Numerology: Ten, Again

“Oh, how happy we will be/ if we keep the ten commandments of love.”
—the Moonglows
“One of a thousand pities that you can’t categorize
There are ten commandments of love…”
—Elvis Costello, “Pidjin English
“She’s got the ten commandments tattooed on her arm.”
—MC5, “Sister Anne”
Not nine. Not eleven. Ten commandments. No wonder ten-named songs are a solid lot: they are linked inextricably to the very basis of Judeo-Christian morality. Use 10 right, and you have a powerful weapon. Granted, it’s a heavy a subject to tackle head-on in a pop song, but in “The Ten Commandments of Love,” a valentine to fidelity and deep, abiding romance, the legendary doo-wop practitioners the Moonglows stirringly suggest a concept the average 1950s teenager could get cozy with. (True, the ‘Glows only enumerate nine commandments of love, but the background vocals cunningly fool the ear into thinking it’s heard the full decalogue.)
Harry Nilsson, no stranger to numerically titled songs (see “One” and “1941”), used the Ten Commandments as the basis for his “Ten Little Indians,” which he derived from the short poem-turned-schoolyard jingle that Agatha Christie borrowed for the title of one of her most popular mysteries. (The original title, published in the UK in 1939, used an appalling racial epithet instead of Indians, but the U.S. edition carried the title “And Then There Were None.”) Unlike the original poem, in which each little Indian dies from one form of random misadventure or another, in Nilsson’s version, which the Yardbirds covered, each one dies by breaking a commandment. The Beach Boys’ “Ten Little Indians,” one of their least successful singles, and deservedly so, uses the traditional sing-song melody of the playground to tell the story of a fickle “squaw” who resists nine eager suitors—and their offers of moccasins, feathers and the like—before settling on “the tenth little Indian boy.” Certainly a low point for a great group. Much more uplifting is “Ten Little Kids” by the Jayhawks, a joyful stomp that really is about kids, from their sublime Tomorrow the Green Grass. The densely churning “Ten Little Girls” by Curve (heck, all their songs are densely churning) diverts from the poem, dispatching the girls in question in one fell swoop.
“Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow/the drummer relaxes and waits between shows for his cinnamon girl”—Neil Young, “Cinnamon Girl”

The nation’s oldest college athletics conference is the Big Ten, but R&B sax master Bull Moose Jackson had a far different, far from officially sanctioned kind of sport in mind on his signature “Big Ten Inch Record.” The caesura that follows “ten-inch” is all that’s needed to make Jackson’s song a classic of the double entendre, and it’s obvious why Aerosmith covered it in 1976, much to the delight of their male teenage fan base. Motley Crue’s premature ejaculation ode, “Ten Seconds to Love,” speaks to that same hormonally addled populace, only1983-style: with phallus-as-loaded gun imagery and the assurance that it’s ok to be bad in bed and brag about it afterward. (Alice Cooper’s “10 Minutes to the Worm” has nothing to do with sex whatsoever, while Jefferson Airplane’s “3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds” is a hard-charging complaint song that takes issue with “people laughing at my hair” and overpriced dope, among other things.)
Bull Moose Jackson - "Big Ten Inch"
XTC - "Ten Feet Tall"
the Stone Roses - "10 Storey Love Song”

We live in a base 10 world, so we lop things off in sets of ten. Ten’s a significant demarcation: it’s a ten-foot pole we wouldn’t touch something with; a deep breath we take before counting to 10. We make top 10 lists, rate people’s looks on a scale of 1 to 10 (the corn-rowed Bo Derek was the feminine ideal in 1977, so she was a “10,” a concept explored in Rich Creamy Paint’s “You’re a 10”). When we feel fantastic, larger than life, how do we feel? We feel 10 feet tall. Which brings me to XTC’s “Ten Feet Tall,” a scintillating and understated gem from the band’s watershed Drums & Wires that features as concise a four-bar guitar solo as has ever been attempted. It perfectly embodies the otherworldly sensation of dumbstruck rapture, while marking new creative territory for this endlessly inventive combo. The acoustic, jazz-chord-laden single was Colin Moulding’s attempt to subvert the band’s MO up to that point, what he called “Quirk, Jerk, Spiky, Crikey, Start, Stop,” and offer up something altogether smoother and sexier. The result speaks for itself: “Ten Feet Tall” remains one of XTC’s most delightful and understated creations. The Stone Roses’ “10 Storey Love Song” amps the love- as-height imagery to gargantuan proportions, from mere feet to stories. The hyperbole inherent in the song’s title is right in line with the over-the-top ambitions of Second Coming, the Stone Roses’ swan song, which was little more than a bevy of bloated blooze riffs utterly lacking the magic that characterized the band’s self-titled debut. That record, many contend, belongs among the greatest ever, while the pompously titled Second Coming is all but universally reviled, or at least characterized as a monumental disappointment. That said, “Ten Storey Love Song” is one of the record’s few standouts, imbued with a strong melody and a sense of proportion, even with its outsize emotions.
Footnote: the Velvet Underground voiced a similar sentiment with the also-ran “Love Makes You Feel Ten Foot Tall,” which ended up on Loaded: The Fully Loaded Edition.
Before attaining a brief ubiquity with their big-beat cover of the Stones’ “I’m Free,” the Soup Dragons were an enjoyably twee English indie band whose “Hang-Ten!” was a fizzy little thing that went pop, like Buzzcocks Lite. The song takes its title from the ‘60s surf term for riding a wave with all ten toes hanging off the board. Bowling never became the craze that surfing did, nor did it inspire tons of songs, but Raleigh, N.C., troubadours the Connells did refer to the strangely addictive pastime in “Ten Pins Down.” The title of “Box 10,” Jim Croce’s concise, affecting ditty of hard times in New York, refers to the address of the Sunday mission where he ends up after losing his earthly possessions to naiveté and a cold-hearted woman. That Sunday mission might plausibly be in the vicinity of 10th Avenue, the site of Bruce Springsteen’s “10th Avenue Freeze-Out,” a staple of the band’s oeuvre that traces the origins of the E. Street Band in colorful if decidedly abstruse fashion—Clarence Clemons recently admitted he had no idea what it meant. Speaking of freezing, “10 Degrees and Getting Colder” by Gordon Lightfoot tells the tale of a down-on-his-luck musician trying to hitch a ride near Boulder Dam.
Fun 10 Fact: “Ten Bob Twist: (obs.) A portion of drugs, usually cannabis, bought for ten shillings sterling; half a quid deal.” (The aural equivalent of a contact high, “Ten Tons of Dope” by Luminal dwarfs a half-quid deal in a cannabis haze of epic proportions.)

“And if a 10-ton truck crashes into us, to die by your side what a heavenly way to die...” The Smiths, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "10 X 10"
(live @ Glasslands Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
Kleenex- "DC -10"
Blonde Redhead - "10"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "10 x 10"
Beach House - "10 Mile Stereo"
Heavier and far more potentially lethal than a 10-ton truck, the DC-10 aircraft was taken out of production in 1989, roughly a decade after it was saluted with “DC-10” by Kleenex. This unheralded all-female Swiss band (actually, they’re all unheralded) were forced to change their name (to Liliput) when leaned upon by tissue-industry thugs. The tough gals behind “DC-10” would have likely appreciated Blonde Redhead’s caustic “10,” featuring yelped, half-spoken Sonically Youthful vocals. If you’re making a mixtape at home, I would suggest following “10” with the sexy, strutting “10 x 10” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs from the Is Is EP, and then, to take things down a notch, “10 Mile Stereo” by Beach House, a slice of elusive dream pop that shimmers like rainbows in a puddle.

Ten has turned up in a many an album title, and while these are not eligible for the top spot, they do merit mention. First and foremost, Ten is the title of the debut outing by Pearl Jam, which, more than any other record, including Nevermind, brought grunge into America’s living rooms. 10 the number is even more popular as an album title: L.L. Cool J, the Smithereens, the Guess Who, the Stranglers, Enuff Z’Nuff, Wet Wet Wet, and Asleep at the Wheel are just some of the acts that have all used it, and the second discrete semiprime also fits into Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales, the Elvis Costello best-of Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How’s Your Fathers, and countless others.
A $10 bill used to be called a sawbuck because of the roman numeral X’s resemblance to a certain wood-holding device, but no one calls it that anymore; maybe that’s because it buys so little these days it doesn’t seem to deserve a jazzy nickname. Of course, M.I.A. wouldn’t agree with me: in “$10,” she sings “What can I get for $10—anything you want,” a sentiment that would go down well with the protagonist of ZZ Top’s “Ten Dollar Man” from the less-than-essential Tejas LP (1977). Essential advice comes in the form of the Monochrome Set’s “Ten Don’ts For Honeymooners,” which begins with the sage declaration, “Don’t ski naked down Mount Everest/With lilies up your nose” before proceeding with a litany of other priceless matrimonial no-nos, including:
Don’t dance the polka in a dhoti
And whistle The Rite of Spring
Don’t recite Hamlet’s soliloquy
While munching onion rings
The Monochrome Set - "Ten Don't For Honeymooners"
“It’s 10:00. Do you know where your children are?” Once a staple of the average Joe’s viewing habits, the 10:00 news inspired songs like “News at Ten” by the Vapors (of “Turning Japanese” fame.) Still, there’s probably no better song celebrating 10:00 than “Clock Strikes Ten” by Cheap Trick, the final track from the monumental At Budokan. “10 A.M. Automatic” by the Black Keys certainly owns the morning slot, while the Verlaines “All Joed Out” looks like the only song in existence to mention the rarified time of “10:00 in the afternoon.”

Something about 10 just seems to go with “years.” Warren Zevon (“After 10 long years they let him out of the home/ Excitable boy they all said…”), The Who (“Ten years old with thoughts as bold as thoughts can be”) and the good old Grateful Dead (“I’ve been gambling hereabouts/ for 10 good solid years”) provide a few examples of this sturdy construction, while 10-years-titled songs abound, including the stately “Ten Years Ahead” by Swedish psych-pop prodigies The Soundtrack of Our Lives and Game Theory’s “Andy in 10 Years.” But the very best of this subset have a common denominator in the form of guitar legend Jimmy Page. One of them is “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,” a song recorded by The Yardbirds for 1967’s Roger the Engineer, when Page shared lead guitar duties with Jeff Beck. Although the song was one of the band’s less successful singles, it stands as one of those rare songs from the psychedelic era that carries the hallmark sounds—the vaguely Middle Eastern modalities, mystical lyrics, like those referring to “sinking deep into the well of time,” disembodied voices and creepy laughter—but doesn’t sound at all dated. With its nifty structure and bevy of guitar sounds—stabbing, discordant, feedback-laden, explosive bursts—amid the songs’s juddering rhythms, “Happenings” just grabs you by the lapels, pins you against the wall, and slaps you into submission.
Yardbirds – “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”
Dusty Springfield - "I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten"
Before discussing top dog, it seems wise to heed Dusty Springfield’s advice when she sang, “I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten.” Because it’s a heady topic. When I first began brainstorming song ideas for this list, my “10” song came to me right away. While there are several excellent contenders (the Yardbirds song in particular is certainly epic enough to take the crown), I am still inclined to stick with my original choice: “Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin, off their monolithic Physical Graffiti. It encapsulates all that is 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 this case, something like 14 separate guitar tracks during one especially rich sequence.

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’ve 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 an amazing feat, a miniature movie consisting only of sound. Every melodic excursion and turn within its 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. “Ten Years Gone” starts hushed and builds 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 a lover from the past who demanded he choose her or his music—and lost the bet. When Plant 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.
Led Zeppelin - "Ten Years Gone"
(live, 1976)
Numerology is our pal Dave's ill-advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. We hear 60 is the new 40, and now we're not even that impressed by his progress.
Previously: No. 1, 2 (redux), 3, 4 (redux), 5-7, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28 , 29 , 30, 30 (counterpoint), 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, Footnotes, 57, 58, 59 , 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68

“Oh, how happy we will be/ if we keep the ten commandments of love.”
—the Moonglows
“One of a thousand pities that you can’t categorize
There are ten commandments of love…”
—Elvis Costello, “Pidjin English
“She’s got the ten commandments tattooed on her arm.”
—MC5, “Sister Anne”
Not nine. Not eleven. Ten commandments. No wonder ten-named songs are a solid lot: they are linked inextricably to the very basis of Judeo-Christian morality. Use 10 right, and you have a powerful weapon. Granted, it’s a heavy a subject to tackle head-on in a pop song, but in “The Ten Commandments of Love,” a valentine to fidelity and deep, abiding romance, the legendary doo-wop practitioners the Moonglows stirringly suggest a concept the average 1950s teenager could get cozy with. (True, the ‘Glows only enumerate nine commandments of love, but the background vocals cunningly fool the ear into thinking it’s heard the full decalogue.)
Harry Nilsson, no stranger to numerically titled songs (see “One” and “1941”), used the Ten Commandments as the basis for his “Ten Little Indians,” which he derived from the short poem-turned-schoolyard jingle that Agatha Christie borrowed for the title of one of her most popular mysteries. (The original title, published in the UK in 1939, used an appalling racial epithet instead of Indians, but the U.S. edition carried the title “And Then There Were None.”) Unlike the original poem, in which each little Indian dies from one form of random misadventure or another, in Nilsson’s version, which the Yardbirds covered, each one dies by breaking a commandment. The Beach Boys’ “Ten Little Indians,” one of their least successful singles, and deservedly so, uses the traditional sing-song melody of the playground to tell the story of a fickle “squaw” who resists nine eager suitors—and their offers of moccasins, feathers and the like—before settling on “the tenth little Indian boy.” Certainly a low point for a great group. Much more uplifting is “Ten Little Kids” by the Jayhawks, a joyful stomp that really is about kids, from their sublime Tomorrow the Green Grass. The densely churning “Ten Little Girls” by Curve (heck, all their songs are densely churning) diverts from the poem, dispatching the girls in question in one fell swoop.
“Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow/the drummer relaxes and waits between shows for his cinnamon girl”—Neil Young, “Cinnamon Girl”

The nation’s oldest college athletics conference is the Big Ten, but R&B sax master Bull Moose Jackson had a far different, far from officially sanctioned kind of sport in mind on his signature “Big Ten Inch Record.” The caesura that follows “ten-inch” is all that’s needed to make Jackson’s song a classic of the double entendre, and it’s obvious why Aerosmith covered it in 1976, much to the delight of their male teenage fan base. Motley Crue’s premature ejaculation ode, “Ten Seconds to Love,” speaks to that same hormonally addled populace, only1983-style: with phallus-as-loaded gun imagery and the assurance that it’s ok to be bad in bed and brag about it afterward. (Alice Cooper’s “10 Minutes to the Worm” has nothing to do with sex whatsoever, while Jefferson Airplane’s “3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds” is a hard-charging complaint song that takes issue with “people laughing at my hair” and overpriced dope, among other things.)
Bull Moose Jackson - "Big Ten Inch"
XTC - "Ten Feet Tall"
the Stone Roses - "10 Storey Love Song”

We live in a base 10 world, so we lop things off in sets of ten. Ten’s a significant demarcation: it’s a ten-foot pole we wouldn’t touch something with; a deep breath we take before counting to 10. We make top 10 lists, rate people’s looks on a scale of 1 to 10 (the corn-rowed Bo Derek was the feminine ideal in 1977, so she was a “10,” a concept explored in Rich Creamy Paint’s “You’re a 10”). When we feel fantastic, larger than life, how do we feel? We feel 10 feet tall. Which brings me to XTC’s “Ten Feet Tall,” a scintillating and understated gem from the band’s watershed Drums & Wires that features as concise a four-bar guitar solo as has ever been attempted. It perfectly embodies the otherworldly sensation of dumbstruck rapture, while marking new creative territory for this endlessly inventive combo. The acoustic, jazz-chord-laden single was Colin Moulding’s attempt to subvert the band’s MO up to that point, what he called “Quirk, Jerk, Spiky, Crikey, Start, Stop,” and offer up something altogether smoother and sexier. The result speaks for itself: “Ten Feet Tall” remains one of XTC’s most delightful and understated creations. The Stone Roses’ “10 Storey Love Song” amps the love- as-height imagery to gargantuan proportions, from mere feet to stories. The hyperbole inherent in the song’s title is right in line with the over-the-top ambitions of Second Coming, the Stone Roses’ swan song, which was little more than a bevy of bloated blooze riffs utterly lacking the magic that characterized the band’s self-titled debut. That record, many contend, belongs among the greatest ever, while the pompously titled Second Coming is all but universally reviled, or at least characterized as a monumental disappointment. That said, “Ten Storey Love Song” is one of the record’s few standouts, imbued with a strong melody and a sense of proportion, even with its outsize emotions.
Footnote: the Velvet Underground voiced a similar sentiment with the also-ran “Love Makes You Feel Ten Foot Tall,” which ended up on Loaded: The Fully Loaded Edition.
Before attaining a brief ubiquity with their big-beat cover of the Stones’ “I’m Free,” the Soup Dragons were an enjoyably twee English indie band whose “Hang-Ten!” was a fizzy little thing that went pop, like Buzzcocks Lite. The song takes its title from the ‘60s surf term for riding a wave with all ten toes hanging off the board. Bowling never became the craze that surfing did, nor did it inspire tons of songs, but Raleigh, N.C., troubadours the Connells did refer to the strangely addictive pastime in “Ten Pins Down.” The title of “Box 10,” Jim Croce’s concise, affecting ditty of hard times in New York, refers to the address of the Sunday mission where he ends up after losing his earthly possessions to naiveté and a cold-hearted woman. That Sunday mission might plausibly be in the vicinity of 10th Avenue, the site of Bruce Springsteen’s “10th Avenue Freeze-Out,” a staple of the band’s oeuvre that traces the origins of the E. Street Band in colorful if decidedly abstruse fashion—Clarence Clemons recently admitted he had no idea what it meant. Speaking of freezing, “10 Degrees and Getting Colder” by Gordon Lightfoot tells the tale of a down-on-his-luck musician trying to hitch a ride near Boulder Dam.
Fun 10 Fact: “Ten Bob Twist: (obs.) A portion of drugs, usually cannabis, bought for ten shillings sterling; half a quid deal.” (The aural equivalent of a contact high, “Ten Tons of Dope” by Luminal dwarfs a half-quid deal in a cannabis haze of epic proportions.)

“And if a 10-ton truck crashes into us, to die by your side what a heavenly way to die...” The Smiths, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "10 X 10"
(live @ Glasslands Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
Kleenex- "DC -10"
Blonde Redhead - "10"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "10 x 10"
Beach House - "10 Mile Stereo"
Heavier and far more potentially lethal than a 10-ton truck, the DC-10 aircraft was taken out of production in 1989, roughly a decade after it was saluted with “DC-10” by Kleenex. This unheralded all-female Swiss band (actually, they’re all unheralded) were forced to change their name (to Liliput) when leaned upon by tissue-industry thugs. The tough gals behind “DC-10” would have likely appreciated Blonde Redhead’s caustic “10,” featuring yelped, half-spoken Sonically Youthful vocals. If you’re making a mixtape at home, I would suggest following “10” with the sexy, strutting “10 x 10” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs from the Is Is EP, and then, to take things down a notch, “10 Mile Stereo” by Beach House, a slice of elusive dream pop that shimmers like rainbows in a puddle.

Ten has turned up in a many an album title, and while these are not eligible for the top spot, they do merit mention. First and foremost, Ten is the title of the debut outing by Pearl Jam, which, more than any other record, including Nevermind, brought grunge into America’s living rooms. 10 the number is even more popular as an album title: L.L. Cool J, the Smithereens, the Guess Who, the Stranglers, Enuff Z’Nuff, Wet Wet Wet, and Asleep at the Wheel are just some of the acts that have all used it, and the second discrete semiprime also fits into Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales, the Elvis Costello best-of Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How’s Your Fathers, and countless others.
A $10 bill used to be called a sawbuck because of the roman numeral X’s resemblance to a certain wood-holding device, but no one calls it that anymore; maybe that’s because it buys so little these days it doesn’t seem to deserve a jazzy nickname. Of course, M.I.A. wouldn’t agree with me: in “$10,” she sings “What can I get for $10—anything you want,” a sentiment that would go down well with the protagonist of ZZ Top’s “Ten Dollar Man” from the less-than-essential Tejas LP (1977). Essential advice comes in the form of the Monochrome Set’s “Ten Don’ts For Honeymooners,” which begins with the sage declaration, “Don’t ski naked down Mount Everest/With lilies up your nose” before proceeding with a litany of other priceless matrimonial no-nos, including:
Don’t dance the polka in a dhoti
And whistle The Rite of Spring
Don’t recite Hamlet’s soliloquy
While munching onion rings
The Monochrome Set - "Ten Don't For Honeymooners"
“It’s 10:00. Do you know where your children are?” Once a staple of the average Joe’s viewing habits, the 10:00 news inspired songs like “News at Ten” by the Vapors (of “Turning Japanese” fame.) Still, there’s probably no better song celebrating 10:00 than “Clock Strikes Ten” by Cheap Trick, the final track from the monumental At Budokan. “10 A.M. Automatic” by the Black Keys certainly owns the morning slot, while the Verlaines “All Joed Out” looks like the only song in existence to mention the rarified time of “10:00 in the afternoon.”

Something about 10 just seems to go with “years.” Warren Zevon (“After 10 long years they let him out of the home/ Excitable boy they all said…”), The Who (“Ten years old with thoughts as bold as thoughts can be”) and the good old Grateful Dead (“I’ve been gambling hereabouts/ for 10 good solid years”) provide a few examples of this sturdy construction, while 10-years-titled songs abound, including the stately “Ten Years Ahead” by Swedish psych-pop prodigies The Soundtrack of Our Lives and Game Theory’s “Andy in 10 Years.” But the very best of this subset have a common denominator in the form of guitar legend Jimmy Page. One of them is “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,” a song recorded by The Yardbirds for 1967’s Roger the Engineer, when Page shared lead guitar duties with Jeff Beck. Although the song was one of the band’s less successful singles, it stands as one of those rare songs from the psychedelic era that carries the hallmark sounds—the vaguely Middle Eastern modalities, mystical lyrics, like those referring to “sinking deep into the well of time,” disembodied voices and creepy laughter—but doesn’t sound at all dated. With its nifty structure and bevy of guitar sounds—stabbing, discordant, feedback-laden, explosive bursts—amid the songs’s juddering rhythms, “Happenings” just grabs you by the lapels, pins you against the wall, and slaps you into submission.
Yardbirds – “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”
Dusty Springfield - "I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten"
Before discussing top dog, it seems wise to heed Dusty Springfield’s advice when she sang, “I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten.” Because it’s a heady topic. When I first began brainstorming song ideas for this list, my “10” song came to me right away. While there are several excellent contenders (the Yardbirds song in particular is certainly epic enough to take the crown), I am still inclined to stick with my original choice: “Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin, off their monolithic Physical Graffiti. It encapsulates all that is 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 this case, something like 14 separate guitar tracks during one especially rich sequence.

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’ve 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 an amazing feat, a miniature movie consisting only of sound. Every melodic excursion and turn within its 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. “Ten Years Gone” starts hushed and builds 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 a lover from the past who demanded he choose her or his music—and lost the bet. When Plant 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.
Led Zeppelin - "Ten Years Gone"
(live, 1976)
Numerology is our pal Dave's ill-advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. We hear 60 is the new 40, and now we're not even that impressed by his progress.
Previously: No. 1, 2 (redux), 3, 4 (redux), 5-7, 5 (redux),6 (redux), 6.4, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28 , 29 , 30, 30 (counterpoint), 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, Footnotes, 57, 58, 59 , 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68












“I shouted out, “Free the Expo ‘67”


Nine-tentacled octapus, chillin'.
The seven deadly sins—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride—have been around in various forms since the 4th century, and have made their way into canonical works by Dante and Chaucer, paintings by the likes of Hieronymous Bosch, a “sung ballet” by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, and a concept album by Joe Jackson. (Oddly enough, the seven Cardinal virtues—faith, hope, charity, etc.—have inspired nothing approaching the creative outpouring unleashed by the sins, although “Charity, Chastity, Prudence and Hope” by Hüsker Dü is pretty cool.) And while the Traveling Wilburys, Simple Minds, Flogging Molly, Gene Loves Jezebel, and many others have written songs called “Seven Deadly Sins,” the debut single by Brian Eno, fresh from jettisoning himself from Roxy Music in 1974, beats them all. OK, “7 Deadly Finns” is just a punning reference to the Sins, but it’s miles ahead of the competition. 







Our man Prof. Klein is currently jet-setting glamorously from No. Carolina to deepest upstate New York, but a pocket of airport wifi was all he needed to pass on a few 6.4.09 words on a related decimal numeral of unique interest. The song is a scizophrenic favorite of mine from way back, so I of course I obliged. The song's from my man Gary Wilson, who, as you may remember, rocks the most...(JK) 








You don’t have to be tall to be a legend. Elvis stood about 6 feet tall, but many major figures in rock have been shorter. Nevertheless, being short is rarely an asset, unless you make it one, like Johnny Rotten, who emanated menace in his debauched king’s crouch. In “Five Feet of Lovin,’” Gene Vincent raves that his five-foot-tall mama “is cool cool cool,” but in general, Long Tall Sally trumps Short Fat Fanny. It takes an iconoclastic figure like Iggy Pop to sing “Five Foot One” from the point of view of a lovesick Lilliputian and get away with it. In the hands of any one else, the song would come off as a joke, but Iggy turns this tale of an amusement park worker who longs to “go home with all the big folks” into the defiant cry of a wounded misfit on life’s fringes. “I wish life could be Swedish magazines/I wish life could be…anything!” he screams before the song’s chaotic fadeout. “Five Foot One” appeared on New Values (1979), Iggy’s return to relative sanity after several years of physical and emotional turmoil following the breakup of the Stooges, and the urgency of his short-man protagonist reflects his newfound sense of purpose. Obviously, the 5 slot is a crowded category, but the primitive power, snarling self-affirmation, and utterly unique worldview of “Five Foot One” make it my top choice, narrowly edging out Pop’s friend and cohort, Mr. Bowie.
Any school kid will tell you that when a donkey and a horse mate, the result is a creature with 63 chromosomes, but thus far songwriters have steered clear of this phenomenon. As the above passage from Quadrophenia indicates, our climb up the numerical ladder has reached the point where the numbers have begun to coincide with the years of the rock era. By a wide margin, 63 songs deal with 1963, sandwiched halfway between rock’s breakout year of 1957 and the universally acknowledged death of the ‘60s at Altamont in December of ‘69. The most inescapable of these ’63-centric songs is the horrifically catchy “December 1963 (Oh What a Night),” by Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, a late-career hit for a man whose string of falsetto-laden hits in the early ‘60s earned the Four Seasons a place in rock’s hall of fame. While the song can still cause palpitations among the mom-jeans set, it is suffused with a cloying nostalgia and devoid of any suggestion of the lust that one assumes made the night in question so special. And the piano riff is so jaunty-cheesy it makes Billy Joel sound like Arnold Schoenberg. Clearly more palatable is New Order’s “1963,” which takes the year’s central tragedy—the Kennedy assassination—as its subject matter. In spite of those cheerful, high-fretted Peter Hook bass lines and Bernard Sumner’s sugary vocals, this is a dark tale of a woman killed by her husband, based on Sumner’s half-baked theory that the bullets that day in Dallas were meant for Jackie Kennedy in order that JFK could marry Marilyn Monroe. Of course, many of New Order’s lyrics amount to sheer poppycock in service of transcendent song-craft, and indeed, Marilyn had died a year earlier, but all this conjecture is moot—the song is not eligible for top honors because 63 does not appear as a stand-alone number in its title. Thus far, I have disallowed “19_ _” type titles, and I’m going to stick to that ruling (until such time that I find I simply have no choice). 
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Speaking of heavy drinking, Jim Morrison of the Doors was known to enjoy a wee bit of the old grape from time to time. He was also fond of the ladies. “Love Me Two Times,” a sassy single penned by Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger, was alleged to be a veiled reference to oral sex, but since when did the Doors veil anything? After the Oedipal freak-out of “The End,” you’d think they would just come out and say it. Seems more likely that the song depicted a soldier’s plea to his beloved before heading off to war, which was the explanation offered by Doors manager Danny Sugerman in his tell-all No One Here Gets Out Alive. Also of note on the “two times” tip: Johnny Cash’s “Two-Timin’ Woman” and a slew of other two-timers: mamas, papas, daddys, losers, babys, two-steppers, and turkeys. 






















H. J. Heinz had a much better slogan. When he adopted “57 Varieties” for his rapidly expanding foodstuffs company in 1892, Heinz gave 57 the kind of notoriety you just can’t buy. His choice of number had nothing to do with accuracy (the company’s offerings already exceeded that number) and everything to do with catchiness. There’s no denying it has a nice ring to it. Besides which, there’s an uncanny aptness to 57, with its suggestion of overabundance that skirts outright hyperbole. Richard Thompson seems to invoke the number in its Heinz-ian sense in “Valerie,” a song about a frivolous temptress who spends her would-be suitor’s money on “fifty-seven things she’s never going to use.” And it doesn’t seem far-fetched to suggest that Bruce Springsteen, at least unconsciously, had ketchup on his mind when he wrote “57 Channels and Nothing On,” an anti-TV diatribe that the Springsteen faithful didn’t exactly snuggle up to. Chalk it up to an extremely infertile moment in his career—the early 90s, when Springsteen left Jersey for L.A, ditched the E. Street Band, and found a new measure of personal happiness. But wait, you say, what about Bruce’s other 57 song: “Incident on 57th Street” from The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle? A fine song, to be sure, but one that feels like a rewrite of the superior “Sandy (4th of July, Asbury Park),” from the very same album, right down to the spoken-word interlude that sets up the final chorus. And since “Sandy/4th” has already taken the no. 4 crown, a line must be drawn somewhere in the pale Jersey sand.







Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven starred in 55 Days at Peking, a 1963 film about China’s Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Sammy Hagar, an avid boxer in his youth, became known for rebellion with “I Can’t Drive 55,” his flip of the bird to the double-nickels that became an MTV staple in 1984. I won’t venture a guess as to how Charlton, Ava, and David would have fared, but it’s a good thing Sammy wasn’t born in Victorian England, where the Locomotive Act—the world’s first speed limit—made it illegal to drive a car (known then as a “light locomotive”) faster than about 10 mph. My guess is that Hagar, a longtime Patti Smith fan (they jammed together when both were inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in ’07) would have had to invent punk 100 years ahead of schedule just to express his outrage.





If you look closely at Studio 54’s iconic white-on-black “54” logo, the 5—clearly the masculine of the two numerals—seems to be subtly humping the 4. And the salacious, Disco Era connotations of 54 don’t end there: Xenon, a popular but less legendary nightclub from the same period, took its name from the element whose atomic number just happens to be 54. Coincidence? Possibly, or perhaps it was a deliberate but subliminal nod toward the biggest thing out there, in the best tradition of the Sex Pistols inspiring the tweaked version of their name: Celibate Rifles. In any case, no song from that sozzled epoch actually uses a Studio 54-iented title, although several dance tracks from later decades do. “Fifty-Four,” by Sea Level, a ‘70s outfit formed by a trio of musical refugees from the Allman Brothers, came out in the heyday of disco, but it’s not clear if the title of this funky lite-jazz instrumental has anything to do with the club. 


Seattle’s Minus the Bear named itself after B.J. and the Bear (minus the bear, get it?), a cheesy ‘80s TV show in which freelance trucker B.J. McKay, his pet chimp Bear, and a gaggle of lady truckers do battle with the nefarious Sheriff Lobo. (B.J.’s truck may not have had a name or a mind of its own, but Herbie’s influence was unmistakable in the way the orange-and-white Kenworth K-100 semi took right turns.) Deliberately or not, “Memphis & 53rd” from Menos Del Oso (2006) shares the same central credo as the theme music from B.J. and the Bear: “keep moving.” The song has a thrilling opening—23 seconds of spaghetti Western-meets-late-‘90s Jungle beats that I kept wishing would just continue. From this Portishead-esque place, the tempo shifts to a restless kind of a prog-ska beat as the lyrics sketch the tale of a couple on the run from a nameless black-hatted figure. The playing is first-rate, but what I really wanted was another helping of that spaghetti. 



My first cursory mind-search for #4 songs yielded an appealingly random selection: Aphex Twin’s gorgeously skittering “4,” “Four Sticks” by Led Zeppelin, probably the weakest link on Zep’s monolithic untitled fourth record, but still quite audacious, and “Radio 4” by PIL, the stately, ominous, uncharacteristically restrained piece that closes Metal Box, which wouldn’t sound out of place nestled toward the end of Side 2 of Bowie’s Low. But all of these seemed to lack anything essentially fourish, and I was determined not to rest until I found a song befitting the number’s considerable stature. Four is the number of the seasons—but obviously Vivaldi and Frankie Valli are much more synonymous with the four seasons than any “Four Seasons”-named song, whether by Crowded House, Violent Femmes, Toots & the Maytals, Ambrosia, or for that matter, Killer Dwarfs or the Sadistic Mika Band. Four is the number of the bodily humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm), the cardinal points (north, south, east, west,) and the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism (life means suffering/the origin of suffering is attachment/the cessation of suffering is attainable/the path to cessation of suffering), but where are the songs to show for it? (Given my druthers I’d enlist the Pixies to cover bodily humors, Wire would handle the cardinal points, and I’d leave the Four Noble Truths to the Sadistic Mika Band.) 
“Dick Butkus #51” is Dillinger Four’s ode to the legendary Chicago Bears defensive end who once said, “When I played pro football, I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately—unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.” “51%” is a dreamy morsel of muted optimism from Mark Sandman, the leader, singer, and sax player of Morphine, who died after collapsing onstage during a performance in Rome in 1999. Sandman’s husky whisper—somewhere between Mark Lanegan and Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam—rides on a cool stream of sax, two-string bass, and plucked slide guitar, and the sound is plain gorgeous. The title track of 51 Phantom by the North Mississippi All-Stars has a swampy flavor that sounds right at home next to the Sandman’s heavenly drone. 




Here are two songs by bands that rose and fell in the 80s, eschewed major chords, and produced a “50” song in 1987: “50 Miles” by Dumptruck is an urgent plea from a man stuck in a Donner party of a relationship; Dream Syndicate’s “50 in a 20 Zone” sounds a bit like solo Tom Verlaine: a couple of chords, a mid-tempo chug, and some hella soloing. What the Spin Doctors and their 5x-platinum Pocket Full of Kryptonite (1991) containing the execrable “Forty or Fifty” are doing in this paragraph, I have no idea. 

“49 Second Romance,” (1980) a minimalist, “dark-wave” dance track by German synth duo P1E, sounds like a Teutonic Joy Division without a bassist or anything vital to say. Compare the relative poetry of JD’s “Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio” to P1E’s “You, you, you like to dance” to see what I mean. I still find the song faintly, weirdly irresistible—especially the intro, which combines the best elements of Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” and the Sweet’s “Fox on the Run,” and vocalist Ute Droste’s gift for making boredom palpable. 


But take heart: Hours, not death, are the primary concern of the vast majority of 48 songs—the winning track included—and for that we can all be grateful. Three 6 Mafia (“48 Hours to Respond”), Ladyhawk (“48 Hours”)—a Vancouver band that likens its sound to “cashmere underwear,” and the prolific guitar shredder known to the world as Buckethead (“48 Hours to Go”) have all mined the 48-hour angle. Toss in Magda—the Polish-born, American-raised, Berlin-based DJ, whose “48 Hour Crack in Your Bass” features a bass line so thick and pulchritudinous you can practically smell pancakes—along with the demented blues stomp of “Letnik 48” by Slovenian rock-scene stalwart, Tomaz Domicelj, and you have the potential for a mix-tape that will perplex all of your friends.



It sure does. In fact, “Rock and Roll ’47” (the second track off Twilley’s excellent yet ill-fated 1977 sophomore effort) captures what a man sounds like when he is truly enamored of a number. Dwight sings it like this: “Forty-seh HEH-HEH Heh-eh-vunn,” echoing Buddy Holly’s “A weh-aheh-aheh-ell” intro to “Rave On,” But from a lyrical standpoint, the inclusion of the number seems arbitrary. I mean, it’s hard to know what to make of a line like, "Heard a song, baby, yesterday/Saw a man understand/That he plays what he says—47."
“I think I had to drive somewhere, [I was] driving at night, and I tuned into one of those late-night radio shows, you know, where they talk about UFOs and zombies and stuff. This particular show they had a scientist on—a real specialist—and so it wasn’t so much fiction, but scientific oriented. And he just happened to matter-of-factly point out that Jupiter had 47 moons, which immediately caught my attention. And it kind of begged the question, it’s kinda like: Doesn’t seem fair; we only have one. And obviously, with the word forty-seven, it was just a natural for me. And because of having the other song—it was just another rock song called 47—I felt compelled to write this song. So I spent a considerable amount of time working on it, because I got real serious about it, and then, coincidentally, about a week later I had finished the song, or I thought I had finished the song, and I open up the newspaper here in Tulsa, through the science section, and there’s a big headline that says: More Moons Discovered Around Jupiter. So I had to go back and add another verse: I sing, I believe, “They thought that there were forty-one/They’ll find a thousand before they’re done.” Like, there just keeps being more and more moons around Jupiter.”


And, o how the kids went ape-ity ape for that “mislabeled” single. It became a huge hit on the jukeboxes of Myrtle Beach, SC, which in the early ‘60s was the hotbed of the Carolina Beach Music scene, where the hip white kids went to do The Shag and listen to forbidden “race” music. The Showmen, led by General Norman Johnson, were the kings of the scene. Eventually the Showmen became the Chairmen of the Board, and had hits with “Give Me Just a Little More Time” and other classic singles. Johnson also had major success writing songs for other bands in the ‘60s and ‘70s, working with the legendary Detroit team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, and earning himself a Grammy for writing “Patches” by Clarence Carter. Much later, he sang a beach-music style duet with Joey Ramone on “Rockaway Beach,” and it’s about as un-Ramones-y as you can get.





I’m sure it never occurred to Al Kooper in 1968 that one of his most lasting contributions to music would involve the stack of 40 or so British LPs he brought back with him from London that summer. Al Kooper was on the hot streak of his life at the time, and would have been well within his rights to be thinking primarily of his own career trajectory. After all, three years earlier the man makes history, twice: going electric with Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, and playing organ on “Like a Rolling Stone,” a great song that becomes revolutionary when Dylan tells Al to turn up his organ. From 1965-68, Kooper proceeds to play guitar and keyboards on hundreds of sessions, with the Stones and Cream, Jimi Hendrix and the Who, and other lesser mortals; he starts and leaves not one, but two, successful bands—the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears—and now he is poised to add solo artist to his resume. In the midst of all this, one of those British LPs, starts to haunt him. One of them, Kooper later writes, “stuck out like a rose in a garden of weeds.”









East River Pipe is the musical alias of Fred Cornog, a reclusive yet prolific songwriter whose weary voice hints at the hard life he’s lived. After a brief flirtation with major labels in the early ‘90s, followed by years of homelessness and drug addiction, Cornog has persevered, finding stability and sanity while continuing to write songs marked by understated beauty and a wry and incisive lyrical touch. It took me a listen or two to fall for the simple charms of “Down 42nd Street to the Light” but I now see its strengths clearly: the weary sense of resolve and hope in his voice, the ramshackle but just-right musical accompaniment, and the hypnotic singsong of the backing vocals, like a child’s voice issuing from the backseat of a car. But if I needed something extra to prove to me that I had found a 42 song I could really live with, it was that Cornog mentions my hometown: "We could fly from here to there and back/Tenafly or maybe Hackensack." I assure you: references to good old Tenafly—also the hometown of Ed Harris, Leslie Gore and Bob Guccione Jr.—are few and far between in the world of popular song. It was all the sign I needed. The superfluous sign, which was just plain odd, is the name of a 1995 East River Pipe release: Poor Fricky.
So what’s in 41’s favor, you ask? Iggy Pop said he chose Sum 41 to back him on the single from 2003’s Skull Ring, “Little Know it All,” and subsequent TV performances “because they have balls.” So that’s a positive thing. The 41st Side by the rapper Lake takes its name from an unforgiving housing project in Long Island City where he, as well as Nas and Mobb Deep, grew up. My favorite specific enunciation of “forty-one” comes from Tom Petty’s “American Girl”: Yeah, she could hear the cars roll by/Out on 441/Like waves crashing on the beach.” Of course the song is ineligible to win anything here except my undying affection; I only mention it because it still catapults me into the stratosphere whenever I hear it, conjuring teenage dreams, as well as the scene in Silence of the Lambs when the senator’s daughter sings along to it in the car, in her last free moments before her memorable captivity. Although it was rumored that the song memorialized a woman who committed suicide at the University of Florida, Petty has emphatically refuted the notion that he was referring to anything more than U.S. Route 441, which begins in Miami, passes through his hometown of Gainesville, FL, and winds north to Tennessee. I’ve never been much of a map reader, but I’ve always dug the way Tom spits out those numbers. (And by the way, that map reference, far from being arbitrary, is what we numerologists refer to as foreshadowing.)
Some songs you love; they touch something in you and you respond by loving them. You get cozy with them and carry them around in your head. But some songs have a different kind of power; they hold you in their thrall. You can carry them around in your head, but still, you’re almost a little afraid of how good they are; you feel the way “Sopranos” heavy Bobby Bacala did when he told Uncle Junior: “I’m in awe-r of you.” “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W” by Wire is just such a song. Despite its strong hooks and soaring chorus, despite the seeming connectedness of various lyrical bits, it’s still a bit of a glorious blur, both sonically and in terms of meaning, like a rainbow in a puddle that disappears when you try to grab it. The specificity of the title and the clearly enunciated attack of the main guitar lines are at odds with the song’s overarching elusiveness. The coordinates in the title, after all, make specific reference to the terrestrial equivalent of nothing at all: a field in Iowa. That same elusiveness and the overall smeared quality of this 1979 song became hallmarks of My Bloody Valentine a good 10 years later. And as far as I know, no one else but 
Let’s start with ounces. I cannot address the cultural significance of the 40 oz. from personal experience; I prefer a nice orgranic microbrew myself, but ignoring it would be a grave oversight. Malt liquor went global in the mid-80s when Billy Dee Williams did his seminal St. Ides ads; in a few years, people like Snoop Dog and Ice Cube were singing the praises of 40s and introducing the term to frat boys nationwide. Of course, 





I have lived my entire life without any knowledge of the existence of Spock’s Beard, whose sixth album, Snow, is a neo-Christian parable about an albino psychic with a messianic following. [Cue Chris Farley’s interview w/ the Beard: “’Member that time you did that, um, album, about that albino psychic…with the…uh, messianic following, and um, but the guy dies but he achieves peace through his connection with God? Y’member that? That was awesome.”] “The 39th Street Blues (I’m Sick)” is more pop-metal than prog, like King’s X grafted onto Lamb Lies Down on Broadway-era Genesis, yet its coda sounds eerily “V-2 Schneider”-ly. 

I can definitely abide Divididos, an Argentine rock institution that kicked off its 1991 major-label debut, Acariciando Lo Aspero (“caressing the rough”), with “El 38,” a spirited mix of garage band chords and tuneful shouted vocals. But would they abide me? The ironically named Bristol, England outfit known as the Pop Group (formed in 1978) revered chaos, cacophony, and confrontation; the instrumental single “3:38” sounds like someone playing a dub record and a funk record simultaneously through an underwater tape deck while someone farts in the water. Which is not to say it’s bad. I regret that “4,738 Regrets” by Trans Am is numerically ineligible for the 38 spot, because it is surpassingly gorgeous. Needless to say, if this list does reach 4,738, my money’s on Trans Am to win in a walk. 

As “38” reminds us, a song that commemorates a horrific event doesn’t have to sound like “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning.” This is no lament; in fact, the message is that this sort of thing happens all the time. Get used to it. Dance to it. Now, I’m not saying I would wish all songs about disasters, floods, and levee breaks to have an industrial rock sound, but in this case, the harsh, unforgiving beats are the perfect expression of being pulverized, as are the repeated words “38/38/There were 38,” which pummel the listener like a taunting jackhammer. Later on, in a popular early sampling move, (think: “Nineteen” by Paul Hardcastle) a news-clip voice is incorporated, in this case, one that sounds a bit like the actor Brian Cox, telling us in a plummy voice, “I can tell you the official number of the dead is now at 38.”
As much as I’d like to be offhand about it, I must confess that it feels funny writing about the Revolting Cocks. Revolting Cocks has to be the most profane band name in history. (Yes, certain death-metal/speed metal outfits have had more disgusting names, but I don’t count them because of my inability to stand the entire genre.) The real credit goes to Butthole Surfers for opening up the floodgates for bands to employ anatomically intimate names. As the story goes, before settling on that infamous moniker, the Surfers would amuse themselves by choosing a new, outrageous name for every gig they played. So one night it would be Nine Foot Worm Makes Own Food, next week it was Abe Lincoln’s Bush or the Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole. But one fateful night, in Austin in1982, at the last minute they introduced themselves as the Butthole Surfers, after a song Gibby Haynes had just written, and the namescape of rock was forever changed. So far as I can tell, no band of any stature had ever had a name like that before. Sure, Steely Dan was Burroughsian for artificial johnson (wasn’t he a basketball player from Canada?), and Buzzcocks was pretty in-your-face, but with a name like Butthole Surfers, there is no ambiguity. Subconsciously or not, this name must have emboldened other bands. Pretty soon, in the next state over from Texas, in fact, you had Wayne Coyne & Co. using the tamer yet somehow related name of Flaming Lips, and in 1985, Al Jourgensen, the Neil Young of industrial rock—named one of his side projects Revolting Cocks. That same year, Stockholm garage rockers the Stomachmouths named themselves after the Swedish approximation of “intestinal valve” a term they’d found in a translation of Confederacy of Dunces. Looking back on it, this clearly was the heyday of the grotty-name trend. 





Searching for songs with 36 in their titles has yielded more than its share of aural oddities, like “Prep Gwarlek 36” from Aphex Twin’s prolix collection Drukqs, which is as weird an unapproachable as it sounds, and Killing Joke’s “S.0.36,” from the band’s self-named 1980 debut. A spiky colossus of a song, “S.O.36” is a good representation of the sound of Killing Joke, described by its original drummer as “the sound of the earth vomiting.” Still, when it comes to eruptions from the bowels of the earth, Carly Simon said it best: nobody does it better [than Killing Joke.] I know that was weird, but I just had a strong urge to juxtapose Carly Simon and ‘bowels of the earth.’









Like most of the New Zealand indie scene of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the Verlaines never got their due in the U.S. And unlike the Chills and the Clean, the Verlaines weren’t a good live act—the arrangements were just too baroque to pull off. Two Verlaines songs appeared on a 1993 compilation called No Alternative, a set of B-sides and rarities from Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Matthew Sweet and others (along with a truly awful Stones cover from the Goo Goo Dolls): “Heavy 33” and a fine cover of “Joed Out” by indie chanteuse Barbara Manning (lead singer of 28th Day, winner of this column’s #25 spot). From the unresolved opening chords, “Heavy 33” finds the Verlaines in pensive territory, with Graeme Downes sounding like he’s singing from the ledge of a tall building. By the end, what began as a dirge has gained force and strength, the despair turning into a sense of sullen resolve. Too bad the group never released anything this good again.
Not many people have covered Stereolab songs. Perhaps it’s that too much is distinct about the group’s sound and the interplay of the two vocalists, and the overall tonalities just don’t seem to lend themselves to easy reinterpretation or reenactment. Enter Iron & Wine, aka Samuel Beam, whose fuzzy acoustic style seems to render everything he touches into an Iron & Wine song. His cover of Stereolab’s “Peng! 33” succeeds in doing just that. I didn’t think it was possible to hear a Stereolab song and not think of the voices of Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen, but somehow, in a feat of musical alchemy Mr. Beam has excised the Can and inserted the campfire. Perhaps he was drawn to the simplicity of the words, which manage to sound less like Marxist platitudes and more like straightforward expressions of optimism: 

The wizards behind Genesis had their reasons for choosing 32 as the number of doors in exceedingly Merlin-esque “The Chamber of 32 Doors,” from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The deeper meanings of this lushly designed two-disc concept album set have always eluded me, even as Genesis-loving friends of mine insisted it was the band’s magnum opus. The Lamb was supposed to be about the spiritual journey of a graffiti-scribbling Puerto Rican youth named Rael, but that made no sense, because all of Genesis music emanates from a fog-enshrouded glade in Avalon, right? How could the reedy voice of Peter Gabriel, intoning lines like, “I’d rather trust a country man than a town man” amid a sea of treated keyboards, ever evoke Times Square? To this day, it remains a mystery known only to the robed art rock gods on high. 



But let’s not forget, 31 was pretty damned kind to the Baskin-Robbins people (we’ll get to that), and Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs (it was called Songbook in the States) is one great piece of music writing. Even the Beatles got around to making a specific reference to 31, Paul McCartney did anyway, in a song John Lennon famously detested, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Maybe the sticking point was hearing Paul sing the line “PC Thirty-One, says we’ve caught a dirty one/Maxwell stands alone” 31 times before he was satisfied. (PC in this case means police constable, but PC 31 sounds more like an earlier version of Bowie’s TVC15. It was said at the time that TVC15 had something to do with masturbation, and oddly enough, thirty-one is Turkish slang for masturbation, apparently. If anyone knows of a song that incorporates 31 in this particular sense I hope you will alert me, and pronto.)
The next morsel—the shimmering, day-glo pinecone—is better known as “Pluto, September 31st” by the Moving Sidewalks, a ‘60s psychedelic outfit that spawned Billy Gibbons of Z.Z. Top. The group had a numerically titled hit in 1967 with “99th Floor,” which first came to my ears via the essential Nuggets collection. “PS31,” from the Sidewalks’ sole album, Flash (1968) is the album’s epic, replete with an echo-drenched, melody-free interlude in the middle and lyrics that rival pre-Shark Sandwich-era Spinal Tap: “A mystic fog is in my eyes/the carpet’s been pulled from under my butt/and as the dark begins to clear/my brain’s reduced to one watt/But slowly it’s all happenin’/my mind might melt today/But don’t relate too late/Just remind your little body you might be late…” Can’t you just hear David St. Hubbins belting this shit out? But say what you will, there’s no denying the song’s kicking groove. 










You probably suspected that somewhere along the line the pickings were going to get a little thin. Ladies and gentlemen, that time is now, for we have officially entered the valley of the crooked numbers. Twenty-six has no discernible meaning or significance for the average person, thus, very few people have seen fit to include it in a song, as a title or even as a lyric. Up to now, certain unexciting numbers have squeaked by on the strength of one strong cut (I’m thinking of “14th Floor” by Television Personalities) but 26 poses even greater problems. Who writes a song with 26 in the title? As I was conceiving this endeavor I saw the great chasm that opens up at 26, and realized that something had to change at this juncture. And so it does: from here on in, any good song that has a number in its title is eligible to win, regardless of whether the number is part of the lyrics. At the outset, with the choices so abundant, it made sense to apply some rules, just to weed the pack out a bit, but at this point there just aren’t enough songs to go around to justify enforcing that rule. It’s not just because Stereolab’s “Olv 26” is such a delight, but if you’re going to break the rules, let it be for something like this.
Listening to Coltrane Motion, it’s immediately apparent that these are clever guys with really good record collections. But behind the knowing song titles (“Ex-Girlfriend in a Coma,” “I Guess the Kids Are OK”) and references to 4-track tape hiss is an abiding belief in the inspirational power of rock & roll. The title of the recently released Songs About Music is neither obtuse nor ironic; it’s actually a straightforward declaration of the muse that inspires Bond and his band mate, Matt Denewitz (synths). And what inspires them is the last 40 years of pop music. “Twenty Seven” sounds a familiar feedback-drenched note that recalls such initialized UK acts as JMC, MBV and BRMC (I was trying to see if I could avoid writing the word “shoegazing” this week), while “Come to Me” is sunshine pop that evokes the simple joys of ‘60s radio, and “Summertime” is pure American garage rock that sounds like something off Children of Nuggets. Several songs have a certain ramshackle quality in the spirit of lo-fi masters like Beck and Guided By Voices, but Coltrane Motion do more than ape their unimpeachable influences; you can hear the influences, but the band manages to leave its own musical thumbprint on these 12 songs. Maybe it’s because they write their own sound software. In any case, I doff my cap to Coltrane Motion for writing a song that this column desperately needed, and I highly recommend Songs About Music to anyone who relishes dense layers of feedback and plenty of kick drum, snare drum, kick drum snare drum…
An obvious contender for the 25 crown is “Twenty Five Miles” by Edwin Starr. Combining the countdown approach with an irresistible groove, the result was a major crossover hit in 1969. While not quite as big as Starr’s signature song, “War” (as in “War/huuuuh/what is it good for/absolutely nuthin’) this journey song is spurred on by a driving beat and Starr’s stirring vocals. I’ve always been ambivalent about the fact that he never gets home. With five miles to go, there is a final self-exhortation of “I got to keep on/WALKIN’” and some seriously funky drumming, and the song fades. I guess it would have been lame to end with, “I got 60 more feet to go now” but to me the song feels somehow unresolved. I would venture to say that most listeners will assume that Edwin makes it home, and I can live with that, but one question has always stayed with me, namely, just why he’s walking in the first place. Has he just been released from prison? Did his car break down? In a rare mystery from Motown, we never do find out.
Know this to be true: making sense of the breadth of songs titled “Twenty Four Hours” and “24 Hours a Day” is not something to be taken lightly. Athlete, 10cc, Betty Boo, Kiki Dee, Canned Heat, Sundays, Swans, Ace, and Champion Jack Dupree are but a few of the musical masters I had to unceremoniously weed out just so I could narrow it down to a half dozen or so worthy contenders and a few oddballs to kick sand at.
I discovered it on the truly wonderful and bizarre collection of obscure covers and alluringly naïve music from the past four decades “curated” by Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey, called The Trip. Teeming with songs, this collection has everyone from OMD (“Waiting for the Man”) to Sonny Bono (his creepily lysergic “Pammies on a Bummer” has to be heard to be believed). Pitney’s “24 Sycamore,” a heart-on-his-sleeve wailer, is the other side of “Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa.” Now the singer is in a hell of his own making. Having ditched the wrong girl, he now knows he’s doomed to forever pine for the hand he used to hold, at 24 Sycamore Street.
Twenty-four is the last time you’ll be closer to 20 than 30. It’s the last good look you’ll have of your teenage years, because pretty soon a whole new numerical truth will come into view, as your childhood continues to recede into the distance. There is much to admire about the song: the sweet sound of acoustic guitars, the incisive lyrics, the rainbow-bright sheen of Mitch Easter’s production, the fact that it is 2:49 in length, and that it proudly declares its titular number. And yes, those wispy vocals. 



He had one record released on a major but has been hitting the road and playing sweaty anthemic bar-band rock for the past several years, converting 70 or 100 people at a time in old-school fashion. As far as I know he hasn’t yet resorted to giant balloons. Reilly is the kind of guy who responds to his girlfriend getting the bum’s rush from Joe Strummer by writing a great song about it (a number song as well, called “Hip Hop Thighs #17”), and he’s one of the few stealth masters of the form on my radar. World, this is your 22 song. 


As you can plainly see, Mick & Keith and the boys have to win this one. During a brief but fertile few years in the mid-‘60s, Stones songs were imbued with an unmistakable Englishness. This record comes from that brief but bracing era. By the end of the decade, the distinctly English locale of Out of Our Heads (‘65) through Flowers (’67) had been replaced by the “ballrooms and smelly bordellos/and dressing rooms filled with parasites” of Exile on Main Street (1970). But for a few years it was all Lady Jane and St. John’s Wood, windscreens and Union Jacks. Not that the music was genteel or anything; the narrative viewpoint was occasionally tender, but more often downright nasty.
The song that comes to mind immediately is “I’m Eighteen” by Alice Cooper, which has all the essential characteristics of a great rock single: lean, strong hooks, wailing Les Pauls, a clenched fistful of attitude. Nevertheless, it must be said that despite its rarified pedigree, (18 is a flat-out beautiful number. Look at it. It’s one of the most voluptuous numbers in the universe. And were you aware that 18 is the only number that equals twice the sum of its digits?) top-notch 18 songs are relatively few in number. 



Good thing “14 Cheerleader Coldfront” by Guided By Voices arrived unexpectedly on my desktop the other day, like one of the cans of Schlitz that Robert Pollard lobbed high and far into the crowd when I saw GBV play an outdoor show many moons ago, in Central Park. It’s an unadorned little number off the originally self-released Propeller, sung by sometime vocalist Tobin Sprout (whose name could almost pass for a GBV song.) Like most GBV songs, the lyrics are either inscrutable or simply nonsensical, like text derived from William Burroughs’ cut-up technique, and that’s part of the charm. But the slightness of the 90-second song, the lack of any real cheerleaders, and the arbitrariness of the use of 14 here render it an also-ran. The fact is, there’s only one really great 14 song, and it’s Television Personalities’ “14th Floor,” the first single from a seminal band that was shambolic before your favorite band was shambolic. This is what Chuck Berry would have written if he had been a young Brit, living in council housing in 1977. (I realize that, in a certain sense, this is an ill-advised simile, but come on, take that leap of logic with me.)







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.
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:
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. 
In the end I'm down to two slabs of sizzling soul. "Engine #9" by Wilson Pickett has to score way up there. With a truly backbone-slipping groove established almost chiefly by means of the holy trinity of cowbell, maraca and vibraslap, and a typically charged-up vocal, this is classic Pickett. My only reservation is that, as an extended vamp, the song seems to suffer slightly by comparison to both the temporal concision and breadth of sonic touches that mark my winning selection, "Cloud Nine" by the Temptations.
The first single to feature pioneer producer Norman Whitfield’s “psychedelic soul” style, “Cloud Nine” is a stone-cold classic, with urgency, a brilliant arrangement, fuzzed out guitars and gospel-inflected vocals that helped extend the group’s reach beyond the traditional Motown audience and into the mainstream. More important, this dark ode to self-medication as a means of escaping the world’s ills still has plenty of resonance today, and still packs a mean punch.
It really comes down to this: Are you a Beatles man or a Byrds man?
But maybe you are made of stronger stuff. Maybe the whole “ooh I need your love babe” thing is no longer relevant to your nuanced existence. Perhaps you prefer the challengers, in the corduroy trunks and rectangular purple shades: The Byrds. The ominous distorted bass line that opens the track like a Morse code signal, soon joined by those unmistakable Byrds harmony vocals, and that guitar: Coltrane lines after a trip through a psychedelic play-doh factory and filtered through McGuinn’s 12-string Rickenbacker. This startlingly vivid reenactment of the drug experience is unlike much of the blantantly drug-inspired music from this era, which today sounds more campy than trippy. “Eight Miles High,” on the other hand, manages to convey both the euphoria (through, what else, euphoric vocals) and the paranoia that a lysergically altered consciousness can bring. Building to a satisfyingly chaotic ending—always a plus—8MH looks like a winner.
It’s probably pointless to say one is better than the other, unless it makes sense to argue that a lemon is better than a lime, or a crocus is better than a snapdrago