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May 07, 2007
Numerology: Ten Digits Gone, then Eleven, naturally
by David Klein
When I first began brainstorming song ideas for this list, my “10” song came to me right away. I’ve turned up a number of excellent contenders, but there was never a lot of serious competition. “Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin, off their monolithic Physical Graffiti, encapsulates what’s great about Led Zeppelin: the sense of space, the majesty, the indelible melodies, guitar lines that fly too close to the sun, drums that shake you to your very foundation, and the whole thing filled with urgency, yearning, and (in the case of 10YG), something like 14 separate guitar tracks.
For the converted among you, there will be no argument. For those who never got into the band—or simply never got their appeal, for those who hated “Stairway,” or who were born too late for the band to truly enter your soul, etc., I say unto you only this: This one might make a believer out of you, at least a believer in the sublimity of the song itself. All you have to do is pretend you never heard of Led Zeppelin or Robert Plant or that fish in the hotel room with the groupie in LA. Just pretend your friend brought this over and slapped it on your iPod, told you it was an outtake from Tool’s latest, and I defy you not to be moved.
Led Zeppelin - "Ten Years Gone"
Like any great Zep song, “Ten Years Gone” is like an amazing feat, like a miniature movie consisting only of sound. Every melodic excursion and turn within the song’s six-minute confines sounds like it was written into the song, and yet there is a certain organic looseness that keeps it from sounding like the labored-over creation it clearly was. All praise to the master producer Jimmy Page. It starts so hushed, and builds so elegantly upon an insistent, Moebius strip kind of a lick, one that sounds better as all the melodic permutations of it are writ large, strategically, in the most perfect places. And Robert Plant delivers one of his most modulated performances in this paean to lost love. When he finally gives it up and wails a couple of “woo-woo, yeah-yeahs” like the banshee incarnate, it’s the perfect, the only, sound that will do.
If anything could have swayed me, it’s this cool-as-shit track by Liliput (known as Kleenex before they got leaned on by tissue industry thugs - ed), an influential though unheralded Swiss band (actually they’re all unheralded) from the early ‘80s, which MS resident Swiss-o-phile Jeff Klingman sent my way, despite his own strong feelings for this Zeppelin track. I have to dock it points because the “10” part is almost arbitrary, and remind Mr. K of the fact that the 10 bracket is a tough one. As in baseball, most of the low numbers are retired. If the song were called, for example, “DC-43,” it would be a total shoo-in. And while I’m employing an equestrian figure of speech, in the interest of a horse race, YOU take a listen:
I know I might be hearing from the Springsteen-ites out there (“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”), the six people who really dug the Stone Roses’ Second Coming (“10 Storey Love Song”), and possibly even fans of The Soundtrack of Our Lives, alerting me to the stately “Ten Years Ahead.” I fantasize about hearing from fans of the Monochrome Set. This oddball ‘80s combo, whose cheeky “Ten Don’ts For Honeymoons” begins with the advice, “Don’t ski naked down Mt. Everest/With lilies up your nose,” had the temerity to list glowing reviews from the rock press on the back of their 1982 LP, Eligible Bachelors, including this one, from Ongaku Senka (Japan): “Though I rarely give five stars, I can do nothing but praise such exciting music.” The first single by Curve was the densely churning “Ten Little Girls.” (I haven’t heard it in awhile, but all Curve’s songs are densely churning.) And I cannot in good faith omit mention of “Big Ten Inch Record,” from Aerosmith’s best record ever, Toys in the Attic (1975). Popularized by Bull Moose Jackson, “Big Ten Inch” sports the kind of outsized double entendre that even an 11-year-old boy can understand. (Back in the day, long before they covered “Walk This Way,” the members of Run-DMC used to think the name of the band was Toys in the Attic. I learned this from watching one of those “history of rock” documentaries that proliferated in the late ‘90s.) Finally, on the ‘50s tip, I’ll mention “The Ten Commandments of Love” by the Moonglows, which was name-checked by Elvis Costello in his scintillating “Pidgin English.”
The pack thins out a lot at 11. U2 turns up yet again, with their Martin Hannett-produced second single, “11 O’Clock Tick Tock,” which the good folks at Wikipedia tell me is among the 20 most performed songs in the band’s oeuvre. Respect to the tie-dyed minions who have written in to remind me of the Grateful Dead song called “The Eleven,” named after its tricky time signature (11/8). Primus did something similar with “Eleven.” I wanted to consider “E Eleventh Nuts” from last year’s fine White Bread Brown Beer by Scritti Politti but it was one of the few tracks that didn’t quite grab me. There was a cool number from the ‘80s by singer-songwriter Peter Himmelman called “The 11th Confession,” which I remember from a mixed tape, side by side with Hunters & Collectors. And it just wouldn’t be Christmas without a pompous art rock song to consider, in this case, “The Eleventh Earl of Mar” by post-Peter Gabriel Genesis (full disclosure, I once paid to see post-Peter Gabriel Genesis in concert, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.) In the end it was not hard to give the nod to Blondie for “11:59,” a great three-minute pop song, steeped in ‘60s girl group drama, with a great, grab-you intro and nifty, noir-ish lyrics to boot.
Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It looks easy now, but there are rough times ahead.
Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9
Posted by Jeff Klingman at May 7, 2007 01:00 AM
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Comments
I think the Moonglows should have been excluded on the basis that their are only 9 commandments of love listed in the song.
Posted by: Randall Monty at May 7, 2007 08:20 AM
I heart the Monochrome Set. Been looking for an excuse to post "Eine Symphonie des Grauens" for a while. Future Obscurer Than Thou maybe?
Posted by: Jeff K at May 7, 2007 11:33 AM
Good call, JK. They are more than worthy, and I have a good smattering of their work.
And as for the Moonglows, I admire your eye for detail, Mr. Monty. I will have to consider such matters as I move forward.
--David
Posted by: david at May 7, 2007 12:11 PM
You should've told these nice people that when we first heard Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, we both misheard the lyrics as "Tell The Devil He Can Freeze Out"...and sang along to it just that way, vehemently I might add, for many years.
Very good stuff, as usual. DC-10 was a plane, by the way.
Here's looking forward to the teens...
Posted by: jonny at May 7, 2007 01:57 PM
