OK everyone makes mix tapes of songs for their car, vacation, etc.
What I wanna' do is see what the worlds greatest mix tape would be.
Here are the rules:

1. You must give a reason why your song should be included

2. It must kind of flow along with the song before it

3. Unless you totally HATE the song before it. Then you can start a new "tape" ONLY if you give the reason why the song listed before sucks.

First Song: God Only Knows by the Beach Boys
Yeah, I know the Beach Boys kinda' suck. However, no one has ever convinced me that God Only Knows isn't the most beautiful pop song on earth. The length, falsetto, harmony, melody and counter-melody, it's just perfect.

-- the brain (dkravetz@hotmail.com), June 01, 1999

Answers

Second Song:Hey Nineteen by Steely Dan
OK so appearantly some people dont know God Only Knows sigh
Hey Nineteen is the song that not only sums up Steely Dan but MOR 70's radio.
Nothing too difficult, nothing too radical,
just a nice catchy steady groove and catchy lyrics (skate a little lower now)
Besdies who can resist "The Cuervo Gold, the fine Columbian makes tonight a wonderful thing."?
Basically saying,"Whatever girl, if we got enough liquor and coke it's all good. Very 70's
A friend of mine once described Steely Dan as Motown on valium.
This song perfectly sums that up. Makes you want to dance and sleep at the same time.
Everytime Ihear it my mind is sent back to the roller-rink skating in a circle with no worries......

-- the brain (dkravetz@hotmail.com), June 08, 1999.

....from Billie Holiday lets go to My Funny Valentine by John Coltrane.
It starts out as a sweet, pretty version of this standard; and then around the middle of this song, all hell breaks loose.
Coltranes' solos start sounding more punk than anything else, and makes the reader listen to all the sweetness that the tune started out with with cynical ears.

-- the brain (dkravetz@hotmail.com), June 22, 1999.

....I'm not sure why this is appearing in the middle of the list instead of after the one I was responding to (Scooters' Billie Holiday suggestion) this could get messy

-- the brain (dkravetz@hotmail.com), June 22, 1999.

The first thing that pops in my mind is Detroit Rock City by

KISS

. Just a crazy, stupid, loud rock song.

-- the brain (dkravetz@hotmail.com), June 29, 1999.

From Motown on Valium, let's just go to Motown. "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye is my choice. It was the first song I thought of after I read your Steely Dan write-up.

-- The Scooter (scott.slemmons@enmu.edu), June 09, 1999.

fourth song Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield we'll go from motown to the best "motown" song Motown never made.
The only positive thing that came out of Dusty Springfields' passing this past year was that she was FINALLY recognized as the great soul singer that she was. This is a great, great song
Nice gospelly beginning wonderful guitar lick and a call and response chorus that would have made Aretha proud.
I have to admit I hardly knew this song before the Pulp Fiction and it's still the only song on that CD I still listen too.
The more I think of it, it really is more of a STAX song than a MOTOWN song, but its' my pick all the same.

-- the brain (dkravetz@tivoli.com), June 10, 1999.

Grrrr...you keep sticking to soul, which I know so very little about. Dusty Springfield may lead naturally to Aretha, but I can't for the life of my remember any of her songs but "R.E.S.P.E.C.T.", which doesn't seem to fit here yet. Instead, I'll go with Billie Holliday's "God Bless the Child" because it's such a sweet song, and Billie sounds so good.

-- The Scooter (scott.slemmons@enmu.edu), June 16, 1999.

I know even less about jazz than I do about soul. But after a while of trying to think of jazz songs that had a punk attitude or punk songs that had a jazz attitude, I decided to go with the question on a more thematic level--finding another song that took a popular standard from the past and subverted it for a new generation. So I came up with Jimi Hendrix's performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" from Woodstock.

-- The Scooter (scott.slemmons@enmu.edu), June 29, 1999.

From John Coltrane to Hendrix to KISS? In that case, I take back my previous answer.

I'll go from Coltrane to "Basin Street Blues" by Miles Davis. It's a pretty good song, and for whatever strange reason, "My Funny Valentine" reminds me of this one.

-- The Scooter (scott.slemmons@enmu.edu), June 29, 1999.