43. The Accused - "Grinning Like an Undertaker"
Take a kid and put him in a hospital. A punk rock kid who hates speed metal. Is it speed metal? Is it punk? Is it freeform fucking art? I have no fucking clue. Make your own decisions 'cause I'm turning it up. Anyway, take this kid, leave him there with just a Walkman and just this one tape. Twenty-four hours of this tape. Drugs and alcohol (we can talk about alcohol in the hospital in another story). Mix it all together and you have the turtle. By the time I walked out of there I was a full-on, pissed off, broken machine. If you get used to Blaine's voice, this shit fucking rocks. It takes about ten times 'til you kinda get it, and you can call it punk or not, but the Accused move and Blaine holds on. Great stuff from a great band that I'm not even sure is around anymore. (T)

44. MC5 - "Kick Out the Jams"
So I’m in the car with my 13-year-old son, listening to the punk rock station on XM radio and this song comes on. Kick out the jams, motherfucker! Kid says, "Hey this song sounds old." I said, "Yeah, 1969, dude. This is like the original punk rock song. The original punk rock band." He says, "They said 'motherfucker' in 1969??" That made me laugh. But hey, he rocked out to the song and immediately hit his Fender when we got home to try and work it out. Over 30 years later and some 13-year-old kid is laying down your notes on his guitar and thinking it’s one of the coolest things he ever heard? Rock on. (M)

45. Husker Du - "Divide and Conquer"
What? Two Husker Du songs and no appearance by anything from Zen Arcade yet? Hey, it's everybody else's favorite album, not mine. This particular song always got me going when I needed some motivation to get off my ass. I’m not saying it inspired me or anything, but the groove got me up and going when I might have just stayed in bed all day going over my bad life choices. The lyrics are kind of like reading the notes of a drunken conspiracy theorist and the music, well, it moves on and on and on and you keep holding your breath waiting for a hook or an extended 'fuck you' chorus or something, but it’s just that cool, winding melody over and over and the occasional 'divide and conquer' and finally Mould gives you a bunch of patented 'la, la, las' which isn’t much of a payoff, but damn that guitar lick kicks some ass. (M)