The Greatest Second in (Recorded) Rock and Roll

The Allman Brothers' instrumental "Jessica" starts off chugging along like a little acoustic train leaving the station, and before 15 seconds have passed you're out flying through a beautiful countryside with trees and grass and water and blue sky all around. But just wait until you get around the bend...

After the first two "verses" establish the mood and melody, there comes an extended vamp over which pianist Chuck Leavell lays down a solo like he's Schroeder from Peanuts (or, rather, Vince Guaraldi), and, great though it may be, it ends up mostly serving as the ski jump from which guitarist Dickey Betts will take his flying leap. As Leavell's section ends, the band builds up to a heart-bursting key change and, at 3.44, the first note of Betts' guitar solo punches through the fabric of space and time like a needle from another dimension. Just when you thought the train couldn't pick up any more momentum, it does. It's like in Back to the Future when the lightning strikes the clock tower at the exact moment needed to send the DeLorean through time; Betts is standing in the right place at the right time with the right feeling in his heart to receive the signal. And now that he's received it, he couldn't make a mistake if he tried. The whole band plays like a team of superheroes who have just discovered their powers and are gleefully putting them to the test.

Eventually, the guitar solo comes back down into the last verse and the song ends after seven-and-a-half minutes of pure joy. It's a perfect ride: couldn't have been any shorter or longer. It's rock, country, gospel and jazz all in one, and I love it.

Judge That Book By Its Cover!

One fine day in 1990, when I was 14, I was reading Music Express, the music magazine you could pick up for free at Sound Warehouse, when a half-page ad caught my eye. It asked, "Are there little surfer girls in outer space?" Good question. Of course, just the word "girls" at that point in my life was enough to completely command my attention, but add to that "little surfer" and my interest doubled. Girls in bikinis! On surfboards! A nice concept with staying power that was planted in my head (as well as millions of other heads) earlier in life by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.

The "outer space" bit wasn't something that I typically cared about, but I liked "outer space" as it was presented in this ad. It was a 1950s kind of space, plastic and red. With weird, flexible tubes. And rings around the Earth. And a name on those rings: Pixies. I knew then that I had to have whatever it was that was being advertised. And whatever it was turned out to be Bossanova by the Pixies.

Later, at the mall with my mom, I made a beeline for Sam Goody or Record Bar or whichever over-priced record store was there, and I headed for the cassette section (this was in my cassette-preference days). I located Bossanova and bought it, sound unheard.

Leaving the mall, I sat in the car with my Walkman on, waiting for the blank seconds at the front end of the tape to pass, marvelling at the beautiful planetary album cover.

I was probably a good minute into the first track before I realized there was not going to be any singing. Oh no, I thought, I've bought an instrumental album. What have I done?!

But then came track two. Now there was singing, if you could call it that. Black Francis screaming his lungs out. I still don't have any idea what the lyrics to that song are after all these years. I bought a death metal album, I thought. What have I done?!

And then track three, "Velouria." Things started to look up, to a degree. I really didn't know what to make of this band. But I sure liked their album art (even more so later, when I discovered Surfer Rosa — a topless woman flamenco dancing on an album cover? I would have bought that even if it had been a Michael Bolton album).

By the time I was a high school senior, the Pixies (broken up by this point) were my favorite band on the planet. It hadn't been easy, immediate love, though. There was an article in Music Express in the intervening years comparing the Pixies to a "stinky" cheese that you knew was supposed to be good but took some getting used to. I thought this sounded about right. They had bite. And, fortunately, the artwork and concepts helped create an opening in my brain just big enough for the music itself to get inside and take root. And, man, it's good, pungent stuff.