Sometimes late at night, rather than going to bed and getting some sleep like I know I should, I get sucked into one of those “Greatest Love Songs of the Sixties” infomercials, where someone like Davey Jones (“Hey, hey he’s a Monkee”) reminisces about all the great songs from his era. Some of them are actually quite enticing, that is, until they play a clip from “Sugar, Sugar” (The Archies, remember?) and you realize that you really hated many of the songs in the collection, and you’d simply hate to be reminded of how sappy you were as a kid.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking that I need to come up with my own collection, something that I haven’t seen anyone else put together. There are, of course, all kinds of collections: “Love Songs of [blank]” has to top the list, followed by era-based collections. There are heavy metal collections, dance-based collections, spiritual collections, and even collections of war songs. However, no one that I know of has ever put together what I am proposing: Great Songs of Paranoia.
I think that Great Songs of Paranoia would be a great success. These songs have been among my favorites through the years (I wonder what the Freudian inferences are of that?). Many of them are very fun, and would be the perfect gift for those conspiracy-theory nuts on your Christmas list.
Over the past few months I have been compiling a list of potential songs for the collection. There are more than I thought, probably enough for a couple of volumes:
- Paranoid – Black Sabbath (an obvious choice)
- Who Can it Be Now? – Men At Work
- Somebody’s Watching Me – Rockwell
- Renegade – Steppenwolf
- Enter Sandman – Metallica
- Don’t Pay the Ferryman – Chris De Burgh
- Silent Running – Mike & the Mechanics
- For What It’s Worth – Buffalo Springfield
- The Ballad of Dwight Frye – Alice Cooper
- Scream – Michael & Janet Jackson
- Welcome to the Machine – Pink Floyd
- Hotel California – The Eagles
- Epitaph – King Crimson
- Twilight Zone – Golden Earring
- Battle of Evermore – Led Zeppelin
- White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane
- Season of the Witch – Vanilla Fudge (better than Donovan’s version)
- Eve of Destruction – Barry McGuire
- Freedom Rider – Traffic
- Come Away Melinda – Uriah Heep
- I Ran (So Far Away) – Flock of Seagulls
- Synchronicity II – The Police
- Life During Wartime – Talking Heads
- Voices Carry – Till Tuesday
- I Walk Alone – Green Day
- Hang On To Your Life – The Guess Who
- Lithium – Nirvana
- Don’t Fear the Reaper – Blue Oyster Cult
I’m sure there are plenty more. Feel free to suggest any that I’ve missed. I’m now considering a country collection entitled “Songs of Depression & Hopelessness.”
