Top 10

10: Sheryl Crow, “Steve McQueen.” Makes you roll down the windows and drive too fast.
9: Sheryl Crow, “Soak Up the Sun.” Another driving song! Makes me wonder why people stopped making them.
8: Richard Ford, Wildlife. “Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing just to know you’re alive.”
7: A walk through the family cemetery in the Glenville hills, among the graves of some I knew and more I didn’t, trying to imagine what their lives were like.
6: Little Orphan Annie, rediscovered. Harold Gray let you know where he stood.
5: Rollerblading along the Mohawk River behind my 9-year-old on her bike, her streamers flying in the breeze, little legs pumping up the hills and coasting down to the canal lock.
4: The Animals. They rock, and don’t say they don’t. And I’ll love Eric Burdon forever for launching into “House of the Rising Sun” with a low mutter: “I hate this fucking song.” JB Scott’s, Albany, way back when.
3: My five-year-old singing, “My intentions are good! Hold on! Please don’t let me be misunderstood!”
2: Rediscovering old slides from college and high school days. Scanning lets me really look at them for the first time. A vaguely remembered other world.
1: Imani Coppola on Sessions at W. 54th stole a riff from Donovan, and listening to her stuck “Sunshine Superman” in my head, which I’m not terribly happy about.