THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

44. BOSTON: More Than A Feeling/ Smokin' (1976)
Masterminded by Tom Scholz, the Brian Wilson of AOR, this delightful paean to the redemptive power of music and lost love is the definitive slice of hair metal for those who own no heavy rock; a joyous rapture of three-and-a-half minutes of pop beauty. With its repeated suggestion to, "hide in my music and forget the day," aching guitar and Brad Delp's soaring, operatic tones, it has rightfully become an anthem that unites stoner and superintendent alike. Kurt Cobain, of course, was later to rewrite it and call it Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Availability: More Than A Feeling Collectables CD
43. THE JACKSON 5 : I Want You Back/Who's Lovin' You (1970)
When The Jackson 5 made their US debut with this, on live TV in autumn '69. Michael Jackson was a dynamic nine-year-old who desperately wanted to be a star. The song, penned by The Corporation (Freddie Perren, Fonze Mizzel, and Deke Richards) for Diana Ross, was given to the Jackson family by Berry Gordy.With it they took the world by storm, zooming straight to the top of the US pop and R&B charts. Rappers Naughty By Nature sampled the bubblegum smash for their own hit single, 1991's OPP.
Availability: Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5/ABC Motown CD 

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CULT RECORD: DE LA SOUL:"THREE FEET HIGH AND RISING" (1989)

De La Soul appeared on the scene in 1989 as the polar opposite of Public Enemy and N.W.A., proclaiming a "Daisy Age" and sampling Schoolhouse Rock, Johnny Cash, and learn-French-yourself records. The music steered by producer Prince Paul of Stetsasonic, was rooted on black pop at its most cheery and integrationist: doo-wop, '60s soul, and, most presciently, P-Funk. Fans who'd grown tired of the stereotypical crotch-grabbing, trash-talking rapper flocked to the band, though the cut "De La Orgee" is as misogynistic as anything on a Dr. Dre album and "Potholes in My Lawn" aims at sucker MCs. In fact, De La Soul's private metaphor jive and boho musicality represented a challenge to rap from within; the group remained every bit as obsessed with identity ("Me, Myself, And I") and cool ("Plug Tunin'") as anyone else in the genre. Perhaps the true difference marking 3 Feet High and Rising as the definitive arrival of "alternative hip-hop--though, race excepted, the Beastie Boys achieved the same thing first-- is its (middle class?) tone of prosperity and entitlement. Most hip-hop sounds pulled from adversity; De La Soul languidly gorges on the fruit of the vine.

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CULT MOVIE: SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943)

The ambiguous blend of good and evil so suited Hitchcock that many of his films could have been mentioned here.(His other classic noirs include Notorious and The Wrong Man, a fine tale about a family wrecked by police procedure.) In this film, Wright plays a bored young girl called Charlie who invites her uncle Charlie (Cotten) to visit but soon discovers that he is a murderer. The film is full of pairs (both obvious and subtle): the two Charlies, the two detectives, the two suspects, even the two conversations about murder techniques and the double brandy Charlie orders in the Till Two bar. This is said to be Hitchcock's favorite film possibly because he worked some of the details of his early life into the script including a rare (for him) glimpse of a benevolent screen mum called Emma (the director's own mother Emma was very ill when he made this).
Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Teressa Wright, Joseph Cotten

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CULT RECORD: CAN: " TAGO MAGO " (1971)

In creating a unique sound-world of wanderlust and wonderment, Can is up there with Hendrix and Miles Davis. Each phase of Can's meandering career has opened up vast vistas of fertile terrain for subsequent bands to colonize and cultivate: avant-funk( Talking Heads, PiL, Cabaret Voltaire), trance-rock (Loop, f/i, Cul de Sac), lo-fi (Pavement, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282) and post-rock (Bark Psychosis, Laika). Can also uncannily anticipated many moves made by entire genres of contemporary "sampladelic" music, such as ethno-techno, jungle, and ambient hip hop. Basically, when it comes to psychedelic, dance music, those crafty Krauts wrote the goddamn book.
Can's core members-- bassist Holger Czukay, keyboardist Irmin Schmidt, drummer Jaki Liebezeit and guitarist Michael Karoli-- came from avant-garde and improv-jazz backgrounds; Czukay and Schmidt had both studied with Stockhausen. But instead of exploring aleatory noise or jerky time signatures, Can discovered-- through the Velvet Underground, and later via James Brown-- the Zen power of repetition and restriction. Minimalism and mantra-ism were hallmarks of the Krautrock aesthetic, but what set Can apart from its peers was a fervent embrace of groove. Like Miles Davis's early-'70s albums ( On The Corner, Dark Magus, etc.), Can's best work fuses "black" funk with "white" neo-psych freakitude. Recording in its own studio in a Cologne castle, the band adopted a jam-and-chop methodology similar to that used by Davis and his producer Teo Macero: improvise for hours, then edit the best bits into coherent tracks. As then band's Macero figure, Czukay worked miracles with a handful of mikes and two-track recording. Can's proto-ambient spatiality actually diminished when they went to 16-track in the mid '70s.
Named after a sorcerer, Tago Mago contains Can's most disorienting, shamanistic work. Torn between two impulses-- James Brownian motion and post-Floyd chromatic flux-- the double album spans the polyrhythmic roil of "Mushroom" and "Oh Yeah,"Aumgn'"s dub-reverberant catacombs, and the fractal sound-daubings and scat-gibberish of "Peking O"-- a meisterwerk.

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THE 100 SINGLES YOU MUST OWN

46. CURTIS MAYFIELD: Move On Up/ Beautiful Brother Of Mine/ Give It Up (1971)
Lifted from the Gentle Genius' eponymous debut LP, this eloquent, uplifting anthem for black empowerment proved a big hit with the British public, rising to number 12 in the UK charts in 1971. Edited down to just under three minutes from its original eight-minute album length, Move On Up appeared on a 3-track maxi single with two equally soulful cuts on the flip. Mystifyingly-- given its infectious chorus, rich instrumentation and sleek dance pulse-- the song failed to dent the US charts.
Availability: Move On Up-- The Singles Anthology 1970-90 Sequel CD
45. FLEETWOOD MAC: Oh Well (Part 1)/ Oh Well (Part 2) (1969)
Following the timeless Albatross and Man Of The World, Peter Green made it three smashes in a row with an upbeat shuffle based on an acoustic guitar hook and a simple, yet quietly profound song. It breaks down into a totally unexpected Spanish guitar and recorder instrumental, as atmospheric as Albatross, which spills across the B-side and makes Oh Well an audacious little eight-minute symphony. Awesome.

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CULT MOVIE: THE EVIL-DOLL ( 1936 )

Best known for Freaks and 1931's Dracula, director Browning's 20-year career also included this oddity. His last but one film before retirement, it was originally titled The Witch Of Timbuctoo but the title was changed when the script was altered because of censorship concerns.. Co-written by actor/director Erich von Stroheim, the story follows a Devil's Island escapee (Barrymore) who hits upon the idea of shrinking humans to doll size for his own evil ends (can't think why no one's thought of it before). Undeniably silly, the bizarre film mixes horror, sci-fi, melodrama and revenge thriller all into one, and contains a plethora of ideas and images ( Barrymore in drag being one of them) that were considered shocking in 1936.
Director: Tod Browning Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan

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