My Apocalyptic Playlist

You know how people always ask you what your favorite band is? That's a tough one for me; I have many. Music is extremely important to me. Sometimes, I catch myself driving down the road without the stereo on. I feel like I just got caught naked in a rainstorm when that happens, with nothing but ugly galoshes on. That's how much music is entwined with my being. I'm a musician...I come from a family of musicians.  Music is my church - it makes me feel things I don't feel otherwise.

So, here is my Apocalyptic Playlist. If the zombies are coming for me, these are the albums you'll find on my iPod when the end comes. It's diverse, kind of schizophrenic, and maybe surprising. This isn't an exhaustive list, but with my ADD, these are the ones that come to mind during this little paddle down my stream-of-consciousness.

1.  Johnny Cash - "The Essential Johnny Cash."
If you don't like Johnny Cash, you are probably not human, and you definitely don't have ears. Here is musical nirvana.  This simple Southern sharecropper paved the way for every punk band who walked through the doors of the CBGB, who created a musical alchemy so intrinsically American that even the most jaded rock star gives him homage. This is the sound of a train cutting across the prairie, of a gospel choir of women with skin the color of molasses breaking their backs in a cotton field. This is taking all of your hopes, your angst, your passions and sending them into the belly of a flat-top box called a Martin guitar.  There is only one Cash.

2. Coldplay - "A Rush of Blood to the Head."
I don't care what Pitchfork says. I don't care if the hipsters roll their eyes when I say I love Coldplay.
This music is epic, it is grandiose, and it is a complete architecture of sound.  "Politik" could have been written by Mozart, but I really think even he could not have done as good of a job as Chris Martin and crew. That bridge takes my breath away.  The counterpoint and structure is pristine, the range of emotion is complex and achingly human in this album. "The Scientist" is a requiem for lost love unlike any other I have heard.  If you don't agree, that's fine.

3. Jimi Hendrix - "Blues"
It's too bad that Jimi never lived to see this album released. This is roots music. This is the Delta; this is a sexy, hot mess on the banks of the Mississippi river.  Sometimes people forget that Jimi was intrinsically a blues man. He wanted to get back to that - it's what he loved. People made fun of that in the 60s sometimes. They wanted the blur, the distortion, the pedals. Jimi gave that to them, but in his free time, he stripped it down to the I, IV, V. That's where it started, you see. Rock and Roll began with little old men with names like Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley, with voices like dried out husks of corn, and no other beat than the stomp of their feet on a wide-planked porch.

4. J.S. Bach - "Complete Organ Works. Ton Koopman."
Here is majesty, here is fire, here is anger and fear. With mathematical precision, Bach composed the penultimate opus to the pipe organ. No one did high-church music like Bach did. As kapellmeister for the duke of Saxe-Weimar, Bach composed this soaring legacy during his 9 year residency. When I walked into Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York, his fugue in D-minor blasted my sister and I as soon as we cleared the threshold. I felt it rumble through every bone and muscle in my body.  I almost hit my knees, and tears sprang to my eyes. That is power, folks.

5. Amy Winehouse - "Back to Black."
Too many of our great musical talents die young.  Miss Winehouse was one of those that I felt in my marrow - here was an old soul. Tortured? Naturally. Her music sounded as if Etta James and Rosemary Clooney had somehow simultaneously birthed a skinny, scrappy white girl with pipes the size of an ocean liner. The beehive and liner just added to her appeal. The title track...yeah, I've been there.  This is the gritty underpinnings of mad love, dangerous love, in a classy package that you can play for your friends over cocktails.

6. Frederic Chopin - "The Nocturnes(Claudio Arrau)"
As a pianist, Chopin is a watermark. The ability to play the Romantic composers well within the repertoire is considered the true test of technical AND interpretive ability. There is a trap in the Romantic era, you see. Composers played fast and loose with time signatures, dynamics, and molto, molto rubato. That's music geek-speak for play it with emotion and grand passion, take some liberties, but don't you dare forget your roots. There is a comfort in the structure of the Classical and Baroque - you know what to expect. Chopin's era was the period when pianists were true performers - working their audiences into a frenzy with show-stopping displays of prowess and drama. They played impromptu interludes and codas - some say it was the beginnings of jazz, way back in 1840. Chopin's nocturnes are fever-dreams; beautiful nightmares for a pianist. They look ever so simple on the page, but they are anything but. Arrau does them justice, as he does with Rachmaninoff and Liszt. He was my idol as a fledgling pianist - I could never dream of coming close.

7. The Rolling Stones:"Hot Rocks 1964-1971."
The Stones are my guilty pleasure. I love them. They are the perfect antidote to fluffy Beatles optimism (not that I don't like the Beatles, but they don't cut it when you're pissed,  such as when you're trying to survive an apocalypse). "Sympathy For the Devil" and "Paint it Black" are on my all-time favorites list for well, all-time.  I like to think that "Get Off of My Cloud" will be playing when I pick off zombies with my shotgun from my roof.  Fitting, no?

8. Flogging Molly: "Alive Behind the Green Door."
This is where it started for Davy King and crew - at Molly Malone's in LA, making little to nothing, playing for a crowd that included pierced punk kids and middle-class linemen. This is pub music, with a hefty dose of Johnny Cash, and a whole lot of spitfire, Irish moxie. You can hear the crowd roar when "Black Friday Rule" begins - a love song from an immigrant who came to the USA from a torn Ireland, to face earthquakes and skyscrapers, and build a new life. I have seen them live, and they are amazing. This is the music of my ancestors, with a shot of whiskey-soaked adrenaline.

I'm tired, otherwise, I'd make it to 10. I could go on for much, much longer. There's Mozart's "Die Zauberflote," Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Professor Longhair, and Beethoven. There's Cake, and Dolly, Led Zeppelin, Loretta Lynn and Jack White. There are too many to name. But if I had to narrow it down, these are the albums I want to hear before the Mayan calendar grinds to a halt.  Happy Apocalypse. May you have many of YOUR favorites on your final playlist. You have a few months left - get busy.