I read a list in the Chicago Tribune of recordings that are historical (seach "recordings" at www.memory.loc.gov The Library of Congress "American Memory") and have some social significance.  I decided to compile my own list of recordings that are historical and explain a little why I think they are important.

1. Give Me A Pigfoot(And a Bottle of Beer)  Bessie Smith.  Unfortunately Bessie Smith died in a terrible car crash while she was only in her thirties.  The newspapers say that in our time, an average of five thousand teenagers die in car crashes in the U.S. every year and fifteen hundred of them are ruled out as suicides. Go to www.Madd.org.  This is why this song moves me, knowing Billie Holiday adored Smith's recordings and recorded her own cover of it.  Bessie was the first one there when it came to jazz and blues classics.  That I give her credit for.  I also love "My Sweetie Went Away." 

2. "Strange Fruit"  by Billie Holiday.  This song in its attempt to be witness to racism and the death penalty that has put to death many men, is not easy to listen to, but necessary if you believe in making yourself sensitive to the truth of African American history.  One of the few songs that Holiday wrote herself is the timeless classic, "God Bless The Child," so this is why it must live forever in the minds of all music historians.  Her recording of "Summertime" and hundreds of other songs impresses me to this very day in its prolific catalogue.

3. "Nothing But Blue Skies" by Al Jolson. From the movie, The Jazz Singer, not just because it was the first movie with sound and talking in it, but because it was the first time the world witnessed and heard a great song being sung right before their eyes.  Al Jolson's film was also an attempt at fighting Anti-Semitism in a time when Hitler was just beginning to manipulate his way into power. I wonder if it is the first real instance in film history of making an attempt to fight the racism of the times.

4. "The House I Live In" as sung by Mahalia Jackson and Frank Sinatra.  These song lyrics are so ideal in their nature that it's very hard to ignore their importance.  Also a song to speak out against intolerance. I found these lyrics by searching them on Google.com. 

5.  T. S. Eliot reading his poem about cats.   This is Eliot liberating himself in a light hearted way from the catasophizing of his earlier poems.  Listen to great poets read their works on www.Poets.org.

6. Hound Dog by Elvis.  Here is Elvis taking a song originally sung by an African American woman and turning it into a song played on every radio station in the world.  "Heartbreak Hotel" created The Beatles, along with Buddy Holly's "Words of Love."

7.  "A Pawn In Their Game" by Bob Dylan.  I heard this song after buying a copy of the record album it came on at a garage sale for a quarter.  It didn't bring tears in my eyes until I saw the footage of Dylan singing this song after Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at a Washington rally for Civil Rights.  It's a classic tale of the untimely death of a NAACP and Civil Rights leader--Medgar Evers death.(www.Naacp.org)  Bob was in his early twenties and so was I when I first heard the song.  I also love Bob Dylan's song, "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," which was covered by Madeliene Peyroux in the past few years. Bob Dylan mentions Rimbaud and Verlaine in "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome"(Go to www.bobdylan.com lyrics).  Rimbaud and Verlaine were two French poets who had a shortlived, but incediary romance. Watch Bob Dylan video here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXq8Qbe2nR0

8. "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones.  The Indian style drums in this piece make me think how English bands tried to make every song an event to be bought on 45 records.  The lyrics remind me of Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko, who painted black paintings before committing suicide.  Theovernight.org claim that someone kills themself every eighteen minutes in the U.S.  So that is why that is important to me. 

9. "Let It Be" by The Beatles.  This song and "Across The Universe" changed my life and I never thought of the world in the same way again.  I began to awaken to very sensitive issues like working toward world peace to stop the world from collapsing into the sun or exploding from the center outward.  That would solve everyones troubles but who would be there to document it, like Let It Be was filmed and documented? Free Tibet please. Watch Let it Be here: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1149357008

10. "The Wind" by Cat Stevens.  This song makes me think of the idea of a retributive God in most religions being challenged by a more contemporary view of an all loving, all forgiving, all knowing God.  It's like the best of Rumi's Sufism and it's connection to the stars by dancing in circles until your dizzy.  It's Universalism that troubles the most intolerant and unyielding. I say everyone needs to alleviate the problems of the world and therefore work toward world peace.  Cat Stevens is now Yusuf Islam and has released another cd for all to hear, Muslim and Non-Muslims alike.

11.  "Because The Night" by Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen, also sung by The Ten Thousand Maniacs in the nineties.  This song has poetry, longing for spiritual unity with another soul and a drive that is determined to perfect itself.  Privelege(Set Me Free) once made me jump up and down in my tiny bedroom when I heard it on record years ago.  Springsteen's The Rising is just as vital a cry for help as his release thirty years before that, Born To Run.  His  live cover of Guthrie's "This Land is My Land" is the best I ever heard.

12.  "Pride(In The Name of Love) by U2 was the first time in my mid teen years did I realize that people still care to think about racial injustice.  I was debating with myself to let the song give me hope for a more equal society, so I decided to let the listener decide what kind of world people should live in.  Let the people decide collectively, I say.  Bono's visit to the www.PeaceMuseum.org around this time made me think that his music is not just private metaphors but still wants to make sure that future generations will still have clean air to breathe(Go to the "Take Action" page of www.GreenpeaceUSA.org) and Amnesty International wants to keep all peoples righteous and sensitive to human life. "Where The Streets Have No Name" still make me say cool song till this day.

13.  "Somewhere" from the West Side Story as sung by Barbara Streisand.  This song has too much emotional baggage for me being Puerto Rican.  It screams importance like Picasso's Guernica.  Streisand's beautiful belting voice soothed a savage beast inside me when I heard he sing "Somewhere."  I knew then that the murder statistics saying that ten thousand people being killed in the U.S. every year by guns(www.BradyCampaign.org) will never completely destroy me, unless someone decides to murder me.  Then Oh Well, At least I tried to make people aware of www.Nobelprize.org/peace.  The West Side Story site: http://www.westsidestory.com/lyrics.php

14. "Posession" by Sarah McLachlan.  This song mystifies me every time, like a secret muse.  It's like the best of Leonard Cohen except written by a woman from Canada.  It moves me just as much as former Canadian's Neil Young's recording of "Birds."  No connection to the bird flu or Alfred Hitchcock here.  There just great songs with great music, melody and lyrics.

15. "Por Un Beso" by Los Jaguares.  Although I loved "Aventame" from this groups era at Los Caifanes, this song sounds like the best of Sting in spanish.  It's like Sting's Fragile, Little Wing(a Jimi Hendrix classic), Russians, Ghost Story and A Desert Rose all wrapped into one.  It's not on such a hard rocking album as the latin classic by Robi Rosa "Penelope" about a man who loses it all to drugs. Sad but true is what your left thinking by these songs.  A Disneyland for Manic Depressives are these songs. Caution: some of Robi Rosa's songs make you want to go to www.Schizophrenia.com and www.aa.org. Acolholics Anonymous.

16. "Imagine" by John Lennon.  I still haven't heard all of John Lennon's music but I have heard some and this piece with "Beautiful Boy" make you want to yell profanities in the face of Mark David Chapman and then let him live.  Another song for PeaceMuseum.org, AmnestyUSA.org, and Nobelprize.org/peace. People:  All we are saying is give peace a chance, i.e. War Is Over if You Want it.  You can watch this video if you click on "Videos" under my profile picture and go to the "My Favorites" section where I chose some great songs to listen to. 

17.  "Walk On" by U2.  A song that would make me release Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi if I were from Burma.  Imprisoning people for intellectual division and resistance is wrong.  Many governments are accused of forcing the politics of fear on their people making them want wants on the other side of the wall.  Human experience is too imperfect to claim supremacy of any kind.  Why do people think that some other government will alleviate their suffering in some kind of utopia?  I'm too much of a realist.  Utopia is not possible.  Democratic liberalism coexisting with consersvative capitalism is possible.  China now has Best Buys  and Wal Marts!!  These hybrid politics of conservativism and liberalism sound ideal to me. www.one.org.

18.  "Speed of Sound" by Coldplay.  This song reminds me of something I tried to write in a poem but failed to perfect it. Now it's in a song so it's no longer my idea.  Be careful about what you put out in the air in a capitalist society. It'll be claimed and copyrighted before you know it, some jerk saying they'll sue you if you try to use it.  Yet this song is good and eccentric in it's poetic lyric writing, something I like in songs.  I think of Bach's music for the Clavier rubung.  It's written by the hands of God, Bach said.  Everyone I know loves the song The Scientist by Coldplay, but no one has ever stopped to explain there theory why they would call a lovesong, "The Scientist."  Maybe www.Nobelprize.org will figure it out one day, who knows? To learn about the speed of sound go to www.NASA.gov.

19. "Together Again" by Janet Jackson.  She donated the proceeds of this song to AIDS causes, just like Bono donated the proceeds of the cd single of One to AIDS causes.  These were two great moments in AIDS activism.  It's great to think of after reading all the scary statistics at the www.AVERT.org site.  25 million people have died of AIDS in the world and about 40 million people are living with it in the world.  If Bob Marley were alive, he would give Exodus to AIDS causes.

19.  This blank is for you to fill in.  Thank you and bless you for trying.

I've added a few more:

20. Tosca by Puccini as sung by Maria Callas.  This is a classic that Maria immortalized by desiring to make it her last performance.  A few years later, her son died in a plane crash.  Her delicate voice sounds tragic, ironic, and sensational. Though I think that of all of Puccini's work, La Boheme--which inspired the musical "Rent"--is a greater work conscious of social ills.  If "Seasons of Love" is historical, then Baz Luhrman's contemporary, neon staging of La Boheme is just as important.  Do you want to know why I believe in mystical experience?  I have proof that God makes people think of me:  Maria Callas sang Cherubini's works and Cavelleria Rusticana which is close to my first and last name, Ruben Claveria.  Am I some kind of myspace saint of Universal Unitarianism? Go to www.AmericanCatholic.org and sign up for saint of the day, only if you want to and if you can tolerate some of the more stubbornly, conservative catholics. 

21. I Want To Wake Up by Melissa Etheridge.  I've been listening to Melissa before she came out as a lesbian around the release of her Yes I Am album.  Songs like It's For You, 2001, Come to My Window, Angels Would Fall, Scarecrow--a song she wrote about the beating to death of a young Gay man named Matthew Shepard-- and now I Want To Wake Up haunt me and stir me toward a righteous action long after listening to them.  These are great songs and albums.  I went to climatecrisis.net and tried to write to my congress person about global warming.   It deserves the Oscar it won.Human Rights Campaign site: www.hrc.org.

22. "Don't Know Why" by Norah Jones.  It's not that I think that her father, sitar player Ravi Shankar, should win a peace prize. It's that her voice is so lovely and tender that you want to hear it again.

24. Frozen by Madonna.  This is an important stage in Madonna's phenomenal three decade career as a songwriter/singer of hits.  She blends kabbala and Indian drums with techno-folk in a way that makes you listen to her attempt to reverse the negativity in an abusive relationship.  The lyrics are very intelligent in their attempt at diplomacy. Another song that fights religious intoloerance just like her classic, "Like A Prayer."  The video for "Like a Prayer" is historical because of the Black saint statues and the burning crosses that got her dropped from a Pepsi campaign because of it's controversial similarity to the crosses that Ku Klux Klan burned on people's lawns during more racist times.  Watch video by clicking here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icrUkBaSefs

25. Dumb by Nirvana as sung on the MTV Unplugged album.  Kurt Cobain changing the music world with Smells Like Teen Spirit is an importment moment is rock history.  This version of Dumb, sounds Beatlesque and hauting.I liked Kurt for wearing dresses on stage.

26. Smooth by Rob Thomas and Santana.  This is one of the most perfectly written songs to come out of the nineties with a cause. The proceeds from this song support a children's charity.   

27. Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber.  Music composed for the film, Platoon.  This song never fails to bring tears to my eyes when thinking about war and the possibility of world peace.  Peace is work. Peace is history.  Peace is forgiving.  Peace is giving back. Peace is compensation.  Peace is charity.  Peace is redemption.  I have read quite a few of the biographies of soldiers and 911 victims at www.Legacy.com.

28.  Praying For Time by George Michael.  George Michael and Elton John are now married because of the new laws allowing civil union amongst Gays, Lesbians in the U.K.  Can the U.S. allow marriage amongst people of the same sex?  Maybe in the future when more people get involved to vote it in. 

29. Your Song by Elton John.  The version sung by Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge was just as good but there's an ache in Elton John's voice on the original "Your Song" recording that is very hard to reproduce.   That rich melancholy comes from a longing for acceptance, a longing to be infinitely united in another soul.  John Lennon went down on his knees and worshipped Elton for writing this song.  Elton John is now a knight for all that he has done for AIDS causes with his foundation.  

30. The Color Purple, the original cast recording. Music arranged by Quincy Jones.  The film is a classic in my book.  It's one of those movies that makes all with a sensitive heart cry because the acting has such a big heart at the center of it that you can't deny that you would like to intervene and improve the lives of its characters.  It's A Wonderful Life, gives me that feeling too.

31. Too Much Love Will Kill You by Queen.  This song is a beautifully written cautionary tale for all to practice safe sex.  Freddy Mercury was one of the greatest rock n rollers of all time, and his roots come from a muslim country.  I imagine a world free of hatred when I hear Queen's songs.

32.  It's The End of the World(As We Know It) by R.E.M.  This song is representative of the sensory overload of the information age and how sometimes the world does feel like a devoloping ball of negativity that is about to explode at any given moment.  Michael Stipe has such an original voice that it trancends all that's liberal or conservative and makes you think of the possiblity of many states and many attitudes existing simultaneously.  Vote for Change!! is Mike's slogan. I also liked the song "Everybody Hurts" and tried to sing it at a karaoke bar that is now closed.

33. Passion by Peter Gabriel.  The music for the motion picture The Last Temptation of Christ.  This music used to make me think it's a love album but the conflicts in the world in the last nine years have made me realize what Peter Gabriel was attempting to do on this brilliant soundtrack.  The international fusion of sounds and intstruments makes it a very fascinating influence. I went to see this film while I was attending Kelvyn Park High School in Chicago and the monks were outside the Biograph theater protesting the blasphemous nature of the film that depicts Jesus as a man prone to mental illness and earthly lusts.  I'm for any interpretation of Jesus in our time because any attempt to explain Jesus is good exposure that promotes the humaneness of Jesus' teachings.  I went to www.blueletterbible.org and looked up passages in the New Testament that makes me believe that Jesus thought all brotherly love between men and women is sacred.  But this is a private Universalist's point of view of mine.  All the Christian names in my family make me think I am related to fanatics but my parents gave me a lot of freedom to decide on my own, which I now appreciate.  The Beatitudes of Jesus still have a strong influence on me.  They make me tolerant to all people rich and poor, Christian and non-Christian all over the world.  I don't like fanaticism of any kind, which makes me sound like someone that just buys one song of each musician on itunes, but I wish people would stop being less fanatic about issues of intolerance.  We can co-exist, despite the choices we make for ourselves that others disagree with. You can find intellectual spiritual enlightment at www.parabola.org.

34. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zepplin.  Many people agree that this is one of the greatest recordings in rock history.  The unacknoledged theme song for the Rock N Roll museum in Ohio.  Is it written by the hands of God?  Does God posess humans and makes them create? www.RockHall.com

35. Sound of Silence by Simon And Art Garfunkel.  This song from the music the Graduate helped me make peace with personal conflicts I've had with my parents.  I no longer resented them for what they were not, but accepted them for what they are.  I think of MC5 playing in Grant Park in Chicago for eight hours while crowds of protesters listened during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.  How could people deny all those people in their plea for peace and compromise?

36. All Is Fair In Love by Stevie Wonder. 

37. What's Going On by Marvin Gaye.  The entire album titled What's Going On once gave me hope.  I especially liked his song about environmentalism named "Mercy, Mercy Me."   He was a matryr of Rock N Roll.  "God is My Friend" and "Save The Children" made me pray for peace and equality in the world.

38. Krafty by New Order.  Those "new wave" of techno bands from the eighties, that included Erasure and The Cure, Depech Mode and Information Society where very exciting to listen to back then.  I could listen to some of that electronic rock from the eighties now that I'm approaching my mid life crisis and pulling out my old records and still be amazed by the quality and originality of the sounds.  All the Puerto Rican djs of the U.S. loved to play Bizarre Love Triangle and still do, sometimes.  It's amazing how quickly people learn to use technology soon after it is invented.  The world is a beautiful place and worth dancing to.  Just listen to the greatest hits and you'll know what I mean.

40. Teach Your Children Well by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.  This song makes me think that there should be more options for people to become teachers and there should be ten kinds of www.teachforamerica.org so that becoming a teacher especially in low income areas is much easier.  Great teachers are like children, it takes a village to raise them.  A great teacher teaches a student to self-educate.  The education you give yourself is always the most valuable.

41. Somewhere Over The Rainbow.  From the film the Wizard of Oz.  I was twelve when I saw the Wizard of Oz for the first time  falling in love with the music like millions of other people.  I named my cat Rainbow, it was the mid eighties.  I didn't really understand how The Wizard of Oz, a book written by L. Frank Baum in Chicago in an area that's now little Puerto Rico in Chicago, was a social satire on the Populism of the 1900s.  "Oz" was taken from the abbreviation for ounces "oz." in the U.S. during the Gold Rush of Jack London's time.  Here's a bluesy version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow sung by an Indigenous Hawaiin singer  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe5p1BXNCQM

42.

_____________________________________________________________________

What are songs that changed your life?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXq8Qbe2nR0

This last list was posted on October 21, 2006.

I just posted this on the Letters to Leaders section of congress.org

A Gay writer who approached my on myspace and made me aware of the publication of his book, I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS. I read it out loud and started laughing in public like a madman. This man has the capacity for wit that takes brilliance, talent and love for the most intelligent kind of silliness. For those who don't read Gay memiors that tend to flaunt sexual experiences to the point of being disturbingly funny, this may not be your book. Josh Kilmer-Purcell is one of the sweetest smartest most generous souls on the half naked Gay side of myspace. At the reading someone mentioned myspace and I brought it up to him as a question asking him if it made him look like a myspace "whore" but in a sweet and endearing friendly way. I should use myspace "night companionship" to be politically correct. Anyway he was so cool about it, even with his "church lady" mother there hearing him read about his sex life as a drag queen named Aqua.

He inscribed my book with an appropriate title, "thanks for being my myspace pimp." I immediately thought that was endearing and my eyes watered for him when he agreed to go out for a drink with us at Cocktails. He is non stop brilliance, greeting my African American drag queen friend Lisa Lexus with utmost respect.

I "pimped" his book to some people I met there and he thanked me. I hope I didn't come off as a bootlicker to him, but I sincerely enjoyed his company, despite being in bar where you could only hear 10% of what anyone says, so you just nod as if they're speaking Albanian. I told him I was glad he chose that bar because there was a portrait that Keith Haring made of me in the eighties on the wall behind the bar. It's just a stick figure with angel wings dancing, a pop art cherub.

I highly suggest if your are interested in Gay studies that this is a must read book. Thanks Josh wherever you are and thanks for shaking my Holden Caufield clammy palms and kissing me on the cheek like a brother on the street corner of Roscoe and Halstead.

Here's how you can read more about Josh.

www.myspace.com/Joshkilmerpurcell

www.iamnotmyselfthesedays.com

By the way, Josh I loved the extra stuff at the end and the introductory quote from the Wallace Steven's poem, "Let be be finale of seem" sums it up. Thanks for reading this, and good luck to all the great memoir myspace blog writers. An "Memories of My Sweet Melancholic Whores" is the title of the new book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who wrote one of my favorite books, "Love in The Time of Cholera."

Blessings for Love, Peace, Respect, Wisdom, and Health, Ruben