Friday, June 4, 2004

IF I WROTE THE LIST, JAMES BROWN WOULD BE UP THERE FIVE TIMES: Stealing Alex's beat, I have the privilege of informing you that Retrocrush has published its list of The 50 Coolest Song Parts Of All Time.

While it's deeply incomplete, it's still compulsively readable. See, e.g., #36:
Regarding [ ] Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al”, the bass guitar riff has a cool piece of trivia about it deepening its impact on top of its incredible out-of-nowhere funk action. If you listen closely, the lick is actually a musical palindrome – it was played forward in its entirety, then the tape was flipped over and played backwards, the backwards lick was recorded onto another tape, and then that second recording was edited into place. . . . This kind of editing is easy to accomplish in the studio today what with fancy pants computers and stuff, but in 1986, this was a glorious and complex maneuver to pull off.

Three words missing from the list? Tin. Roof. Rusted.

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