Frank’s Favorites Playlist
What’s in a Playlist?
I know more about the large-scale structure of spacetime and the mathematical details of quantum mechanics and radars than I do about music. Let me put it another way: I know almost nothing about music, beyond chord structures. I used to play the clarinet (badly) in high school. Despite my almost total lack of musical talent, I love to listen to music. I do not, however, understand the mechanism by which music affects us. I mean, it really changes the brain-body biochemistry, and its effects are universal, so far as I can tell. For example, a minor chord automatically evokes a bittersweet feeling of melancholy and can make the listener recall a rainy afternoon or a lost lover. But how and why does this happen? I wish I knew. I feel very sorry for people who either cannot hear music, or who think that they cannot listen to it for cultural or religious reasons. Listening to music (and making it, if you are sufficiently talented and hard-working) ought to be a wonderful part of everyone’s life. I mainly like rock-and-roll. One of my all-time favorite favorites is Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird. but there are plenty of other genres represented in my favorites list, including such quirky pieces as Ringo Starr’s Octopus’s Garden.
Understanding the kind of music a person likes can tell you a lot about them: The era when they grew up, what their personality is like, and so forth. A playlist might not be exactly a window into the soul, but it does provide an insight.
A Re-Gifted iPod as a Window to the Soul
Here’s an example: My (now-ex) girlfriend was horrified to discover, years ago, that I had given an old iPod of mine to a ne’er-do-well friend of hers, a jerk named Stuart, without first erasing my songs from it. She felt that I had given him something way too personal. What was worse, Stuart being the twit that he was (and never having any money to buy gifts for others although he was never short on money to buy pot for himself), in turn re-gifted my iPod to some mutual friends as a wedding gift on the same night that I gave the iPod to him. I subsequently learned that Stu and the newlyweds were later joking about my awful (as they saw it) songs with my girlfriend at the college where they were all students together. In other words, an act of both magnanimity and generosity on my part (magnanimous because Stu was really Stephanie’s friend and I gave the iPod to him as a favor to her and generous because I could have sold it instead of giving it to him) was turned into an act of humiliation by people who I thought were my friends (including my girlfriend).
But allow me to clarify this situation: they thought it was humiliating for me. I didn’t. My feeling was, I like the songs I like, and if those guys thought they were stupid and were laughing at me for having done something innocently nice against a backdrop of incredibly tacky behavior by one of them, then they could go to hell. (In hindsight, that whole incident should have been a warning to me about what kind of person my girlfriend really was, in that she was laughing at me along with them, instead of being outraged at what her friend had done with the re-gifting.)
With that caveat about my musical taste in mind, my playlist of favorites from my iPod is on this page, along with a few explanatory notes (no pun intended).
Some More About What I Like...
I get a kick out of songs that tell stories. My favorite line from a pop song occurs in one such song by the J. Geils Band. In Centerfold, the protagonist reminisces about his old high school sweetheart and then makes a rude discovery some years after graduation. Thumbing through magazines at a newsstand, he discovers that she is featured in a new centerfold spread. Initially shocked, disillusioned and disheartened at this turn of events, he finally gives in to practicality and sings: “Oh no, I can’t deny it; oh yeah, I guess I gotta buy it.” That cracks me up. If you don’t get the perfection of that line, then you don’t understand the way that I think.
I also have some sound bites listed here. Sound bites from movies and cartoons often flash into my mind spontaneously when I’m involved in funny or stressful situations. Some of my favorite lines therefore had to be recorded onto my iPod and are in my playlist on this page.
One of my all-time favorite sound bites is not from a movie or a cartoon at all. It is, rather, a real-life recording of Gene Kranz that was taped at Apollo Mission Control on 13 April 1970. It is the monologue that he delivered when the controllers realized that Apollo 13 had suffered a catastrophic accident half-way to the Moon and that they might well lose the three-man crew before they could get them back to Earth. Kranz immediately provided a spare and well-reasoned analysis of the situation.
The wrecked Apollo 13 service module, photographed in Earth orbit after command module separation as the exhausted crew was preparing to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. This was their only chance to see the damage: one whole side of the spacecraft was missing. Courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
In my iPod sound bite, Kranz delivers his words steadily and with confidence. He starts by saying, “Let’s everybody keep cool,” echoing a favorite phrase of mine, “don’t panic,” from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Then he seamlessly moves on to say, in essence, the lunar lander is attached as a lifeboat and it’s full of oxygen and fuel. We can use it to get our guys home. Having established that there’s a way to solve the problem, he then concludes with the third and best line of all, and I quote him here: “Let’s solve the problem, but let’s not make it any worse by [momentary pause] guessing.” The words are perfect, and the momentary pause before he says the last word, guessing, makes the delivery perfect as well. It isn’t often that a truly great impromptu speech, Shakespearean in its beauty, its truth and its brevity, gets recorded at an equally great moment in history. That’s why I put Kranz’s Apollo 13 monologue on my iPod favorites list.
Another Apollo 13 sound bite that I recorded onto my iPod favorites list is the the remark made by a ground controller just seconds after the capsule crew has radioed their famous “OK Houston we’ve had a problem here” statement. Watching the plunging Apollo 13 power and oxygen levels on the monitors in Houston, one of the ground controllers immediately adds, with some tension in his voice, “We’ve got more’n a problem.”
Speaking of Project Apollo, I also have several monologues from Apollo launch sequences on my iPod favorites list. There’s never again been anything like them. One of my favorite lines in the Apollo launch sequences that I have on my iPod is “guidance is internal” at T-17 seconds (changed to “guidance release” in later launches). That line triggers a flood of memories for me. That’s when you knew that the rocket had become isolated in the universe, its gyros spinning on their own, its electronic brain running by itself, the whole vehicle and its three astronauts ready to fly to the Moon all on their own. The “main engine ignition” call always seemed somehow premature, with the Niagara Falls-like cascade of water smashing into the flame trough just ahead of the engine exhaust.
Liftoff was anti-climactic for me, but the excitement level would rise again and a couple of seconds later when “the tower is clear!” came over the microphone (you could almost hear everybody at Mission Control gasping a relieved “whew” at that moment), and finally the words from the Apollo capsule astronauts, nearly drowned out, lost in the explosive shaking and rumbling: “roll and pitch program initiation.” With that the entire 300-foot-long Saturn V vehicle, still barely above the tower, first rotated longitudinally and then pitched its nose over as gracefully as a ballerina, accelerating away to Earth orbit and then the Moon, blasting its exhausted stages into the sky one after another as its astronauts climbed higher and faster than anyone had ever gone before. And all of their words, and of mission control’s words, were said (are said, for it still lives in my mind) against the background roar of the five thunderous, colossal, Earth-shaking first-stage F-1 engines and, later, the upper-stage engines. Wow.
Nothing against the space shuttle, but the visual and audio sensations of a shuttle launch just can’t grab me the way those Apollo launches did. (Even the name shuttle sounds boring.) Who cared about Vietnam (or anything else in the world) when you could watch the big red block letters “U...S...A” race vertically upward, one after the next, on the television screen as the ice chunks went flying off of the Saturn body and the rocket screamed upward past the dreaded tower on an explosive wave of fire? Ah, those were the days of my childhood. I hope the lunar Orion launches (using the new, Saturn-class Ares V launch vehicle with the lunar lander on the nose and the new Ares I with the astronauts on the nose) will bring that feeling back to me again.
Concluding Thoughts on My Playlist
So, for what it’s worth, here are some of my favorite songs (and sound bites), as embarrassing as it might seem to admit to some of them. (Putting some of these on the list is like admitting to the guilty pleasure of watching re-runs of Gilligan’s Island or Green Acres.)
Oh well, as I said above, I am what I am, bad taste included. I’ve crossed deserts on foot, I’ve come close to being killed more than once, and I’ve matched wits with some of the best the world has to offer and have usually come out looking good in the comparison. So I’m not too proud (or too fragile) to admit to some fairly awful, corn-ball musical favorites. (Admit it, you have some awful favorites, too.) Here you go, here’s a peek through a little window into my soul...
Kryptonite
3 Doors Down
Because the Night
10,000 Maniacs (Natalie Merchant, vocalist)
Space Age Love Song
A Flock of Seagulls
Pyramania
The Alan Parsons Project
Damned If I Do
The Alan Parsons Project
Games People Play
The Alan Parsons Project
Eye in the Sky
The Alan Parsons Project
Let's Talk About Me
The Alan Parsons Project
It Never Rains in Southern California
Albert Hammond
“Let’s solve the problem but let’s not make
it any worse by...guessing”
Gene Kranz monologue from Apollo 13 catastrophe
Apollo 13 Project Team sound bite
“OK Houston we've had a problem here” monologue
Apollo 13 Project Team sound bite
“We've got more’n a problem” monologue
Apollo 13 Project Team sound bite
Apollo 10 launch monologue
Apollo 10 Project Team sound bite
Apollo 17 night launch monologue
Apollo 17 Project Team sound bite
Haiti
Arcade Fire
Rebellion (Lies)
Arcade Fire
Sugar Sugar (For some reason this song can make me feel better in even the worst situations.)
The Archies
I Say a Little Prayer (For some bizarre reason I see an Apollo launch when I hear this song. Go figure.)
Aretha Franklin
City Of New Orleans
Arlo Guthrie
Windy
The Association
The Boys of Summer
The Ataris
Hazy Shade of Winter
Bangles
Eternal Flame
Bangles
Be With You
Bangles
Walk Like An Egyptian
Bangles
I Only Want to Be with You
Bay City Rollers
California Girls
The Beach Boys
Paperback Writer
The Beatles
Yellow Submarine
The Beatles
Get Back
The Beatles
Wellington's Victory
Beethoven
“That was one good king”
Beowulf spoken (Old English sound bite)
In a Big Country
Big Country
We Didn’t Start The Fire
Billy Joel
Turning Japanese (I know it’s awful, but I like it. So there.)
Blank Pages
Heart of Glass
Blondie
Into the Ocean
Blue October
Don't Fear The Reaper
Blue Öyster Cult
Closer to Free
The BoDeans
Good Things
The BoDeans
Pick up the Pieces
The BoDeans
The Getaway/Riding as One
Bruce Broughton--Silverado
You're So Vain
Carly Simon
Jazzman
Carole King
I Feel the Earth Move
Carole King
Just What I Needed
The Cars
Touch and Go
The Cars
You Might Think
The Cars
“I thought it was a pretty stupid idea too”
Cartman (from Southpark)
Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves
Cher
Reptile
The Church
Lost in the Supermarket
The Clash
Clocks
Coldplay
Clocks
Coldplay
Yellow
Coldplay
Talk
Coldplay
Talk
Coldplay
Speed of Sound
Coldplay
World Where You Live
Crowded House
Half the Way
Crystal Gayle
Friday I'm in Love
The Cure
In Between
The Cure
Just Like Heaven
The Cure
“Honey Roasted Peanuts” monologue (one of my favorite favorites-Homer frustrated by a last peanut)
Dan Castellaneta as Homer Simpson
Wouldn't It Be Good
Danny Hutton Hitters
Kiss on My List
Daryl Hall & John Oates
Out of Touch
Daryl Hall & John Oates
Theme From "St. Elsewhere"
Dave Grusin
Love Theme from St. Elmo's Fire
David Foster
Soul Meets Body
Death Cab For Cutie
Crooked Teeth
Death Cab For Cutie
Strangelove
Depeche Mode
Dooley - The Dillards
The Dillards
Twisting By the Pool
Dire Straits
Money For Nothing
Dire Straits
“We need to disconnect HAL” dialogue
Dialogue between two astronauts in the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey
American Pie (original)
Don McLean
I Love You Always Forever
Donna Lewis
I'll Make A Man Out Of You
Donny Osmond
Rio
Duran Duran
Electric Barbarella
Duran Duran
Come Undone
Duran Duran
Save Tonight
Eagle-Eye Cherry
Feels So Right
Eagle-Eye Cherry
Take It Easy
The Eagles
Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)
Elliott Lurie/Looking Glass
The Magnificent Seven
Elmer Bernstein & Royal Philharm.
Orinoco Flow
Enya
Here's to the Night
Eve 6
Father To The Man
Exchange
The Dying Redcoat
Fair Liberty's Call Studio Cast
Aquarius (Original Version)
Fifth Dimension
One Thing
Finger Eleven
Superman
Five For Fighting
December 1963 (Oh What a Night)
Four Seasons
Who Loves You
Four Seasons
How to Save a Life
The Fray
Breezin'
George Benson
Stalker
Goldfinger
Long Way Down
Goo Goo Dolls
Naked
Goo Goo Dolls
Only One
Goo Goo Dolls
Ain't that Unusual
Goo Goo Dolls
Eyes Wide Open
Goo Goo Dolls
Broadway
Goo Goo Dolls
Black Balloon
Goo Goo Dolls
Big Machine
Goo Goo Dolls
Smash
Goo Goo Dolls
Stop the World
Goo Goo Dolls
All Eyes On Me
Goo Goo Dolls
Amigone
Goo Goo Dolls
Axel F Theme
Harold Faltermeyer
Taste of Honey
Herb Alpert
This Guy's in Love (With You)
Herb Alpert
Work Song
Herb Alpert
And We Danced
The Hooters
500 Miles
The Hooters
Huygens Radar Sounder Approaching Titan’s Surface
Huygens Titan Lander Radar--ESA and NASA
Centerfold (One of the best pairs of lines ever: Oh no, I can’t deny it; oh yeah, I guess I gotta buy it.)
J. Geils Band
We Built This City
Jefferson Airplane/Starship
Cannon D Rock
Jerry C (on YouTube)
Standing still
Jewel
Light My Fire
Jim Morrison-The Doors
All Along the Watchtower
Jimi Hendrix
Them From "Greatest American Hero" (Believe It Or Not)
Joey Scarbury
St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)
John Parr
The Throne Room/End Title
John Williams
(Ghost) Riders in the Sky
Johnny Cash
Would You Go With Me
Josh Turner
Someone to Lay Down Beside Me
Karla Bonoff
Chiquilla
Kumbia All-Starz
All in All
Lifehouse
Am I Ever Gonna Find Out
Lifehouse
Hanging by a Moment
Lifehouse
You and Me
Lifehouse
Free Bird
Lynyrd Skynyrd (One of my all-time favorite favorites)
Holiday
Madonna
Hung Up
Madonna
I'll Remember
Madonna
Magnificent 7 Theme
Magnificent Seven
East is Red
Mark Pevsner Orchestra
If You're Gone
Matchbox Twenty
Mad Season
Matchbox Twenty
Unwell
Matchbox Twenty
Long Day
Matchbox Twenty
3:00 AM
Matchbox Twenty
Girl Like That
Matchbox Twenty
Right Back Where We Started From
Maxine Nightingale
“Are you a manic depressive?”
Mel Blanc (as Porky Pig) sound bite
“Happy birthday you thing from another world you”
Mel Blanc (as Porky Pig) sound bite
“Is there any insanity in your family?”
Mel Blanc (as Porky Pig) sound bite
“Oh well, back to the old drawing board”
Mel Blanc (as Marvin Martian)
“Son of a b*tch”
Mel Blanc (as Porky Pig) out-take sound bite
“That's all folks”
Mel Blanc (as Porky Pig) sound bite
Smooth Criminal
Michael Jackson
The Impression That I Get
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Silent Running
Mike & The Mechanics
All I Need Is a Miracle
Mike & The Mechanics
The Rockford Files Theme
Mike Post
Natural Blues
Moby
(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
The Monkees
Australian Table Wines
Monty Python
Cannibalism
Monty Python
The Cheese Shop
Monty Python
“Constitutional Peasant” dialogue
Arthur and a peasant argue in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Rock Notes
Monty Python
Ride My See-Saw
Moody Blues
The Story in Your Eyes
Moody Blues
Your Wildest Dreams
Moody Blues
I Know You're Out There Somewhere
Moody Blues
Hawaii Five-O theme
Mort Stevens & His Orchestra
Superman
Neil Norman
99 Luftballoon
Nena
Let's Go (Nothing for Me)
New Order
Age of Consent
New Order
Love Vigilantes
New Order
True Faith - ('94)
New Order
Bizarre Love Triangle
New Order
Vanishing Point
New Order
Run
New Order
Regret
New Order
World in Motion
New Order
60 miles an hour
New Order
Primitive notion
New Order
Close range
New Order
Round & Round
New Order
Someday We'll Know
New Radicals
“Because all we want to hear is the truth” dialogue
Nicholas Cage in Raising Arizona
Cruel to Be Kind
Nick Lowe
Just a Girl
No Doubt
One Flight Down
Norah Jones
“Delays Delays” monologue (Marvin Martian experiences frustration in his effort to destroy the Earth)
Mel Blanc (Marvin Martian)
Here It Goes Again
O.K. Go
A Million Ways
O.K. Go
“Your attitude has been noted, oh yes, it’s been noted” dialogue
Omar Sharif as Dr. Zhivago opposite a Soviet commissar in Dr. Zhivago
Enola Gay
Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark
I Know a Place
Original Soundtrack & Petula Clark
Dance With Me
Orleans
Love Takes Time
Orleans
Jackie Blue (One of my favorite favorites)
Ozark Mountain Daredevils
Silly Love Songs (I Love You) (One of my favorite favorites)
Paul McCartney
Just Like Me
Paul Revere & The Raiders featuring Mark Lindsay
Solsbury Hill (One of my favorite favorites)
Peter Gabriel
“Bang the Rocks Together” monologue
Peter Jones in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
“Don't Panic”
Peter Jones in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
I Don't Wanna Know
Phil Collins
You'll Be in My Heart
Phil Collins
Don't Let Me Get Me
Pink
King of Pain
The Police
Such Great Heights
The Postal Service
Recycled Air
The Postal Service
Clark Gable
The Postal Service
We Will Become Silhouettes
The Postal Service
The Ghost In You
The Psychedelic Furs
Bad Day
R.E.M.
I'll Be There For You
The Rembrandts
Never Gonna Give You Up
Rick Astley
Together Forever
Rick Astley
Octopus’s Garden (Quirky but fun)
Ringo Starr
“Charlie don't surf!”
Robert Duvall as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now
Paint It Black (One of my favorite favorites)
The Rolling Stones
John Henry
Roscoe Holcomb
More Than This
Roxy Music
Avalon
Roxy Music
Affirmation (One of my favorite favorites)
Savage Garden
Crash and Burn
Savage Garden
I Want You
Savage Garden
Tears of Pearls
Savage Garden
A Thousand Words
Savage Garden
Beautiful Wreck
Shawn Mullins
“At this height they might harpoon us but they'll
dang sure never spot us on no radar screen” monologue
Slim Pickens (as B-52 pilot Major Kong) in Dr. Strangelove
“This is your attack profile”
Slim Pickens (as B-52 pilot Major Kong) in Dr. Strangelove
Hands Open
Snow Patrol
Shut Your Eyes
Snow Patrol
Shut Your Eyes
Snow Patrol
Games People Play
The Spinners
The Rubberband Man
The Spinners
I'll Be Around
The Spinners
Could It Be I'm Falling in Love
The Spinners
Working My Way Back to You/Forgive Me, Girl
The Spinners
Moonlight Feels Right
Starbuck
Born To Be Wild
Steppenwolf
Fly Like An Eagle
The Steve Miller Band
While You See A Chance
Steve Winwood
Lord of the Dance
Steven Curtis Chapman
Love Spreads
The Stone Roses
Love Spreads
The Stone Roses
I Think We’re Alone Now
Tiffany
It's Raining Again
Supertramp
Break It Down Again
Tears for Fears
Shout
Tears for Fears
All I Want
Toad the Wet Sprocket
Fall Down
Toad the Wet Sprocket
The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)
The Tokens
American Girl (one of my favorite favorites)
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Don't Do Me Like That
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Learning To Fly (one of my favorite favorites)
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Mickey
Toni Basil
Anyway That You Want Me
The Troggs
Love Is All Around
The Troggs
Jump
Van Halen
Youth of 1,000 Summers
Van Morrison
Hitchin' a Ride
Vanity Fair
Everything You Want
Vertical Horizon
A Fifth of Beethoven
Walter Murphy & The Big Apple Band
Pinball Wizard
The Who
