DJ Allyn – The Soundtrack for my Life

Love Reign O’er Me ~ The Who  

The story covers about five days of the life of a certain Jimmy, a participant in the circa 1964 Mod lifestyle in England. “The story is set on a rock!” announced the composer, Pete Townshend, at one live performance, indicating that the opera represents Jimmy’s looking back at the events of the previous day or two that led him into the gloomy situation where he finds himself at the end of the story. The narrative is difficult to derive from the lyrics alone, but becomes clearer with the benefit of a short story (also written by Townshend) related from Jimmy’s first person perspective, that is included in the album’s booklet.

The first half of the opera consists of songs that allude to the frustrations and insecurities that govern Jimmy’s life, including brief glimpses of his home life, his job, his psychoanalyst, and his unsuccessful attempts to have a social life. Halfway through the opera he sings “I’ve Had Enough”, finds himself kicked out of his home when his parents find his box of ‘blues’ (blue pills of some unnamed drug, possibly amphetamine) (this happens in the song Cut My Hair). Distraught and with nothing better to do, Jimmy takes a large dose of blues and takes a train ride to the coast (Embodied in the song 5:15, which is supposed to be the time when the train departs). During his stay near the beach in Brighton, he encounters the former “Ace Face”, the leader of a group of Mods, whom he admires greatly. However, “Ace Face” now works as a bell boy at a nearby hotel. Ironically, this is the very same hotel Ace Face had smashed the windows of two days before. This display of masculine bravado had earned him the admiration of many of his fellow Mods two days before during Jimmy’s first stay in Brighton. Jimmy is disgusted to learn that the person he had admired as a Mod had “sold out”.

At this point, Jimmy is inconsolable. Everybody from his parents to his girlfriend had disappointed him before, but he had never expected the Mod lifestyle to let him down. Drunk and depressed, he steals the now former Ace Face’s scooter from the front of the Brighton hotel where he is employeed, takes it out to a barren rock protruding from the sea, and crashes psychologically. With nothing left to live for he finds redemption in the pouring rain, which is expressed in the final song, “Love, Reign o’er Me”.

Love, Reign O’er Me

Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea
Only love
Can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers
Laying in the fields.

Love, Reign o’er me
Love, Reign o’er me, rain on me

Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky
Only love
Can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high

Love Reign O’er me

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool cool rain
I can’t sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool cool rain

City of New Orleans ~ Arlo Guthrie  

Arlo Guthrie is the son of American folk singer Woody Guthrie and like his father, is known for his common-man folk songs and songs against social injustice. He has both performed with and influenced artists like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, and has performed with his band Shenandoah.

His most famous work is Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, a talking blues song that last 18 minutes and a movie by its name.

First, we have a version of the City of New Orleans that he performs with his band Shenandoah.

City of New Orleans

Ridin’ on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday mornin’ rail
15 cars & 15 restless riders
Three conductors, 25 sacks of mail

All along the southbound odyssey the train pulls out of Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms & fields
Passin’ graves that have no name, freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of rusted automobiles

Good mornin’ America, how are you?
Don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done

Dealin’ cards with the old men in the club car
Penny a point, ain’t no one keepin’ score
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
And feel the wheels rumblin’ neath the floor

And the sons of Pullman porters & the sons of engineers
Ride their fathers’ magic carpets made of steel
Mothers with their babes asleep, rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel

Good mornin’ America, how are you?
Say don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.

Night time on the City of New Orleans
Changin’ cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Halfway home, we’ll be there by mornin’
Thru the Mississippi darkness rollin’ down to the sea

But all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain’t heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
“The passengers will please refrain:
This train got the disappea rin’ railroad blues

Good night America, how are you?
Say don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.

Texas ~ Chris Rea  

Chris Rea is a singer-songwriter from Middlesbrough, England. His career started out in the mid-1970s with his debut album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? with a single peaking at number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978 with a song called Fool (If you think it’s over), that was nominatate for a Song of the Year Grammy, but lost out to Billy Joel’s “Just the way you are”.

Chris Rea focused most of his attention to a European audience, but every now and then something would trickle over to the US. His album, Road to Hell, released in 1989 was one of those albums, that reached number one in the UK, but never really caught fire here in the US, reaching only number 107.

Texas

Warm winds blowing
Heating blue sky
And a road that goes forever
Been thinking ’bout it lately
Been watching some TV
Been looking all around me
At what has come to be
Been talking to my neighbour
And he agrees with me
It’s all gone crazy
Well my wife returns from taking
My little girl to school
She’s got beads of perspiration
As she tries to keep her cool
She says That mess it don’t get no better
There’s gonna come a day
Someone’s gonna get killed out there
And I turn to her and say Texas
She says What?
I said Texas
She says What?
They’ve got big long road out there
Warm winds blowing
Heating blue sky
And a road that goes forever
I’m going to Texas
We got to get out of here
We got to get out of here
Well I got a little brother
Several meters high
Yea his built just like a quarterback
And he swears he’ll testify
he says he’s been to Texas
And that’s the only place to be
Big steaks, big girls, no trouble there
That’s the place for me
I’m going to Texas
I’m going to Texas
Watch me walking
Watch me walking

Road to Hell ~ Chris Rea  

Chris Rea is a singer-songwriter from Middlesbrough, England. His career started out in the mid-1970s with his debut album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? with a single peaking at number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978 with a song called Fool (If you think it’s over), that was nominatate for a Song of the Year Grammy, but lost out to Billy Joel’s “Just the way you are”.

Chris Rea focused most of his attention to a European audience, but every now and then something would trickle over to the US. His album, Road to Hell, released in 1989 was one of those albums, that reached number one in the UK, but never really caught fire here in the US, reaching only number 107.

Road to Hell

Stood still on a highway
I saw a woman
By the side of the road
With a face that I knew like my own
Reflected in my window
Well she walked up to my quarterlight
And she bent down real slow
A fearful pressure paralysed me in my shadow
She said ’son what are you doing here
My fear for you has turned me in my grave’
I said ‘mama I come to the valley of the rich
Myself to sell’
She said ’son this is the road to hell’

On your journey cross the wilderness
From the desert to the well
You have strayed upon the motorway to hell

Well I’m standing by a river
But the water doesn’t flow
It boils with every poison you can think of
And I’m underneath the streetlight
But the light of joy I know
Scared beyond belief way down in the shadows
And the perverted fear of violence
Chokes the smile on every face
And common sense is ringing out the bell
This ain’t no technological breakdown
Oh no, this is the road to hell

And all the roads jam up with credit
And there’s nothing you can do
It’s all just bits of paper flying away from you
Oh look out world, take a good look
What comes down here
You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well
This ain’t no upwardly mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the road
Said this is the road
This is the road to hell

Mr. Jones ~ Counting Crows  

Counting Crows is a rock band originating from Berkeley, California.

Singer Adam Duritz (former member of the Bay Area band The Himalayans) and guitarist Dave Bryson formed Counting Crows in San Francisco in 1991. As well as his experience in The Himalayans, Duritz had contributed to recordings by the Bay Area group Sordid Humor, although he was never a member. Counting Crows began as an acoustic duo, playing gigs in and around Berkeley and San Francisco. By 1993, the band had grown to a stable lineup of Duritz, Bryson, Matt Malley (bass guitar), Charlie Gillingham (keyboard instruments) and Steve Bowman (drums), and it was a regular on the Bay Area scene.

The band took its name from a divination rhyme about the crow, heard by Duritz in the film Signs of Life. The rhyme is used at the end of the song “A Murder of One” on the album August and Everything After: “Well I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow / Casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there, counting crows / One for sorrow, two for joy / Three for girls and four for boys / Five for silver, six for gold / Seven for a secret never to be told.” In the poem, the act of counting crows is particularly useless. Duritz reveals that a name is just a name, and, with that, is useless and can be anything. This recalls a traditional rhyme: “One crow means sorrow, two crows mean joy, three crows a wedding, four crows a boy, five crows mean silver, six crows mean gold, seven crows a secret that’s never been told.” In the United Kingdom, the rhyme is well known but uses magpies rather than crows. A popular superstition states that if one sees a single magpie, one should greet it to deflect the “sorrow”.

Mr. Jones

“Mr. Jones,” refers to The Himalayans bassist (and Duritz’s childhood friend) Marty Jones and Kenney Dale Johnson, the drummer of Silvertone (Chris Isaak’s band), describing the desire of working musicians to make it big and the fantasies they entertain about what this might bring.

I was down at the New Amsterdam staring at this yellow-haired girl
Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation with this black-haired flamenco dancer
She dances while his father plays guitar
She’s suddenly beautiful
We all want something beautiful
I wish I was beautiful
So come dance this silence down through the morning
Cut Maria! Show me some of them Spanish dances
Pass me a bottle, Mr. Jones
Believe in me
Help me believe in anything
I want to be someone who believes

Mr. Jones and me tell each other fairy tales
Stare at the beautiful women
“She’s looking at you. Ah, no, no, she’s looking at me.”
Smiling in the bright lights
Coming through in stereo
When everybody loves you, you can never be lonely

I will paint my picture
Paint myself in blue and red and black and gray
All of the beautiful colors are very very meaningful
Grey is my favorite color
I felt so symbolic yesterday
If I knew Picasso
I would buy myself a gray guitar and play

Mr. Jones and me look into the future
Stare at the beautiful women
“She’s looking at you.
Uh, I don’t think so. She’s looking at me.”
Standing in the spotlight
I bought myself a gray guitar
When everybody loves me, I will never be lonely

I want to be a lion
Everybody wants to pass as cats
We all want to be big big stars, but we got different reasons for thatBelieve in me because I don’t believe in anything
and I want to be someone to believe

Mr. Jones and me stumbling through the barrio
Yeah we stare at the beautiful women
“She’s perfect for you, Man, there’s got to be somebody for me.”
I want to be Bob Dylan
Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky
When everybody loves you, son, that’s just about as funky as you can be

Mr. Jones and me staring at the video
When I look at the television, I want to see me staring right back at me
We all want to be big stars, but we don’t know why and we don’t know how
But when everybody loves me, I’m going to be just about as happy as can be
Mr. Jones and me, we’re gonna be big stars..

Drift and Die ~ Puddle of Mudd  

Puddle of Mudd was formed in 1993 by Wes Scantlin (vocals/guitar), Kenny Burkett (drums), Jimmy Allen (lead guitar), and Sean Samon (bass guitar). The name was inspired by the Missouri River flood, which inundated the band’s practice space, and left the floor a big “puddle of mud”. The group’s first album, Stuck, was released in 1994. The album, of entirely original compositions, was produced by PoM and E.J. Rose, and recorded at Red House Studio in Lawrence, Kansas. The album did well in Kansas City, but never made it much further.

Minus Jimmy Allen, the group released a second album, Abrasive, in 1997. It had eleven tracks, all written by the band, three of which would eventually make it on to Puddle of Mudd’s first major label release.

Scantlin’s start in the music business came after a copy of his demo tape was delivered to Fred Durst. Durst contacted Scantlin, and after hearing that his band had broken up, decided to bring him to California to attempt to put a new band together.

One of the first people Scantlin met upon arriving in California was Doug Ardito, an intern at Interscope Records. Ardito was also in a Boston-based band called Throat Culture. When Scantlin found out about Ardito’s bass playing, they decided to work together. They were still in need of a guitarist and drummer.

Fred Durst decided to contact a guitarist he knew from his hometown of Jacksonville, FL, Paul Phillips, who had formerly played in a local band there called Happy Hour. After getting the call from Durst, Paul decided to try out for Puddle of Mudd, and was accepted, choosing to leave college in order to join. A drummer was also recruited from Jacksonville.

The four began playing together on some of the band’s older songs, as well as some new ones. Durst signed the group to another showcase, and this time all went well. Durst then recruited the band to his new record label, Flawless Records.

Unfortunately, things did not work out with the Jacksonville drummer, and Josh Freese from A Perfect Circle and The Vandals (and later Guns N’ Roses) did the drum tracks for Puddle of Mudd’s next album instead. The band later held auditions for a new drummer, which produced Greg Upchurch, an ex-member of Eleven who had also toured with Chris Cornell.

Puddle of Mudd released its major-label debut album Come Clean on August 28, 2001.

Drift and Die

Forgotten thoughts of yesterdays
Through my eyes I see the past
Well I dont know, I dont know, I dont know why

I believe, I believe, I believe in the truth
From inside
Go away, go away, go away from me
Leave me alone

Ignorance spreads lies
How much will money buy
Well I’ll take my time
As I drift and die

Unwanted, live my life in shame
Who’s to blame for my mistakes
Well I dont know, I dont know, I dont know why

I believe I said I believe in the truth
From inside
Go away go away go away from me
Leave me alone

Ignorance spreads lies
How much will money buy
Well I’ll take my time
As I drift and die
As I drift and die
As I drift and die
As I drift and die

Ignorance spreads lies
How much will money buy
Well I’ll take my time
As I drift and die

Desolation Row ~ Bob Dylan  

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, author, poet, and disc jockey who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan’s most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. A number of his songs, such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’”, became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements.

Dylan’s early lyrics incorporated politics, social commentary, philosophy and literary influences, defying existing pop music conventions and appealing widely to the counterculture. While expanding and personalizing musical styles, he has shown steadfast devotion to many traditions of American song, from folk and country/blues to gospel, rock and roll and rockabilly, to English, Scottish and Irish folk music, and even jazz and swing.

Desolation Row

They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning
“You Belong to Me I Believe”
And someone says,” You’re in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she’s ‘neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid

To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah’s great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They’re trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She’s in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
“Have Mercy on His Soul”
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
They’re getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They’re spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words

And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls
“Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row”

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row