The Alan Parsons Project has the distinction of being the only prog rock group to crack the infamously snobbish and exacting quality control standards of the Jock Jams franchise. It's difficult not to listen to the hypnotic instrumental "Sirius" and have your mind fill in the 'lyrics': "at shooting guard, from North Carolina, number 23...."
While we're on the subject, I think more professional sports teams need to adopt official songs from the outdated pop canon, a la soccer clubs, and they should be chosen by the same type of person who impishly reintroduced a pretentious prog opus as a pro wrestling-style intro song. The rest of the world understands this. Why don't we?
Without the Bulls, though, APP is basically the kinder, gentler, more commercial Pink Floyd (Parsons was the sound engineer on the seminal Dark Side of the Moon). "Eye in the Sky" is proof that, even if he jazzes it up with hieroglyphic window dressing and interstellar mythology, a guy with a guitar is always going to write a breakup song. Same with "Games People Play," though it is distinguished by its heavy disco feel and decent appropriation of the best parts of the Hall and Oates formula.
Alan Silvestri - "Back to the Future Theme"
Silvestri is best known as Robert Zemeckis's go-to composer, and is therefore more of an unknown to the general public as Zemeckis has gone full Lucas on us in the past decade and interest in his films has waned. Like most film composers, he is also very prolific and tends to work on projects that are big and loud for reasons that have little to do with the score.
But his work on the BTTF trilogy should give him a lifetime pass. There are few precious blockbuster themes not written by John Williams that have the evocative power of Silvestri's. It's just as much of a part of the trilogy's iconography as DeLoreans and hoverboards and moonwalking in Wild West saloons.
Albert Hammond - "It Never Rains In Southern California"
One of the great post-60s hangover songs. Only five years elapsed between the Summer of Love and this beautiful slice of bubblegum melancholy. What a difference a Nixon makes. It also established a leitmotif of musicians warning people how, despite all appearances, what a terribly perverse and dangerous place SoCal is, though recently the pendulum has swung the other way.
Alice Cooper
Journalists are bound by a covenant to refer to Cooper exclusively as "70s shock rocker Alice Cooper," but this was an image forged primarily by his appearance and live show and least of all by his music. In reality, "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and "School's Out" are as edgy as the fifth-grader egging the principal's house, but they are great shorthand for the rebellion of the petulant as opposed to that of the truly disturbed or downtrodden. "School's Out" in particular feels like the bratty cousin of the much darker schoolboy remembrances that pepper the first half of The Wall (Pink Floyd reference counter: 2).
Yet Cooper can get away with this because of his great charisma and, especially, his self-awareness - "School's...out...for...summer/School's...out...for...ever" wouldn't work from someone who didn't know what he was doing in being so dopey and so eternally sly.
Alien Ant Farm - "Smooth Criminal"
In an alternate universe, ANThology is a track-for-track punk cover of Michael Jackson's Bad. I mean, why the hell not? It's not like Alien Ant Farm was going out on a limb here. It wasn't, say, like covering an obscure Leonard Cohen or Bernie Taupin composition. This was some of the lowest-hanging fruit from the goddamn King of Pop.
So AAF is forever in that dubious pantheon of artists famous primarily for performing someone else's high profile hit. They also presaged the process of "Lambertizing" a song, a technique made famous by American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert and consisting of taking a popular song that worked just fine and making it all hardcore and screeching and craaaazy! Because we can.
This video is a more loving tribute to Michael than his overproduced public funeral.
Allister - "Fraggle Rock"
Imagine arranging a conference call with Sid Vicious, Joe Strummer, and Lou Reed circa 1977. The topic is the future of punk rock. "At the turn of the millennium," you say, "punk's not dead. In fact, it's one of the most influential and most popular cultural movements in the world. Contrary to what pundits are saying today, it is not a fad and has remained critically and commercially viable for all these years and moved into realms far beyond music."
"Oh, and also, punk musicians will be judged on the caliber of their dick jokes and the heartiness of their party, culminating in this cover of a 1980s children's television show theme." And you'll play it and say, "But to be fair, the Fraggles were themselves a de-facto disenfranchised underclass struggling to make themselves heard. As Muppets. Yeah, man, Y2K messed with everybody."
Allman Brothers Band
The nomadic Allmans were frequently singing about movement, like the gypsy wanderer yearning for "Melissa" and the ambulatory male of "Ramblin' Man." They heavily inspired the fictional band Stillwater in Almost Famous, and if you're familiar with the movie, it makes sense. There's a good deal of tension in these songs, pitting the pureness of the band's country-bluegrass roots against the polish of the rock production on their recordings. Plus, the original Allman lineup burned out relatively quickly after seven Southern rock template-defining years. If nothing else, I appreciate them for giving me a lot to chew on during those guitar solos.
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