Ok. I'll go all in. This song hits pretty close to the bone thematically. It got me through a rough patch. It may seem weird, but I turn to this when I want to find my center and elevate my spirit above whatever has brought it low. It's both ugly and beautiful, coarse and poetic--the contrast between faith and awe in the miracles of man and the deeper recognition of how we all come up short when measured against the momentum of the universe; yet we keep going. I don't know if this is, necessarily a song to be remembered by but it does represent what I value in music. A song with the power of transformation and hope, regardless.

Lou Reed: Power & Glory


And, I have to include this one too. Just cause it seems appropriate. I've got some funny ideas about what sounds good.

Camper Van Beethoven: Shut us down


My runners up list included:

Camper Van Beethoven: Good Guys & Bad Guys
A bit of fluff, but it never fails to make me happy

John Coltrane: A Love Supreme, Part One: Acknowledgement (remastered)

It was tough not to go with this one. I think I once posted that this piece is about as close to god as you can get without burning your wings...and I'm largely agnostic.

The whole piece builds to the thematic phrase. If you have that phrase in your head you can hear the pieces from the very beginning as they swirl around and eventually come together. It's embedded throughout and the arc of the improvisation leads you along its synthesis, showing you fragment by fragment how it all fits together. Its meaningful, musical and metaphorical.

from NPR:
It's a theme Coltrane consciously uses in subtle and careful ways throughout A Love Supreme. For example, toward the end of part one, "Acknowledgement," Coltrane plays the riff in every key.

"Coltrane's more or less finished his improvisation, and he just starts playing the 'Love Supreme' motif, but he changes the key another time, another time, another time. This is something very unusual. It's not the way he usually improvises. It's not really improvised. It's something that he's doing. And if you actually follow it through, he ends up playing this little 'Love Supreme' theme in all 12 possible keys," says Porter. "To me, he's giving you a message here. First of all, he's introduced the idea. He's experimented with it. He's improvised with it with great intensity. Now he's saying it's everywhere. It's in all 12 keys. Anywhere you look, you're going to find this 'Love Supreme.' He's showing you that in a very conscious way on his saxophone.

And then it coalesces in this startling and centering verbal chant by Coltrane, "A Love Supreme, A Love Supreme..." and when you get there, one just feels this great relief and resolution. A 'yeah, I get it all now' epiphany. For me, it took a few years to appreciate this song, but it was worth the effort.