30 Day Song Challenge, Day One: Your Favorite Song

I pride myself in averting most Facebook Time Vacuums like the plague. Farmville? Bah! Mafia Wars? Meh. But send me somethin' music-related and I'm like a horse addict given the opportunity to rave on about his favorite grades of China White.

My friend and Musical Yoda Dean Saling sent me the following challenge, and I'm in thrall to its siren song. I was looking for an excuse/vehicle to force myself into keyboard diarhhea, just for the love of it, on an extended basis, anyway. So here goes.

The challenge is thus: Every day for 30 days, post a song title, mp3, video or link to your Facebook profile, in this order:


day 01 - your favorite song
day 02 - your least favorite song
day 03 - a song that makes you happy
day 04 - a song that makes you sad
day 05 - a song that reminds you of someone
day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere
day 07 - a song that reminds you of a certain event
day 08 - a song that you know all the words to
day 09 - a song that you can dance to
day 10 - a song that makes you fall asleep
day 11 - a song from your favorite band
day 12 - a song from a band you hate
day 13 - a song that is a guilty pleasure
day 14 - a song that no one would expect you to love
day 15 - a song that describes you
day 16 - a song that you used to love but now hate
day 17 - a song that you hear often on the radio
day 18 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio
day 19 - a song from your favorite album
day 20 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry
day 21 - a song that you listen to when you’re happy
day 22 - a song that you listen to when you’re sad
day 23 - a song that you want to play at your wedding
day 24 - a song that you want to play at your funeral
day 25 - a song that makes you laugh
day 26 - a song that you can play on an instrument
day 27 - a song that you wish you could play
day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty
day 29 - a song from your childhood
day 30 - your favorite song at this time last year

Yeah, I'm more than up to the challenge.

Rather than just post stuff to Facebook, I figured I'd post a link to this here Blog on Facebook each day. So today, day 1, marks Favorite Song of All Time.

Anyone who's wandered into this corner of the Blogosphere (or anyone who's been corralled into music nerd-speak with me at all) will not be surprised at the choice here. I've adored Love--the LA psychedelic cult outfit fronted by troubled genius Arthur Lee--since I was 17 years old, and if pressed I could (but don't worry, I won't) populate nearly every positive category on this list with a song by the band. You can go here for a personal account about this metaphoric and literal Love affair, if'n you're so inclined).

The band's finest moment, ironically enough, was penned not by Lee but by Love's only other contributing songwriter, the underrated and gifted-in-his-own right Bryan MacLean. "Alone Again Or" opens Love's 1967 masterpiece Forever Changes with a rush of urgent, propulsively gorgeous incandescence. Lyrically, it's conflicted as hell--the sound of an awestruck romantic celebrating the beauty of the people and the world around him ("I could be in love with almost anyone/I think that people are the greatest fun") even as he wrestles with loneliness (the next line? "...And I will be alone again tonight, my dear").

The song's so sonically breathtaking, though, that it utterly skirts self-absorbed navel-gazing. When the strings surge and the horns soar, "Alone Again Or" conveys (to these Love-struck ears, at least) the whole tapestry of life; every heady, sad, joyous, magickal moment. And that's why I will never stop adoring it, for as long as I breathe.

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