Musings in Search of a Muse

While tweaking my iTunes library before an upcoming road trip I noticed a few patterns. Take this one for example:

• "Hey Baby (Land Of The New Rising Sun)"
• M.A.C.C.
• Stone Free: A Tribute To Jimi Hendrix
• My then-sister-in-law bought me this disc and this track is my overall favorite. They were truly channeling Jimi to make this one as the guitar riffs are truly euphoric and the vocals just resonate with passion. Makes me wonder why the reviews at Amazon.com generally lambaste the collection as pathetic.
  
• "Hey Bartender (Live)"
• The Blues Brothers
• Briefcase Full of Blues
• This Floyd Dixon cover is just a fun song. Jake and Elwood may not have had as much talent as they thought, but they sure do have a love of the Blues and that was more than enough. Anyone can sing the Blues, but they still did it better than most. I would have loved seeing them in concert, but alas, Belushi lost control and we now have just a few precious recordings.
  
• "Hey Joe"
• Body Count
• Stone Free: A Tribute To Jimi Hendrix
• Rapper Ice-T can actually sing! Whoda thunk? Like most people from the pre-Rap era are usually of the opinion there is little talent in artists like Ice-T. This stereotype is once again broken, though, with this track. If anyone does a Jimi-biopic, then they should get this man to do the vocals.
  
• "Hey Jude"
• The Beatles
• 1
• Probably the first song anyone would think about when talking about Hey songs would be this classic. Like many of the group's songs, it is a bit enigmatic but we now know it started out as a song for Julian Lennon. Google it sometime and you'll see that a lot of people identify with it.
  
• "Hey You"
• Bachman-Turner Overdrive
• Takin' Care Of Business
• Not my favorite BTO track, but it's in the top 15. That may not seem like much, but consider that I have almost all their albums on vinyl, most on cassette, and still more on CD or iTunes downloads (no 8-tracks I'm sorry to say). The tune-crafting is formulaic and the lyrics seldom have any sort of bite or true poetry, but oft times Blair Thornton's technical work has both bite and poetry.
• "Hey, Hey"
• The Elms
• Festival Con Dios, Volume One
• This catchy ditty is a great praise and worship song. The lyrics are overly simplified (making BTO look like Byron) and non-Christians might have trouble ciphering them, but the melody is infectious throughout. Much of the album is this way and over 50% of the tracks were good enough to be ripped for use on the iPod. I can't say that much for other collections that have come out of the annual concerts some liken to "Woodstock for Christians."

I've also noticed that BTO writes a lot about life on the road.

One of the playlists I'm putting together is based on musicians writing about being musicians. This kind of redefines road trip music. All it is missing is Golden Earring's "Turn the Page."