Metropolitan Illumination

 Song 834: This week the playlist focuses on Lights of Downtown by The Long Ryders, written by Stephen McCarthy, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this enlightening description started emerging from radio speakers at the end of the summer of 1985, I resided in a comfortable home a few blocks from the downtown area of the city of Berkeley, CA, which I shared with five of my singer/songwriter colleagues. A few years earlier, soon after POTUS Reagan ended the federal funding for mental health institutions in early 1981, the number of homeless people wandering around that downtown area greatly increased, and when Mr. Ron essentially said that homeless people choose to live on the street, I got a very different impression from the ones I saw and heard wandering through the Lights of Downtown Berkeley, though, at the time, I had no idea what caused their insanity! Now, however, I DO have a much clearer understanding of such mental problems, so I share that understanding in my book Expecting the Broken Brain to Do Mental Pushups, and you can get a copy from Amazon of the most recent edition of it by clicking on the title.

A Wave

 Song 833: This week the playlist rides on Ripple by Grateful Dead, written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. In the fall of 1970 I began my sophomore year at Northwestern University, and in the Evanston apartment that I shared with three fellow students, I had a friend who had become a big fan of the GD quintet and he liked introducing me to their new vision of a moving wave. Being a word-game player myself, during that era I gave the band the nickname The Dreadful Grape but I did like hearing their excursions. As I developed my own style, I hoped to have songs to fill the air, wanting my words to glow with the gold of sunshine. Regularly heading down a road somewhere between the dawn and the dark of night, I often found a path that was for my steps alone.

Excellent Movement This Evening

Song 832: This week the playlist frolics to Good Rockin' Tonight by Elvis Presley, written by Roy Brown, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I probably did not get to hear this anthem during the era when it rode the charts, since my folks had no interest in the sounds coming across the air waves. When the Fab Four rocked my world a decade later, i became more focused on the Top 40 and at a certain point, I found out that both John and Paul had been big fans of the Elvis guy, so when, as a young adult, I began acquiring a collection of 33s, I did add a few EP gems to the pile, including one that featured this hit. When I got that disc riding on the player, I heard the news and that would rock away all my blues.

Vagrant Feline Shades

 Song 831: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Stray Cat Blues by The Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Soon after the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, a bunch of their fellow British Invaders did tunes that climbed the charts, and when the summer of the following year arrived, their circling pebble colleagues grabbed my attention with their complaint about inability to acquire gratification. That anthem made them the top competitor to the Liverpool quartet, and three years later they continued to rock hard while J,P,G & R headed in a psychedelic direction. I might have heard this accusation on the radio during my final HS senior-year months during the winter and spring of 1969, but I definitely did get to hear it regularly in the fall of that year after I moved into a room of a dormitory at Northwestern University. The guy who resided in the room across the hall from me had a very large album collection and a high-quality record player, and the RS five ranked as his favorite band, so I got to hear plenty of their songs that I already knew, plus some other interesting ones that I didn't initially recognize. At the time, I was very far from home, but I did not miss my mother, since I could, and would, regularly get to visit her and the rest of the family in the coming years. I was no mad-brained bear and I certainly had at least one friend who was wilder than me!

Understanding Her Desires

 Song 830: This week the playlist showcases If She Knew What She Wants by The Bangles, written by Jules Shear, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. While I had, by my mid-twenties, gotten beyond many of the male supremacist ideas that I inherited growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, in the spring of 1986, a female quartet proved that their gender could rock just as strongly and compellingly as my side of the divide. Initially, I think it did surprise me, but I really liked hearing them making their lively points. Around seven years earlier, ! had gotten crazy for this girl in that neighborhood, and if she knew what she wanted back then, I would have tried giving it to her. I found out, though, that she had so many ideas traveling around in her head that she didn't need anything from mine.

Request Information

 Song 829: This week the playlist comes around to Ask Questions by Jack Hardy, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's rhythmic advice comes from another one of my Fast Folk colleagues. In fact, he was one of the initial founders and central figures of the group. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I would regularly join the gathering at his Manhattan apartment on Houston Street on Thursday in the early evening where we would each share our latest compositions. While I did get to hear some impressive Jack tunes, I don't think I heard him do this one back then. I do get his point, though, that history has eyes and history has ears, and that therefore, we regular citizens should climb up the hill to the capitol and dare to hold them accountable. One of the best ways to do that is to ask questions!

Beyond Someone

 Song 828: This week the playlist focuses on Over You by Gary Puckett & The Union Gap, written by Jerry Fuller, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title.  When the end of the summer of 1968 arrived and I began my senior HS year, I started hearing about a Gary guy's frustrated efforts to distance himself from an obsession over a former romantic partner. I soon learned his chorus lines and would often sing along when I heard the anthem rising from a nearby radio. Ironically, during that era I developed a close friendship with an attractive young woman in my age range who had become a nearby neighbor when her family moved in to a house they bought about a half mile from my parent's place. I wasn't losing any sleep over her at the time, but I also didn't know how to play the romantic game, so the precious moments we knew did not have the kind of reverberations that the ones from Gary and his former lover did have.