Late Fall Downpour

 Song 746: This week the playlist recognizes November Rain by Guns N' Roses, written by Axl Rose, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I had moved from California to Brooklyn a few years before this snappy forecast came along and I hung out with the Fast Folk bunch a lot, but I also still listened to the radio and got moved by some of the more magnetic chart toppers. This piece actually became the longest song ever to reach the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 at the time in early 1992 and would hold that distinction for a number of years. Of course, nothing lasts forever and over time, hearts can change. Meanwhile, given the weather forecast in my area, I'm not looking forward to it, but it seems quite likely that at least once or twice this week I'll have the privilege of walkin' in the cold November rain.

Lacking Favorable Fortune

 Song 745: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's roaming ballad Out of Luck comes from another one of my Fast Folk colleagues Ilene Weiss, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. In the summer of 1987 I did a trip to NYC, intending to move there the following year, and during that visit, I got to see Ilene do a set at Folk City which quickly turned me into an IW fan. Not long after I moved to Brooklyn in September of 1988, I joined the Manhattan Fast Folk circle and soon had a copy of Ms. Weiss's Nine Songs Basically cassette, which included this moving excursion, and which got a lot of spins on my player. It didn't take long to understand how it might feel if I made a crazy deal but I also figured out that after my loss of innocence, I would want to say la la la la la la la a lot!

Harvest Season Foliage

 Song 744: This week the playlist features Autumn Leaves by Roger Williams, written by Joseph Kosma, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Anyone living in the northeast area of the U.S., or somewhere else with a similar climate, can understand the implications of this tune's title, and has probably seen plenty of examples of the term in the last few weeks, as I have. The YouTube video here comes from an appearance by Roger Williams on the Ed Sullivan Show on January 1, 1956. At some point in that era, my folks got our family's first TV, and very soon, we got to see the Ed Sullivan Show regularly, so it's possible that we might have witnessed that appearance. However, I'm not sure if we even had the tube when Mr. Williams appeared on the show on the first day of 1956. The descending piano riffs he features in the piece do sound quite familiar, so it is possible that I did get to see and hear that segment, though I also might have experienced a rerun of the sequence on a later date. My family at the time had an upright piano sitting next to the TV back then, and even before we got the tube, I had spent some time pounding my fingers on that keyboard, so it's possible that I might have figured out those descending riffs myself and given my own family a musical sense of autumn leaves.

Raising Hair

 Song 743: This week the playlist comes around to Spooky by Classics IV, written by James B. Cobb Jr., Buddy Buie, Mike Shapiro and Harry Middlebrooks Jr., and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. With a ghostly holiday set to arrive this week, it seems like the appropriate time to feature an eerie narrative that got us all shaking along back in February of 1968. While I don't think I ever added the 45 to my hidden collection, I did get to sing along with the haunting rhythm when I had the transistor radio in hand and the touching phantom came rocking across the airwaves. A few months earlier, I had indeed had my first date with an attractive young woman who was actually a year older than me, and I had enjoyed our time together in the cool of the evenin' on that night, but I would never have asked her if she would have liked to go with me and see a movie because the church we both attended (and where we met each other) did not approve of movies, and actually classified viewing a movie in a theater as being A SIN! Some of the older generation of that church also raised the idea that observing the 10/31 holiday might violate fundamentalist principles, but fortunately for me and my brothers, our folks DID let us play the Halloween trick or treat game.

Combustion Pipe Firebolt

 Song 742: This week the playlist comes around to Smokestack Lightning by Howlin' Wolf, who also wrote the song (credited under his name Chester Burnett), and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. The first version of this song I heard came along in 1972 when Chicago radios introduced me to the Mike Harrison renditon, which I applauded on this list as Song 158. Soon after that recording roped me in, I found out about the Yardbirds one (Song 691) and also became aware of this original one. During the 1970s, some Chicago radio stations featured rocking classics from the 1950s, so I may very well have heard it from them, though I don't recall the details now. I definitely did get to know this recording in that era, and when I got to hear it, it felt like it was shinin' just like gold. Of course, even in the previous decade, growing up in a house near a railroad line, I knew that whether or not the engineer might stop the train, even to let a poor boy ride, I would never see a smokestack, since those fuming pipes did not appear on the diesel electric locomotives that had taken over the train tracks by then.

Darkness Approaching

 Song 741: This week the playlist recognizes Here Comes the Night by Them, written by Bert Berns, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. While this informing uplift came along in the early spring of 1965, it seems more appropriate to applaud its observations during the early fall period when days have begun to get noticeably shorter. A year before these attentive notes arrived, the Fab Four had rocked my world, and after becoming a fan of that moving quartet, I soon got to know and appreciate a bunch of their fellow British Invaders, including Them. I could understand how seeing another guy holding a former lover the way I used to do could make me wonder what is wrong with me but experiencing such sadness still would never make me want to die.

Swaying Under Lunar Illumination

Song 740: This week the playlist applauds Dancing in the Moonlight by King Harvest, written by Sherman Kelly, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Around this time in the fall of 1972, as my wife and I searched for an apartment on the south end of Evanston, IL, we started hearing about how making certain moves after dark could and would alleviate particular types of anxiety. I did not at the time look forward to the coming Windy City area frigid season, but it did feel good to imagine that on a somewhat-cool night, dancin' in the moonlight could make someone feel warm and right. The fundamentalist family where I grew up had not approved of dancing, and had never allowed my 2 brothers and/or me to ever do it in any way, but soon after I had left that home a few years before this hit arrived, I got to appreciate how sharing moves with a special attractive partner could feel like a supernatural delight.