"Ariel" by Dean Friedman

"Ariel" by Dean Friedman

Have you ever wondered what it would sound like if, through a freak accident involving nuclear waste and an overturned sugar beet truck, Ben Folds, John Linnell, and Weird Al Yankovic inhabited the same body? Me too.

Wonder no more.

"Generals and Majors" by XTC

"Generals and Majors" by XTC

Who doesn't love a cheerful, peppy anti-war song? Well, probably generals and majors don't.

"History Repeating" by Propellerheads and Shirley Bassey

"History Repeating" by Propellerheads and Shirley Bassey

Haven't we heard this all before? Oh, well. We can hear it again.

"Birth, School, Work, Death" by Manhead

"Birth, School, Work, Death" by Manhead 

I'm sure there are plenty of folks that prefer the original rock 'n roll version by The Godfathers, but I likes me some of that dancin' disco beat once in a while.

"What You Got" by John Lennon

"What You Got" by John Lennon

In case you ever wondered what it would have sounded like if The Beatles had been a 70s funk band.

"Tighten Up" by The Bamboos

"Tighten Up" by The Bamboos

Just when you think the song couldn't get any better, WHAMMO! A Ron Burgundy flute solo!

"Train, Train" by Blackfoot

"Train, Train" by Blackfoot

Here's a little Southern Rock to remind you of all the trains that rumbled through Arimo every hour of the day and night. Dinah, won't you blow that horn?



Fun fact: My brother Jared once shot his bb-gun at a hobo that was peeing out of the side of a railcar at the end of our lane. Unfortunately for the hobo, Jared had practiced many a day before that by shooting Sprit cans off our back fence, and on his shot at the hobo, Jared says he "dotted the i."

"Lucky Number" by Lene Lovich

"Lucky Number" by Lene Lovich

If you're a math teacher, you'll like this song. You'll especially like it if you're married to a math teacher.

The Best Songs You Ain't Never Heard

Since finishing my Top 200 list, I've come across a number of songs that I think are worthy of sharing even though they aren't on that list. After all, just because a song isn't in my Top 200, that doesn't mean I don't like it. Also, one of the things that was most gratifying about making the Top 200 list was that once in a while I would put in a song that Hondo Joe liked but had not heard before or forgot about and was excited to hear again. So I'm going to transition this Top 200 list to a new phase, one which doesn't involve ranking songs based on my affinity for them, and one without a limit to the number of songs that will be included. But first, let me explain the title of this add-on list to my Top 200.

Back in the days before the interwebs were jam-packed with digital music files and free-to-view music videos, Hondo Joe used to make some mix tapes for me to share songs that he thought were worthy of a listen or two by somebody other than himself. And when I just said "some mix tapes," what I really meant to say was "more mix tapes than I could ever fit in any vehicle in my garage that still had a functioning cassette deck in the dashboard." That's because Hondo Joe wouldn't just send me one mix tape at a time. No, no, no. I'd get two or three at a time. And for special occasions like birthdays or Christmas or Guy Fawkes day, I'd get an entire thirty-cassette collection of mix tapes inside its own carrying case. Consequently, I have well over one hundred mix tapes sitting in my closet, each one with around two dozen songs. That means I have over twelve hundred pirated songs, each one carrying a maximum penalty of five years in jail and a quarter-of-a-million dollar fine. And according to the rules of math, that means I now have a music collection worth three hundred million dollars that I can listen to while I spend the next six thousand years in jail. I don't know if any of that time will involve solitary confinement, but I'm guessing it could if I try to drive the guards insane by playing Volare on a non-stop loop for the first three hundred years. So I'll have to be careful about that.

Back to the tapes. Since these were not albums bought in a store, and since we needed something to refer to the individual tapes besides numbers, Hondo Joe would make up clever titles for each of the tapes. The title of one such tape--which eventually turned into a multi-tape collection--was called "The Best Songs You Ain't Never Heard." It featured rarely heard gems by some well-known artists and bands--like Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, and ELO--as well as catchy songs by more obscure groups--like Mono Puff, Lemonheads, and The Rentals. I've always thought that title--"The Best Songs You Ain't Never Heard"--was pure genius. Someday, I'm going to create an online radio station with that as the title. But until that day, I'm going to create the playlist for that station here on this blog by sharing interesting songs that I think would be worthy to include in Hondo Joe's original collection of gotta-hear-'em songs that most people probably haven't heard before--or at least they haven't heard in a long time and will get a kick out of hearing again because the songs aren't included on the 70s-80s-and-90s-top-hits stations that plague the airwaves today.

And now, here come THE BEST SONGS YOU AIN'T NEVER HEARD!