I started adding a Music Lost to History feature on my sidebar sometime in 2004. Just random songs that are important to me for one reason or another, with no bearing on the quality of the song. Since I started using the blogger script whenever I update it the previous one gets lost (to history). I used to keep them on a notepad on my desktop, but that was some four or five pc’s ago. There are a couple of songs that I can clearly remember having put up over there that I just can’t seem to find. Nonetheless, I scoured my pre-blogger archives (not recommended, wow was I ever scattered back then) and found all that I could there. So I thought I would throw up a page to keep track of them in the future, for historical purposes.
Recently I took the time to also learn how to embed mp3 files using a flash player object, so I took the time to il legally download each of the songs and sample a snippet of it here. I figured if I just took a snippet of the song I couldn’t get myself into trouble for redistributing it. Of course that could be completely wrong. So at least until I get angry cease and desist letters from the record labels you can hear a bit of the songs I am talking about. Also, after having initially set it up so that the songs appeared in the order I had placed them on the webpage, I realized that someone might want to look for a particular song or artist, so I have alphabetized them by artist. It’s helpful for me at the very least.
Any italicized text is original text from when the song first appeared on the MLtH bar, normal text was either added at the time of compilation, or the song was added to the list after I initially set up the archive. Without further ado, I give you the Music Lost to History archive:
Aerosmith – Dream On
When I started doing these, I could never have imagined that I would be putting an Aerosmith song here. Since I was born in 1974, this song is well before my generation. It was recorded in 1972 and released in 1973 on Aerosmith’s Self-Titled Album, but to read the information on it at Wikipedia most of us would become familiar with it from a re-release in 1976. Like most of the music being released in the late 60’s/early 70’s that was pushing the rock-n-roll envelope, Dream On relies heavily on solid composition and and melody. Before the era of the modern effects processor, these bands had no distortion to hide behind (or very little), and synthesized instruments hadn’t yet made their way into music. In that way the music always sounds more raw to us today because, quite simply, it was. While it seems laughable to think about today, music like this was so far removed from the bubble-gum pop of the 50’s that it still wasn’t accepted into the mainstream. As the baby-boomers became the target demographic, the rock-n-roll movement really started to pick up speed, with bands like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith clearing the path for the much darker and heavier bands like Black Sabbath.
While I (and most of my generation) are probably far more familiar with the Aerosmith of the late 80’s and early 90’s, the reason this song makes it onto my MLtH page comes down to one thing: Age. Not necessarily the age of the song; In fact, as I sat down to do the research for this today, I had no idea when it was released, but would have guessed (closely) the mid 70’s. Tyler was born March 26, 1948, meaning that this song was written when he was only 24 years old. I’m not sure why, but I have always thought this song was pretty amazing given his age at composition. I suppose it is human nature to wax poetic about the days of yore and the imminent passage of time, but the melody sets a mood that makes you feel it right along with him. As the song nears the end and his lyrics become more more frenzied, you can almost feel the pain (longing?) in his voice. Listen to it with headphones and no distraction sometime, you’ll see what I mean.
I wrote a short bit some time ago about Kelly Sweet’s cover of this song (see the video on Youtube). While I have since gotten over the initial hatred I felt towards the cover of the song, I still just can’t like it. The words are there; she hits the notes; but I just can’t hear it in her voice. As if there is somthing very personal about the song and Tyler’s deliverance of the lyrics that just can’t be duplicated. At least to me. That said, I have heard Aerosmith doing the song with an orchestra, and it also seems to lack the passion of the original. So perhaps the thing that I like so much about it is the under-produced, raw sound of it, or it may be that I am still hearing it through the ears of that impressionable youth that heard if for the first time in a dusty old Van with my Uncle Art. Either way, it seems it is Lost to History.
Alice Cooper – Roses on White Lace
Alice Cooper is basically what Marilyn Manson has become. He sang about really taboo subjects at a time when taboo actually was taboo. This particular tune is one that I began listening to after being dumped by the girl that I was supposed to marry back in the early nineties. It is actually one of three songs that play back to back on most albums. Those three songs are, if memory serves, “chop, chop, chop”, “Gail” and “Roses on White Lace”. I never really appreciated the other two quite as much as this one, but then I have never hacked anyone to death, so check back later… This song stands alone as being pretty cool just because it states the anger that I was having at the time (back in the ’90s). At the same time, it illustrates that Marilyn Manson is following the course of another very successful rocker. While Cooper’s songs were not earth-shaking, they were provocative. That single fact is what has led to Manson’s success. I have never heard or read Marilyn Manson say that Alice Cooper was an actual influence on his music, but here is an example of it from twenty years ago.”
One of my great regrets from my teens is that I never got to see Alice Cooper live. His stageshow was supposed to be second-to-none; He had a guillotine on stage and was beheaded in front of your eyes… Of course I’m sure that if a video exists of his act from the day, it would proably look pretty cheesy and fake, but the fact that he was doing that when most rock acts just stood by their microphones was something. Alice Cooper has really mellowed, and I’m sure a lot of that has to do with his age. I live in Arizona, where you can hear him hosting a late night rock show on KDKB. He plays stuff that’s even more lost to history than the stuff I list here (though rarely any of his own music). I’m not sure if he ever even puts on the make-up and does shows anymore, so the possibility of seeing his act -much like this song- is just lost to history.
“Alice Cooper – The World Needs Guts
. From the Constrictor album realeased in 1986 this song never really got any attention, I remember loving it, but I don’t remember exactly why.” That was what I wrote way back in 2004, and as I sit here today I can still hear the song playing through my head. Hey, what’s in your eyes, I think I’m getting through. Say that you despise, the things they did to you. Pray that someday their throats are in your hands. Take them, shake them, till they understand. I was a teenager when I liked it, and I’m sure the righteous indignation center in my brain loved that line. Although I also remember it having a line that says Some maniac butcher’s trying to hack away your balls, and this at a time when pretty much any naughty word or reference would cement a song in my mental playlist. At any rate, that was the first song that made my Music Lost to History feature.
“Dangerous Toys – Outlaw
. From the Self-titled album realeased in 1989 this song never hit a radio dial, but, I think it was the best song on that whole album. I still listen to it today, and I seriously dispute the claim that these guys were a hair band. Seriously, Megadeth, Metallica, Anthrax, Pantera, Death, Cannibal Corpse, and everyone else that was rebelling against their parents in the late 80’s or early 90’s, had long hair, that does not make AC/DC a ‘hair band’ any more than it makes Michael Bolton a power in the heavy rock scene [Michael Bolton had airplay in the hard rock circuit with a song called “Everybody’s Crazy” in the late 80’s before switching over to adult contemporary]?” I sure did love this song way back when. I got a fistful of lead buried in my back. Got a hundred thousand dollars right in this sack. I’m just beginnin’ my life, i’m ready for death, been runnin’ for a while and they ain’t caught me yet. I still don’t agree that these guys were hair metal. They may have hit at the same time as metal was popular, but I would probably lump them into the southern rock genre. They certainly weren’t glam, with their dirty boots and cowboy hats. While their more popular songs, Teas’n Pleas’n and Scared, may have had the styling of the hair metal that was in at the time, they also had songs like Take Me Drunk and That Dog that were more bluesy and homegrown. This song in particular came out back when Young Guns was big in theaters, and I’m sure that I probably thought of myself as an “outlaw”. I was a rebel! I came home late a couple nights and everything! Of course the passage of time can’t take away whatever emotion it was that originally got this one stuck into my subconscious, so I still remember it fondly.
“Dan Fogelberg – Same Old Lang Syne
Perhaps a sign of weakening with age that I would suggest this song. Normally I’m not a big fan of this type of music, but in this case the story makes up for the wimptastic music.” It is rare in this day and age to hear a song that tells a great story. This song does just that, and if I hear it at the right (wrong?) time it brings about emotions I usually reserve for chick flicks when no one is watching me. A story of unrequited love that I think everyone can probably relate to on at least some level; Try listening to the entire song the next time it comes on your local light rock radio station and make it to the end without feeling bad for the poor guy. It just isn’t possible… The quiet piano, saxaphone, and synthesizer are there for the specific purpose of building that emotion, and they do a bang-up job of it. By far the weakest song I have ever featured on MLTH, but by far the most emotionally moving.
“Megadeth-Hook In Mouth
– I gotta be honest on this one. The sound quality is not all that great, even on cd. The reason that I really loved this song was that it was released at damn near the time of the founding of the PMRC. For those of you who are young, that was the reason that we now have to be a certain age to buy certain cd’s. I will never forget the chorus of that song:
F is for fighting.
R is for red, ancestors’ blood in battles they’ve shed.
E we elect them.
E we eject them, in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
D for your dying.
O your overture.
M they will cover your grave with manure.
This spells out freedom, it means nothing to me, as long as there’s a PMRC.
Now that I no longer have the angst I did in my teens, I find it all a bit frivilous in the grand scheme of things. None the less, this was one of the songs that I really stood behind and probably warped my little mind just a bit more. I think it really was a question of freedom of speech, but we have stickers on cd’s now.. The PMRC may have made it impossible for me to buy the albums that I wanted to at the time, but now I can buy any Fucking album I want to any Fucking time. It is for that reason that this one is simply lost to history… my history mostly.” Another one that I still have on my mp3 playlist. Whenever it comes on it still sounds horrible. I don’t know if they were recording this in a tin can with blankets hanging over their amplifiers or what. Maybe that’s why the song was never as popular as some of the other songs on the album. I’ve never read the history on the song, but it was released so close to the time that Tipper Gore started fronting the PMRC, that I imagine it could have been rushed through production and put on last minute. Dave Mustaine has always been one to speak his mind in his music, and this one was so dead-on (in my teenage mind) that it will forever be one of my anthems. Little man with a big eraser, changing history was how what I really feared back then. I mean if they could censor the music that was coming out, what was to keep them from retroactively censoring music that was already released? Of course the fear and rage that I felt as a teen has fizzled since then, and I would actually be all for censoring the hell out of some of the rap coming out nowadays. Hell, another year or two and I may be wearing my slacks at my nipples, shaking my fist in the air, yelling at the damn teenagers to get off my lawn.
Ozzy Osbourne – Goodbye to Romance
Another depressing love song by a hard rocker. I related to this one so much that the poem These Sorrowed Seas is actually an acrostic of the title. Oh how young, jilted lovers are easy prey for the songwriter. That is not why this one makes it onto my MLtH section though. It is on the page because of the trial against Ozzy and CBS in 1986.
The Case: McCollum et. al. v. CBS, Inc., et. al. On the evening of October 26, 1984, nineteen year old John McCollum shot and killed himself while listening to the recorded music of rocker Ozzy Osbourne. That night, John listened repeatedly to several of Osbourne’s albums, including Blizzard of Ozz, Diary of a Madman, and Speak of the Devil. With his headphones on and the music playing, John placed a .22-caliber handgun to his head and took his life. John’s parents filed a lawsuit in a California civil court alleging several causes of action against Osbourne and his music label, CBS Records. The central premise of each cause of action was essentially the same: the lyrics, tones, and pounding rhythm of Osbourne’s music had the cumulative effect of encouraging self-destructive behavior…
I remember the media blitz surrounding this even though I was only 12 at the time. This was a big, big deal. And while I was far too young at the time to realize just how important this case was, I have come to realize since. Thankfully, and justly, the case was ultimately dismissed:
The trial court dismissed the McCollum’s complaint holding that the First Amendment was an absolute bar to the lawsuit. On appeal, the California Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court decision holding that there was nothing in any of Osbourne’s songs that could be characterized as a literal command to an immediate suicidal act, nor was it intended as such.”
Of course the song on trial there was Suicide Solution which I think really shows us why this young man killed himself. His parents didn’t look beyond the title of the song to see that Suicide Solution is a song about alcohol addiction. They even hired some audio experts to come in and testify to there being subliminal messages telling you to shoot yourself in the song. I can’t say for sure that there aren’t such messages, but I can say for sure that the parent’s inability to look beyond the title probably wasn’t limited to music. Suicide Solution is about alcohol abuse, but had they gone back one track they would have heard Goodbye to Romance, a song about lost love that says over and over again, “I guess that we’ll meet in the end”, referring to being together in death. And the fact that they didn’t even bother to listen to the other songs, or even read the lyrics, is probably a microcosm for how much attention they gave their son. While I’ve not researched it, I would be willing to bet that he had just been dumped by a girlfriend and retreated to his bedroom since he didn’t feel comfortable talking to his parents about it. And he really needed someone to talk to about it. The whole thing reminds me of an episode of South Park, where the parents get so caught up in crusading against things that they completely ignore their own children… Who are invariably the ones suffering the most from what they are crusading against.
Sepultura – The Hunt
: This is actually a cover song, though I don’t know who the original artist is (I am sure that I could find out who it was with just a bit of looking, but I don’t want to spoil my memory of the song). If you take a look at the Lyrics to the song, it is pretty clear that this was written about a city where corruption has made the streets unsafe; either due to a ruthless gang or a who-will-police-the-police type situation. Knowing that Sepultura originated in Brazil I can certainly understand why this song would have a pretty deep meaning for them. The reason I like(d) the song is far less profound; O.J. Simpson. I began listening to this song while the O.J. trial was going on. I had a feeling that he was going to be acquitted, but also a feeling that he was guilty as sin. What can you do? You can listen to a song and imagine…
“There are eyes that see but say nothing at all There are ears that hear but they don’t recall In this city of ours So we followed your man back to your front door And we’re waiting for you outside ‘cos not everybody here is scared of you Not everybody passes on the other side No police, no summons, no courts of law No proper procedure, no rules of war No mitigating circumstance No lawyers fees, no second chance And we could spent our whole lives waiting For some thunderbolt to come And we could spent our whole lives waiting For some justice to be done Unless we make our own
Perhaps it wasn’t a healthy dream, but it was all mine. ” This one has been on the front page of my site for probably at least two years. I wanted to take the time to make an archive for the Music Lost to History before I changed it, beacause it’s terrible when your music lost to history gets lost to history. Sepultura was one of my favorite bands for a long time, though I have since gotten over the cookie monster-esque music that I enjoyed so much back then. This song, though a cover, was by far my favorite. And over a decade later, I still think of O.J. whenever I hear this one play.
The Monkees – Daydream Believer
This is probably the first song I have put up here that actually still has pretty regular airplay, albeit on the oldies stations -and I am not quite ready to flip my radio dial to oldies on the off chance this song will come up. It’s a wonder that The Monkees managed to make any music at all, let alone something that I would be sitting here typing about some 40 years after release. The band was thrown together to form the cast of a television show of the same name in 1967. The show ran only 2 seasons, and was probably some of the worst slapstick comedy I have ever personally sat through (thought certainly not in 1967-68, I caught it in rebroadcasts in the mid 2000’s on Comedy Central). The idea behind the sitcom being ripped off pretty directly from The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night, where we just follow the musicians through the antics of their day to day lives. While the show only lasted two seasons, the songs, and the group would last much longer. I remember this song from the 45 single that my dad bought somewhere around 1981. I couldn’t tell you why it resurfaced then, nor can Wikipedia, which only makes mention of its re-relase in 1986. Perhaps a channel was running the shows in sydication, or maybe it had found its way into a movie soundtrack, I just don’t know. Though the reason could be far more personal. What I do know is that this was at the time when my parents were just beginning to go through a divorce, and my Mom always seemed happy when she listened to this song. Perhaps it was one of my Parents’ songs from back when they were dating -the time frame would have been about right. I was about 7 when I first heard the song, and I could see how happy it made my Mom, and I guess that just stuck with me. Later, when I was in the sixth grade, I would do an A Capella version of this song in a School recital. In fact, to this day I find myself replicating that A Capella rendition every time it comes on the radio. Such a simple song, about such trivial things, but for some reason I feel compelled to belt it out every time I hear it(at least if I’m alone). A happy song that makes me recall a simpler time. While this one may not be lost to history, the time that it takes me back to certainly is.
The Showdown – Head Down
: The guitar riffs in this song just grab me and keep me hooked. Whenever it used to come on the satellite radio, I would have that intro riff stuck in my head for the rest of the day. I wrote a post when I first heard these guys back in 2007, thinking they were going to be the next Godsmack. Unfortunately subsequent research showed that the Hard Rocking sound of this album was actually a departure from the Hardcore Metal that they had done on their first studio release, and what they would be going back to on their next release the following year. A sample from a song picked at random from their next studio album:
Aphrodite-The Disillusionaire
As you can see that is a completely different style than the previous song. I can’t fault them for going back to what they did in the begining. Maybe they made a deal with some record company exec. somewhere that forced them to release the more radio friendly Temptation Come My Way album, or maybe they had these songs lying around from their early years. Who knows. But as a result of going back to their roots, they killed any chance of airplay on mainstream rock stations (they are still in heavy rotation on the more hardcore metal stations), and as such this song, along with an absolutely awesome album, will be lost to history.