If there's one thing I hate, it's getting a really terrible song stuck in your head.

You know what I'm talking about. You're in a store or an elevator or a doctor's office and they play some awful generic 80's tune like Rick Astley's "Never Going To Let You Down." All it takes is a few bars and that evil little fucker gets jammed into your brain like an ice pick!

Then, two days later, through no fault of your own, you accidentally sing it out loud and your friends won't let you forget it for the rest of your natural life. You'll be laying there at your funeral, staring up at them with your glassy eyes and that weird funeral-home-make-up that makes everybody look like Tammy Fae Baker, and they'll all be standing around the coffin snickering, saying, "Remember that time he sang Rick Astley?"

Bastards.

Anyway, here's your goddamn song of the day:

Okay, today's essential song is a little number called WAGON WHEEL.

This is one of those songs, like Zepplin's "Hey Hey My My" or The Replacements' "If Only You Were Lonely," that seems like an obvious hit single, and yet somehow got rejected and left off the album.

It has an interesting history. It started out as an almost-finished Dylan demo, recorded for the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack, but never used. Years later, Ketch Secord of Old Crow Medicine Show heard it on a Japanese bootleg. He liked it, but had trouble understanding the lyrics, so he wrote his own verses to go with Dylan's chorus. 

I first heard it as a cover version by Tom Gabel of Against Me.

I highly recommend any of the three. Gabel's has that great Against-Me-acoustic-punk thing going on, Secord's is old-time-string-band all the way, and Dylan's is... well, Dylan.

Oh, and I almost forgot, there's also a pretty rockin' interpretation of Dylan's original by those manic hillbillies in Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.

One listen and I guarantee you'll be singing the chorus to this one for days, but hey, it beats the shit out of Rick Astley.