#1 (1/1/2/5) Genesis – Supper’s Ready

(UK – 1972)

Welcome to the end of the Top500 project, and welcome to the end of the world. Yes, they did it. They packed all their love and hate of church and heaven/hell together, took a number of embryonic songs that seemed unrelated and welded them together to one single rock opera. They basically did what all the major prog bands did in those days: producing one magnum opus, but this one was different.

“Supper’s Ready” (click on pic to watch the illustrated version) is heavy on both the music and the lyrics and achieves a level of bombastic that even surpasses the #2 on this list. Thus it comes closer to an actual opera than any other song. Also, because of the war-and-piece storyline, it also comes close to GoT- and Marvel-like fantasy.

But in the beginning and in the end it’s a song about the Last Supper, not of the first but rather of the second coming of Christ. There’s no way to get up from the supper but through the apocalypse, but with a happy end.

Musically there’s are so many experiments that if Peter Gabriel hadn’t left Genesis 3 years later, they could have gleaned new songs from this one for the rest of their career. The quality of the musicians is such that the final product is impeccable. They reached perfection probably even without knowing.

This perfection more or less was my introduction to Genesis in 1977. Played live it sounds even more impressive, and they did play it live a LOT. They must have liked it just as much as the audience did.

The Apocalypse in 9/8 section of the song are 6 minutes of the best the world of rock has ever produced. Tony Banks’ keyboard solo and Phil Collins’ drumming remain unequaled. Even after 50 years.

The finale marks the victory of Peter Gabriel’s vocal qualities. When he sings about the New Jerusalem you can hear the crowd yelling along and believing they’re going to be saved. Gabriel didn’t want followers in the end. He descended from the mountain and went to make some more music.

Every time I hear this song I realize that it’s the whole of humanity playing along. This is what the human race is capable of, sound and word-wise, thought and emotion-wise. These guys happened to record it.

The 16 1/2-month journey is over. 500 songs, 500 stories. It was the greatest pleasure of my life. Don’t know if I’ll do this again, but I still have an appetite. The last supper hasn’t been served yet.

I have lived for 60 years now, and my musical harvest is here to be enjoyed. See you perhaps in 2024 when the next Album Top100 is due, or another time with more music. Keep on listening!

Love, Ronald

#2 (2/3/1/8) Van Der Graaf Generator – A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers

(UK – 1971)

If some songs can be regarded as movies for your ears, this is a 9-episode series. Multiple story lines, characters and cliffhangers.

Musically perhaps one of the most original tracks ever recorded, so many surprising chord progressions, moods, wielding of instruments, chaos and structure, always reminding us that we’re sinking down deeply into the black hole of the human condition.

This is prog in its purest form, reminding us that in the 1970s the term prog rock was not very common yet. People talked about “symphonic rock” and the global fanclub was called “Neosymphonia Association”. I was a member for about a year when I was 17 years old.

“A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” (click on pic to listen) has been highlighted by me before, see for example the PH70 project in november 2018.

For this entry I will refer to the muscial achievement which is truly symphonic, the harmonies are unprecedented for the year 1971 and probably not equalled very often in the 50 years after that. I know that there are people who don’t put “Pawn Hearts”, the album on which “Lighthouse Keepers” appears, on the top 5 of VDGG albums. These people are crazy.

This is 23 minutes of pure enjoyment, philosophically, vocally, instrumentally and all as an ensemble. I didn’t discover it until after almost 10 years after its release but I can’t do without it. The last two “episodes”, with a real showdown in part VIII, and a happy end in part IX, could be up for an Grammy for best original score if a real series was shot.

The final 4 minutes are hard to bear, so unbelievably beautiful.

#3 (7/9/7/4) Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven (live)

(UK 1976)

‘twas the summer of 1977 when I worked for 6 weeks selling ice cream on the Dutch coast and stayed with the family of the parlor’s owners. Their two oldest sons were friends of mine and I shared a bedroom with the youngest of the two. He had spent a year in Canada with his cousin and got introduced to Led Zeppelin. “The Song Remains the Same” was his relic. He listened to it every day, usually multiple times. He was 14, I was 15.

We both agreed that “Stairway to Heaven” (click on pic to watch the clip from the movie) was the best song on the album, although sometimes preferred “Dazed and Confused”. I had known the studio version of “Stairway”, but this was the uninhibited version that delivered on the promise. Jimmy Page’s guitar solo was about the best music that was ever recorded or played, for that matter.

A couple of years later I had a Chilean friend who used to play the guitar during mutual visits (usually after we had played a vicious game of checkers) and as he refused to sing in English but liked the song, he asked me to do the vocals. Those were my moments of glory, as I knew the lines word for word and had practiced the singing a lot.

The buildup, the lyrics, the impeccable drumming, the mysterious keyboard and bass, and of course THE guitar solo have always offered me a haven when times were rough. In the 10 minutes this song takes to evolve, everything is right, all things fall in their place. There’s no doubt.

Led Zeppelin would experience a number of unimaginable tragedies, the same went for my friend who introduced me to the album in the first place. He began to suffer major mental health problems at 21, probably stemming from his wild stay in Canada 7 years prior. He bought his stairway to heaven much too soon, eventually.

When Led Zep were introduced to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, a new version of this song emerged and has since stuck to my soul. And yes: Jason Bonham plays much like his dad.

“Stairway to Heaven” is an emotional roller coaster and a monument of musical greatness. Jimmy Page plays his solo with such ease and such deep knowledge of the scales.

It’s totally out of this world.

#4 Tool – Lateralus

(US – 2001)

Weird enough that this is the highest new entry. Not that there haven’t been very high new entries, but the fact that this track didn’t appear in any list before, is hard to imagine. But that’s how it is. I knew it, but it stayed off the radar for about 15 years. And then it hit like a torpedo.

For those who know the story, it is obvious that this is a musical, art, poetic etc. masterpiece in which Tool bodly goes where no-one has gone before. For those who don’t: the composition is entirely based on the Fibonacci sequence, i.e. you will find the 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 (and perhaps even 34, but that still eludes me) in every corner of the song. The bass lick, the syllables in the lyrics, the guitar riffs, it’s all spiraling in and out.

The spiral is the key shape here: the Fibonacci sequence spirals out through nature and space and is also a metaphor for artistic and personal freedom. The irony of the song is obvious: by following a pattern, we try to get rid of all the patterns. “Lateralus” (click on pic to listen) particularly appeals to be because of my own laterality. I’m spiraling out permanently, whilst desperately trying to hold on to some patterns to make sense of my existence.

Freedom and structure, or rather: freedom within a structure, produces alternating segments of wild experimenting and clockwork rhythms.

Here’s the key passage of the lyrics:

“Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind
Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines”

I recognize this word for word.

This is our destiny:

“Swing on the spiral
Of our divinity
And still be a human“

There are days that I bingelisten to this song, either in real life or just in my head. I want to be energized by this grand effort of wisdom, headbang my way into enlightenment.

There is only one way to listen to this song: so loud that no other sounds can be heard.

And then, maybe:

“following our will and wind we may just go where no one’s been
We’ll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one’s been”

This song stands not like a rock but like a mountain range.

#5 Fleetwood Mac – Rhiannon (live)

(US/UK – 1976)

This version came out of nowhere, just a random video suggestion and, based on the studio track, without any expectations. The first minute or so is very similar to that low-key version. But very soon I heard something in Stevie Nicks’s (she wrote the song) voice that revealed something raw and wild.

Before it gets out of hand, Lindsey Buckingham plays a country rock classic guitar solo and song seems to remain the same. Fleetwood, Mac and McVie play a virtuoso bridge, but that’s not what we came for, isn’t it? When the last two minutes arrive something unusual, even uncanny occurs.

Nicks gradually mutates into the “Old Welsh Witch” the song is about. Her voice is full of passion and lament at the same time, her eyes are closed, it seems she is no longer here with us. These two minutes are among the best US music from the 70s has produced. Since then, I’m totally addicted to this version of “Rhiannon” (click on pic to watch the famous live clip). I have to listen to it a couple of times a week and it is instant serontonine pleasure.

Now I finally understand why I’ve always read that “Rhiannon” was Fleetwood Mac’s best song. Based on the album version, that could never be the case, but the performance version turned into a completely new song, and what a song it is! A great composition, rendered by a band at the top of their game, Stevie Nicks being 28 and radiating all the magic it takes to write and play songs like these.

Can’t stop listening and I still don’t know exactly why. A sudden newcomer on this list, which I didn’t even have on my shortlist a year and a half ago when this project started.

She’s here to stay now.

#6 (6/5/-/-) Alice Cooper – Swing Low, Sweet Cheerio

(US – 1969)

This is how it started. A dress, not the black paint around the eyes. Alice Cooper looked and sounded more like a gender fluid operation. Music-wise, it went in all directions. If this was not art for arts sake, there wasn’t any. Their debut album puts Captain Beefheart in the shade. They could have joined Andy Warhol at any given moment.

“Swing Low, Sweet Cheerio” (click on pic to listen) is one of the most daring songs on a debut album you will ever hear. Remember: these guys were about 21 years old when this was recorded. There is hardly a precedent nor a postcedent of this kind of creative force in modern rock history. Everytime I listen to this, I am in awe of the combined writing talent.

Just listen to the small sections of pure musical innovation, put together as some sort of mini-suite, lead by a space guitar, a narrative bass and joined by a demure but still firm voice. A break in a different key and they get back to the first theme, and at the next break they change keys, time signatures, the whole lot, a third section sounds like this is going to be the theme for the rest of the song but it’s a total decoy. Another key change and then they shoot off into a totally different song altogether. Psychedelic explorations, I see fragments of “Stalker” and then the harmonica comes in out of nowhere, they’re into another song already.

You just have no time to get accustomed to the groove, because they’re stretching it into the wild. The bass lick seems to run backwards, while the guitar and harmonica are rushing faster and faster towards… well, we don’t know. Only the rhythm guitar seems to be the stable element here. The pace slows down until it almost grinds to a halt, but that’s another decoy.

The pace is set in again, this time even more convincing, the harmonica is conquering a number of scales and reaches a climax before finally fading away.

If there was ever a musical representation of a quickie, this is. A truly fascination recording, played with a freshness and ingenuity beyond compare. They just did not know how good they were.

Now we do.

#7 (3/16/4/2) Focus – Anonymous II

(NL – 1972)

As soon as the groove hits, you’re hooked, no escaping it. You’re in for the full 26+ minutes and it’s a roller coaster ride that doesn’t seem to end. Even the lull in the middle is just a buildup.

Set up as a classical 12-bar jazz piece with 5 major solos, it is actually a rock song, the kind of fusion that came out of the first round of experiments in the late 60s and early 70s. “Focus” were a band on the cusp of jazz, rock and classical music, with an amazing cast of musicians who could play anything in any style.

The five solos of “Anonymous II” (click on pic to listen, the II is because of the proto-version on an earlier album) feature Thijs van Leer first on flute and then on keyboards, Bert Ruiter on bass, Jan Akkeman on guitar and Pierre van der Linden on drums. It’s hard to pick a favorite. Thijs works himself into a frenzy twice, like a derwish on a roll, Bert goes from very low and slow to a point where he’s telling long and interesting stories, Jan kicks in and basically rocks the wallpaper off with an unprecedented intensity and Pierre seems to have four sticks instead of two, it’s all so virtuoso, played with such ease and fluency. And it was probably recorded in one take, at least that’s how it sounds.

“Anonymous II” almost made #1 in 1997, after a decade of playing it incessantly at (m)any occasion(s). People even used to dance to it at parties. I would take it anywhere. It slipped out of the Top10 in 2016, but now it’s back, healthy and strong.

If life seems boring and there’s no excitement in sight, just put this music on and you’ll thoroughly enjoy yourself.

#8 (4/6/27/23) Soft Machine – Virtually

(UK – 1971)

Fusion – Explosion – Contemplation – Repetition, my interpretation of the four parts of this behemoth of a song. The ultimate in experimental jazz and the incredible harmonies, consisting of contradictions and conflagrations, it keeps throwing at the listener. Soft Machine were so deep into in, they must have been brought back to reality with pliers after playing this.

“Virtually” (click on pic to listen) is a feature movie for the ears, and it is set – at least in the images I receive from my inner eye – in Paris. Part I is fusion cooking, alternating courses of haute cuisine and traditional dishes, served with excellent wines, with a backdrop of Seine bridges and boulevards. Remember the movie “Pont Neuf”? Stuff like that.

Ten years after the release of this album and just months after first listen I went to Paris for the second time in my life. What I did was to roam around the city aimlessly, trying to catch the magic I had felt 3 years prior. The magic was in small experiences rather than in big ones. I had just ‘undergone’ my first escape year from the captivity of my small town family home and I still had to learn a lot. Part I of “Virtually” opened up the box of possibilities, of the myriad options I could choose from, if I would be prepared to accept the cost. Because Paris, just like Amsterdam, taught me that nothing comes without a cost.

Part II wanders off onto the endless banks of the Seine, the endless boulevards and avenues not stopping until the vision ends, but there’s also a tension building up, because obviously I want to go beyond that horizon. Excitement fills my head and lungs, I want to run, to act, to create some impact. But here I am, invisible me in a city of millions, while others are hiking in the Dordogne or on a beach in Andalucia or partying in Berlin. Finally the tension explodes and the party is starting in my head. The beautiful bass/sax/keyboard train is taking me where I want to be. Fantasy world is calling. Dance with life and limbs in bright sunshine.

The beginning of part III is a backward track, we’re going into the past to explore where this all came from. Suddenly an earnest sadness fills the room. There is a reason why I like this haughty, impenetrable city with its proverbial unfriendliness and its history of oppression and revolution. It reminds me of my childhood, during which love is hard to find. I’m reliving parts of that childhood during my walks through the city, I’m trying to catch the eyes of those who might have felt the same, I fail to make contact, probably because my face is not marked enough. I am 19 years old but I look like 15. Behind that babyface there is an old man looming. Part III beautifully taps into that hidden sadness, the feelings I have never been able to express in real life, and if I would, no-one would believe me, I’m known as the clown. But in this Paris I can be who I believe I really am – but who I don’t want to be, so I face an unsolvable dilemma. Who do I want to become?

And then we slip into Part IV. During these days in Paris, I wasn’t able to find my real identity, which I sort of had hoped for. So the music ends with a gorgeous but grieving sax theme. For a very brief moment, the flame is rekindled and I seems I will emerge purified and new, but the theme gets stuck in a loop. Regardless of its beauty, it is the same false identity over and over again. It is attractive and will get me through life, but it is a surrogate. Where can I find the me that is allowed to say I?

The answer is: in the music.

#9 (5/4/-/-) The Mothers of Invention – King Kong

(US – 1968)

“Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny”, FZ famously said. “King Kong” (click on pic to listen to the studio version) is the ultimate proof. “King Kong” did not appear on an album until a year after it became part of the Mothers’ live shows. Some of the live renditions beat the recorded version by a mile, like this show in Essen, Germany or probably the best known version live at the BBC. The latter is introduced like this:

“We’re involved in a sort of low-key war against apathy. […] A lot of what we do is designed to annoy people to the point where they might, just for a second, question enough of their environment to do something about it.”

And annoying it might be. Free jazz merged with classic passages, Varese-type static and the monster of rock ‘n’ roll raising its head from time to time. A full workout for the ears.

A new idea every minute and it’s not going to stop. Hell for those who look for easy listening, or easy in an form, for that matter. Incredible solos, exploring unknown chords, the band exploring in each and every direction in general. At some point they will collaborate perfectly and you’ll get an idea what musical heaven feels like, at the next it’s total chaos again and it seems there’s no way out, but they always find the hidden door.

Music was revolutionized by The Mothers and their legacy can’t be overestimated. “King Kong” is, beside Beefheart’s “Trout Mask Replica” of course, the living proof of the liminoid character of art, and thus of mankind.

#10 (8/56/8/-) Gil Scott-Heron – “B”-Movie

(US – 1981)

Probably the best bass lick in the business, potentially some of the best lyrics ever and certainly one of the best roastings of the man they called The Gipper but who was more like the Ripper of human rights. Spoiler alert: history repeated itself in 2016.

“”B”-Movie” (click on pic to listen) blew me out of my chair at first listen, almost 35 years ago, so devastatingly good! I remember taking the song along on my walkman in Central America in 1988, trying to figure out the lyrics in their entirity.

GSH was still a young man when he recorded this, a poet and an activist, a strong figurehead of the struggle for democracy in the US and beyond. He disapproved of strong language and needless dissing of brothers and sisters. His appeal was for the unity of human beings, whilst unequivocally campaigning for the rights of black people in a deeply racist world. He later clashed with the rappers whom he regarded off the scale and who regarded him as a sellout.

The live versions of “B”-Movie often include the story about “How we was gonna call this song”, beginning with “From Reel to Real” and ending with “From Shogun to Rey-Gun”. But “B”-Movie nailed it the most.

The music is soul but it already sounds like was sampled. Gil Scott-Heron was one of the Godfathers of rap.

The frenzied finale shouts out “This ain’t really alive, this is nothing but a movie”. An apology or total shock (staggeringly surpassed in 2016, when it turned reality show)?

Do we want to keep starring in a B-movie?