We all know the standard classic mixtape love songs – “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton,” Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love,” Stevie Wonder’s “Golden Lady,” “I Will Always Love You,” (Dolly or Whitney, you pick the version), “At Last,” by Etta James, most of the Beatles’ early catalog. But what about modern, 21st century love songs, i.e., those that came out after January 1, 2001?

Up until I started preparing this, I never really thought much about it, but surprisingly, I came up with a wealth of ideas, almost too many. The songs I thought up are not necessarily traditional ballads (though there are several), are not always romantic or saccharine or even very nice, do not always offer bold statements of devotion or everlasting ardor. But in each, the meaning is clear even if it isn’t always spelled out clearly.

“Fell in Love with a Girl,” The White Stripes, White Blood Cells (2001)
The song made stars of pasty, Detroit-based indie alt blues duo Jack and Meg White, both because it was nice and short and tasty raw, and because it has a really cool Lego video. Check it out, if you haven’t already seen it a few dozen times.

“The Purple Bottle,” Animal Collective, Feels (2005)
Not your average love song by any stretch, or even an average song – it is Animal Collective, after all. But this is the song that made me fall in love with this band and it happens to be about love:

“Can I tell you that you are the purple in me?
Can I call you just to hear you, would you care?
When I saw you put your purple finger on me
There’s a feelin’ in your bottle
Found your bottle, found your heart
Gives a feeling from your bottled little part”

“Michael,” Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand (2004)
The fourth single off Franz Ferdinand’s debut made certain male fans uncomfortable with its homoerotic lyrics (”Michael, you’re the boy with all the leather hips / sticky hair, sticky hips, stubble on my sticky hips / Michael, you’re the only one I’d ever want”) despite them being written and performed by an alleged straight man. From a 2004 New York News article: “[Lead singer] Alex Kapranos has said he’s a bit surprised that ‘Michael’ is the song people most want to ask about since it’s so straightforward. He told the story behind it to the magazine Boyz: ‘It was one night when me and the band were out with friends from Glasgow, and we went to this warehouse dance party thing called Disco X. It was a very debauched night and these two friends got it together in a very sexy way.’”

“Touch Me, I’m Going to Scream Part 1,” My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (2008)
Never has such a dramatic demand been delivered so tenderly and sexy casual as Jim James when he sings “Touch me I’m going to scream if you don’t.”

“Fidelity,” Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope (2006)
A perfectly lovely ballad by one of today’s great songstresses. Here she is being wonderful:

“Plastis Wafers,” of Montreal, Skeletal Lamping (2008)
So many of Montreal/Kevin Barnes songs are about the ups and downs of love. This one’s particularly close to my heart and has some of my all-time favorite lyrics, like “I confess to really being quite charmed by your feminine effects / you’re the only one with whom I would role play Oedipus Rex,” and “You give me such a rush, make my whole body blush, I don’t care if they say you’re just my crutch I know you’re not, you’re the only good thing I’ve got,” and, the most poetic, “When you’re dead I’ll search for you, like Orpheus, I’ll find you, some way”

“Sweethearts on Parade,” M. Ward, Transistor Radio (2005)
M. Ward’s crushed velvet vocals are sublime in any song, but in this one, they are colored with a particularly exquisite longing.

“One,” Raz Ohara & the Odd Orchestra, Raz Ohara & the Odd Orchestra (2008)
A down-tempo, loungy number with bossa nova rhythms and Raz’s voice like caramel, smooth and rich and tantalizing.

“You Know I’m No Good,” Amy Winehouse, Back in Black (2006)
It’s dark and heavy soul, about a woman who loves her man but keeps cheating on him time and time again, in the end really only cheating herself since he always seems to know when she’s done wrong. “You say what did you do with him today? / And sniff me out like I was Tanqueray.”

“She’s the One” Caribou, Andorra (2007)
Dreamy psychedelia has never been so touching. Here’s Caribou doing the song for The Pink Room:

“Maple Leaves,” Jens Lekman, When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog (2004)
The cutest Swede to ever write pop music offers this clever little ballad.
“I think you’re beautiful
but it’s impossible
to make you understand
that if you don’t take my hand
I lose my mind completely
Madness will finally defeat me

She said it was all make-belief
but I thought you said maple leaves
and when she talked about the fall
I thought she talked about the season
I never understood at all”

“Sweetheart in the Summer,” Ween, La Cucaracha (2007)
An easy, cheesy little roots number with lyrics like “She’s a sweetheart in the summer / Summertime is here again / She’s a sweetheart in the summer / and I hope it never ends.”

“1 2 3 4,” Feist, The Reminder (2007)
This song was everywhere for a while and I can’t help but like its adorable message. According to WikiPedia, The Reminder was selling 6,000 copies per week, “1234″ 2,000 downloads before the Apple iPod Nano commercial featuring the song aired. After the commercial, the song surpassed 73,000 total downloads and reached No. 7 on Hot Digital Songs and No. 28 on the Billboard Hot 100; The Reminder jumped from No. 36 to No. 28 on the Billboard 200, with sales at 19,000. Time writer Josh Tyrangiel named it among his Top 10 songs of ‘07, calling it a “masterpiece” and lauding Feist for singing it “with a mixture of wisdom and exuberance that’s all her own.”

Some other great ones:“Skinny Love,” Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (2008), a melancholy ode; “Be Gentle with Me,” The Boy Least Likely To, The Best Party Ever (2005), a saccharine, blissful number about a boy who’s been hurt and needs his new lady love to take it easy; “Spread Your Love,” Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, B.R.M.C. (2001), a crunchy rock number with the classic lyric, “Spread your love like a fever”; “Die Die Die,” Dr. Dog, We All Belong (2007), a stabbed-in-the -gut number with the anguished heart-been-broke line, “I don’t want to die in your arms, I just want to die”; “All I need,” Radiohead, In Rainbows (2007), in his usual brooding manner, Thom Yorke strips away all romantic notions and says it plain (check out the video below of Radiohead performing “All I Need” on Nigel Godrich’s show, From The Basement); “Famous Flower of Manhattan,” The Avett Brothers, Four Thieves Gone (2006), a song that uses floral metaphors to present a story about a city girl and the man who wants to sweep her away to the countryside; and “Paris 2004,” Peter Bjorn and John, Writer’s Block (2007), a blissful ditty about a couple in love in Paris.

Here are some CL Staff picks:

“Breathe (2 a.m.),” Anna Naylick, Wreck of the Day (2005)
-Jamie O.

“Dance With My Father,” Luther Vandross, Dance with My Father (2003)
-Eric

“Falling Slowly,” the Oscar-winning song by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová from Once soundtrack (2007).
“My Phone’s on Vibrate for You,” Rufus Wainwright, Want One (2003)
-David

“Someday Baby,” Bob Dylan, Modern Times (2006)
-(Wade’s suggestion if he were still here)

I know there’s a huge swath of songs I’ve forgotten or didn’t even know about, so enlighten me, please:

How did my mom go from owning such a wide range of rock n’ roll records, from the Beatles to Black Sabbath, to devoting her ears solely to Celine Dion? Living in the land of oldsters and hipsters (some people are both), this question ultimately pervades every aspect of existence in Tampa Bay. Issues of marketed generation norms, like older people being more mild mannered and set in their ways and younger people experimenting with sex and drugs, maintain arbitrary divisions between age groups and sonic preferences. Generalizations of the 1960’s “Summer of Love” are quickly ripped to shreds in records by bored mutants like The Stooges. Their self-titled record in 1969 and Fun House in 1970 destroyed notions of the singular cultural experience by being nasty and unlearned instead of nice-sounding and well-trained. History has never been as cut-and-dry/black-and-white as we are led to believe. Likewise, our present continues to be very complicated.

All my life I’ve heard things like, “now that John Lennon could sing” or “Eric Clapton knows how to play real guitar music” or other such flapdoodle. People who make statements like those assume there’s a correct way to sing or play guitar, and other musicians who are inferior or get it wrong should do something else. Iggy Pop’s snarling vocals and Ron Asheton’s unsophisticated, immediate and exceedingly raw approach to the guitar challenged the notion of perfect technical skill as the ultimate goal in music. (Pictured: the late Ron Asheton, photo by Dena Flows.)

I was pretty bummed out by news of Ron Asheton’s death this week. I consider him one of my favorite guitarists because of his ability to play with music for the sake of sound and emotion on truly immediate levels instead of precision of notes and clarity of intonation. As I was driving home from band practice last night, I caught WMNF’s Surface Noise paying tribute to Asheton by playing some of his songs and discussing his legacy. My closed-minded preconceptions of Tampa Bay’s cultural buffoonery happily dashed for a few minutes, I reflected on death and nostalgia while I drove up depressing 66th Street.

Recently, The Stooges re-formed, toured a bunch and put out the solid album, The Weirdness, in 2007.  Standing out in the rash of comeback tours and reunion shows, Ron Asheton’s guitar playing, while slightly more refined than 35 years ago, cut through preconceptions of people losing relevance with age. Simplicity in riffs and biting imperfect leads influenced and continues to influence generation after generation or underground mutants. The Stooges always made me want to play music, regardless of my skill level. Anyone who can open their mouth and emit sound can sing, anyone who can pick up a guitar can play and getting old doesn’t mean you have to be lame and irrelevant.

*side note: Obviously Asheton didn’t wait around for Iggy to call him up and play again for 35 or whatever years. Check out some of his other really great sounding guitar bands like The New Order (not THAT New Order) and Destroy All Monsters.

Jacksonville’s Derek Trucks, 29, has established himself as the greatest guitarist of his generation: He’s a genre-hopping band leader/solo artist, key Allman Brother and while on tour with Eric Clapton a couple years back the kid named after Derek and the Dominos helped Slow Hand wonderfully recreate classics from Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Yeah, Trucks is the shit.

And so is his wife, Susan Tedeschi. She’s a feisty blues guitarist, an accomplished songwriter and excellent soul singer. Her new album, Back to the River, features her crushing on emotive originals – several cowritten with Trucks, who also lends his slide guitar fineness to the disc – steeped in the sounds of the Deep South. Tedeschi’s also a master interpreter of classic rock gems. One of the many highlights of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2008 was during the final moments when Tedeschi joined Derek Truck’s group for a tent-raising rendition of The Band’s “The Weight.” I get chills and a smile comes to my face just thinking about that very special performance.

The skinny: Soul Stew Revival is an 11-piece ensemble led by slide guitarist Derek Trucks and vocalist/guitarist Susan Tedeschi. The ensemble also includes horn players Kevin Hyde, Paul Garrett, Mace Hibbard and Derek’s younger brother, Duane, on second drum kit in addition to current members of The Derek Trucks Band: Todd Smallie (bass), Yonrico Scott (drums), Kofi Burbridge (keys & flute) Mike Mattison (vocals), Count M’Butu (percussion).

Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi Soul Stew Revival, 7:30 p.m. Mon., Dec. 29, Tampa Theatre, Tampa, $57.50/$47.50/$37.50.

Read my interview with Derek Trucks that ran Jan., 2007.

Here’s my review of the Susan Tedeschi show, Saturday, April 21, at Jannus Landing, St. Petersburg, 2007.

Derek Trucks Band w/Susan Tedeschi — The Weight (NOLA Jazz Fest 2008)

Repetition pounds rhythms and patterns into the human brain while pulsating through the body.  The rejection of complexity by bands like the Intelligence, which relies heavily on simple, grinding beats, guitars, keyboard, bass and exploding drums, represents a reaction against intricate learned music.  Rather than meandering schlock, the Intelligence favor lean, angular songs straight to the point and combine raw music with catchy tunes.  Intensity and conviction sloshed with simplicity fosters inspiration for new musicians: just look at the Ramones.  Still skoffed at in high brow music circles as unintelligent comic book schlock, they empowered more people to pick up guitars or drums or yowling than anyone of the top off my head.  Without specific or indoctrinated technical ability, these bands create more engaging rhythms than Eric Clapton could ever hope to pencil out after 10 years studying in a conservatory.

Mark E. Smith

The Intelligence draws heavy influence from the ever present British band the Fall.  The Fall have been caterwauling across Britain and the world since the late 70s with the belligerent lyrics, vocal stylings and music of the enigmatic Mark E. Smith. The favorite band of legendary British DJ John Peel, the Fall unrelentlessly assault convention and style simply by persisting and making great records…

Similar in sound and attitude, the Intelligence releases records mainly on the amazing American independent label called In the Red Records. Directly refuting the call from young and old that all new music offers nothing to the cultural table, this band engages the audience with the combination of heavy pulsating sound and affecting hooks and vocal rhythms.

Specifically, repetition in the rock n roll of the Intelligence galvinizes their intense music into the brain of the listener relentlessly and with catchy hooks to boot.

For an Intelligence show review of an LA performance, check out the great site Victim of Time’s review by Brett Cross!

Does the guitar god still got it? Judging by recent YouTube clips, especially from the tour Clapton did with Derek Trucks at his side, I think so. Let’s just hope he skips “Wonderful Tonight,” that annoying cover of “I Shot the Sheriff” and, well, pretty much everything from the 1980s — except “Pretending.” Always like that one the best when it comes to E.C.’s pop stuff. Pedal steel guitar whiz Robert Randolph, one of the most exciting live acts around, opens.

Here’s the skinny:

WHO: ERIC CLAPTON WITH: ROBERT RANDOLPH AND THE FAMILY BAND

WHAT: By the time Eric Clapton began his solo career with the release of his self-titled debut album in mid-1970, he was long established as one of the world’s major rock stars due to his group affiliations…

WHEN: SATURDAY, MAY 3, 2008, 7:30PM

WHERE: FORD AMPHITHEATRE
AT THE FLORIDA STATE FAIRGROUNDS TAMPA, FL

ON SALE: SATURDAY, MARCH 1, 2008, 10AM
AT THE FORD AMPHITHEATRE BOX OFFICE, www.livenation.com, AND ALL TICKETMASTER OUTLETS INCLUDING FYE AND SPEC’S MUSIC. OR CHARGE BY PHONE:
TAMPA: (813) 287-8844
ST PETE: (727) 898-2100
CENTRAL FL: (407) 839-3900

PRICES: $125.00, $85.00, $70.00 & $49.50 – RESERVED SEATS
$29.50 – FESTIVAL LAWN
All dates, acts and ticket prices are subject to change without notice. All tickets are subject to applicable taxes, and service and handling charges.

WEBSITE ADDRESS: www.livenation.com.