^ Listen along!

10. Fugue State - Vulfpeck

Vulfpeck is oh-so-often at their strongest when they are at their most minimal - producing delightful little ditties that are perfect for spring and summer listening. At least, that’s what I think - I can understand why they may have wanted to move away from this over time as it can be a bit simplistic/boring/etc. etc. but they do it extremely well. I do wish they hadn’t traded the minimalist ideal for large scale collaborative projects with instrumentalists and vocalists alike (of which there are now already too many in the band). I digress.

Fugue State brings Bachian baroque sensibilities to this laid back (and quite short) funk tune, with its most obvious influences coming to the front during an instrumental breakdown that essentially has the members of Vulf playing out the ancient form of a Fugue. A fugue has complex variations upon a theme interacting with each other over and over - something they play out across several instruments here to great effect. We return to the more normal, funky melody that starts and ends the song and the whole package is something I have loved listening to time and time and time again for years. Vulfpeck at its best, right before it went in a different direction that I’ve never been able to square away with my own tastes (I am being really dramatic about this huh).1

9. Swarm - Thank You Scientist

This is the short entry for these 10. Thank You Scientist is a remarkable band that has gotten less popularity than they deserve. They’re also possibly the best live show I’ve ever seen - the one time I’ve been blessed to see them - stealing the show while opening for Between the Buried and Me (I swear I like those guys, it’s not my fault that both TYS & The Contortionist went up before they did).

Swarm is the type of song that has the group at their best - a frantic affair that perfectly highlights their unique brand of… progressive ska? It’s damn fun to listen to - I especially enjoy the bridge that features a multi-instrument duel between a trumpet, a sax, and two guitars - with the drums and bass holding everything down.

8. The End of Corporatism - Cameron Graves

What beautiful insanity. I’m not sure if there’s much of any other way to describe this piece, my introduction to the solo work of Cameron Graves. It’s interesting comparing it now to his more recent work, which has abandoned a bit of the craziness for a bit more groove, but The End of Corporatism lives high in my heart for several reasons. One - it broke me a bit out of a stuffy box. For what is effectively a jazz quartet, a venue in which I had been used to much more restrained affairs (still mad at Dave Brubeck for going to 4/4 on Blue Rondo a La Turk solo sections you coward), they do a ton of really sick stuff.

Two - it is the purest pinnacle of a recurring genre that I’ve made up for myself - the drummer does whatever he wants. While the rest of the band spends much of its non-solo time playing the (incredible) melody together, Ronald Bruner, Jr. (brother of Thundercat, fun fact) provides our intrigue by wailing every part of his kit into submission.

Third - the bass work during the solos made me scream the first time I heard it. Literally, actually scream. Starting at 1:45 and throughout the rest of the song, the humble bassist2 is blacked out, playing out of his mind.

Fourth - and finally - amongst the insanity is a piece that I consider legitimately beautiful. The melody is often played in unison across the band for a reason: it’s an astoundingly good one. It takes us up and down the staff, each measure providing a little new bit of intrigue.

I have a feeling that Graves knows this is his best, or at least most interesting piece. Why else would he dedicate (a masterful) twenty three minutes to a live version of it?

7. Flourish - The Contortionist

This is the kind of song that gets me MOVING. My body and head start bouncing around, only for me to realize time & again that, despite how innately driving and groovey it feels, the time signatures are so all over the place and I’m left moving at the wrong times against my will - something I find incredibly fun. They’ve tricked me for like, six years now & I still can’t get enough of it.

Eventually though, the brutal beatdown ends & The Contortionist leads us to something much more of the beautiful sort, with floaty keys and sweeping guitar that go on and on, drawing me into a trance-like state. A wonderful solo line is introduced, alongside with a complimentary bass. I can picture them in the studio now.

“What if we took the whole thing & then reintroduced heavier guitars, and then broke it all down again with the beginning riff in a new, slower, somehow even heavier form, bringing on what will remain the most brutal two minutes of our entire five album discography?” Hahahaha sure dude do it.

Ever single second of this six minute track is perfection. If you forced me into a room & forced me to pick my favorite band, it is the Contortionist, exactly because of exultant masterpieces such as Flourish. I can’t wait for them to start making music again.

6. Totentanz (Dance of Death) - Franz List

I have waited until the end of our time together to dare ask you to spend 15 minutes of your time listening to but one song, the only classical piece on the whole list. There could have been more, but finding and recommending all of the specific recordings I like best is very fraught. So I have this one, the one I simply feel the strongest about and of which… my favorite recording is off some weird Spotify compilation album so I guess that’s where we’re at.

I’m not sure this Liszt piece is objectively all that good, especially in the context of his larger, astounding canon. But boy, does it make me feel something. It’s astoundingly dark and moody, building tension throughout (that my grandpa really wanted to resolve, obviously), using my favorite form of epic classical instrumentation, the piano and orchestra, to perfection.

It’s hard to talk about something this large and grand in any cohesive way, as every moment purposefully builds upon each other and is more something to be experienced than meaningfully described. This is, admittedly, another reason for fewer classical pieces here than there could be.

I’ll just point out one bit though & then I’ll let you hopefully form your own opinions. We spend the first minute and a half setting a metaphorical table, playing some themes, getting everyone involved. Then? Several seconds of silence (there’s actually a timpani hit or two), letting us breath before we start into the real meat and potatoes, the piano player introducing the main musical motif we’ll be playing with for the next several minutes. I’ve always appreciated this breath, a subtle nod to something ending and another thing beginning, sure, but also a space to digest what you have just heard before settling into the remaining 14 or so minutes, a blistering and harrowing affair.

5. Death Be Not Proud - Attalus

From the Christian perspective, there are few more powerful things than death not being the end of oneself but instead being an effective start of something new and better. Of course, sects throughout time have burnt and twisted this theology, tossing aside present concerns and purposefully disregarding the effects their lives have on the still very real and present Earth (luckily there’s a lot in the Bible about that too).

Death Be Not Proud by John Donne is an excellent outlay of that hope Christians hold concerning the end of their lives, written while he himself was approaching Death with eyes wide open. One can obviously imagine why he would take solace in this belief.

Death Be Not Proud by Attalus is a well done reinterpretation of the themes (and specific lines) contained within Donnes’s work that rarely fails to make me a bit misty, presenting death as a sun-bleached ship that ground up upon Heaven’s shore. It doesn’t hurt that the surrounding rock-y musical landscape is a beautiful one in its own right, presenting a powerful sea for the vocals to sail on top of.

Again, perhaps the emotion comes from sadness that more stuff like this doesn’t exist, Christians can & should make beautiful, well done things rather than chasing whatever the God’s Not Dead movies are. In a faith where one has to insist that it was God who made all things good, I would think its professants would be, on the whole, capable of more. I miss & treasure this band.

4. Cold Fame - Band of Skulls

Cold Fame is an obvious outlier - featuring pretty simple instrumentation and repetitive lyrics. Though an outlier it may be, it still represents something special to me, having been a prominent feature of the soundtrack of the quieter parts of my life. Time and again, when I need less noise, less craziness, perhaps on a cool nighttime walk or drive, it’s the song I’ve turned to. My love affair with it began during my time working at a coffee shop in college. I’d often close up the shop and take my 12 minute walk back to my crummy sublet as slowly as I could. There’s something about a summer night in the Midwest that’s a bit magical. Clear skies that let you see the stars, a bit of wind to take the edge off what is probably a temperature in the mid 80s, just enough humidity to get you sweating a bit anyways.

Baby darling doll face honey, the name of the album that Cold Fame comes from, has been my wife’s Facebook Messenger nickname for seven years and counting. It makes me smile every time.

3. Crash the Car - KNOWER

I remember showing Crash the Car to my friend Lexi as we were driving back from… somewhere. Heck if I know, but it was only the two of us in the car, which rarely if ever happened over the few years we knew each other before she moved to Chicago. I appreciate a lot of things about Lexi - but one of them is a constant willingness to listen to the music that I sent over (and also be particularly enthused about it).

It’s so easy to recall this bit because I would say we were both enraptured. I suppose that’s a good sign when I was the one recommending the song & put it on in the first place.

Crash the Car gets me good every time I’ve heard it (or watched the music video on YouTube). There’s something lovable or mind-blowing or intriguing or soothing or gratifying at almost every moment. I love the way that Genevieve’s voice sounds a bit weak and pitchy at the beginning. “Is she built for this?” thinks someone on first listen. Yes, she strengthens and nails every single bit of the rest of the song (the run at 3:57 - what can I say except holy shit). Her range is insane. I love the way that the bass (played by Sam Wilkes, of course) ramps up in the first chorus, immediately offering most of the musical intrigue with a line that interfaces directly with the vocal melody. I love the use of an ethereal backing chorus to fill in space throughout. I love the modulation up three minutes in. I love the strings coming in at 3:30, taking jumps of fifths up and up and up. The first time I was listening to the song, it literally made my jaw drop. I could listen to the resulting few phrases of strings, choir, bass, vocals, drums, and keys bouncing off of each other on repeat over and over and over and I often do. I love the extended sax solo which is a masterclass in bepop playing, note selection, use of the melody and chord changes, that whole thing. Yeah, there’s a sax solo, why not!! I love Louis Cole’s masterful drumming throughout, but especially during the sax section and through the end of the song. His playing specifically from 4:15-52 is a masterclass that I think I could study forever. Honorable mention to the snare drags at 3:47-ish, they add so much with so little, bridging into the second half of the string instrumental. I love the final moments, a sudden cut to smooth, decompressing synth, taking us back through the chords of the song, before coming to an end. What a rush.

Apparently I was singing along during that listen with Lexi, though I don’t remember it but he insists I was & that it made the moment that much more special. In my defense perhaps, how can you not? For my taste, this may be the most perfect song on the entire list. Obviously I already ran through many of my favorite parts, but there are so many things I could say beyond it.

2. Marianas Trench - August Burns Red

Mariana’s Trench has a hell of a fun intro - something that let August Burns Red flex a little more of their melodic chops, a consistent theme throughout the album Constellations when compared to their preceding effort, the incredibly chug-y Messengers. It also was effectively my introduction to loving metalcore, a genre that has stuck with me ever since. Obviously, as one does, I had listened to the almighty Someday Came Suddenly by Attack! Attack! cefore I got my first hint of August Burns Red’s work and loved it, but it kinda stayed at that. Me listening to Stick Stickly & not knowing how much better it could all be out there.

Mariana’s Trench really runs the gamut of what a track in the style can be, with a building, melodic beginning that lasts a whole minute and a half before introducing the more brutal crunch in the guitars and screaming. Fun breakdowns throughout, frantic energy, a chorus of types, a minute long fade-out outro - they stuffed it all in here. And the drumming man, the drumming. Matt Greiner is and always has been the standard for insane parts that serve the song. I always appreciate how often he mixes it up too - if you listen back to this one you’ll notice that his composition changes up pretty consistently every four bars or so. Highlight - going to a half time feel from 2:38-2:46 to let the return of the lead guitar line shine a bit before returning to our rapid hi-hats as normally scheduled.

Weirdly enough, metalcore was somehow the first genre (non-Christian explicitly) that I really got into. I guess it’s not that weird, given that I was in my early teens when stuff like Constellations and other second and third albums from icons of the genre were coming out. It was easy to hop onto the train and ride along, experiencing a type of golden age together with everyone else, especially as I got to go back & check out the earlier work of all of these artists. As a percussion obsessed kid from the day I was born, it was also easy to get into a genre that lived and died on a sneakily groovy backbone - the breakdown. Breakdowns (and for that matter, a lot of screaming in the lyrics) were a bit of a license for an uptight, anxious Midwest Christian pastors kid to unwind a bit, let loose a little, fall into the music, stop analyzing every damn thing and just have fun.

I’m probably just getting older or more anxious or too busy or something but I listen to a lot less metalcore (and louder, more frantic music in general) these days - it fills up too much space in my head that I’ve left for other things. Maybe that’s a sign that there’s a bit too much going on up there. If I can’t have a bit of fun with a silly loud song, what’re we doing here?

Back to Mariana’s Trench, the track we’re technically framing this conversation around.

“We cannot swim, we cannot swim under these conditions,” are the lyrics from this one that has always stuck out to me for one reason or another - with it usually pointing to something going on in my life. I feel like by nature I live in a way that keeps my head just a little bit above water - usually by massively overworking myself, keeping focused on whatever is directly in front of me without stopping to smell the roses. That has been the longest battle of my adult life, quieting down that impulse and finding out other methods of living that work for me. Maybe - actually - my listening less to metalcore instead points to something else - maybe I am one who doesn’t actually need that moment of release anymore, having found other coping mechanisms and/or (and hopefully or) better ways to live my life instead. Who can say. Hopefully me with time.

1. Lingus - Snarky Puppy

I’ve spent the last year of working on this project wondering and considering what I would say here. I don’t think I figured it out. The placement was a given, Lingus being given the #1 spot is how the Top 100 list started and while plenty of other songs have been bumped up and down by a few or taken an impromptu 20 place dive that felt right (sorry Portrait of Tracy), Lingus remained number 1.

The day that someone showed me Lingus by Snarky Puppy (during lunch of marching band camp my junior year of high school), I think it would not be overly dramatic to say my life changed. Now that it’s a decade old, has amassed 36 million views on Youtube, 20 million more listens on Spotify, and has become the type of song that a lot of 26-32 year olds have said that about it feels a bit trite but I don’t care.

A huge band, playing something crazy together the likes of which my jazz-quartet-and-metalcore-and-classical-and-contemporary-Christian-music-filled brain hadn’t quite experienced yet. Sure, I had recently starting listening to a little bit of Vulfpeck3 but this is different. Complex, broad, epic in scope and scale, a bunch of people at the absolute top of their craft playing out of their minds. It helps that the tune itself is awesome - and that the recording is a live performance that you can watch. Everybody involved knows exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, peak of their craft stuff. Larnell Lewis catapulted himself into my heart & the heart of millions of others on this track & this album, especially when it became more widely known he had learned the songs on the plane ride to Europe to record as an emergency fill in. Michael League, the composer, band leader, and bassist, is at the top of his game.

I think watching the video at least once amps up the appeal, the vibe. You can see how into it everyone is, feel the communal hype - especially once Cory Henry starts playing.

One day, I will have the rhythmic notation for the Lingus solo’s backing progression etched into my skin the same way it's been inscribed on my brain. It was my first tattoo idea but it does remain unfulfilled because I can’t figure out a design I like. Even in the moment, everyone knows that a young Henry (something like 26 or 28 at the time) is laying down something special, that they were experiencing something they wouldn’t forget. I think Cory knows. Now deceased icon Shaun Martin definitely knows it too. His slow progression from intrigue to being impressed to disgust (complimentary) to an outbust of joy at the end, jumping and hugging Cory is something to behold. I love the moment where he takes off his headphones, leaving his seat and joining the audience, waving off whatever mastery he can’t believe he’s witnessing. There isn’t much I can meaningfully say about the four minute masterpiece that is the Lingus solo beyond that. I can skat every note of it, that’s something.

I’m someone who does tire, most things don’t hold my attention easily or for very long. Time and again still, over a decade later, I find myself coming back to Lingus over and over, hearing a new little detail I hadn’t noticed before, even though I borderline have most of the parts memorized at this point. This time around, on my refresher watch of the song I’ll never forget, it was a little ride cymbal ping from Larnell Lewis at a perfect moment. Thank you Snarky Puppy.

Conclusion: Notes on a Sheet, Points in a Life

How much music surrounds us in a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, a lifetime? It fills in cracks in public space, floats through our cars, imprints itself upon our memories. Collective seasons are defined and remembered by an album, sections of a life wrapped up in a playlist.

Currently I am sitting in my front room, typing away on my iPad, shuffling through my Liked Songs on Spotify. It never ceases to astound me how much every single song (of all 10,000+) can bring a little different something to mind.

Player by the Hiromi Trio? Oh yeah, I remember learning about how Anthony Jackson, a contemporary musician, ordered the first five string bass not that long back.

Convalescence by The Helix Nebula - running to Dollar General and back (literally running) before yet another class on feature writing during college - because somebody made me a bet I couldn’t get back with Zebra Cakes before our (sometimes a few minutes late) professor arrived. I won more often than not.

Mine Townsend is a Disappointment by the Garages - I don’t even know where to start describing Blaseball to you.

Home for the summer, yelling along the world’s stupidest ad-libs in Kelly Price by Migos with my brothers, coming over the Bluetooth speaker that stood in for a dead sound system in the van our family drove for 15 years. Windows down, obviously (no money to fix the AC).

Holding my wife in the kitchen, rocking back and forth, listening to John Denver’s Country Roads and crying together on her (deceased) father’s birthday. Nobody should lose their dad in their early 20s, man.

Guitar Hero 3 introducing me to Dragonforce for the first time, along with thousands upon thousands of other 10 year olds.

How limited a list of 100 songs really is. When I first had the idea, the list sounded impossibly large, how could I possibly order 100 songs? True, this was hard, but there were at least 200 more songs that could have sneaked in that spent their time on the list at one placement or another.

Hundreds more moments, stories, pieces of a life. And that is just me. Every other person around me has their own songs that mean so much to them.

Something I never explored as much as I had hoped is my own relationship with Christian music, given that I am basically a Christian guy who, on average, hates the vast majority of self-professed Christian art forms. And yet - many of my most formative music memories still come from there. Son of a worship (and youth) pastor, music was everywhere. My dad practicing his guitar parts on Saturday evening, standing in the pews next to my mom, stumbling through figuring out harmony by ear, confidentially singing those bass parts learned through trial and error in unison with my maternal grandfather (Poppie) at Christmastime, putting my piano chops to use for accompaniment and solos alike, branching out to the bass & drums in high school worship band. At this point it almost feels like something separate from me, a different life, where my faith and taste in music, two of the most dominant pushes in my life, intersect. Now, more often than not, they are diametrically opposed as many of those in my faith and also its music industrial complex move in a direction oppositionally from me.

There’s no grand takeaway here, I fear. I rarely have the words in my head for those forms of things, as I’m sure a consistent reader will notice by now. Merely a question of what comes next? Where will my music taste go next? If the past few years are related, it may do nothing & stagnate, checking out new projects from artists I like & being a bit upset as they continue to naturally evolve. Discovering new things has gotten harder for me, not easier, as stuff like Spotify keeps me in a bit of an algorithmic cage that I haven’t expended the effort to get out of. Boy, does it take effort. But it’s something I would love to work toward. New music is so sick. Maybe you should even give me your recs, tell me what songs are important to you and why. That would be a good takeaway.

Anyways, I’m gonna publish it now. Thanks for reading.

Addendum:

Wow, it’s done! I started this in May of 2024, a whole year ago, as a bit of a personal thing to prove to myself that I could make a list of 100 songs and rank them. Then I wrote a sentence about a few of them and then it became… a whole lot more than that. I will soon be taking a second pass at it, changing a thing or two I don’t like, massaging a few of the interludes especially, maybe replacing one or two, getting a new intro, and then publishing it in the horrifying venue of a poorly made zine in return for a few bucks.

It’ll be available at my Soon to Come Magic & More Merch Store, Stitcher’s Supply. Sign up for the email list over there if you wanna know when it’s available & all that.

With love, Cal

Check out the full playlist here:

← Songs 30-21 + No More Interludes for Now

Trigger warning up top, there is a mention of self harm in this one.

^ Listen along!

20. Palms Read - Protest the Hero

Palms Read symbolizes a great many things, I think, on this list. My evolution of music taste over time has been that of increasing appreciation of technically complex instrumental playing with disregard of much else. This peaked sometime in early college - at some point the musicality kicked back in & that led me to Protest the Hero. Their 2008 album, Fortress, from which Palms Read comes features smart and varied songwriting while also displaying the very obvious chops each person has on their instrument. This was the first song I heard off of the project and I legitimately feel like it rewired my brain. I probably listened to it 20 times in a row before moving onto listening to the rest of the record. It's nestled right in the middle, the fifth song of 10, and also is the start of a generational three song run of itself, Limb from Limb, and Spoils (which is itself an excellent display of every single thing progressive metalcore can & should be). True to form I specifically love the way in Palms Read that the bass line alternates between doubling the guitar riffs and strengthening them in other ways, using counterpoint & the like. I also enjoy them giving in to their most prog-ish inclinations, with the end of this song featuring an entirely separate, frantic instrumental piece for seemingly no reason other than, well, they could & it would be extremely cool & it is. These days, I listen to Protest the Hero less than I used to, it’s a bit busy for me in my old age (of 28 lol). Palms Read is still a masterpiece.

19. Senor Mouse - Gary Burton & Chick Corea

What a vibe shift, ey? From progressive, technical metal to, well, a shockingly progressive and technical jazz duet. I think if pushed for answers though, or maybe even unbeknownst to them, Gary Burton & Chick Corea are two of the giants upon whose shoulders bands like Protest the Hero proudly stand. Crystal Silence was the album which brought these two pioneering musicians together, spawning a partnership that only ended 40 years later with Chick Corea's death. Every time I listen to this song, I’m reminded of how much we still have to learn about music and how it can be made. This is similar to my thoughts surrounding Song 100 - which was mainly about the introduction of slap and pop bass guitar playing not being invented until the late 1960s. In a similar vein, Burton innovated a four-mallet grip for keyboard percussion instruments which has become the prevailing technique for many jazz and concert players.

Without the speed and chording made available through using four mallets rather than two, Gary’s playing wouldn’t be able to stand up to the beautiful, complex comping that Corea brings to the piano. The two seem like a match made in heaven, instinctually trading off the lead of each piece with seeming impossible ease. Senor Mouse in particular is a song that elevates the concept of a duet, often making me forget that there are only two players playing because, when you start to let your attention slip, their incredibly full sound makes you believe that there is an army of players on stage, much the same way that I often forget that Rush was just a three piece rock band rather than a team of six. A beautiful triumph from two of jazz’s best.

18. Primordial Sound - The Contortionist

If Protest the Hero represents some level of maturation of my taste away from “wow those guys can play their instruments real good” towards something a tad more… tasteful?, The Contortionist shows the final step in that evolution for me, at least in the sphere of heavier music. I already wrote before about how they’re the only opener that ever blew me away - because everything they’re making rules.

Primordial Sound is a song that shows both sides of the Contortionist coin, with an atmospheric, yet still grooving, first two minutes before transforming (right on that two minute mark) into a more driving affair, blossoming into a blistering wall of heavy sound before settling back down into a spacey, minute and a half long outro. They really hit all of the beats - and the song is just damn smart songwriting too.

17. O The Depths - Attalus

Attalus is a band that quietly came and went in an army of post-rock-ish Christian bands that existed in the early 2010s that had their time in the limelight, releasing one real full-length album before disbanding & going their different ways (to become pastors, largely, it seems). They have become more popular after the fact because, in my opinion, Attalus simply made one of the best Christian pieces of art of the 2010s. GRANTED, I’m not sure that there’s actually good competition AND I’m extremely biased, but Into the Sea is an excellently well written, often a bit genre bending project that across its 77 minute runtime has me coming back again and again.

O The Depths is the song that first grabbed my attention, popping up on a Spotify Discover Weekly years ago - probably 2019. The music had me first, with some extremely fun shifts from major to minor and back to major keys, an excellent drum part, and other such stuff that grabs me (& I’ve written about time and again). Just as smart though was the lyrical writing, something I’m not really used to in ostensibly Christian tracks (more on that another time). They’re not quite on the nose as they describe the singer’s hope and joy and light and salvation from the waves in at least one layer of abstraction from what one would normally get elsewhere. Put those two things together and you get one of very few tracks about God that I do really, really truly enjoy. It helps that it stands on the bones of an objectively good song to begin with - I think so anyways.

16. It Gets Funkier IV - Vulfpeck, Louis Cole

What a beautiful explosion of noise. Another It Gets Funkier has hit the Top 100 and this one is my favorite of the bunch, in no small part because it features the drumming phenomenon Louis Cole. The top song of the year on my Spotify in the year of its release, 2018, it did so with basically only a month's time to get in there. I was obsessed.

Honestly, it helped that I was perhaps my most depressed I’ve ever been at the time. I was finishing up the first semester of my Senior year of college, a time that saw me stringing together C-minuses in most of my classes, exuding approximately zero meaningful effort while spending most of my time either an hour and a half drive away (in Columbus, where I now live, visiting my then-girlfriend [haha get it because now she’s my wife]) or holed up in my dorm room grinding out horrible Gambit quests in Destiny 2.

I mean this in complete sincerity, It Gets Funkier IV cut all through this like a massive beam of sunlight. It’s so fun, so hoppy, so fast, so maximalist, featuring so many things I love, it raised me up at least a few levels of mental state. I had it on repeat for weeks, listening over and over and over. My favorite part is Cole’s drum solo - especially fun given that he’s only working with a very small kit. No toms for this man. He does a great job painting an audio picture on his set that manages to make his lil collection of snare and cymbals and little else sound like the rest of the band is in there with him playing the backing track.

Is the mix a little muddy? Is this perhaps the beginning of the end of the Vulfpeck I loved for the previous five years? I dunno, maybe. The minimalism was gone long before this one (looking at you Cory Wong, etc.) but I still love It Gets Funkier IV with all of my heart.

15. Ebony And Ivy - Esperanza Spalding

This is a song about privilege and institutions, another song with supremely well done lyrics that I can confidently say I haven’t paid enough attention to over time, the consistent theme here, as ever. It lives in the midst of an astoundingly underappreciated album, 2016’s Emily’s D+Evolution, which started Spalding’s journey away from more traditional jazz trappings (her natural home as a prodigy-level bassist & vocalist). I’m frustrated to no end to see her ostensibly-good-and-yet-a-bit-stale more traditional offerings dominate her streaming numbers when stuff like this is right there.

Ebony And Ivy throws you into the deep end from the very beginning, with rapid-fire, extremely dissonant vocals with no backing - that end in a beautiful resolution into one of the most musically sultry things I’ve ever heard. Some drumming that I would almost call lazy, bass playing that leaves a lot of open space, and a looping guitar riff form the backdrop for Spalding’s transcendent voice.

The end of the chorus is where the real magic is and is what I’ve listened to over and over. Every part explodes into its most intense form - the drummer hits a long fill while also sneakily swapping a half-time feel, the vocals are suddenly double, tripled, quadrupled into crazy harmonic bits, and the bass. Man, the bass. Esperanza would simply never leave her own instrument out to dry on any track and it gets to sing here, playing a line that at parts doubles, at parts compliments, at parts repeats, the vocals. I can picture her in my mind, belting while also working the fretboard. I can’t imagine how fun it is.

14. Yellow Jacket - Shaun Martin

I cried on the day I heard Shaun Martin died. That’s the first time that’s ever happened, so it definitely was a bit of a surprise and a new experience, obviously. An all time great of the gospel scene, he already had one or three Grammies from his work as musical director for Kirk Franklin before he joined up with the fusion super-group Snarky Puppy (with which he won a few more of those before his death). Obviously, SP would have been my first exposure to him in around 2017, my deeper dive into his Gospel work long to come. It was his Snarky Puppy playing (and also his later solo attempts, from which Yellow Jacket comes) that sticks with me. He brought a gospel sensibility to the whole ordeal, performing some of the most soulful work that they have on their records. His extreme outbursts of enthusiasm for Cory Henry’s soloing throughout the album recording of Lingus (coming later lol) are the type of seconds that stay burned in your brain forever, enshrined as something truly, truly special that you’ll never forget. He’s one of the all timers for me, and will remain so.

Honestly, I think Yellow Jacket (his best solo track) has the bones of becoming a modern jazz standard. Whenever a video pops on YouTube of someone somewhere performing it with their own band, I feel a little glow inside. A fun chord progression for people to solo over, a catchy central riff that isn’t too simple or too complicated, it’s a bowl of just right porridge. Come on kids, keep finding it and playing it. I believe in you.

13. YYZ - Rush

YYZ is just the best instrumental rock song of all time & it isn’t particularly close. Come on dude. These three guys are each gods of their own instruments - but I think most specifically incredibly skilled at a bit of the restraint that I acknowledged earlier. Masters of writing parts for what is needed in a song, what will compliment the other parts best, those kinds of things. YYZ could have easily featured blistering fast guitar solos, slap bass to melt your face off, a technically intense drumming master class - but it isn’t any of that, nor is any of that what Rush ever really was. Instead what you get is three dudes playing complimentary music the likes of which I still haven’t heard much of anywhere else.

12. Composure - August Burns Red

Few albums are more iconic or more important to the direction of the metalcore genre than August Burns Red’s Messengers - a blistering collection of breakdowns and surprisingly competent melodic playing.

Composure, slipped into the middle of this album but one of their encore songs on tours for years now, has my favorite breakdown of their discography but also contains a message that was important to a lot of people who may have been their fans of the time. A few selections -

A little on the nose? Sure. We’re not talking about poetry here, it’s 2007 metalcore.

I make a lot of jokes about wearing shorter shorts for one reason or another, but part of the reason is definitely, well, my relatively small cluster of self-harm scars on my upper right thigh. I won’t really belabor the point but there should be more, or whatever. The population of people who knew about them before this moment is approximately one.

I feel into a much less deep hole than many others have and consider myself very lucky. Even still - this earnest, almost to corny levels, song gave me some important reminders when I needed it most & I’ll always appreciate it, very deeply, for that.

Also, I mean, come on. What a banger.

11. The Fear of the Lord - Tommy Walker

Alright, a little inside baseball here. When collating this list at the very beginning of working on it (over a year ago), I left myself small notes about many of the songs, capturing a broad strokes idea of what I may want to write about it or thoughts I had in the moment that I would want to remember later. Gonna just leave this one, it’s funny.

”Holy Pog, literally.”

The one explicit worship song on this whole list, written, arranged, and performed by one of the worship music GOATs, The Fear of the Lord is a wonderful musical treatment of what is basically a few passages of the Bible strung together to be sung. Why do I appreciate it so much? Man, it’s actually so well done in a massive sea of so many other similar tracks that boil down to little more than a pop-y voice singing over such a repetitive group of chord progressions that people were meme-ing on them 15 years ago (& they haven’t changed). Excellent use of several different vocalists, a wide range of instruments and musical changes throughout create an epic five and a half minutes that does feel like an earnest attempt to actually create something worthy of the glory of God that the song itself professes.

Some of my emotional reaction to this song is also definitely wrapped up in my origins of hearing it, something that is probably underemphasized in most people’s taste. I won’t go into the whole story, as explaining the full context of my conservative college experience and its various oddities, positives, negatives, and trappings, could be something of 20,000+ words all on its own - but the first encounter was in the context of a chapel sending off the senior class in 2017 (my sophomore year) - a service put on by the senior class itself that somehow featured a whole orchestra (with extra brass lol), a choir, a normal band, and more. They did a great job, some would call it a transcendent one. I still think about it a lot. Those very positive emotions are all wrapped up here in a big bundle that pop out from time to time. But I love the original recording too. Thanks, Tommy Walker, for giving me like, the sixth piece of Christian musical media that I’ve ever truly loved. That’s kinda sad, huh?

Interlude: Writing About Music is Actually Impossible

Writing about music is actually impossible.

I love reading so much and especially reading the work of people who are obviously so much better at writing than me. Not-so-recently but while still technically working on this entry of the Top 100 I made the mistake of reading a large amount of Hanif Abdurraqib. If you’re not familiar with his poetry and essay collections, I would heavily recommend them. There is much that I could write about what I enjoyed & why but the end point of it would be to say: He makes writing about music an incredibly beautiful affair, bringing to life why a song or band matters with stories from his life, stories from around the band, snatches of moments that matter - all of this is to say he makes the impossible look easy. The 2024 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction snippet, an award good for $175,000, sums it up best.

Reading the work of the person who I believe is currently the greatest modern music writer while also writing about music myself, feeling very self critical the entire way? What a blessing! What a trap! Exploring essays as beautiful and smart as those is like holding a gilded mirror against myself, helping me improve and also making me realize I’m about a decade of hard work away from where I’d like to be. Writing about music is actually impossible.

Working on the most recent 10 songs (20-11), and to some extent the previous group (30-21), has been the hardest thing creatively that I’ve ever done. Why? Screams my brain, what can be so hard about writing about the songs I truly love the most? I DON’T KNOW!!!! Screams back my heart but it is almost like there is a block. It is hard to communicate “wow I sure do love this bassline” about these songs because it isn’t just the bassline or the way a specific drum fill hits, it’s all of the things, I love the way these songs feel, the way these songs have been a part of me for years, if not a over a decade now, and the farther we’ve gone the harder its been to put any of that into logical words. I wish you could watch me listen to a song when nobody else is around and then maybe you would get it. I had stories, at the beginning at least, to fill in some of the gaps and maybe communicate that. I think the secret is that I’m out of tales and without tales, what is there to say beyond the Anthony Fantano-like string of “wow, I loved those shimmering keys” over and over? So much and so little. Writing about music is actually impossible.

And yet, I have at least done somewhat of the impossible, as hard as it may be. There are passages and sentences and single words in this exploration that I have agonized over and ended up endlessly proud of which is honestly something of a first for me, at least within the last decade or so. Where I maybe got in trouble was starting not from the top, giving the songs I was least passionate about my best, least burnt-out self. I would have had more stories to tell, more patience to let a thought crystallize. Honestly, unfortunately, at this point I am ready to be done - complete this project that has defined about six more months of brainspace (and counting) than I ever thought possible. But I will cry when it is over, for not only has it been impossible, it has been so important for me. Ha, this feels like it should be at the end of the whole ordeal, but whatever. I’ve had something else planned for that for a while & we’ll see how long it takes me to write. Thank you, truly. Somehow writing out this really unblocked me a bit.

^ Listen along!

30. Red - Cameron Graves

I hereby give Red by Cameron Graves several Cal’s Top 100 awards - Most Weirdly Groovy Song, Weirdest Fusion in a Jazz Fusion Song, Most Drummer Does Whatever He Wants Song, & Most Underappreciated Song. Seriously, for being a borderline… metalcore fusion song? (more on that in a minute) composed and helmed by a prominent member of the West Coast Get Down (the LA jazz collective that features the likes of Thundercat, Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin and other extremely influential & important musicians), I would think this would have more than 50,000 streams on Spotify. It doesn’t have much exposure elsewhere either.

I love Red. It centers around a frantic, repeating piano line that is immediately taken up by the band, creating an effect that sounds exactly like a metalcore band chugging their way through a headbang-inducing breakdown. You could mosh to this song and it has a piano in it. This is SPECIAL to me man. It makes me hyped up every time I hear it and I AM truly amazed at the musicianship at play - if there’s anything that is a knock in its favor, it is that it probably IS a bit too much. It’s loud, it’s frantic, it’s brash, its fast, the drums aren’t the centering presence that they often are in so many other songs or genres. Maybe it’s a bit more for me than it is for you, but I would love it if you gave it a chance anyways (and the rest of Cameron Grave’s discography for that matter).

29. Giorgio by Moroder - Daft Punk

I’ve been obsessed with Daft Punk for over a decade now. They were one of the first bands I was introduced to outside of the musical bubble I had been within for the majority of my life. The year was 2012, we were all obsessed with Minecraft & I couldn’t get enough of Alive 2007, the TRON: Legacy score, and Discovery. Sure, I was really, really late to the party but slowly getting to discover Daft Punk & related House artists was an awakening for me, showing me all the other stuff that could be out there.

Soon after discovering Homework and friends, the astounding Random Access Memories was released - and while everyone else was understandably obsessed with songs like Get Lucky and Instant Crush, I immediately was drawn to the storytelling and… epicness of Girgio by Moroder, for lack of another term. The constant upward momentum throughout the track is captivating while more and more layers are added in, culminating with an awesome bass and drum segment - which, when it ends, opens up room for even more craziness. This time its sourced from a high, piercing synth that cuts through everything. The energy is so good. And it keeps going! And going. and going.

28. Fingerprints - Hiatus Kaiyote

Oh, how the mighty have fallen - in 2017 or so this was easily one of my favorite songs, one of the top 10 for sure. Nothing much has changed about it, maybe I’ve just gotten a bit comfortable with it and more flavor of the month - or decade - type stuff have jumped out at me. Regardless, Fingerprints is a beautiful, sultry song centered around fleeting keys, a plodding and consistent drum beat, and, at the expense of sounding repetitive across these top 30, one of my favorite bass lines of all time. Fingerprints is a dang solid song that is always enjoyable to listen to but… as I’ve aged, it’s become about that. Something nice to listen to. Choose Your Weapon’s neo-futurist soundscape, which once wowed me, has grown comfortable with time, a shirt I’ve washed too many times and let get a little stretched and worn out. I don’t purposefully wear it into public anymore, but it’s nice to sleep in.

27. Tesla, Live at MSG - Vulfpeck

Speaking of favorite bass lines of all time, Vulfpeck returns to the list with an insane live version of one of their boppiest tunes, Daddy He Got a Tesla. Joe Dart tears up this one with a line that’s largely doubled by the two guitarists, albeit with Joe adding in some more pizazz and lines here and there. Overtopping it all is both a soaring sax melody line/solo and a guest percussionist adding in so much spice that it easily clears the original studio recording. A fun, relatively simple, drum solo ties it all together in the bridge section before going right into the fast bass line that the song is all about. About as good as live music gets as far as I’m concerned.

26. Need to Fall - Noticing Icarus

Noticing Icarus was (is? was.) a local band in my college town, made up of students from years before me. For being buried in the middle-of-nowhere cornfields of Cedarville, OH, I think they were way better than they had any right to be (something I hope they would take as the major compliment I mean it to be). Need to Fall is my favorite song of theirs and I still listen to it regularly. It’s one of those songs that just works and sticks with you. How cool is it that bands from such small backgrounds and with small discographies that never played more than 10 shows can make such an impact on you, ever since I saw them do a few performances… Well, something like 7? 8? years ago now. I’ll keep listening to their album, Irrational Man, for a long time, I know that.

25. Just and Just As - Penny and Sparrow

Just and Just As is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. I don’t really related to the lyrical content (classic) which is something that could be simply embarrassing to some, especially for a song that is obviously so emotionally poignant in that respect and so high up on this list, but for me the vocals are just another piece of the overall soundscape that makes up this astoundingly simple, amazing track. In my personal musical landscape and in the greater context of these 100 songs, it stands out by virtue of being just some voices and an acoustic guitar (playing only chords) and a few strings in the bridge. We all need simplicity in things sometimes.

24. I Talk to the Wind - King Crimson

Beautiful, beautiful. All of it is beautiful. How many times can I call something beautiful here? King Crimson is often known for their progressive rock pieces, especially the famously-sampled-21st-Century-Schoitzoid-Man. They have plenty of “weird” stuff across their discography too, especially as they moved through their career, creating a bunch of pieces that are not exactly for the average rock fan. I love it all but time and again the song of theirs that I’m most drawn to is the slow, ballad-like I Talk to the Wind.

Its haunting, dissonant vocals and simple instrumentation are a marked change of pace from the rest of the album. It’s driven not by its guitars but instead by a variety of woodwinds, with simple drumming making up the backdrop. There’s an awesome flute solo. It all adds up to something much more than the sum of its simplistic parts.

23. Change of the Guard - Kamasi Washington

The Epic by Kamasi Washington was astoundingly formative for me in my listening and taste - despite coming out relatively late compared to lots of other music here (2015). It lives up to the name - featuring TWO HOURS AND FIFTY THREE MINUTES of absolutely bonkers tracks featuring 39 credited vocalists and musicians. While it does lack slightly in the thematic department across the three hour runtime (something that Kamasi’s career has suffered from, in my opinion), the bones that are present are the ones that make you feel something. Expansive melodies, masses of musicians playing roughly the same thing together. It feels huge and contained at once, almost like a chained, massive beast of prey. Some of the solos sound so frantic I can imagine whoever is playing is desperate to get the next idea out of their head and get to the next spot that they want to go & they’re waiting for the rest of the band to catch up.

Change of the Guard is the perfect place setting for everything that this album is - it’s a 12 minute intro track that starts strong and keeps on strong for years. Powerful horns, strings, a choir. It’s probably the highest energy song present in a whole album that itself briming with power. I love it.

22. A Map, A String, A Light - Yvette Young

Subtle, restrained, poetic, virtuosic. All words I would use to describe this song & Yvette Young’s larger solo discography. For an artist that usually is awash in guitar effects and fast playing and the other members of her math rock band Covet, I think the girl and guitar accoustic setup may work best.

The central, repeating riff of A Map, A String, A Light is simple in concept and a bit complex in execution, creating a floor for her slow, anguished singing. This song is another track that is the definition of hauntingly beautiful to me. It’s stuck in my brain for years and deserves this spot, no question in my mind. Another reminde that things don’t have to be fiendishly complex to be “good.” The theme of this overall entry, I think.

21. Maybach Music II - Rick Ross, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Kanye West

Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, & Kanye West dropping the world's most corny bars with T-Pain on the hook, all over a ridiculously luxurious beat? Sign me up.

Best line(s) from each:

The world's silliest song. Most Rick Ross tracks are very much in the guilty pleasure territory, with me enjoying them more than I arbitrarily “think” I should. He’s really, really good at making dumb fun, over the top, bagadotious music. Sign me up for putting this on repeat and screaming.

No More Interludes For Now

Interludes were slowing me down. This one would have been out two weeks ago if I wasn’t scrambling around trying to find something “interesting” to write about that I also had the energy to write about. That will come sometime (when I make this into a dumb zine) but that time is not now. Writing about music is damn hard, especially the songs I actually care about most. I thought that would be the easy parts - but I’m quickly finding that the words I have don’t feel adequate, at least not yet. I can practice though.

Thanks for readin’.

^ Listen Along!

40. Fireshaker - Maynard Ferguson

If there was an award for “most upward movement over the creation of the list,” Fireshaker by Maynard Ferguson would be the easy winner. If I hadn’t forced myself to lock in the list, it probably would have jumped some more. Every time I listened, it moved up and moved up and up and up and for good reason- Ferguson and his band laid down some insane bits of listening on this track. They set the table with a bopping bass line that will anchor us throughout the whole song. I love listening to the different parts moving around the solo trumpet’s melody lines, with the sliding saxophone parts often being a fave. Our drummer puts in just the right emphasis points, hinting at other instruements doings through what he’s playing.

Ironically and perhaps unfortunately for Mr. Ferguson, the trumpet solo is the part of the song where I’m most likely to skip to the next track while listening because, well, it’s missing most of the incredible texture I dig from the rest. But, I usually make it through because I’m ready for the incredible full band unison that finishes out the remaining minute and change of the song. Let’s run it back again.

39. As Surely as I Stand Here (40th Anniversary) - Tower of Power

Tower of Power means something man. An enduring force of Oakland soul and funk and R&B sound across a 50+ year career. Bands just don’t make it that long, especially large ensemble bands. Of course, band members have come and gone over the years but plenty of people have returned to keep making awesome music.

This specific track, a live version of As Surely as I Stand Here from their 40th year anniversary show, has resonated with me for years for some reason. Love songs aren’t really my deal historically (yet another thing my wife is much better at than I), but As Surely As I Stand Here sums it up for me. I’ll be there, I’ll take care of you. Don’t you worry about it.

It helps that the whole song is incredible from start to finish, with some awesome brass runs, a great bassline and a simply transcendent vocal performance.

38. Us & Them - Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd is another band that I wish I had been able to spend more time with when I was younger - their discography amazes me time & again. Pretty 20-year-old-white-guy thing to say, I suppose.

I first heard Dark Side of the Moon on my first summer away from home, living in my college town, which I documented before while talking about an earlier song. Turns out, it was the perfect album to throw on during lazy video gaming sessions, while I was walking around the local state park, or during late, slow nights at the coffee shop where I worked. Us and Them is the peak of the album for me, taking its sweet time slowly building to a crescendo all the way in minute six, paying off all of the previous parts under a screaming sax solo. Funnily enough, I don’t even know a single word of the lyrics to this day but the vocals are a nice addition to the masterful instrumental soundscape. It is a bit of a bummer for a one-off list like this that it does fade so nicely into the next song, making a bit of an abrupt end for the purpose of stand-alone listening.

37. Work Shit Out - Dirty Loops

I LOVE DIRTY LOOPS!!!! This is their representative song on the list and it may not even be their best. Loops are a Swedish trio with classical music educations and very divergent senses of style that combine to create some of the best fusion-rock-jazz music that exists out there. I first discovered them via their quite frankly insane cover of Beiber’s Baby which features rehamonization and a bass solo that blew my mind at the time and still does. However, their early work was a bit… mastubatory, to put it lightly. This could put a lot of people off. It was incredibly technically proficient and impressive but not always exactly pleasant to listen to, if that’s not exactly what you’re into! Jacob Collier, a musical prodigy of our time, has this problem often!

However, in the decade-plus that has passed, the band has matured, learning when they should be more restrained and when to let loose. The more things I listen to, the more I appreciate that in a group. Work Shit Out is emblematic of that evolution, still featuring some blistering bass lines, great keyboard and drum solos and other awesome touches - but gone is the wild harmonization for its own sake, gone is playing as fast or as crazily as possible (again, simply for its own sake), replacing it is smart and fun fusion songwriting with plenty of space for play.

36. Biblical Violence - Hella

I need new Hella music like I need air. I’ve watched nearly every sweat-drenched live performance I can find of them online (often in Japan). Unfortunately, they haven’t toured in well over a decade - or released new music in that timeframe for that matter.

Biblical Violence is a song where this incredibly influential noise-rock band is at some of their most grokable and melodic - and I think it's also where the frenetic playing of guitarist Spencer Seim and drummer Zach Hill are at their best. Their weirder stuff is really cool, sure, but sometimes an understandable frame is the best thing to store brilliance in.

Zach Hill has moved onto new, even weirder things with the massive success of his other band, Death Grips. I guess that’s why we don’t get Hella tours anymore, ey? Shows what I know.

35. The Colours of Chloe - Eberhard Weber

The Colours of Chloe is, I think, the most peaceful and beautiful song on my whole top 100. Glistening keyboards, moving strings, melodic woodwinds and slowly rolling percussion create a perfect soundscape for composer and double bassist Eberhard Weber to float over. Add in flowing piano playing and you have a top to bottom incredible song that I can’t stop listening to once I’ve started it. As many jazz songs are, it’s formed around one central theme, or tune, that is then repeated and tweaked by the surrounding instruments before returning to center - in this case, our composer-bassist letting a baited, delicious moment pass before launching back into the main theme for one or two lines. Then we’re sent right back into the next solo or ring around the theme, but with a different instrument leading us. Always back to center before being sent right back out on a new adventure.

34. Holomovement - The Contortionist

The Contortionist is the only new-to-me show opener that has ever taken my breath away. Openers in general are usually tough for me (as I guess they can be for anyone) because I enjoy, well, knowing the music I’m listening to when I go to a show. I suppose that can take some of the fun out of it, music discovery is its own awesome thing and maybe I would simply find more new-to-me-artists that I would love if I would show up at doors at shows more often. But, I’m lazy & my knees hurt & all of the shows I go to are standing-only on concrete floors.

Anyways - I saw The Contortionist when they were opening for both Animals as Leaders and Between the Buried and Me, two bands which also appear up and down this list. As soon as they got on stage, I knew they were different. They played truly mind blowing progressive metal stuff and had a perfect sense of pacing for their songs, often introducing slow, trance-like instrumental sections that drew the listener in.

One of those is present in this chosen track, Holomovement, stripping back the song to its studs, which in this case is the main riff of the song, slowly repeated on both a keyboard and electric guitar. It’s used to great effect - lulling you into relaxing (something you don’t get much in this genre) before slamming you over the head with a truly insane, sludgy breakdown. Masterpiece. The rest of the song is awesome too - but this one is all about the end.

33. Atticus, in the Desert (Live) - Kishi Bashi

Kishi Bashi is a violin player who writes incredible music. Atticus, in the Desert is his best record and the live version is simply transcend, featuring more flourishes and touches and a better tempo and a whole string group backing rather than obvious synthesized versions and that live feeling that only comes with, well, live music. It makes me feel a great many things and I love listening to the group of voices singing this song together. Well recorded live songs are so good man.

32. Money Trees - Kendrick Lamar

Good kid, m.A.A.d city is my favorite Kendrick project. A perfectly told story by a master artist, backed up with incredible beats. I love the gritty sonic feel which pairs perfectly with the message. Money Trees is not only one of the main narrative turning points of the greater concept album, it’s also quite the earworm. It gets stuck in my head for days and days at a time, playing on repeat up in my dome for my own enjoyment.

It is weird to think about and interact with a piece of media that is so not for me, I’m a white kid from the cornfields of Michigan who, sure, grew up in some amount of poverty, but I barely ever had a problem and went on to a bougie private Christian college (still paying for that one). Listening to Kendrick is often purely an intellectual pursuit for me, with no thorough connection to the real pain and thought behind his music. It’s different for others, I’m sure.

31. Portrait of Tracy - Jaco Pastorious

THE bass guitar song as far as I’m concerned, Jaco Pastorious makes that instrument SING on this trailblazing track. His playing is transcendent, emotional, simultaneously oh-so-careful and oh-so-quick. Use of both harmonics and normal playing at once creates a two-layered sound, making differentiation between the bassline and melody easier to distinguish while also creating the illusion that the song could be a bass duet rather than a solo. I love it very much. Give it a listen.

Interlude: I Saw Sungazer Last Night

I am out of words to say about music this week. I am sleepy. So there is nothing more to write except that I saw Sungazer last night at a small venue a few blocks from my house here in Columbus. It was really fun to be in a tiny room with other people who like the same weird electro-metal-jazz-funk-fusion as I do. A bunch of people just bobbing their heads to weird 7/4 and 9/3 time signatures and enjoying a deeply referential solo. The opener was really funky & they ruled too. I should go to more shows and so should you.

^ Listen Along!

50. Mayonnaise - The Smashing Pumpkins

The guitar feedback in this song is one of the best musical moments of the entire 90’s and you will not convince me otherwise. It lives rent free in my mind, day and night, and takes a pretty decent song into the stratosphere. Supposedly it was a purposeful use of a messed up cheap guitar they had around that would make the sound by itself. If true, genius. I love the rest of this recording too obviously (especially how back in the mix the vocals are), the whole package works really well together. I also love the largely entirely unrelated intro, a classic of the times.

49. The Mind Electric - Miracle Musical

Hawaii: Part II, how do I sing thy praises? The result of an interesting experiment in a band collaborating over distance long after their last relevance, Miracle Musical and its masterpiece album are the brainchild of former members of Tally Hall, of all things. The whole thing is weird, full of electronic crunches, altered voices and simply incredible percussive parts.

The Mind Electric is smack dab in the middle of the album and, true to the strangeness of the rest of the LP, heavily features backwards-playing instruments and vocals throughout to dramatic effect. It sounds so dang cool and is the song that made me fall in love with Hawaii: Part II in the first place, all the way back in 2015. It’s unfortunate that Joe Hawley has, by all reports, gone a bit off the deep end.

I met Ross Fetterman at my sister-and-brother-in-laws wedding in 2023 and sat next to him & his partner at dinner, since she and my wife were both part of the wedding party. He gave my wife & I the Musical Miracle hat that he was wearing. That was pretty cool of him, I think. He also let me hit his weed pen, which was pretty cool of him too. The only problem: I thought it was a plain ole’ nicotine vape when he offered it to me. That ended my night pretty quickly.

48. Borderline with My Atoms - Hiatus Kaiyote

Y’all, we’re getting into “Cal’s most played songs and albums of all time” territory and we’re only just inside of the top 50. This list is so tough. Borderline with My Atoms is a perfect example of what I love from this album, Hiatus Kaiyote’s Choose Your Weapon. It is a smooth six minutes, underpinned by a slick bassline and tight drumming. Layer on Nai Palm’s soulful voice and a quiet guitar playing and you have a hell of a stew going. The song continues to evolve across its playtime, adding in layered vocals and keyboards while ramping up all the rest of the parts too - coming to a maximalist crescendo you wouldn’t expect from the beginning. Just a plain great song that I love to listen to time and again.

47. Polka Dots & Moonbeams - Wes Montgomery

Wes Montgomery, one of the world's jazz guitar greats, did some magic with this rendition of the now iconic jazz standard. It’s also a standard of the Jones home, living on the top spot on my playlist Cocktails After Dinner which is a favorite to spin up for a relaxing night at home in the living room. The guitar melody with piano and bass accompaniment is the perfect scene-setter for the rest of an evening well spent. From time to time, a relaxed drummer joins the party with a slooooooooow shuffle with brushes. Makes me want to smile and dance with my wife.

46. My Sacrifice - Creed

WHEN YOU ARE WITH ME, I’M FREEEEEEEEE I’M CARELESS I BELIEVE

Get your lighters out. Another all time groovy rock banger, once again from Creed. There’s a lot about this song that I could point to - the iconic guitar line comes to mind, as well as the very popular and fun to yell along with chorus. What really gets me every time is the drum part during the chorus. Working the high hat into the ride cymbal and snare groove adds SO much sneaky texture and opting to smack the splash cymbal on the beat before the logical crash cymbal end to one of the fills creates SO much subtle motion to a moment where the guitars are focused on power chording rather than keeping the song moving. These little song-writing decisions hidden in plain sight are some of my favorite parts of music and always keep me coming back. File the Mayonaise-like feedback right before the final choruses (3:37) under that too.

45. For the Love of God - Steve Vai

In thinking about what I may want to write about this song, I found myself instead being carried away. It’s 6 minutes long & I’ve listened to it three times while writing these two sentences. Steve Vai is the virtuosic guitar fiend that I never knew I needed in my life until a few years ago. On For the Love of God, he’s at the peak of his powers, taking us on what feels like an epic journey while surrounded by a relatively basic backing track. Throughout the song, Vai continually riffs on the same theme, twisting it and turning it and tweaking it in the most delicious ways. Rather than continuing to write about it, I’m just gonna keep listening.

44. Dream House - Deafheaven

Deafhaven definitely isn’t for everyone, especially not on nine minute long epics such as Dream House. This song is a continual wall of distorted, melodic sound washing over you in wave after wave. Even the vocals are mixed at the same level as all of the rest of the band, adding to the cacophony, becoming something close to a percussive instrument rather than any kind of lead to grab onto. If there is any one part that comes to the forefront it's the drums, which pierce through everything else and drive us forward.

I already used the term “wash over you” in this segment here and I think it’s the correct approach to this song. The best way to experience it is to put it on, close your eyes, and be taken along for the ride on the highs and lows that the energy of the track offers. One of the few on my still-in-development Noise/Dissociation playlist which is a major compliment.

43. I Love Music - Ahmad Jamal Trio

I Love Music by the Ahmad Jamal Trio is probably a song you recognize bits of, even if you don’t anticipate to - it’s one of the most iconic piano samples of all time, forming the instant classic hook and riff of Nas’s 1994 hit, The World is Yours. Realizing that in real time as I listened to I Love Music for the first time was an incredible revelation, seeing the connections in music is so fun & I since have gone out of my way to find as many original sample tracks as possible. It’s a good exercise as most of them are objective bangers.

This specific song is much more than the one that samples it though, featuring masterful and smart piano playing and improvisation from Ahmad Jamal (another all time great in my opinion) and the bass and drums by Jamil Nasser & Frank Gant, respectively, add in the perfect compliments.

42. Playing the Game - Gentle Giant

One of the very best of a specific set of songs that use a mind-twisting opening effect. I’m sure it has a “real” name but I like to think of it as rhythmic re-contextualization. You spend the first segment of the intro thinking the beat is in such and such a place and then the sudden introduction of another instrument makes you realize that you were dreadfully, deliciously wrong all along. Runaway by Kanye West is the most common example in popular music, if you’re familiar. In that same vein, Playing the Game starts out with a few instruments creating a solid groove… and then the drums & bass come in, bringing the realization that the beginning of the measure is in a completely different spot than you believed. It’s so awesome.

British Progressive Rock was cooking so freakishly hard in the 70s in ways we truly cannot comprehend. Much like I talked about concerning Japanese fusion of the same time period, it’s a shame that the musical tradition largely evaporated by the mid 1980s (save some outliers carrying the banner forward, like Rush). I simply would be feasting for years and years if people had been consistently making songs like this enmasse for the following 40 years.

One of my favorite hallmarks from the era is the ridiculously compressed snares - as my wife Jen noted to me last night, this does a lot of work to soften out the overall vibe of the song, making them sound more like living room jams rather than what very easily could be arena bangers with a bit more aggressiveness.

Going back to Playing the Game itself, my favorite part is the wonderful interplay between all of the different instruments. Several keyboards, the drums, the bass, the guitars, and multiple bits of auxiliary percussion work together to create a complex soundscape that you can study over and over again… or just have a ton of fun listening to. Also, there’s a crazy organ solo.

41. It Gets Funkier II - Vulfpeck

Welcome It Gets Funkier II, the second It Gets Funkier iteration that has popped up on this list & it won’t be the last! Vulfpeck’s most repeated tune is one truly worthy of iteration and I love this version, featuring tons of strange synths over the rock solid Fender Bass playing of Joe Dart. It was the second Vulfpeck tune I ever heard, after being served up Adrienne & Adrianne by Youtube one fateful day. It Gets Funkier II was next up in the queue and I couldn’t resist but keep listening to this awesome crew. I love this band so much man. So, so much.

Interlude: I Don’t Even Listen to Music I Like

So I would say one of the largest problems I have with music is that I rarely, if ever, actually listen to the stuff that I enjoy anymore. I’ve never been capable of casually listening to good music, it just takes over my mind. I’ve already mentioned it more than once in the writing of this larger 100 song work but sometimes I just sit and listen to the songs rather than writing about them. Why? I can’t focus on the writing.

You can imagine then that while, well, living an adult life, if one is distracted to the point of borderline non-operability by music one enjoys, this does indeed make it difficult to listen to said music. This makes it even harder to find new cool music too because I don’t even get enough time with the stuff I already enjoy lots and lots.

Instead, I float through my workday with a cohort of lo-fi beats and chill jazz as distracting-enough background noise to keep me focused but not NOT focused (which very well just may be mass manufactured by Spotify for exactly that purpose rather than coming from “real artists” trying to make something cool and get paid for it, which I don’t feel great about). Honestly? It’s kind of soul-crushingly-ass. I should be able to listen to cool music and also live my life at the same time. How do I do that though? How do I stop the continued calcification and solidification of the Cal Canon that I’m laying out here? Most of these songs I’ve been listening to for an actual decade plus, especially the stuff that we’re into now in the top 50. Shouldn’t there be newer music here, or newer to me music? I would like to figure that out sometime. It unfortunately probably requires a lot of Actual Work, which is sick in its own way. I’m tired of lazy listening.

^ Listen along!

Two quick things before we start -

I’ve started another Substack, this one for focusing on Magic: The Gathering stuff. You know the vibe.

The Herald's Horn

Magic: The Gathering essays, editorials, thoughts & recommendations, edited by Cal

By Cal

Secondly, I wrote a piece outlining my favorite 10 pieces of media that I got the chance to experience in 2024. You can check that out here:

Alright, let’s get into it.

60. Untitled 02 | 06.23.2014 - Kendrick Lamar

The backlog of Kendrick Lamar is the thing of legends. Incredible tracks have, over the years, leaked or been performed just once or twice, only to disappear back into the vault. Maybe those songs have popped up onto albums in the future with tweaked lyrics or a new hook or a different beat. untitled unmastered’s release was a true flex by Lamar, unleashing 35 more minutes of demos from the creation of his seminal work, To Pimp a Butterfly.

From amongst the eight untitled tracks, untitled 02 is my favorite, heavily featuring the themes present throughout Butterfly as Kendrick talks about how different his life is now compared to back at home in Compton. I think it also does a great job of showing his stylistic range. He uses a squeaky voice and lazy rhythm, floating over a slow, scary beat for the first half of the track, before executing a flow switch so drastic that I always subconsciously think it comes with a beat switch too. Nope - same beat but an entirely different song.

59. It’s All Nothing Till It's Everything - KNOWER

FINALLY IT’S KNOWER TIME!!!!! The brainchild of Genevieve Artadi & Louis Cole, this band is quickly rising up my rankings of personal all timers, bringing a completely weird brand of jazz and funk and electronica to the forefront. Cole & Genevieve surround themselves with an insane gaggle of collaborators, with my favorite being the bassist wunderkind Sam Wilkes.

It’s All Nothing Till It’s Everything features the more manic side of the band with fast drumming, a driving bass and synth line, tightly resolved dissonance, a sweeping chorus, and a blistering piano solo making up the soul of the track. It also ends in a very KNOWER way - silence followed by a beautiful full string section. I enjoy how much this song is constructed around cranking up tension and then releasing it, a really gratifying bit of songwriting prowess that was fundamental to the likes of many of our societies greatest pieces. It has since often been sacrificed on the altar of easy consumability. Listen to It’s All Nothing Till It’s Everything a few times and try to track and figure out how they’re doing, it’s worth it.

58. The Majestic of Gaia - Persefone

I’m a real rhythmic guy - I played the drums for 15 years, I memorize the drum and bass line rhythms and time signature swaps of songs long before anything else starts to register with me, that kind of stuff. I would have really, really thrived with the Era of Rhythm Games, aka the deluge of Guitar Hero and Rockband releases, at least if I had played them more than twice a year. Our family never acquired one of these titles I sought after so much, at least not until I nabbed a copy of Guitar Hero 3 for the Xbox 360 at the ripe age of 19. By the time I could really sink my teeth into these games, finding a love of slapping on a plastic guitar, their era was long past, the cheap accessories falling apart, the last meaningful entry released over five years before.

Luckily I had Clone Hero to save me, the fan-made Guitar Hero-clone software and thousands upon thousands of fan-made charts to import into my game. Since then, I’ve put countless hours into playing those songs, though it should be noted that I’m not really a difficulty fiend. There are some techniques that I haven’t taken the time to learn or don’t really care to learn, I’m just looking to have fun. Boy, are Persefone songs incredibly fun to play on Clone Hero.

They’re dang fun to listen to, featuring atmospheric progressive metal epics as their most popular fare. The Majestic of Gaia is one of my favorites of theirs, feeling something of a Dream Theater track turned up to 11 on the hardness, with way more screaming and chugging guitars than Petrucci would go for. From the very beginning you know what you’re in for, with immediate dueling guitars, held together by a low divebomb and ending on a sick keyboard run. As we get deeper into the track we get something like five insane guitar solos, two separate sweeping string sections, an extended synth-based part, a chorus that slows things to a melodic breakdown crawl, a nature sounds break exactly 75% of the way through (again, hello Dream Theater), and a true return to theme at the end. This is a delightful eight and a half minutes that I love to listen to on repeat, getting more hyped up every time.

57. The Vision - Victor Wooten

Victor Wooten is the greatest bassist of all time. He does it all, from incredibly complex solo arrangements to holding down wonderful basslines on zany Bela Fleck & the Flecktones records to his ever evolving list of collaboration work across a range of genres, including bluegrass! His individual debut, 1996’s A Show of Hands, helps to show that wonderful range, from U Can’t Hold No Groove (If You Ain’t Got No Pocket)’s “Is he really playing that all at once????” (he is) moments to the genius Classical Thump. There’s even some short skits. The Vision is the winner for me though, featuring slow, soulful playing that really shows off how beautiful of a solo instrument the electric bass guitar can be if handled right. It’s also a true technical playing masterclass as well, showing off his skills even when he’s going a bit slower than on the album’s other tracks. One of my most played songs of all time & rightfully so.

56. The Planet Maker - Becoming The Archetype

Incredible Christian art, though you wouldn’t really guess it on first listen, taking the high level perspective of God creating Earth and Man. This is fun and cool and good. I think the world could use some more earnest and interesting religious art across the spectrum, especially in the Christian sphere where most aspects of art-making have been crushed into worship music paste by the K-LOVE Industrial Complex.

Becoming The Archetype is the Metalcore band that I always thought deserved more success but like so many bands of the era suffered from a few problems (so-so production quality, constant member changing, that sort of thing). 2008’s Dichotomy (with Devin Townsend as producer!!!) should have been their big break, dangit.

Band troubles and lyrical topic aside, this song is masterfully put together in my opinion. They set the table with the introduction which features a heavily melodic, yet plodding and chugging, riff. Throughout the rest of the song, they stack on harsh and clean vocals and a soaring solo part that floats throughout - before ending on an actual guitar solo, back over that original intro riff. It makes me feel really good.

55. Whispers, Pt. 1 - Culprate

Goosebumps song with incredible use of soundstage and different instrumental and vocal parts from someone who is obstensibly a techno-focused artist. The very definition of a “listen with headphones” track as bits move in and out of focus and around your ears. It was also the very first song I showed to my now-wife, Jen, convincing her that pretty good headphones can make a difference.

54. I Just Can’T Tell You - Mississippi Mass Choir

Perhaps the most funky & fun bassline present on my entire top 100, snapping and popping along under this joyful choir. I do love the song itself, but whoever that dang bass player is is the real star of the show, pulling off some truly godly stuff. It does make me sad how quiet this song is on Spotify though - makes it hard to give it the loud blasting it deserves.

53. Them Changes - Thundercat

Them Changes is, by the last.fm 0numbers, the song I’ve listened to the most times in the last five years. Shocking? Maybe a little. But this MASTERPIECE by Thundercat is groovy as hell and the bass playing, going through one million effect pedals, is funkyyyyyyyy. It’s basically a pop song with a bit of extra sauce on top of it, which makes it appropriate for most every situation.

52. Physical Education - Animals As Leaders

Animals As Leaders is an astoundingly talented band, featuring Tosin Abasi, Javier Reyes, and Matt Garstka playing the lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and drums respectively. Physical Education is the first ever song I heard from the band and I listened to the album it’s on, The Joy of Motion, endlessly in my freshman year of college. All three of the parts are expertly well put together and I can never get enough of Tosin’s unique way of playing the guitar and the music that it creates.

51. Memory Palace/Option Oblivion/Life in Velvet - Between the Buried & Me

A wonderful 18 minute epic, so epic that I couldn’t help to keep all three of the parts of it together as one song on my list. Between the Buried & Me are masters of the craft, with a special highlight being, as always, their bass and drum parts. They very often mix up their patterns and ideas throughout the repeated sections of a song (chorus and so on), adding what can be much needed variety. To continue a theme amongst these 10, I really enjoy the way this song is laid out, with a powerful return to theme at the end of Life in Velvet. Soooo fun. We actually float through several seperate recurring themes throughout these songs, some of them from the larger album itself, which makes the whole record listening experience past these three tracks that much more rewarding.

Interlude: Tilt

I’ve been obsessed with Drum Corps International since I was a kid - so much so that I wore out a tape of one year’s World Championships that my parents made for me. The Bluecoats’ 2014 show, Tilt, is, without a doubt, my favorite live musical performance of all time. Ever. I’m going to do my best to explain what I find special about it, but I will probably fall short. Here’s the link as, obviously, you should listen to it:

As someone who says “wow that’s my favorite X ever” without truly meaning it, so much so that my friends make fun of me for it, it’s pretty cool to be so sure about something.

In case you don’t know, Drum Corps International is the premier competitive drum and bugle corps operation in the United States, with drum and bugle corps KINDA being really, really serious marching bands. They’re not matching bands at all, actually, but I won’t get into it. Shows feature intensive choreography and incredibly complex musical parts for all its instruments - but especially for the drum lines (technically called the battery). Drum corps season lasts all summer long, with different crews traveling around their part of the country, performing the latest version of the show, being judged on it, then tweaking it the next day. Oftentimes, they’ll be deciding and working on the final details all the way into Championship weekend, which takes place in August in Indianapolis, Indiana and features the top 25 groups battling it out for the title of best band in the land (or something like that).

Tilt is a show quite ahead of its time, making heavy use of more electronic elements to create a spooky ambiance. The Bluecoats also redefining the edges of the field via a massive orange vinyl cutout, which places the field and the direction that the corp’s members march on a slight, well, tilt. This changes up the entire gemoetry of the performances, completely changing what would be the normal reference points of yard lines and similair. It features only four songs, all of them by newer American composers that are trying to break the mold or look at the world from a new angle, as the Bluecoats said in their program notes. The field is also littered with massive scalene-triangle-shaped props that players move on and off of throughout the performance, swapping what side is touching the ground throughout.

The first half of the show is quite strong in its own right, having a ton of fun choreo, technically impressive music, and also an unreal drum break. But, the final six or so minutes are what truly shine for me. Their ballad section is one of the most beautiful that I’ve heard in DCI history, lasting nearly three whole minutes, and features plenty of well constructed moving parts. Dyanamics are also masterfully used throughout, with the band getting impressively quiet when nessesary. I love watching the players hit their angels at the end of every phrase. It’s such a genius touch.

We then move into the finale - whew. Frantically passed, having members of the corps fly around the field while featuring individual parts of the drum line, the pit, and the tubas.

A side note: the Bluecoats marched a full 16 tubas for this show which would be almost unheard of these days. I think it’s a major factor in the incredible low end undergirding many of the most powerful parts of the routine. The Bluecoats won this year with their show Change Is Everything marching only 12 tubas - an incredible program but you can feel the difference especially within the first two minutes. They make it up by swapping in some trombones though, whew.

Anyways, back to the real point. The final minute and a half of this is astounding. Dissonance and continuing upward motion from horn and keyboard percussion lines sets you on edge before one final resolution note and visual that sends the audience to their feet. I would try to describe it, but it’s something to be watched.

Anyways, I hope you get it a little bit. Figuring out how to talk about the things I love while using more than 10 unique words and accurately representing my thoughts is the point of this whole thing.

Songs 50-41 + Interlude: I Don’t Even Listen to Music I Like →

^ Listen along

Buckle in, this one is over 3,000 words long!

70. This Old House Is All I Have - Against All Logic

Like a lot of people who happened to be 20 in 2018, I’ve listened to a lot of Music Takes from the one and only Internet’s Busiest Music Nerd - Anthony Fantano. Despite listening to and watching a lot of his videos - interacting with his thoughts and views a lot - my music taste has basically never converged with his, save on stuff like Kamasi Washington’s The Epic being incredible. He rated one of my favorite albums of all time low, dammit (Hiatus Kaiyote deserves better). Anyways - I was introduced to the album 2012-2017 by Mr. Thicc Bald himself and it’s one of his few recommendations that stuck around. This Old House Is All I Have is a deliciously dark introduction to the album - the massive brass and mysterious vocals begin and you can’t help but wonder what you’re going to be in for. You know it’s gonna be epic. Once those drums, guitar, and bass kick in, we’re straight onto vibe town, no stops

69. Slip Away (Live from Maybe Island) - Josh Garrels

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Five years figured. ago, if you had told me that this one had somehow slipped down the list this far, I would have called you a fool. Josh Garrels is one of the most important artists in my life. His music on the album Love & War & The Sea In Between (which I was exposed to by my uncle doing the album art design) gave me the music and language I needed for one questioning their ideas and their faith, in what felt like a healthy and approachable way at the age of 14. It is the extremely rare Christian album that isn’t much about praise or adoration or the like, but instead contains sadness, anger, questioning, distance from the one you worship. I practically wore that CD out in the combo player/alarm clock that lived in my bedroom for years.

This specific version of Slip Away - featuring the mesmerizing combination of keyboard percussion, accordion, clarinet, and cello, is the one that has ended up holding my heart. Josh’s words have continued to remain important to me throughout my life because, well, like I said, I am still a Christian believer, albeit a much different one than I once was. Where is forgiveness, in faith or in life? What do we deserve? Should they (friend, lover, God, take your pick) hold onto us, as Josh begs in this song? Or should they let us slip away after being wronged? Many people these days are rightfully afraid of persevering, but I do think the cultural conversation on the topic has slid too far in one direction. Loving someone will almost always eventually end up in hurt but rolling with the punches and growing as a result has brought me, well, most of the meaningful relationships and experiences in my life.

68. Clown Core - Computers

I LOVE LOUIS COLE. Is that a related statement to this song? Who knows! Anyone could be behind those weird clown masks sitting in that porta potty and van, creating some of the most zany, inventive and fun music that has pierced into the mild mainstream recently but it sure does look, sound, and feel like Louis Cole & Sam Gendel. Crazy synth lines, fast drumming (usually only with one hand), and non-lyrical yelling define half of the sound of Clown Core - while the rest is made up of beautiful melodic vistas, usually overlaid by a ripping sax solo. Computers is the perfect balance between these two worlds. The rhythmic, grinding, almost atonal introduction is as industrial as it gets, interrupted only by harsh, digitized screaming. It finally gives way, relieving all of the built up tension into the best synth & sax solo of their discography, making my brain all tingly. Of course, they just can’t help themselves. The creepy clowns knock all the blocks down at the end.

67. Asheville Skies - The Milk Carton Kids

Another sneaky “coming of age inclusion” - Asheville Skies screams Summer of 2017. I made the executive decision to find lodging in my college town for the summer, opting to not return home & live completely on my own for the first time. I had a car, I had a decent job at the coffee shop downtown that I wanted to hang onto, why not give it a try? That shop - once called Stoney Creek Roasters, then Telemetry, now something else was a shockingly early outpost of third wave coffee principles in Ohio, a suprising find in a sleepy village. Asheville Skies was easily the “best” song that played in that shop, at least before we figured out how to blare the just-released DAMN all shift long. The magic that can be weaved with just two acoustic guitars and voices never ceases to amaze me and is a good reminder that there’s plenty more out there than the crazy pieces I’m more predisposed to.

It was a constant standard on the Pandora station that rules our moment to moment mood, integrating itself into the soundtrack of the most formative summer of my life. Lots of beer late at night, hours of walking and thinking in the nearby state park, an easy secultion, wandering the very pleasant streets of Cedarville by the moon. In hindsight, it was something out of a book or a movie, something only lucky people get to do. I was completely in control, did whatever I wanted. Usually that was playing Overwatch or Breath of the Wild in my sublet room or stretching my near-minimum wage between small town sandwiches and the occasional American Spirit (Light Blues, the decadent habit that I still hate to love to hate to love).

Summer came & went - I was eventually fired from the shop, only the second such dismissal in a decade-plus in business. The reason? A bit too loud badmouthing of the owner’s distance from the day to day that was overheard by the wrong ears. He was a bit too busy working on another project… the now very successful Third Wave Water. Shows what I know!

66. Crosshairs - DANGERDOOM

The entirety of DANGERDOOM is a perfect marriage between geniuses & Crosshairs is the pinnacle. DOOM often, at least to me, melded closely to the beats he was performing on, falling into them rather than floating above. Danger Mouse gives him an excellent playground, especially on this specific track.

“DOOM, not to be confused with nobody,” spit out with a rhythm that JUST brushes with aligning to the falling baseline has kept me coming back time and again.

65. Throw Some D’s (Remix) - Rich Boy, Andre 3000, Jim Jones, Nelly, Murphy Lee, The Game

Just some plain FUN. Bouncy production, Andre 3000 still rapping his ass off on what could've been a complete phone in assignment, Lil Jon is here for some reason, there’s plenty more awesome features too. The random swap to “Throw some D’s on that hoe” for one hook makes me laugh every time. Yelling “throw some D’s on that bitch” with friends in the car is as good as life gets. Shoutout to Rich Boy, we all want to be Rich Boy.

64. Kuhmilch 74 BPM - Vulfpeck

This supremely nostalgic song, in my headcanon, is about our superstars aging. Let’s watch the slow motion, black & white highlight reel together. While Joe Dart holds things down on the Fender Bass, Lebron James crosses over, takes two massive bounds before coming airborne, a bit lower and slower then last year, slamming the ball home. Bronny watches from the bench, a full grown man watching his father still play. Frank Gore rumbles forward, stiff arming a defender, maybe for the last time, when the high synth pops back in. As the guitar slides in & out of the mix, fighting against the onslaught of the droning keyboards, Miguel Cabrera watches his 500th dinger fly into full stands, bleachers that have been a ghost town since the excitement of his Triple Crown a decade past. A little sad, but this is a track that brings some melancholy with its power. I love it.

63. Generator - Justice

The return of Justice was one of my highlights of 2024, for no other reason than they know how to make a damn fun beat. Generator and its oily, gritty soundscape is easily my pick of the resulting full length album. When I start the song, I can’t decide what drives it most - is it the claps and hissing cymbals which are technically keeping our beat? The omnipresent, sawed-off synth riding just one note? Maybe it’s the harsh keyboard-fueled main riff.

This is probably a personal bias talking, but once we get further in it’s obvious who the star of the show is - it’s the bass line. Hiding in the middle of the mix for the first half of the track, it can be easy to miss unless you’re paying attention. But when all else is stripped away & only it remains to keep your head (and hips) moving over some beautiful strings, it becomes apparent that it was there all along.

After our star making bass solo, like in all great pieces of production, Justice lets us down easy, giving us a chance to breath over a slow section I can’t help but call epic. Then, like hitting the gas in the neon-adorned, blacked-out muscle car this song brings to life, they bring everything roaring back. The bass, the synths, the drones, but now with a new friend - a pulsing, EAR shattering cowbell, beating out an additional scintillating syncopation. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

When I revisit this list in five years, I look forward to putting Generator much, much higher.

62. Passepied (Debussy) - Punch Brothers

Chris Thile is one of Those Musicians to me - the ones that I can pick up and put down comfortably, knowing that everything he touches will certainly be incredible and will be there waiting for me when I am ready. His mandolin playing is transcendent and is made only the more notable by the actions associated. Whenever weidling his tiny instrument of choice, he undulates, wiggling like a worm, almost performing the such-named dance move while standing, sometimes staying in one place, often traveling the stage a bit. Thile’s all over this dang list, from the earlier Nickel Creek inclusion, to this track by his modern outfit, to a later Vulfpeck track. I’m noting my love of the man here because there’s nothing else to say about this piece, save it’s a beautiful instrumental I adore listening to. Chris Thile forever.

61. Black Hole Sun - Sungarden

Insert the dad-rock song of this section of the list, or whatever I’m supposed to call it. It’s Black Hole Sun. Again, what do you want me to say? The central guitar riff is one that sticks in my head for days at a time. A simple drum fill that leads into every chorus is still complex enough to keep me thinking about it for years. An all-time banger among bangers.

Interlude: I Was A Musician Once, I’d Like to Try Again Please

Maybe one can never “stop” being a musician, especially since anyone really can be one with little to no effort at all, just a bit of passion and time and the right equipment (or not even that). But I think for most of my life, the title of “musician” was one to be attained through a lot of purposeful work, lessons, practicing, the like. I was slowly making that ascension myself - until one day I just… stopped.

Dr. John Mortensen is a fascinating man. Cold, calculating, funny, intense in his pursuit of excellence, extremely opinionated. He is one of the world’s leading experts in classical improvisation, composing complex musical pieces on the fly in the style of baroque fugues and similar. When he’s not on sabbatical to write his next field-leading textbook on said improv, he spends his time tucked away in a very dark office on the campus of the relatively backwater Cedarville University - a conservative, Christian college that for my money (something like $90,000 worth hahahahahaha…haha…ha… ) actually does a pretty good job of teaching its students. When I, bright eyed & bushy tailed, showed up on campus for my audition into the music program, he definitely was the most intimidating of the bunch - and also passed over me for his studio for private lessons. To Dr. Mortensen, all incoming freshman “pianamals” go by their last name until they perform a Bach toccata and fugue to his own liking, which often takes a year or more of collegiate work. Really, I think its largely in jest from what I’ve heard - something to motivate the kids & all that - & Dr. Mortensen is a quite nice guy. However, to the uninitiated (me, especially 17-year-old-me), he was a musician's musician, intimidating, laser focused, cold. I interviewed him for a school newspaper article two years after I had last been in his office and that perception held true. I was inexperienced as an interviewer and writer alike. My halting questions washed up uselessly against the mountain of his disinterest of what I was asking him (something I still remember to this day - the questions have to interest the interviewee or else you’ll get nowhere). I think I maybe netted one usable quote out of a quick five minute chat that felt like five years - a quick “is that all?” sent me skittering out of his office with quick thanks as the lamp was turned back off.

Dr. Chuck Clevenger is a fascinating man. Warm, affable, funny, concerned with everyone around him, also obviously a bit full of himself. An artist through and through, whenever he wasn’t teaching students on the piano, he was a proficient watercolorist and also responsible for the gen ed humanities course at the school, something he took very seriously. In a rather frank moment, after his retirement, he remarked to me that one of his missions in life was to help stubborn Baptists see the glory that God had put directly in front of them and that he probably had failed in that. His other mission though - to make disciples. Of art, yes, spreading the word of wonderful things that can be encountered through music or painting or statue or the written word, but also, obviously, of God. To him, his watercolor and his wonderfully emotive performances were not for him, they were for the one he worshiped (and also a little bit for him). That’s not exactly something profound, but something I have often found to be extremely lacking in greater Christian culture. He was also, in my experience, extremely kind and considerate. Even after our time as student and teacher came to an awkward, unfulfilled end, he still considered me a part of his little family, inviting me to the piano group’s Christmas party for the next two years and also ensuring I was invited to and felt welcome at his own performances on campus. Many of the things he taught me, explicitly and implicitly, have gone into how I live my life every day. When he decided to call it quits, I had the honor of writing a short profile for him for the school paper, the reason I was interviewing Mortensen. Looking at it now, yeah, I got one quote. Ha.

Piano lessons began at a young age, probably six or so (I don’t remember). Myself and my brothers and another family from church would take turns making the 35 minute drive down to the house of one Mrs. Gloria Martin, a wonderful senior woman who taught the instrument out of her home. 30-plus minutes of daily practice was an idealized fantasy my mom had for me, something that was rarely realized. Despite a so-so teacher and an even more milquetoast work ethic, I steadily progressed upwards in proficiency, finally hitting the pedal to the metal after a move to Grand Rapids, MI, something that not only netted me a better teacher but enabled me to participate more widely in related pursuits - marching band, symphonic band, much larger musical theater productions, the like. I started Taking Piano Seriously® for the remaining three years of high school, somehow brushing myself up to get admitted to a music school that while at a small college, did take itself very seriously.

This isn’t a Cal history lesson, I apologize, but this all feels important enough for me to say. I was not prepared to take music “seriously” or anything else all that seriously, I fear - mainly because of unresolved mental health struggles that I have since put a lot of work into. Somewhere between dropping my aural skills class for attendance reasons, the second panic attack before going to a general recital and the third week in a row of Dr. Clevenger being disappointed in my egregiously poor progress, I concluded the line of study was not for me. I changed from music education to English ed, before eventually changing again to Journalism, and have touched a piano in a meaningful way less than 10 times in the decade since.

Two men, two incredible musicians with different backgrounds, personalities, and focuses. I too was a musician in high school, albeit one forging ahead with little context or knowledge - I loved the piano, I adored trying new things on my bass guitar, I poured over new material for concert band or marching band with abandon. College was like running into a brick wall. What do you mean things can be worth striving for but have to be hard worked for? What do you mean, excellence does require 40-plus hours a week in the practice rooms, purposefully torturing yourself for self-betterment? That broke the musician in me, blowing out the little flame for what I loved. Perhaps it was my first time ever experiencing major burnout concerning something that I deeply enjoyed (a concept I’m now intimately familiar with). Now, every time I try to play, my fingers feel swollen, unwieldy, and awkward. If I can’t play the piano as well as I could when I had been working at it daily for five years and at a more comfortable pace for five-plus before that, what’s the point? Recapturing where I once was will be hard if not an impossibility. I’m speaking fluently. Of course, there is a point - I would like to do it again.

I’ve filled the space instead with learning the bass guitar at my own pace - usually focused around playing in my church band once a month. I’m looking at where we could fit a piano or spinet in our house if we can get one for the right price (free). My drumkit is set up in a friend’s basement, waiting for me to jam sometime. I am trying at being a musician once again, just a different kind. One that plays when it’s fun, one that picks it up when it interests him. I’m not striving towards something, at least not yet. I’d like to try that again one day too though.

If you want to chat about music, please message me!

^ Listen along

80. The Fairy - Paavo

I have a playlist on my Spotify, it’s called whirl piece. It was created not by me, but my friend, Greg, as a place for us to share music with each other & listen to. I put on stuff like Vulfpeck and c418 and Cory Henry, stuff I was really into at the time & still am. Greg added songs like Shenandoah by Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band, Genegno by Baaba Maal, & The Fairy by Paavo - a delightful ditty featuring flying vocals, an incredible piano part, various percussion, and delicious woodwinds playing off each other. A quite extended bass solo, too. It’s a song that, for all of its six minute runtime, brings me a lot of joy to listen to and feels incredibly well done, two things that always get me.

I met Greg at a very important time in my life - at my first full-time job. I was fresh out of college and had never left the midwest, he was married, had two kids and a house, and had lived abroad before settling, somehow, in a relatively small city in Ohio. Working for an objectively crap employer, Greg (who is the only coworker I’ve had who is taller than me, fun fact!) was working well below his skill level on fairly menial graphic design tasks. But over lunch (and some beers and games of Go) he instilled in me something that I still think about a lot - it’s not hard to be content.

79. Metalingus - Alter Bridge

I don’t remember how many wrestling-related songs are on this list - at some point there were like 10. This is my favorite one though, especially because every time I hear it my mind flashes back to Edge’s incredible Royal Rumble return, to this day the one that has felt like an actual meaningful surprise to me. Past my very positive associations with the song being the entrance theme for one of my true all timers, this track is still a banger. The central riffs make me wanna go insane, I get so hyped listening to this shit. It’s really funny to me too that Alter Bridge formed out of the ashes of a disbanding Creed - a true guilty pleasure band of mine that’s currently undergoing a much deserved renaissance.

78. Michigan - The Milk Carton Kids

I grew up in very rural Michigan in a weird town. It had 3 total stoplights (two, now) and yet still was something like 80% seed corn by mass. When my family of five had to move to the Big City (Grand Rapids) so my dad could find a Better Pastor Job (the church of 15 years and dwindling congregation ran out of money for both him and the senior pastor), I had a lot of pain. I had a lot of blossoming too - finally getting involved with the stuff that defines most of my life now. Better music lessons, learning Magic the Gathering, discovering a love of writing. I’ve realized how good it was for me in retrospect, being overjoyed in the moment to make the 6 hour drive down to college in Ohio. I couldn’t wait to leave what felt like a weird microsegment of my life behind. I grew up rapidly at college and learned a lot, evolving my thoughts, how I viewed the world, how I viewed my own religion, thinking “Michigan’s in the rear view now,” as the Milk Carton Kids croon on this track. I miss Michigan these days. When I first heard this song, I didn't want to go back one bit. Now, I can’t wait to visit and see my grandparents, my parents, my brothers, my uncles & aunts, my cousins. Maybe I’ll move back to Michigan one day, living in a strangely rural era again. Weird how growing up gives one just the littlest bit of perspective.

77. Vignette: Panacea - Disasterpeace

I’ve never even played Hyper Light Drifter, a game that’s been on my to-play-list for what feels like ages now. Doesn’t change the fact that this is one of my favorite just-chill-out songs. It’s a bit peaceful, a tad melancholic, a wee hopeful. Perfect for being sad or content or joyful or working or playing. Not that many songs are that flexible.

76. In the End - Linkin Park

We’re starting out with what feels like a cop-out - there’s no emotional connection here! A strange thing to have to say about a song that so many seem to hold dear - hitching their grief or struggles or stories of overcoming or lowest points to this, well, banger. In The End by Linkin Park is an objectively incredible song on an excellent album by a wonderful band. It’s a sad song, but listening to it usually gets me feeling up for whatever reason.

75. Take Five - Panzerballett

Panzerballett is a crazy band. Hailing from Munich, Germany, they boast a quite unique version of progressive metal - venturing much farther into the realm of jazz and its trappings than any other outfits I’ve heard. Heck, they might be best described as heavy fusion or something like that. This odd marriage is no better exemplified than through their own inventive cover of the jazz standard Take Five. Its seven minute runtime features a drummer playing in a 4/4 time signature “feel” while the rest of the band jams AND IMPROVISATIONALLY SOLOS over the original tune’s traditional 5/4 groove and riff. It sounds so wrong AND so right. Where does the right come up? Because the triplet eighth note of the 5/4 part is the sixteenth note beat of the drum part! You can think of it as a 4/5:3 polyrhythm if you want, hope that helps!

74. 00000 Million - Gordi

Acapella music isn’t something that I would usually jump for, but this one is perfect. Layered voices on layered voices.

73. Earfquake - Tyler, the Creator

Tyler is a drastically underrepresented artist on this list, most likely because I’ve been a relatively casual fan of his for years. I’ve never really dived in but I can’t think of a time when I’ve skipped a track from Flower Boy or IGOR. As a whole package, IGOR may be as close as it gets to a perfect (but not favorite) album to me. I guess this unfairly lowly ranked song is a stand-in for that. Earfquake itself is an expertly crafted song, with bouncy bassline and synths keeping up the momentum while sweeping, slow vocal parts try to drag that momentum right back down. This vibe combination hits something inside of me - and it helps that it doesn’t overstay its welcome at a perfect 3 minutes.

72. Giant Steps - John Coltrane

I have nothing I can add to this song. One of the most important songs in jazz history? One of the most important songs in modern music history? I’ll say this - listening to Tommy Flanagan… play? the piano on this tune cracks me up. Dude has no clue where he is. Most of his moment to moment comping is as non-committal as possible, behind the beat even. His solo is a wreck, starting and stalling and sputtering all over the keys, albeit with some nice use of space and I like when he gives up and gets lyrical at the end. You can feel him barely hanging on for dear life, desperately wishing they were moving like, 20 beats per minute slower at minimum.

The incomplete, alternate Take 7 features Cedar Walton, Coltrane’s first choice, on the piano. Despite the much slower tempo than the version most know and love, Walton doesn’t take a solo. Smart guy.

Tommy did get his redemption - his own treatment of the tune on a later album is incredible in its own right.

71. Ready Wednesday - Bill Laurance

We’re in a nice run of fusion now! Bill Laurance is best known to me, and I imagine others, as one of the original members of fusion-powerhouse/supergroup Snarky Puppy (a band we’ll be encountering plenty later on, trust me). He’s composed a few tunes for the crew - Ready Wednesday being among them. It’s got a core, driving piano riff that I’ve never been able to get enough of.

This specific version, from Bill Laurnace’s own album Flint - is my favorite treatment. Can’t place why, it just is. Give it a listen, it's an incredible ride.

Interlude: I Watch One Piece for the Soundtrack

I’ve already said it in the larger Top 100 work but I’ll say it again - television shows and movies of most any kind are, on average, just not for me. Watching them is a rare happening, few and far between. Anyways, I’m currently on episode 1023 of the anime One Piece. That’s a lot of, well, anything for any one person to have watched, especially since we’ve only been watching it for three years or so. It features masterful storytelling, incredible characters, and moment after moment that leaves me with my jaw on the floor or tearing up or literally yelling with excitement. What’s kept me coming back time and again, though, through the lower, slower bits of pacing? It’s the soundtrack in all of its mostly-fully-orchestrated glory. It’s my favorite OST for anything, ever, and has been pretty much since the day I first started watching. I’m listening to “Get Up, Luffy” as I write this and I can feel it pumping me up in real time.

One Piece isn’t unique in this regard - it’s usually the music that ends up bringing me in and binding me to a piece of media that I would otherwise hold in lower regard. Christopher Nolan’s Inception has been a favorite of mine for a long time, based entirely on its soundtrack, I was sucked into Persona 5’s 80+ hour runtime thanks to its awe-inspiring spread of funky and rock tunes, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword’s fully-orchestrated versions of songs I knew and loved, alongside originals, drove me to tears when I first played. I’ve rewatched Tron: Legacy just to listen to Daft Punk’s masterpiece in context. Attack on Titan’s first opening (and the whole show’s OST) turned me into an anime watcher in the first place - and now here I am, years later, listening to (and watching) One Piece as a direct result. This piece, “To The Grand Line” plays during many of the show's most meaningful moments and listening to it makes me want to cry. Check it out!

Songs 70-61 + Interlude: I Was A Musician Once, I’d Like to Try Again Please →

^ Listen along

90. Post Tropical Cyclone - Yuuki Matthews

It’s beautiful. It’s mesmerizing. It’s something that centers me. This song makes my brain feel good. It’s a Headphone Song, another fun designation in my head which doesn’t actually mean anything but I assume you get what I mean. Thanks, Yuuki Matthews.

89. V Neck Sweater - The Grayboy Allstars

FUUUUUUUNKYYYYY FUNNNNNNNN is what this track is and it also strongly features one of the most underutilized instruments out there - the baritone saxophone. I know it’s harder to play that most and its sound and register could limit your options but I really thought that we were headed to a Leo P-driven surge in popularity for my fave. Alas, I’ve been thinking that since 2017 or so & it’s never come to fruition. V Neck Sweater will have to do for now, the oh-so-groovy line it’s blasting taking me everywhere I want to go. The mid-song non-bari sax solo is a nice touch too.

88. Out of the Woods - Nickel Creek

Out of the great many songs here, this is one that I wish I could pay more attention to the lyrics of. They’re really cute but they just wash over me - this group of young prodigies taking me somewhere else, with pine trees and a lake and good times. Growing up, I went to a Christian summer camp every year, called Northland. It was small and it also happened to be so theologically conservative that most of the music used was very restrictive in form and instrumentation, with bluegrass and related folk somehow being the genre style of choice. I’m not complaining - many of the people who played there were simply incredible and the mandolin-fueled soundtrack they wafted through the northern Wisconsin wilderness has had a long term effect on my taste. Out of the Woods reminds me of that - summers in the sun with a lot of friends and even more fun.

87. Fight 76 (Flight of the Bumble Bee) - Walter Murphy

The day is April 1st, 2019. I log onto my beloved Spotify, trying to find the latest recommendations from the platform, a feature that I greatly appreciated (& has been enshitified since). I shuffle the new Discover Weekly playlist, launching Destiny 2 - I’m in the middle of one of the most depressed periods of my life, second semester of Senior year of college, during which I’ve largely isolated myself to my room, leaving only to go to the bare minimum amount of classes & to eat. Destiny 2 (and to some extent League of Legends) define most of my time, I basically can stop playing. Only paying half attention while grinding out Gambit matches (and also listening to a podcast at the same time), I didn’t even notice the April Fools joke, probably because a whole-disco cover playlist isn’t THAT far from my tastes at the time, which was full of funk. What snapped me out of it was a Walter Murphy track - some weird disco cover of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. I’ve been listening to the album it was on, A Fifth of Beethoven, ever since. Flight 76 isn’t actually anything to really write home about, but it is a lot of fun. Flight of the Bumblebee rules & having a disco version of it is even more sick.

86. Interstate Love Song - Stone Temple Pilots

One of my favorite bass riffs of all time. The little country-reminiscent intro is a genius stroke too. This kind of rock, whatever you want to call it, reminds me a lot of my summers off of college, going home & having to figure out what to do with myself whenever I wasn’t working whatever jobs I had rustled up for the three months. The free time was almost always filled by bumming around my local game store, The Gaming Warehouse, which continually had the local rock station, WGRD, playing. That’s how I got my first introduction to Stone Temple Pilots & plenty of other bands like them. Eventually, I started listening to WGRD on my way to FNM, too.

85. Glycerine - Bush

It’s Glycerine by Bush. What else do you want me to say? I like it. Maybe I should do it at karaoke or something to make everyone remember how much they Really Like Glycerine by Bush. Surely nobody would hate if I sang Glycerine by Bush on the karaoke machine.

84. The Ballad Of Howie Bling - Daniel Lopatin

If we’re discussing missing context with media, let’s talk about movies. I basically don’t watch films, ever, unless my wife or my friend Blake convinces me to do it. It’s an adulthood-long running joke at this point - “CAL, you haven’t seen THAT MOVIE?” No, it’s rated PG-13+ & came out before 2010, obviously I haven’t seen it. I find it difficult to explain to people why I don’t care for movies that much, or TV in general, but here’s something rough & dirty - my brain has a VERY delineated priority system, especially when it comes to my free time. Sure, it would be NICE to watch The Mummy for the first time or The Matrix or Insert Movie Here or whatever, but I COULD be reading the latest thing I’ve had my mind on, playing Magic: The Gathering, hanging out with my friends in a more active context, all of that takes priority up there. It’s just not an activity that appeals to me that much.

That may explain why I was so taken aback by Uncut Gems when I first saw it - something about that movie blew my socks off, so much so that I went out of my way to see it four times in theaters, two of which were with my lifelong best friend, Sam. Is it the all time be-all-end-all movie? No, but something about that miserable wretch of a man continually cranking up the tension did it for me like nothing else had or has since.

The opening track, The Ballad of Howie Bling, blaring while the sweeping opening scene revealed itself to be a shot of Adam Sandler’s colon certainly set me up to enjoy the movie all by itself. An incredible soundscape of choirs, synths, saxophone, percussion, and more, it’s a song that REALLY stands alone as a beautiful piece. I think about it, the rest of the Uncut Gems soundtrack and the film a lot. Maybe I SHOULD find more time to watch stuff.

83. ON THE MOVE - Jun Fukamachi

THEY MADE VULFPECK IN JAPAN IN THE 70S WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS.

Japanese artists were exploring “Fusion” as a genre decades before it broke through to popularity in the United States and it makes me so happy. Calling it Vulfpeck from the 70s is a bit reductive, because, well, I think On the Move is probably a better album than anything Vulf has managed to put together, but it’s the easiest comparison to draw.

When I go to a record store with my aforementioned friend Blake, we have a bit of a running joke in my head that’s actually reality - if you find a 70s-80s-era record in the jazz/funk section with a group of Japanese guys on the back, it’s an instant buy, no question. It’s usually $5, max. We run home and put it on, and those records have never disappointed. If these albums didn’t have largely kanji names on Spotify and other services, they would have huge audiences today. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe you should have to work to find the best stuff in an era defined entirely by convenience and clicking on whatever is recommended to you next.

While I’ve known of Jun Fukamachi’s On the Move since before Blake & I were discovering similar albums at Used Kids Records, I find something I love about it more every time I listen. Do yourself a favor & go dig up a Japanese fusion album the next time you’re around a record store. You won’t regret it.

82. You’re the Inspiration - Chicago

I know every word to You’re the Inspiration by Chicago. It was my parent’s song, simple as. Drives down to the old family stomping grounds of Dayton, Ohio were defined by whenever Dad decided to find the local station on the drive that would be likely to play it within the next half hour. Inevitably it would come over the airwaves & I’d listen to my parents belt out this silly love song to each other.

Mom got an iPod Classic for Christmas one year, I don’t remember when, but past that point, the song entered a new level of omnipresentness in my life, being played all the time. It’s stuck around in my playlists - and makes me a bit sappy every time I hear it.

81. Stadium Jazz - Donny McCaslin

You know that thing I said about My Friend of Misery - Kamasi Washington, number 97? The Drummer Does Whatever They Want, that whole thing? Stadium Jazz by Donny McCaslin is the song that started it all for me. Every single second of kit-playing in this track blows my mind, including the 40~ second solo that has you FEELING the piano riff that is present throughout the rest of the song. Keyboard as percussive underpinning of tunes, letting drummers do a bit more with themselves than just keeping time, is one of my favorite growing movements in fusion-adjacent jazz genres. Stadium Jazz is an excellent example. GIVE IT A LISTEN!!! Especially this live version, which has its own merits compared to the recorded one:

Interlude: I’ve Listened to Jimi Hendrix Once

I’m not proud of it - I’ve just been intimidated. Is that weird to say? One listen to Purple Haze is what I have under my belt and holy shit what a song. Since then, I’ve had some kind of weird hang-up about listening to any more of his work, feeling like I’ll be forced to interact with it deeply, understand it, study it, appreciate it fully for what it is and represents and has influenced since then. The unavoidable caution, the fear_, speaks to a major factor in the calcification of my taste over the last 5 years - I take music too seriously, I respect its makers too much, I expect too much out of it. That sounds so pretentious. It probably is! This is the reason why I, on a PHYSICAL LEVEL, cannot listen to music I deeply enjoy while trying to accomplish things. The songs will pull me in & it’s curtains for me.

Exploring a new artist, especially an excellent artist, is an exhausting prospect for me, because my brain will latch on and it won’t let go until I feel like I’ve wrung everything out of them that I can - or they’ll enter the tier of those that never release me, listening and learning new things every time. There’s an appeal to this. Having a font of greatness to return to and rediscover and learn from is perhaps the most ideal thing one could imagine. Right now, it sounds tiring. I have the rest of my life to listen to Jimi Hendrix.

I lied, I’m gonna put on All Along the Watchtower right now.

←- Intro

100. POW - Larry Graham & Graham Central Station

Slapping and popping as instrumental techniques have been around music for a bit - even within popular American music it appeared as early as the early 1900’s on the double bass. However, slapping on the bass guitar - something that is quietly ever present in pop, fusion, live hip hop, even rock thanks to Flea - is barely older than my in-laws. It was pioneered by the above, Larry Graham, during his time with the incredible funk band Sly and the Family Stone (notably the first ever American major rock group to be both racially integrated and mixed-gender, if you trust the Wikipedia factoid I read years ago, neat) in the late 1960s to early 70s. After some problems in the band, he went on his own way, eventually releasing… the above track. It’s a funny, silly romp that makes me smile every time I listen to it and always reminds me how much more there is to explore in music. SLAP BASS is ONLY SIXTY YEARS OLD!

99. My Own Summer (Shove It) - Deftones

The riff rocks so hard & makes me want to drive around with the windows down, which will always get a song onto this list, or close to it, regardless of all other factors present. What else do you want from me? Deftones were, weirdly enough, a band I didn’t start listening to until last year (2023), somehow having entirely avoided their discography during my early college dive into the more alternative rock bands of the 90s and early 2000s. Happy to have finally made it, even though I listen to this kind of stuff way less than I used to already - Around the Fur is slowly rising up whatever a top 100 Albums list would look like for me (not doing that anytime soon, geesh).

98. Fuck - Bring Me The Horizon

Hi Mom, I hope you aren’t reading this! - This is some kind of love song!? I literally never realized until I looked up the lyrics before sitting down to write. This points to something that will certainly be a consistent theme on this list - lyrics are the last thing that will pierce my consciousness about a song and often never do. I couldn’t tell you more than a line or three of most of the tracks present here. What I do know this song as: a potential source of my ever-present tinnitus. I did NOT treat my ears well for the first decade-plus of active music listening & I’m now continually paying a price for it. It’s fun that what seems like a throwaway song in the middle of an album made by a band gone on to much larger than its original niche popularity can be one of my favorite guilty pleasure breakdowns of all time. It enamoring me seems especially unlikely when compared to its two surrounding songs on its album (both better by objective quality and stream count), the future sound-teasing It Never Ends & the wildly popular & intensely emo Don’t Go (which I do, unfortunately, still know every word to).

97. My Friend of Misery - Kamasi Washington

Of all the bands not present on this list (I say with 98 songs locked in), Metallica is probably the largest oversight from my personal listening history - so this one will have to do the job. Kamasi Washington’s always-moving cover of My Friend of Misery was the easy highlight from the otherwise-shockingly-unimaginative The Metallica Blacklist project. The album brought together 53 different artists taking up just over 4 hours of play time to celebrate the band’s 30th anniversary by covering their most popular songs and, theoretically, putting their own spin on them. Let’s just say that Kamasi does a better job than most others. This treatment gets stuck in my head for days at a time & also is a keystone piece in a personal sub-genre of music that I like to call “Drummer Does Whatever They Want.”

96. My 1-Bedroom - Theo Katzman

A simple song, a cute track about two people joining together. I listened to this one a lot while pining after my now-wife when we were dating semi-long-distance for junior & senior year of college (I saw her on the weekends, we lived a 3 hour round trip from each other). We have more than one bedroom now. I see her way more than on the weekends, making up for the lost time. Life is good.

95. Swaying Trees - Takenobu

Some of these songs, I have a lot of things to say about and some of them I don’t - this in the latter camp. I don’t know much about the artists, haven’t listened to the rest of their work really, don’t have a lot of emotional attachment or stories to confer - it is just a beautiful, simple song that was first shown to me by the above now-wife, Jen, after she saw Takenobu open for one of her favorite artists.

94. Deathbed - Relient K

I have a lot I could say about Christian Songs or Religious Media & I will talk more about it later on, trust me, but Deathbed is just a dang good song, maybe something close to a masterpiece for what it is, that makes me cry most of the time when I listen to it. Does that mean it should be higher? Sure, but the order of most of these songs isn’t the point, the point is that Relient K was capable of a lot more than just making funny tongue-in-cheek songs, they were smart & clever & heartfelt & I wish they had flexed those muscles more often than they already did. Damnit. It bounces between moods in a masterful way & also Jon Foreman makes a surprise appearance at the very end (just like it’s surprising to me that this is his only appearance on this list)

93. It Gets Funkier III - Vulfpeck

A must-watch on Youtube, as is the case with all of the Vulfpeck songs on this list (all 6 of them, the most populous group by… a bit). Watching this group of Michigan-natives work their silly, funky, well, funk magic in low definition with smiles on their faces amps the music up to eleven. This song is pure smiles - I’ll have enough to say about It Gets Funkier itself for its other… two appearances on this list. Vulfpeck too - perhaps the most meaningful band in history to me. You’re waiting for that, though.

92. Slow Chemical - Finger Eleven

Man, I love Kane. I really don’t love Glenn Thomas Jacobs. Don’t meet your heroes, as the saying goes, because I wish this guy had never taken off his mask and opened his mouth. Hell, Undertaker, aka Mark Calaway, too. Who asked? Y’all had a great thing going, being two of my favorite wrestlers of all time. High praise. Whatever. This song goes dummy. Just listen to it. Many point to the riff as a defining factor and understandably so - but the drumming steals the show. Perfectly simple, right in the pocket, just behind the beat. If you have me popping for a snare-snare-cymbal-cymbal fill, you’re winning.

91. Deep (with N’Dambi) - Snarky Puppy

This song is S E X Y, top to bottom. The lyrical material, sung by the beautifully lush and deep voice of N’Dambi? Sex. Bass-clarinet-and-low-register-piano-only instrumentation during the versus which somehow morphs entirely with the addition of slow bass, muted trumpets, and some light percussion during the chorus? Sex. The way the bass pops in to join the clarinet on the second half of the short piano solo? Sex. Sex sex sex.

Interlude: Indy Won The Super Bowl When Prince Played In the Rain

I can’t actually tell you why I became an Indianapolis Colts fan - I basically gained consciousness with a Peyton Manning poster on the wall that I assumedly requested. The Lions stunk, we basically lived in Indiana anyways, most people cared about Michigan or State football more than the NFL anyways. Who told me about the Colts? Whoever did, they ruined my adult life. Go Indy.

Super Bowl XLI is imprinted upon my mind - obviously because the Colts won, but it wasn’t even that interesting of a game. The Colts won easily. But it wasn’t just my beloved horseshoe taking hope the Lombardi on that snowy February day - I was spending the week with my grandparents, a special birthday treat, giving the festivities a special backdrop. Burned into my memory - running into married, middle-aged Bear’s fans at Walmart who declared to me that I would be “crying onto that little watch” later that night. Said watch was one of my most prized possessions - a little thing that had the Colts logo on the face on my freshly ten-year-old wrist. Jokes on them - my team crushed theirs and I got to behold Prince perform for the first time in my life. I bet they had turned off that travesty by half-time (did they have a Bear’s watch to cry one, I wonder) & missed what is, for my money, 12 of the best minutes in live television history. Actually, they probably saw it because it was close at half-time. I digress.

Man. Prince owned the stage, pouring rain making everything about his strutting, running, and virtuosity on that damn guitar that much more impressive. We Will Rock You, a PROUD MARY COVER, and some of his own work passed quickly and easily in eight minutes. The final four? Dedicated to Purple Rain. Obviously.

“Can I play this guitar?” Prince begs the audience, not waiting for the obvious answer before screeching into his most iconic solo, working that purple logo he wielded with ease, shadow projected larger than life onto a massive billowing sheet. He moves to the finale, leading the amassed audience in a singalong while the Florida A&M University Marching 100 blared, bringing everything to a fever pitch conclusion.

17 years later & I still cannot get enough of those damn four minutes. Sure, the Colts won the Super Bowl, something I’ll never forget. But Prince won my heart & mind & soul.

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