Top songs - 1

This, hopefully, will build up into another series. Songs currently spinning around my head, refusing to leave, and leaving that permanent mark. Songs whose lyrics keep popping up while I'm sitting at Nescafe, or whose solo I would hum inappropriatly loudly even while in the library, and very subconsciously.

TS, I shall name it. I've got this affection to short-formed-series now.

Anyway, here goes.

Mr. Big - Green Tinted Sixties Mind

No, I didn't make it for the Big concert. I did hear another incredibly talented band, Slain from Bangalore, perform it in college recently. The first time I heard the song was them performing it a year ago, at the BITS rock night. It is still a mystery to me why I hadn't explored Mr. Big till that late. The signature happy-jumpy intro and the perfectly fitting soloing by Gilbert, Eric Martin's intense emotion-filled vocals make this song an instant mood-lifter!

Zero - Christmas in July

Another song which became so much better after hearing it live. Yes, I did witness the God of tone, Warren, at I-Rock, and good GOD did he own the concert! Among all the other names that performed that night, Warren stood out like a saviour of good music. It poured that day like there was no tomorrow, and we still stood in the killing rain and heard every note played by the man! Something about this song that makes it in the switch-off-lights-throw-head-back-and-drown category! One of the best guitar instrumentals I've heard by anyone ever, let alone an Indian artist!

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Rainy Day, Dream Away/Still Raining, Still Dreaming

"Rainy Day, Dream Away

Oh let the sun take a holiday!"

Along with his pioneering guitar sounds, Hendrix has never stopped amazing me with his lyrics. The recent showers in Goa drew me to these two songs. The experience of listening to the songs one after the other, over and over again, while the rain pelted down on my window was one of the most memorable ones I've had! Every time it starts raining after that, I can't stop myself from humming those lines now.

The Allman Brothers Band - Whipping Post

Be it that sexy little melody after "Sometimes I feel..." in the song, or the solo, or the haunting bassline running through the song - this one's one of those everlasting ones. One of those that never get old, or you never get bored of. It's the pinnacle of progressive electric blues, what with the 11/8 verse and the 12/8 chorus! And the crowning moment of this song is that 22-minute live epic in the Filmore East tapes. Everything about those 22 minutes exalts pure Blues power!

Grateful Dead - Box of Rain

I had to really think before I typed out the name of this song, mostly because the entire American Beauty album has been one of my favourites ever since the semester began. But what with the weather being at its most beautiful yet (obviously in the middle of tests, when rather than breathing it into my system, I need to sit in the library studying and watch it through glass windows), I thought Box of Rain would be fitting. Not anywhere else have I seen vocal melodies pulled off so perfectly. The lyrics just seem to flow and in the tandem of seemingly disconnected music from three guitars rises a melody so uplifting, so joyful and so comforting! I don't think there's ever gonna be a time when Box of Rain won't get my mood up!

Writing this was way more fun than I thought it would! Hopefully, many more of these!