is my favorite Chicago song. It's an entreaty to slow down and enjoy the good things, instead of getting caught in modern life. And this was written before the PC and cell phones chained many of us to our work. Other songs in this post have a similar theme, such as "DOA" by Foo Fighters and "Different World" by, you guessed it, Iron Maiden. In the bridge, there is a spoken part that makes the song's point quite clear: "People runnin' everywhere/Don't know the way to go/Don't know where I am/Can't see past the next step/Don't have to think past the last mile/Have no time to look around/Just run around, run around and think why."

• Die Like This - Fuel
• Die With Your Boots On - Iron Maiden : "If you're gonna die, die with your boots on." Discusses Nostradamus and predestination.
  
• Difference (In the Garden of St. Anne's-On-the-Hill) - King's X
• Different Strings - Rush : "Different eyes see different things/Different hearts beat on different strings/But there are times, for you and me, when all such things agree."
  
• Different World - Iron Maiden : "I would like you to know/When you see the simple things/To appreciate this life/It's not too late to learn."
• Dig - Incubus
• Dig a Pony - The Beatles
• Digital Man - Rush : More conflict about technological progress.
  
• Diminished - R.E.M. : Creepy song about a guy who killed someone - is he guilty or insane?
  
• Dirty Second Hands - Switchfoot
• Disappear - Army of Anyone
• Disappear - INXS
• Disappear - R.E.M. : "I looked for you everywhere/Tell me why you're here/I came to disappear."
• Disarm - Smashing Pumpkins
• Disconnected - Goo Goo Dolls
• Diseased - Seether
• Disenchanted Lullaby - Foo Fighters
• The Distance - Live : "Oh, are we locked into these bodies?/Let's hold out for something sweeter/Spread your wings and fly."
• Distant Early Warning - Rush : "The world weighs on my shoulders, but what am I to do?/You sometimes drive me crazy, but I worry about you."
  
• Disturbance at the Heron House - R.E.M. : One of my favorite R.E.M. tunes. I've listened to it hundreds of times and still have absolutely no idea what it's about.
  
• Dizzy Miss Lizzy - The Beatles
• Do It Again - Queens of the Stone Age
• Do the Evolution - Pearl Jam
• Do This Anymore - Nickelback
• Do You Know - Tonic
• Do You Remember - Jack Johnson
• Do You Right - 311
• DOA - Foo Fighters : Life is fleeting, so make the most of it. "Take a good hard look for the very last time/The very last one in a very long line/Only took a second to say goodbye."
• Doctor Robert - The Beatles
• Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? - Chicago
  
• Dog Years - Rush : OK, you get the picture that I'm a huge Rush fan. I can't get on board with lyrics that are this laughably bad, though - even if the music is good. "In a dog's life/A year is more like seven/And all too soon a canine/Will be chasing cars in doggie heaven"
• Doll - Foo Fighters
• The Dolphin's Cry - Live
• Don't - Elvis Presley
• Don't Be Cruel - Elvis Presley

Two in a row from the King.

• Don't Be There - Switchfoot
• Don't Believe - Chalk FarM
• Don't Believe It (It's Easier Said Than Done) - King's X : King's X is a criminally underappreciated band.
  
• Don't Break Me Down - The Donnas (yes, The Donnas)
• Don't Come Around Here No More - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
• Don't Do Me Like That - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Super back-to-back Petty songs.

• Don't Fade - Toad the Wet Sprocket
• Don't Get Around Much Anymore - Harry Connick, Jr.
• Don't Give Up - Peter Gabriel : I can listen to this song again and again and again.
  
• Don't Give Up On Me - Fastball : "I need a little leeway and an angel to watch over me."
  
• (Don't Go Back To) Rockville - R.E.M. : "At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me."
• Don't Know Why - Norah Jones
• Don't Let Me Down - The Beatles
• Don't Make Me Dream About You - Chris Isaak
• Don't Mean Much - Chalk FarM
• Don't Panic - Coldplay : "We live in a beatiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do!"
  
• Don't Stand So Close to Me - The Police
• Don't Stay Home - 311
• Don't Stop - Fleetwood Mac : "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow/Don't stop, it'll soon be here/It'll be better than before/Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone"
  
• Don't Stop Dancing - Creed
• Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
• Don't Take Your Guns to Town - Johnny Cash : More like a short story than a song - a very sad short story.
  
• Don't Tell Me You Love Me - Night Ranger
• Don't Touch My Hat - Lyle Lovett : Lyle Lovett is hilarious. "If it's her you want/I don't care about that/You can have my girl/But don't touch my hat."
  
• Don't Tread On Me - Metallica
• Don't Worry 'bout Me - Frank Sinatra
• Don't You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds : One of my favorite 80's songs. I can't hear it without picturing "The Breakfast Club."
  
• Double Agent - Rush : "My angels and my demons at war/Which one will lose/Depends on what I choose/Or maybe which voice I ignore." The "Double Agent" is our internal struggle between wrong and right.
  
• Down - Fuel
• Down - Kutless
• Down - Stone Temple Pilots
• Down - 311

Ranking the 4 songs called Down:
1) 311, 2) Kutless, 3) Stone Temple Pilots, 4) Fuel

• Down Inside of You - Fuel
• Down Poison - 3 Doors Down
• Down There By the Train - Johnny Cash
• The Down Town - Days of the New
• Downtown - Petula Clark
  

Summary:
Listened to 72 songs, skipped 2 (Live version of "Dirty Second Hands" and live acoustic version of "Don't Give Up On Me")
6 Do, but 29 Don't - That seems about right - we're told much more often what NOT to do than what TO do.
3 Disappear, 9 Downs (including 4 simply titled "Down")

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Now playing: Metallica - Don't Tread on Me
via FoxyTunes

Daughters

Featured tunes in this post: "Daughters" by John Mayer, "The Day the Ravens Left the Tower" by The Alarm, "Diamonds and Coal" by Incubus.

Daughters - My wife and I have 3 daughters. I can't imagine life without them. I'm not really sure what I lived for before they came along. Actually, I think my life up to that point was just preparation for becoming their Daddy.

Our oldest, Nicole, has been out of the house for about a year now (give or take - she'll be disappointed I didn't mark the exact date in my brain's history log), but she lives in an apartment close by. We get to see her a couple times a week for a few hours. I hope she knows how special that time is to us, even though it's usually just spent catching up on TV viewing.

Raychel (named after my Dad, hence the non-standard spelling) is the middle child. She just finished her sophomore year of college and is transferring to SMU for the fall. She wants to find an apartment closer to campus. She kicked ass and took names at community college.

In a few days, we're taking our youngest, Lauren, to Freshman Orientation at Oklahoma State - a joint venture for kids and parents. Soon enough we'll be making the trip again so she can start her college career on her own. I'll act tough and make fun of Linda's crying, if I can manage it. Or I might break down myself.

We'll be empty nesters. We had several weeks to test this out last summer when the younger girls took church trips. No worries there - we had a great time together. It's not possible to say how much we love our girls and how proud we are of them all. We'll be empty nesters, with overflowing hearts. Maybe it will make me a better son - at least calling my parents on a regular basis. I'm starting to see how much that means to a parent.

The Day the Ravens Left the Tower - I was going to write about animal songs - those that name an animal in the title - when I noticed how many songs there are with birds in the title. Here are the songs on my iPod that fit the bill (what a punster!): "And Your Bird Can Sing" (The Beatles), "Bird On a Wire" (Johnny Cash), "Blackbird" (Alter Bridge), "Canary In a Coalmine" (The Police), "Comfort Eagle" (Cake), "A Crow Left of the Murder" (Incubus), "The Day the Ravens Left the Tower" (The Alarm), "Disturbance at the Heron House" (R.E.M.), "King of Birds" (R.E.M.), "Kiwi" (Maroon 5) [although this seems to be about the fruit], "Nightingale" (Norah Jones), "Parakeet" (R.E.M.), "Penguins" (Lyle Lovett), "Rooster" (Alice In Chains), "Songbird" (Fleetwood Mac), "Swan Swan H" (R.E.M.), "Three Little Birds" (Bob Marley), "Vultures" (John Mayer), "Where Eagles Dare" (Iron Maiden), and "Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)" (Icicle Works). That's 20 songs. R.E.M. leads the way with 4 of them.

Diamonds and Coal - "If it's good to instigate, we're a fast horse bet on us/I'm not calling you an animal/I think we just fight too much". "Love isn't perfect/Even diamonds start as coal/Come on, in spite of this we're doing just fine/Even diamonds start as coal/Give us time to shine/Even diamonds start as coal/We're incomplete and infantine/Even diamonds start as coal". My favorite lyricist going these days is Brandon Boyd of Incubus. He displays an imaginative vocabulary, discusses a wide range of topics, and doesn't mind letting his phrases fall out of phase with the music - allowing them to stretch into the following progression or end in the middle of a measure. It makes you pay attention. It's unique and thought-provoking. In the next post, I'll be featuring another Incubus tune, one of my favorite songs of the current decade, "Dig". Future posts will no doubt feature other Incubus songs - "Smile Lines", "Nice to Know You", "Wish You Were Here", "Megalomaniac" - great poetry, and when combined with instruments it makes stunning music.

• Crush - Gavin DeGraw
• Crush With Eyeliner - R.E.M.
• Cry In the Sun - Better Than Ezra
• Crying Shame - Jack Johnson
• Crystal Ball - Keane
• Crystal Ball - Styx : "I used to like to walk the straight and narrow line/I used to think that everything was fine/Sometimes I'd sit and gaze for days through sleepless dreams/All alone and trapped in time"
  
• Crystal Blue Persuasion - Tommy James & The Shondells
• Cupid - Jack Johnson
• Cure - Metallica
• Cut to the Chase - Rush
• Cute as a Bug - Lyle Lovett
• Cuyahoga - R.E.M. : "Let's put our heads together and start a new country up/Our father's father's father tried, erased the parts he didn't like/Let's try to fill it in, bank the quarry river, swim/We knee-skinned it you and me, we knee-skinned that river red"
  
• Cyanide - Metallica
• Cygnus X-1 - Rush
• Daddy Sang Bass - Johnny Cash
• Daisy Duke - Rooney
• The Dam at Otter Creek - Live
• Dam Would Break - Toad the Wet Sprocket
• Damaged Goods - Fastball
• Dance Naked - John Mellencamp : That's an ugly visual!
  
• Dance of Death - Iron Maiden
• Dance With You - Live
• Dancing With Myself - Billy Idol
• Dangerous Type - The Cars
• Danny Boy - Johnny Cash : One of the few songs from Cash's American Recordings that I just don't like much.
  
• Dare You to Move - Switchfoot : "Welcome to the fallout/Welcome to resistance/The tension is here/Between who you are and who you could be/Between how it is and how it should be"
  
• Dark Street - Fastball : I don't see how anyone could not love this song.
  
• Darkness - The Police
• Daughters - John Mayer
• Dawn Chorus - The Alarm
• A Day In the Life - The Beatles : It's a great song, even so, it's grossly overrated. It's rarely left out of lists of the greatest songs of all time.
  
• Day Job - Gin Blossoms
• The Day That Never Comes - Metallica : About a battered woman - very evocative. "Love is a four letter word and never spoken here/Love is a four letter word here in this prison/I'll suffer this no longer/I'll put an end to this I swear/This I swear!/The sun will shine/This I swear!"
  
• The Day the Ravens Left the Tower - The Alarm
• Day Tripper - The Beatles
• Daylight - Coldplay
• Daylight Fading - Counting Crows
• Days Go By (acoustic) - Dirty Vegas : The electric version was a pretty big hit - very techno/electonica. This acoustic version shows what a great song they actually wrote, unhidden by the repetitive noise.
  
• Days of the Week - Stone Temple Pilots
• Days With You - Fuel
• Daysleeper - R.E.M. : Good song, but way too similar to "It's the End of the World...", which is far superior.
  
• De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da - The Police : "Poets, priests, and politicians have words to thank for their positions."
  
• Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground - The White Stripes
• Dead Wrong - The Fray
• The Debt Collectors - Ben Lee
• December - Collective Soul
• Deeper and Deeper - The Fixx
• The Deepest Blues are Black - Foo Fighters
• Deja Vu - Iron Maiden
• Delia's Gone - Johnny Cash : Delightfully dark tune. The guy couldn't stand his woman any more, so he shot her.
  
• Demolition Man - The Police
• Deny - Default : "The hand that feeds you, needs you/Oh God, I'd die to try to finally please you". From the excellent CD "The Fallout".
  
• Departure - R.E.M.
• Desire - Toad the Wet Sprocket
• Desire - U2
• Desperado - Johnny Cash : Not as good as The Eagles' version.
  
• Detroit Waves - Matt Nathanson
• Diamonds and Coal - Incubus
• Diddley Daddy - Chris Isaak : A bluesy tribute to Bo Diddley.
  

Summary:
Listened to 59 songs, skipped 1 (live version of Cygnus X-1)
2 Crushes, 3 Crystals, 2 Dams, 4 Dances, 11 Days, 2 Dead

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Now playing: John Mayer - Daughters
via FoxyTunes