Enjoyable Possibility

 Song 781: This week the playlist applauds Wouldn't It Be Nice by The Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson, Tony Asher and Mike Love, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I did not initially pay much attention to the L.A. shoreline quintet when they first started riding the airwaves, but by the time this attractive question mark rose into the TOP 40 in the summer after my freshman HS year, it felt good to sing along with their suggestions about pleasurable experience. However, I highly doubt I knew the line about how the couple could Hold each other close the whole night through, since the erotic implications there would have made it harder for me to justify my admiration for the devil's music that my folks commonly criticized. Of course now, almost six decades later, it sounds ironic to suggest that it would be nice to be older, but at the end of the day, we can all still say goodnight to each other and pass on a sleep tight thought.

Endless Expression

 Song 780: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's melodic lift Always Have A Song to Sing comes from one of my New Brunswick buddies Spook Handy, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When I first moved from California to Brooklyn in September of 1988, I initially focused on performance spots in NYC, but fairly soon, I found out about folkie gatherings in other nearby places, and I started regularly going to open mics held in a New Brunswick night club that got managed by a Handy guy. I appreciated his tunes as much as he liked mine, and we kept in touch for years. However, after I waved good-bye to Highland Park and headed for upstate NY, I didn't maintain connections with some friends there. It did surprise me, and make me smile, when I got a phone call from Spook a few months ago. After that conversation, I realized that I hadn't yet included him in my playlist, so I decided to feature him at the next appropriate time. When I looked at his YouTube video collection, the title here caught my eye, even though I hadn't heard it before, and giving it a few listens, it really moved me, because all of us singer/songwriter types always, always, always have a song to sing.

Sunlight Traveler

 Song 779: This week the playlist swings to Day Tripper by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. In the era after the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, I mostly paid attention to them and their fellow British Invaders, but by the time the final month of the following year arrived, I had widened my focus to much of the rest of The Top 40, so this enlightening ride reminded me of the origin of my attraction to heavy rhythms. I had used the lessons the radio taught me to begin writing my own songs, and this particular outing gave me a shining example of how to expand a composition around a single riff. I had begun considering that possibility in the previous summer after hearing about some turning rocks having a lack of Satisfaction (Song 256) and then Paul & Co. gave me a much clearer understanding of how to do that. In fact, having the radio taking me on this ride, it did NOT take me so long to find out how to write my own riff excursions.

During the Warm Season

 Song 778: This week on the playlist you can hear In The Summertime by Mungo Jerry, written by Ray Dorset, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. At the end of my freshman year at Northwestern University, I returned to my parents' home in upstate NY for the 1970 summer vacation, and then got hired as a counselor for a northern PA music and arts camp. I spent the warmer months in a very attractive rural area, and I liked helping youngsters have a better understanding of the way musical notes ride their scales. Sometimes we counselors would listen to the radio during our breaks, and this heated seasonal description often gave us a clearer sense of our comfortable dwelling. In fact, it occasionally made us feel that we could stretch right up and touch the sky, and it also encouraged us to go out and see what we could find nearby in that woodland area.