WoNoBloG: Top 2000 voting

Come end of year, come Top 2000 in the Netherlands. All listeners of NPO2 and everybody else who fancies the list of list activity has to vote in this week. For weeks it is being announced, songs are pushed by DJs, hoping to influence voting. All to arrive at the Top 2000, broadcasted from Christmas to 12PM on New Year's eve. Everyone willing to share a truckload of privacy sensitive data and all sorts of other data with the national broadcaster, why????, can vote. From a huge list with thousands and thousands of preselected songs, a selection of a minimum of five and a maximum of 35 can be made. The oldest from 1954, perhaps even older, the youngest maybe only a few weeks, like the new Adele single.

There are two major pushed songs. One to get 'Radar Love' by Golden Earring on the #1 spot, to honour songwriter, singer and guitarist George Kooijmans, who is mortally ill and 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' by Procul Harum. This was the favourite song of the assassinated reporter and crime-fighter Peter R. de Vries. Anything better than 'Rollercoaster', imho.

Like I shared with my girlfriend last week, if I was really to delve into this conundrum in a serious way, it would probably cost me my sanity. Making a choice of 35 songs from the thousands I truly like? Even making a longlist that really reflected my favourites in music would cost me more time that I could ever afford, stopping all other activities. And I put far too much time into music already, listening, writing and playing. So, I do things rather snappy when it comes to voting. I made a list of a little over 50 songs and stopped there. What is my true favourite Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Doors, Radiohead, Oasis, etc., song? Even that would cost me days to figure out. And some did not even make it into the list, simply because I want my favourite German, French and Dutch songs in there to.

So what 35 songs made it? The overview is below. Traditionally by now I add two songs that are not preselected. The first is 'Inca Roads' by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The opening song of 'One Size Fits All' is a combination of utter madness, childish humour, virtuosity, fantastic soloing, singing and playing in unison at lightning speed. Clocking in at many minutes the song shales all sorts of parts, changing pace and moods the whole time, including a fantastic George Duke synthesizer solo. Not to speak of percussive work by Ruth Underwood echoed by many in the band.

The second song is 'Hail To The Rain', Maggie Brown's perfect pop song from 2017. The Amsterdam based band created one of the most beautiful songs of the past decade and would have deserved a lot of attention with it. Sometimes bands do not get the attention they deserve. Go and have a listen and form an opinion yourself.

The third one I've added, is by Shocking Blue. Everyone knows 'Venus', as in all over the world. It wasn't even the band's biggest hit over here. Both 'Mighty Joe' and 'Never Marry A Railroad Man' made the #1 spot here. My favourite however is 'Send Me A Postcard'. The band's first single with singer Mariska Veres, also the first one I ever heard. 'Send Me A Postcard' is a wild song, with some great breaks in it. My own band, Sweetwood, has mastered it pretty well by now.

With the rest, I'll admit to voting to some of the most popular songs by the band, but not if I would not truly like it as well. Yes, I supported the George Kooijmans bit for the #1 spot, but not without scoring 'She Flies On Strange Wings' as well, currently my favourite Golden Earring song, replacing 'Just A Little Bit Of Peace In My Heart'. This is the only band with two songs this year. You see what I mean with making hard choices? The Beatles and The Rolling Stones deserve at least ten songs each.

A few songs are new in my list. Kiki Dee e.g. I love playing this song with Sweetwood. It's so full of energy and so much fun. It had to make my list this year. Just like Supertramp's 'Dreamer', for exactly the same reason. The band has several other songs deserving a spot, so why 'Dreamer'? Good question. Sweetwood is my answer.

The list for a large part shows my age of course. I thought hard yesterday whether any new songs, read the last 15 years, should be in the list. Fact is, I could simply not think of a single one. How many songs are there that make an impression on me like the songs that did when I was 8, 9 or 15, 16? I know that there are songs that have made an impression like this, except that I can't think of them. Besides, there's the fact that most likely hardly anybody has heard of these songs. My music is not the world's music. Enter Maggie Brown. I've added 'Deutschland' as new song. Rammstein's single and fantastic video from 2019 and 'Knights Of Cydonia', Muse's epic song, but most songs are from my youth. That is the period that will, when all is said and done, remain my favourite, always. Hence 'Eloise' that beautiful mini opera by Barry Ryan and his brother Paul, 'Hair' by Zen, the most rocking rendition of the musical's title song and 'Hey Jude'. Late 1968, the time I discovered Veronica's Top 40.

Of course it did not stop there, as you can see below. 35 Songs. There's so, so much more. Especially the one hit wonders, that I will never guess at, because I start with the bands I've loads of records of. Not that one single. When I'm retired, perhaps then I'll take the time to really do this for the first time since I was young. But what did I know then? Now it's 40 years more music and then perhaps 50. Pfff. Probably it's best to just do it like this. Anyway, here's my 35.

Wout de Natris

Muse
Knights Of Cydonia (Albumversie)