Working Class as the Better Class

Song 231: The playlist song for this last week of 2014 and first week of 2015 is Better Class of Losers by Randy Travis, written by Randy Travis and Alan Jackson. I think country music has always been a working-class art form, and this piece draws a very clear picture of the conflict between a working-class guy and his middle-class uptown wife or girlfriend. Having grown up as one of those working-class guys myself, when this song showed up on New Country radio in the early '90s, I knew exactly what RT meant when he sang about people who looked down on those that drank 3-dollar wine, and I understood why he, and I, would rather hang out with a better class of losers who don't pretend to be something they're not. From a different angle, I have, for most of my time as a musician, paid more attention to songwriters and players than I have to singers, but on this song, and every other track I've heard by Mr. Travis, he handles the vocal so well that I can't help but notice what a talented singer he is, with a uniquely-expressive tone that he wraps around every line. On a side note, this track is my third sly reference to the first verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, which begins with a line that mentions Pam Tillis (Song 210) and Johnny Cash (Song 218), and then follows it with the line because Travis gets kind-of Randy sometimes, you know. You can find the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video here.

Hearing the Call From a Passing Car

Song 230: The playlist song for this Christmas week is I Hear the Call by The Unforgiven, written by John Henry Jones. You can find a link to a YouTube video of it, as usual, by visiting the home page of my website (daveelder.com). I wouldn't call that video a great one, but it does have some good scenes, and I could watch it again without feeling a strong sense of wasted time, unlike the way the vast majority of music videos make me feel, so I would call it one of the better ones I've seen. Going back a few years before there was a Clint Eastwood movie called The Unforgiven, there was an L.A. rock band by the same name, which is apparently more than coincidence, because, according to their official story, the band reached out to Eastwood, hoping to hire him as director for their music video. Clint didn't want to direct their video, but evidently he liked their name. I don't recall how I first heard the call of I Hear the Call, but within a year or so of its release, I had the LP called The Unforgiven spinning on my turntable quite a lot. A few years later, in compiling cassettes of favorite songs to accompany my musical travels, I added this song to an '80s favorites tape. Heading to Brooklyn a few short weeks ago in early November, I played that tape on the road, along with a few others, and the next day, walking in Park Slope on a balmy, sunny afternoon, a car went by playing a song that I recognized, and that I liked. I Hear the Call did not make the charts in the era of its release, and neither the LP The Unforgiven nor the band gained any wide recognition, but obviously, from my experience on the street in Park Slope, I can say that others besides myself must have heard the call and liked it. I often smile at the line Papa was loud but he thought of himself as the poetic type, I relish the guitar interplay, and I particularly enjoy the ending coda that takes the recording in a surprising and unique direction with some flute sounds that remind me of traditional Irish music -- hearing this call, I will gladly listen closely to it, and I will answer it.

That Was the Ticket!

Song 229: This week's playlist song is Ticket to Ride by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The Beatles had totally rocked my world from the moment of that February 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearance, and I listened to every song by them that I could get to hear, but since the rest of my family, other than my little brother, didn't like the Fab Four, and actually disapproved of their music, I could mostly only hear them, and other rock and rollers, by visiting friends who had the records, or occasionally sneaking some listening time on the transistor radio somewhere alone. Under those circumstances, I couldn't really follow the progress of their latest releases, so when a classmate brought this new record into our music class at the end of the school year in June of '65, I could feel the earth rocking once again. I had already loved their music, but it had never occurred to me that they could get even better, yet somehow they did. Over the course of my own development as a musician, I went through various rounds of understanding and appreciating the music of The Beatles. At a certain point, having learned to play Ticket to Ride, I marveled at the chording on the tune -- as Dylan said of the mop tops, "Their chords were just outrageous," and they were. In Evanston in the mid-'70s, a singer/songwriter friend once remarked to me about the double-time effect at the end of this track, which I hadn't fully appreciated until he pointed it out. A decade later, my Oakland friend Doug, as an ex-drummer who shared my affection for the music of The Beatles, spoke about the unique, sort of off-balance (as he put it) drum beat on this record that I had also somehow never focused on, and I found myself marveling again. Then, in the 2007-2009 era, working on recordings of my own music with my production partner David Seitz, I began to hear elements of record sound quality that I had missed before, and I recognized that some of the songs I like were produced (recorded and mixed) much better than others. In this process, I noticed the consistently high production quality of Beatles records, and when I mentioned this to David, he remarked that despite all the improvements in recording over the 5 intervening decades, in terms of sound production quality, some of those old Beatles sides still can't be beat, or even equalled, and Ticket to Ride still stands as one of the best-sounding rock and roll records ever produced. If you're not sure, put on some headphones and compare it to a dozen other tracks, from any era, and I bet you'll probably agree.

Not Blue Enough to Move to L.A.

Song 228: For this week, the playlist song is Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues by Danny O'keefe, who also wrote the piece. As the summer of 1972 started turning into fall, this song started climbing the charts, and on first hearing, I liked it a lot, then liked it more as I heard it more. Ironically, I picked up some criticism then from a member of the older generation I knew who, upon hearing this track on the radio, accused me of copping my entire style from the singer. While I liked the song and the tone, over the previous few years I had worked at developing an original artistic style for all facets of my music, and though I could admit to some common points with Danny O, it surprised me that this particular personal critic could believe I was imitating a guy who had only recently popped up on the radio, and who I knew nothing about before his big hit came across the airwaves. It didn't occur to me then, but looking back, I would guess that the critic had no idea that Danny O's record was new, and that I had no prior knowledge of him. Currently some commentary floating on the web quotes Mr. O as indicating that he wrote the song about an imaginary character, but back in the '70s I assumed that he was singing about himself, and I figured that when he said everyone was moving to L.A., he meant all of his musician friends, since L.A. had by then become the center of gravity for the American music business, and almost every other town, with a couple of exceptions, would waste your time if you wanted to pursue a career in modern music. Knowing this, I still spent 10 years living in Oakland and Berkeley, only visiting L.A. a few times, at least in part because living in the S.F. Bay Area can feel so good that even the possibility of a more rewarding career in southern CA, only a few hundred miles away, can't necessarily compel you to try moving to L.A.

The Joy of Sax

Song 227: 7 weeks since posting a song by a personal friend, this week's song is Carrie by my 1980s Berkeley housemate Bob Nichols, who also wrote the song, and sadly, since he died back in 2005, you probably won't catch any videos of Bob songs on YouTube any time soon, but you can hear this tune from a link on my home page, at DaveElder.com. In the early '80s Bob did a handful of 8-track recordings, and then in '83 his band Moo put together a full-length cassette with 6 of Bob's recordings on side 1 and 5 songs by his band mates on side 2. Bob gave copies to everyone in my band, and I remember our drummer Darrell Heithecker saying that he liked the cassette so well, he thought it was the best tape he'd ever heard of original songs by people he knew personally. I just about agreed with him, though I had a couple of other friend recordings at the time that I liked quite well, and I found that I listened to that Moo tape a lot. These days I still do, though now I often listen to the recordings in digital form. When Bob first played the Carrie mix for me, I told him I really liked the solo. He laughed and said I was just impressed with it because it was a sax (instead of the usual guitar break), and that was at least partly true, but having heard it as many times as I have over the last 3 decades, I think that sax player came up with some pretty good riffs to fit this tune. Though I'm not a sax player, I would guess that this particular solo didn't require any fancy finger or lip work, but the worth of a solo is measured in how good it sounds, and how well it fits the song, so on both counts, I would say this sax break easily makes the grade. The one other part of this track that really appeals to me is the interplay between Bob's lead vocal lines and the backup singers, especially on lines like (Bob) "(You've) got your babies in beakers" / (backup) "still creepin' along" / (Bob) "You can't hide from the bomb" / (backup) "So long, so long". When I first heard the mix, I didn't get a few of the lines, and I asked Bob about them, but I now think that anyone could probably figure out what he's singing, and what he really means, by listening to the track enough times, and sounding as good as this song does, whatever you don't get the first time, you'll more than likely piece together before too long.

Didn't See This One Coming

Song 226: This week's playlist song is I Can See For Miles by The Who, written by Pete Townshend. The YT video that I link to for the track is from the band's appearance on the Smothers Brothers TV show, and they perform both this song and My Generation, though of course, as was so often the case during that era, they're just miming to the records, but at any rate, along with the mime, at the end of the second song Pete Townshend also does a bit where he appears to smash a guitar and an amp. In the fall of 1967, along with the music scene buzz about Sgt. Pepper's, the Doors, the J-Plane and an amazing new guitarist named Jimi, people were talking about this new English band called The Who that ended their shows by destroying their equipment. That sounded dumb to me, and I decided that I probably wouldn't like their music, but then I Can See For Miles came across the airwaves, knocking down all my expectations -- the record didn't just sound good, it sounded unbelievably good, and to this day, it remains one of my favorite tracks, as I hear both Keith on the drums and Pete on the guitar setting off musical explosions and rocking so hard that it seems as if one of them might himself explode at any moment. Appropriately enough for a song about seeing for miles and miles, the band recorded the backing tracks in London, did vocals and other overdubs in New York, and had the recording mixed and mastered in L.A., covering a lot of miles in between, most likely by riding in an airplane, and from a window seat, anyone can see for miles and miles, though you still might need some kind of magic, or a crystal ball, to see through the haze of a lover's deception.

A Wheel Turning Around, But Not On a Truck

Song 225: Picking a track from the Grateful Dead catalog to follow last week's Six Days on the Road, Truckin' would seem like the obvious choice, but instead, for some reason, even while writing last week's post, I had in mind The Wheel by Jerry Garcia, written by Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia and Bill Kreutzmann, as the followup. I couldn't have guessed then that by the time this day rolled around, I would find myself in a situation very much like the chorus of the tune, caught in a storm where I could do nothing to escape or remedy the present circumstance, so that if I did manage to avoid the thunder, then the lightning would surely get me. While I can do nothing to affect the wheel spinning around me, my present problem is in reality much more mundane than thunder and lightning, as most life predicaments generally turn out, but this song perfectly expresses that sense of finding yourself caught up in a swirling moment beyond your control, whether a major or a minor one. I remember when the Garcia LP hit the stores, and Sugaree got a lot of radio play, which it deserved, plus I heard Deal a few times as well, so I figured that I'd probably like the album, but when I heard this track and Bird Song, I knew I had to have the record, though I still didn't quite expect that Garcia and Bob Weir's Ace would end up being my 2 favorite Grateful Dead records, as they have. As well as the lyrics, I really like Jerry's pedal steel work on this song, which in my imagination draws musical sketches of the vast western American desert, with soaring rock formations, ghost towns and big, rolling skies. On a side note, the visual for the linked YT video of this recording is simply a still of JG's right hand print, reminding us that he only had about a third of his middle finger, having lost the rest at the age of 4 in a woodcutting accident. As many people have said over the years, "Imagine if Jerry had had all of his fingers", because he was a pretty impressive player by just about any standard, but knowing his lack of a complete middle finger makes his playing all the more impressive. On a further side note, I will admit that the verse about Round, round, Robin run around did inspire me a bit in writing my song Round Robin, which I recently completed a lyric video for, and you can see that video here.

Truckin', I'm a Goin' Home

Song 224: This week's playlist track is Six Days on the Road by Dave Dudley, written by Earl Green and Carl Montgomery. In the summer before the Beatles came along and rocked my world, I was singing along with this track every time it popped up on the radio, along with a few other country and folk hits. I still well remember my parents being amused as they listened to their 11-year-old son sing, "I could have a lot of women but I'm not like some other guys." A few years earlier I had enjoyed every episode I could catch of a TV show about truck drivers called Cannonball, and growing up, my personal circle included a few men who drove trucks, including my father's brother, so I knew a few things about that world, such as the log book and the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) mentioned in the lyrics. Knowing some of the details of a truck driver's lifestyle did not in any way inspire me to want to be a trucker when I grew up, though, and speaking with a neighbor a couple of years ago as he commented on his recent experience of long hours on the road that ended up paying him less than minimum wage, the conversation solidly confirmed my impression that I hadn't missed anything by not going down that road. I did, however, get to see the highway from the passenger side of a trucker's cab a few times back in the 1970s, and I remain eternally grateful to every driver who stopped to pick me up when they saw me standing by the road with my thumb pointed in the direction they were headed. I am most grateful to the trucker who stopped for me and my female companion on a cold April evening in 1972 at a spot near D.C., later dropping us off by a motel around Harrisburg where we got a warm room for the night that only cost $10. So "Thank you" to all the truckers who gave me a ride, and if it happens that today adds up to Six Days on the Road (or more) for you, then I hope you're "gonna make it home tonight." On a side note, the woman at my side for that April 1972 hitch, and a bunch of other travels in that era, has a first name that begins with the letter K, as in my song Apology to K, which you can hear (in rough-cut video form) here. For one other side note, while the Dave Dudley version of this tune was the first, and to my ears is still the best, lots of other singers have covered it, and I also really like Livingston Taylor's take, from his autumn 1970 debut LP Livingston Taylor, for the way he rocks out on this old classic, in a way that fits in perfectly with a set of 10 of his own compositions. The opening track from that LP, Sit On Back, is Song 196 on this playlist, and if you follow the YouTube link on that listing, it plays the entire album, song by song, so you'll hear his version of this song as well -- it's the 3rd track, after Sit On Back and Doctor Man.

Is It a News Story or Not?

Song 223: This week's addition to the playlist is Just Another Movie by Timbuk 3, written by Pat MacDonald. The weekend before an election seems like a good time to post this song, even though it's not a presidential election, which won't happen for another 2 years. Jeff Larson and his buddy and former neighbor Craig Rigglesford were both big fans of the Greetings from Timbuk 3 LP, and both of them praised it so highly that I felt I had to get to know the record better. In doing so, this song quickly became a favorite, even though initially the social critique about TV replacing reality for the viewers sounded a bit exaggerated to me (it no longer does, and hasn't for a long time). In one section of the song the recording includes what sounds like a TV broadcast, with a moderator asking the question, "Who controls the media?" At the time I first heard the recording, in the mid-80s, the question sounded ridiculous to me, as I naively believed the U.S. media to be too diverse to fall under the control of any one person, or group of people. As a musician, I understood the basic hype factor of the music press, but it never occurred to me that the mainstream press essentially functioned in a similar way. The question from the song resonated in my mind, though, and then one morning in 1993, I began to understand the answer to it. At the time, I listened to a news station every day while going through my morning routine, and so every morning I heard a story about Iraq, as had been the case for years. Then, the day Bill Clinton took the oath of office, I heard no stories about Iraq whatsoever -- suddenly, Iraq was not news. I felt pretty good about that, and I sensed that as long as BC was president, there wouldn't be another Iraq war. During the next 8 years, Iraq would occasionally pop up in the news, but not like it had during the GHWB years. Of course, starting on inauguration day of 2001, Iraq was once again headline news every day, and I sensed that another Iraq war would happen within a year or 2. On 1/20/93, the question in this song started to take on a deeper meaning to me, and I thought about the track quite often as I began to better understand the workings of the U.S. media. Then on 1/20/01, I had a quick reminder about what I had learned 8 years earlier, and with the continued passage of time, the words on this recording make even more sense than they did almost 3 decades ago.

A Song Not Just For Teenagers

Song 222: This week's playlist song is Spanish Caravan by The Doors, who also wrote the song. The Doors being the band that in their prime could rock the reptile brain like no other RnR combo, they got a lot of criticism at the turn of the '70s for being too adolescent, with the implication that their music, and particularly their lyrics, did not deserve the kind of attention that a serious, reflective adult might give to, say, Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and other major rockers. In the early '70s, being a singer/songwriter type, I understood that critique, as ridiculous as it might seem today, but even so, some of their songs stood well above the criticism, and this song qualifies as one of those -- the words still defy any logical interpretation, as do most tracks by the Doors, and they sketch a hazy, dream-like vision that fits in quite well within the landscape of most of the other dark dreams drawn by Doors lyrics, but they don't sound silly, overblown or teeny. On the musical side, I always enjoy the acoustic guitar flourishes that open the recording with a hint of Spanish classical music, and the way the track later hits full-throttle RnR after the electric guitar jumps in on one of the same riffs. I thought this song sounded as good as it gets when I first heard it take off from a friend's turntable, and after all the decades in between, having heard it hundreds of times, it still sounds that good to me.

A Rose by a Very Particular Name

Song 221: Following last week's song by my friend Jeff Larson, this week's playlist track is one that he turned me on to, and which I quickly grew to love -- Rose of Cimarron by Poco, written by Rusty Young. I knew and liked a few Poco tunes, but I didn't know their music as well as Jeff did, and he played this title track to their 1976 album after telling me he thought I'd really like it. I think he might have played most, if not all, of the rest of the LP, but this opening track just amazed me. I heard at least enough of the rest of the album to know I wanted to add it to my collection, but I liked this particular song so much that I might have even bought the record just to have a copy of this Rose for my own. I always enjoy the way the song moves from the first sort-of-normal part into the extended instrumental coda that ends the piece, and I feel that the track perfectly expresses the feeling of traveling through the American desert. I admit, though, that until researching this song today, I didn't know that the Rose of Cimarron was actually a real person -- apparently she was a woman who, during a shootout at the Oklahoma Territory town of Ingles in 1893 between U.S. Deputy Marshals and the Bill Doolin Gang, gave the outlaws some help that ended up being the key to their escape from the lawmen. She did this because her lover was a member of the outlaw gang. Rusty Young read about the Rose while on tour in Oklahoma with Poco, and turned the story into a song, but you don't need to know that story to enjoy the track, though it can add some deeper meaning to the lyric to know about the real Rose of Cimarron.

Good Thing We Brought the Umbrellas

Song 220: Once again, the playlist gets to a point 7 songs from the last personal friend song post, so this week's tune is Rain Soaked Cloud by my friend Jeff Larson, who also wrote the song. The track is about as new as anything on the playlist, coming from Jeff's July 2014 CD release, so I can't claim to have any historical associations with it, but I have listened to it a lot over the past couple of months. If you haven't heard any of Close Circle yet, this song makes a fine introduction, and will give you a good idea of what the rest of the CD holds in store. Jeff has his America friends backing him up on this one too, by the way -- Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell both do backing vocals, plus Gerry also handles the Wurlitzer and he produced the track. Close Circle has gotten a bunch of very favorable reviews lately, and you can find links to them on Jeff's Facebook page. Jeff and I haven't seen much of each other since I moved back to the East Coast in the fall of '88, but recently we hooked up on a morning in Manhattan in early June to share a bite and talk things over, and yes, as it so happened, we carried our umbrellas because the walk from the hotel to the eatery took place under a Rain Soaked Cloud.

The Drummer Said I Needed to Hear This One

Song 219: Today I posted Feed the Tree by Belly, written by Tanya Donelly, as this week's playlist song. The home page of my website, daveelder.com, has a link to a YouTube video of the tune. While a lot of videos from this era, a couple of decades ago, don't move my meter very much, this one managed to hold my interest for the duration of the track, due to some very skillful editing, even though most of the imagery just shows the band appropriately performing the tune in a forest. Apparently it got plenty of attention when it appeared in early 1993, becoming a smash buzz bin MTV hit and garnering a nomination for Best Alternative Video VMA. I didn't watch MTV at the time, or ever, really, so I heard about this song from my drummer friend John Paul Wasicko, around the time when we began talking about maybe playing some music together, which we would start doing not long after (J.P. played drums on my Country Drivin' CD). I liked not only J.P.'s style of drumming, but also his taste in music, with this song, and the album Star, being a prime example. He told me he was really excited about this new song, along with the rest of the CD, and that I needed to hear it. After he put the CD on, playing this track, it didn't take long for me to feel the buzz, and I had a feeling that I'd probably like the rest of the record as much as he did. I also had a feeling at that moment that soon enough he and I would play some good music together, which I think we did.

What Did Happen to Johnny's Cash?

Song 218: This week marks Johnny Cash's first appearance on this playlist with Folsom Prison Blues, and it's also my second sly reference to the first verse of my song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, which opens with the line Now Pam Tillis the truth now, what happened to Johnny's Cash? (the Pam Tillis record Don't Tell Me What to Do being the first sly ref, as Song 210). Long before I understood the meaning of rock and roll, I knew or at least recognized a number of country songs, having heard them at the homes of relatives and family friends, and though my family didn't actively listen to any music other than church music, the parents didn't as a rule object to me hearing country tunes, contrary to how they would react as my interest in RnR developed. I don't remember the first time I heard this track, but I got to recognize it well before my teen years, and my father did mention that he had some concerns with his sons learning a song about a man who shot someone just to watch the person die, though Dad didn't turn off the radio or tell us not to listen to the tune. In a much later era, the song popped up on the local hit radio station in the summer before my final year of high school, as an updated and up-tempo live version (actually recorded At Folsom Prison) of a golden oldie that, despite its subject matter, seemed tame compared to the latest new stuff rocking the transistors. Then moving to a much later era again, in the mid-'80s, if I really did play bass in a country bar pick-up band, as the rumor goes, then it's quite possible that I could have been spotted singing lead on this song and guiding the rest of the crew through the changes -- if someone says they saw me do it, they might be telling the truth. On a side note, I feel I should mention that according to the Wickipedia page for this song, while JC did write the piece, apparently he borrowed very heavily from a 1953 track called Crescent City Blues by Gordon Jenkins, to such an extent that in the early 1970s he actually payed Mr. Jenkins a settlement of around $75,000. On a second side note, doing the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video in 1995, for the Johnny Cash line I wanted to have the Rolling Stone calendar picture of JC hanging nearby and clearly visible in the scene where Herb looks at me and shakes his head, but my friend (engineer and co-producer) David Seitz told me that I could get sued if I didn't get clearance from the photographer who took the shot. A quick phone call informed me that the photographer's permission would cost about $1,000, so you don't see JC's calendar photo in the video, or any other major pictures of those named in the song. I had thought of various ways to include images of country singers in the video, such as flashing some of their album covers in the scene where Keith throws a bunch in the garbage can (and I come back and take them out), but for the final cut, I made sure we didn't include any footage where those covers could be clearly seen, because I didn't feel like asking for trouble, having learned long ago what usually happens when you do. By the way, you can catch the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video here.

The Sweet Days of Summer Are Almost Gone

Song 217: With fall just 2 days away, today I posted the song Summer Breeze by Seals and Crofts (who also wrote the tune), since the sweet days of summer are almost gone. This track came across the radio like a cool breath of fresh air during the warmer months of 1972, and in that sweaty Chicago summer, I remember noticing a special summer breeze once or twice on a hot day, and connecting it with this song. I also liked that interesting and somewhat familiar sound in the middle section (sweet days of summer...) but didn't realize that it came from a child's toy piano. I did wonder, though, about the line When I come home from a hard day's work, as I was all caught up in the music business hype and didn't understand the realities of music business economics. I didn't consider musician work, whether recording, performing, doing interviews or whatever, as particularly hard work, but listening to the song, I also got the impression that the singer wasn't referring to musician work. After I heard a couple of other tracks from the Summer Breeze album, it sounded like a good investment, and the first time through the LP I felt pretty good about buying it. I picked up on a bit of a religious angle from some of the lyrics, but I sensed that it didn't come from any of the traditional Judeo/Christian branches. The early 1970s saw quite an expansion in the variety of religious messages attracting attention, and I soon learned that Jim Seals and Dash Crofts were followers of the Baha'i faith. I then discovered that the city where I lived (Evanston, IL) actually had its own Baha'i temple, and was one of the U.S. centers of the faith. I think this discovery happened when my childhood best buddy (the one who I wrote the song So Long Friend for) came to visit me, because during that stay, he made a pilgrimage up to the north end of town to see the temple, as a recent convert to the faith, though a few years later he drifted away from religion, into agnosticism. Unlike my friend, S & C doubled down on their faith, retiring from the music business to focus on religious work. I won't comment on the wisdom of either move, but simply say that listening to Summer Breeze still makes me feel fine. On a side note, you can click the title of my tune So Long Friend to find a lyric video on YouTube.

Long Distance Information

Song 216: This week's playlist track is Memphis by Johnny Rivers, written by Chuck Berry. After the Beatles rocked my world in the middle of the winter of '64, spring followed with a bunch of English bands doing more of this magical rock and roll stuff, along with the Fab 4, and things were still rocking in the summer, when a guy from our side of the pond got to the top ten with a rocker that sounded like it had been recorded live, as indeed it had. That summer, I knew nothing about Chuck Berry or the fact that this song predated the whole British Invasion, but I did know that it sounded like rock and roll, and stood up pretty well alongside all of those English tracks I was hearing on the radio. At some point during the warm weather my family visited the relatives in Ohio, as had been our routine, and I still remember the day my cousin Jim walked in, from whatever he'd been up to, and put this single on the turntable. He was a few years older than me, and I think he was headed towards his senior year, so we didn't do much together or have a whole lot in common, but at that moment, it was clear to me that he shared my love of rock and roll. At the time Jim still wore the '50s-style D.A. haircut, which to me seemed a bit dated, but his record collection was obviously up-to-date. Actually, what wasn't up-to-date at that time was the lyric idea about calling long distance information, which had been the reality a few years earlier when CB wrote and recorded the song, for by the time JR's record hit the charts, direct dial LD had already appeared, but even so, the words still somehow sounded perfectly contemporary. On a side note, if you read the Wickipedia article related to this record, you may discover, as I did, a story by someone who used to work for Elvis in which the story-teller asserts that The King actually recorded his version of this Chuck Berry classic and played the demo for Johnny Rivers before he'd gotten to the final mix, whereupon Rivers, who liked the approach so well, copped the arrangement, getting a record released and to the top of the charts before the Elvis mix was done, and apparently in the process ending whatever friendship the 2 singers might have had. The record business has a bottomless vault of old stories like this, and only the people who were there know which of those tales are true, so I personally have no idea about the validity of this yarn, and even if I could call long distance information, they wouldn't have that kind of information.

Coming Right Out and Saying It

Song 215: Following last week's playlist song about the love of rock and roll, this week's song has the same theme, but actually comes right out and says it -- I Love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, written by Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker. My first thought when I heard this record for the first time on the radio, though, was, "Where are the jukeboxes that only cost a dime for a song?" Of course, the answer was that they were long gone with the mid-'70s, but I soon learned that Joan's record was a cover of a mid-'70s track, which explained where the line "Put another dime in the jukebox, baby" came from. It didn't surprise me to learn that the song was a cover, because the line about the person dancing by the record machine looking to be about 17 sounded to me like a lyric coming more from a male angle than a female one, but that don't matter... 'cause it's all the same. What does matter is that I Love Rock and Roll and so does Joan Jett -- you can tell that she does by the way she sings this song.

For the Love of Rock

Song 214: This week's playlist song is Drift Away by Dobie Gray, written by Mentor Williams. If you've listened to any flavor of classic rock radio or '70s oldies stations you have no doubt heard this track, and maybe you've also heard it as background music at a store in your local mall. Well over 4 decades after it first came across the air waves, it still makes a lot of waves in public places, and whenever I hear it, it always makes me feel good. I had enjoyed the Beatles version of Chuck Berry's tune Rock and Roll Music, and when I first heard this song, it sounded to me like an inspired update on that earlier idea of just how magical rock and roll music can be. Of all the songs that celebrate the magic of rock and roll, I can think of no better one than this. When the record first came along in the early spring of 1973, it exploded right in the middle of a Beach Boys revival, and one of my friends would jokingly sing along with the chorus as "Gimme the Beach Boys and free my soul..." which was amusing and close enough to the real lyric to fool someone who didn't know, but really, it was the beat that freed our souls, whether that beat came from the Beatles, the Beach Boys, or, in this case, Dobie Gray. Incidentally, the songwriter on this tune is the brother of Paul Williams, who is a lot better known and who wrote a lot more hit songs, but as much as I respect Paul's talent, I'd rather Drift Away on Mentor's hit song than listen to An Old Fashioned Love Song somewhere Out in the Country on Rainy Days and Mondays, if I have the choice.

An Old Song About Something New

Song 213: Once again, the playlist rolls around to 7 weeks since the last time I posted a song by a personal friend, so this week's track is New Dirt Road by Richard Meyer, who also wrote the song. There is no YouTube video of the song, but you can hear an m4a of it by checking out the playlist page on my website (daveelder.com). Richard acted as editor for the Fast Folk Musical Magazine for many years, including a few when I put in some time there as well, and while we didn't always agree on our musical points of view, I always respected Richard for the time and effort he put into the FF operation, in the service of music and songwriters that he believed in and wanted to help promote. The FF gatherings and song swaps usually centered around a songwriter's newest piece, but at one song swap Richard said he wanted to do one of his older tunes, and he played this song. I told him I thought it was the best original I'd ever heard him do, and when it appeared on his 1992 release The Good Life, I thought the recording sounded even better than his live solo version. I liked this song so much that when he played a set at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival one July afternoon, I asked him to play this tune, and he did. I later designed and coded Richard's website, back in the era before CSS, when everything had to fit in an HTML table, and while I still think my stage/spotlight design looks good in the archive, I could never get it to center the way it should have. Sadly, Richard lived out his last few years in a nursing home, due to a disease that had plagued him to varying degrees for most of his time as an adult, and that disease ended his life in the spring of 2012.

A Reason to Look to the West

Song 212: This week's playlist song is California Nights by Lesley Gore, written by Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Liebling, to follow last week's vision of California with another one, this time a bit more laid back, picturing relaxed romantic evenings on a beach rather than a group of guys cruising a strip looking for girls. I had heard from Lesley Gore a few years earlier, not as the one crying at her own party, but as the one who got her boyfriend back and told us it was Judy's Turn to Cry. I thought that song was fun, but this one made me want to gather some kindling and start a campfire so she and I could walk hand in hand by the shore and count the stars on a warm California night. I liked the Beach Boys but hearing them didn't make me want to take up surfing, or even think much about California. At some point someone I knew moved to CA, though, and then not long after this song came along, I also started to hear about people wearing flowers in their hair. By then, I'd also heard about the California Girls and what it feels like to be California Dreamin' and I started thinking that maybe, as another song from the era said, California's the place you ought to be. It would take another decade or so, but in the summer of 1978 I walked over to a road side and pointed my thumb westward, hoping that maybe I could find my own place close to that Pacific shore, and someone to share those California Nights with me.

Understanding What the Song Means, or Not

Song 211: This week the song added to the playlist is I Get Around by The Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Somehow I managed to get well past the 200 mark on the list without including a Beach Boys song, and I don't have a good excuse for that, but I hope Brian Wilson will forgive me. Before the Beatles came along in February of '64, I wasn't all that focused on music and the radio, although the summer before the British Invasion, I had developed a strong liking for a couple of folk hits, which have already appeared on the list, and a couple of country songs as well. That same summer, Surf City also got my attention, mainly because my good friend Dave from across the road, who was my partner in boyhood mischief, was such a big fan of the tune, and would sometimes sing it. At that point I probably didn't know the Beach Boys from Jan and Dean (who recorded the hit single version of Surf City), but by the following summer, I was paying a lot more attention to the radio, whenever I could, and in addition to all those cool songs by the Beatles and the other English bands, I heard this tune a lot as well, and really liked it. I tried to sing along with the record when it came on the radio, but the chorus was actually about all I knew -- it would take me a while to be able to get the verse lyrics on records from the radio. Listening to this song would give you no clue that during the making of the record Brian Wilson fired his father Murry, who had managed the Beach Boys for their first few years. If you've read any of the early history of the group, you probably know something about the conflicts between Brian and his father, and some of the ways that Murry belittled his son. I heard a story from my late-'70s Oakland housemate Doug who told me that Murry actually told Brian the lyrics to I Get Around should be rewritten because the words made no sense to him, and apparently he even mocked Brian while quoting some of the lines, and he asked Brian what certain phrases in the song meant. If you've read much about the conflict between the father and son, you know that Murry did much worse things to Brian, but if this story is true, I can understand why Brian decided around that time to fire his father, and it was probably a wise decision. Personally, I always like the lines on this song, and no one ever had to explain to me what they meant, but I guess Murry was just showing his age when it came to trying to understand the jargon of the younger generation.

Daughter With a Familiar Last Name

Song 210: This week's playlist song is Don't Tell Me What to Do by Pam Tillis, written by Harlan Howard and Max D. Barnes. At the turn of the 1990s, country music radio was buzzing about New Country, and with good reason, it seemed to me, as I started hearing a lot of new artists and clever, catchy songs that I liked, from a revitalized country music scene. In the process, I soon learned that Mel Tillis had a daughter, and from the sound of this track, I could tell that Mel's daughter could sing pretty well. This song alone was almost reason enough to buy the Pam Tillis CD Put Yourself in My Place, but I also heard a couple of other good tracks from the record so that by the time I picked it up, I knew I'd be spinning it quite a bit. If you know about country music songwriters, then you probably recognize the name Harlan Howard on this one, as the guy who also wrote a number of classic country tunes, including I Fall to Pieces, Heartaches By the Number and Busted. Not long after this record came along, I wrote a song called As Long as Merle is Still Haggard that makes puns like the title one from a whole bunch of country singers' names, and the one that I open the song with is... Pam Tillis. I'm sure that this record is the main reason why I thought of Pam, though it wasn't the only reason. On a side note, you can check out a YT video of my song by clicking on the title.

Back Where It All Started

Song 209: This week's playlist addition is Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley, written by Mae Boren Axton and Thomas Durden. How did I get well past the 200 mark on the playlist without including an Elvis track? Well, I'll admit that I didn't listen to Elvis at all as a kid. I caught Hound Dog a time or 2, and strangely enough, I thought Elvis sounded like a hick, in a way that the country singers I heard at the time didn't. Later, in my final year in HS, I got a copy of the official Beatles biography, and I discovered, to my surprise, how much Elvis had influenced them. I thought the Beatles had invented RnR, but from then on, I started to read and learn more about the '50s rockers, and later the blues crowd from the same era, and earlier. At the time, RnR radio played current records, with an occasional oldie from maybe 6 months or a year previous, so in the early '70s I read a lot about the early days of RnR but heard very little of the music. That included reading about this really rocking tune that had launched Elvis's string of hits back in 1956, but then suddenly, one day in the spring of 1974, living in Atlanta, I heard this very song on my car radio. At that magic moment, I understood Elvis as the RnR guy he had started out to be, and over the next few years, I heard a bunch of other records that filled in more of that part of his legacy, including Little Sister, My Baby Left Me, Jailhouse Rock, All Shook Up and That's All Right, all of them cool rocking tunes. This song, though, would be the most important one of the bunch, as the first one to take him to the top of the charts. Interestingly enough, one of the two writers on this tune, Mae Boren Axton, was the mother of Hoyt Axton, who wrote Greenback Dollar (Song 201) and The Pusher (Song 202).

Wading Through Layers of Dreams

Song 208: This week's playlist track is These Dreams by Heart, written by Martin Page and Bernie Taupin, and it follows last week's song about hard-edged, oppressive political realities of war, injustice, assassination and class struggle, by moving into the soft-edged romantic unreality of dreams. Songs often create their own reality by virtue of their existence, and this one does so in a truly inspired and poetic way. Heart came out of the gate with a very strong first album (Dreamboat Annie) and had some excellent tunes on the follow-ups, but by the turn of the '80s the band seemed to hit a lull, despite having a couple of stand-out tracks. Then, a decade after their first LP, they came back strong on their 10th album (Heart), which contains this song as well as a few others that shouldn't be missed. One of the songwriters on this track, Bernie Taupin, had made his career in the early 1970s writing words that Elton John set to music and turned into hits, and I liked a lot of his early work, but by the mid-'70s his lyrics came across as more pop than poetry, which is not necessarily a bad thing for a songwriter, but it was also inspiring to note that a decade later, he could pen a song this richly evocative, with lines that suggested layers of meaning. Maybe I like this song as much as I do, though, because I've also had some of These Dreams myself.

Saying a Lot in Under Four Minutes

Song 207: This week's playlist song is Open Your Eyes by The Lords of the New Church, written by Stiv Bators and T. D. James. The YouTube video that I found for this track is a lyric video, and a wonderful thing that is, especially for someone like myself who had to wonder for years at what the opening words of this song are. I got the part about training the kids for war and something going on in high fashion stores, but I was missing a few important words. Sometimes when you can only get part of a lyric, maybe you guess at the rest of it, and when you later find out what the right words are, maybe you're amused, maybe you're impressed, or maybe you're disappointed, a little or more than a little. When I finally got to learn the opening lines on this track, I was truly impressed to find out that they're every bit as hard-hitting as the other lines in the song that I already knew. During that late-'70s/early-'80s punk era, I initially liked the basic idea of a rougher and harder-edged sound, but I didn't hear that many punk records that interested me because most of the songs didn't seem to have much to say. However, once in a while, a song would come along that spoke volumes in less than 4 minutes, and this track is probably the best example I could find of one of those. When I mentioned this record to a friend who was himself a big fan of the whole punk scene, he chuckled as he told me The Lords of the New Church were really a Who's Who of English punk, but I told him that I didn't care about their musical exploits -- what mattered to me then, and still does now, is that they created a record that packs a punch like very few before or since, particularly centered around a very strong and straightforward lyrical message, but also wrapped in a hard-edged musical sound to match those lyrics. If you're looking for a song with something to say, this is one that says a lot in a very short, tight space of time.

A Cool Song About Winter

Song 206: This week's playlist song is The Winter Song by Jane Byaela, who also wrote the tune. Once again, seven weeks have passed since I last posted a friend's song to this list, so this week's track is also by someone I've known personally. I didn't know Jane as well as some of my other singer/songwriter friends, but she was one of a group that graced the stage of the Sun Mountain Cafe on 4th St. in Manhattan on Tuesday nights, for a series of shows that I helped to plan and produce, back at the turn of the 1990s. Now in the middle of summer, it seemed like a good time to post a song about winter, just to remind everyone of what we're missing here at the moment. This one comes from Jane's 1994 Burning Silver album, and I recommend the entire album, especially for those who like the kind of dark territory that Leonard Cohen covers so well -- Jane's songs will also take you through some similar dark spaces, in a very compelling way, both with her lyrics and her music, and this track is a fine example of what the ride will sound like.

Learning a Song Before Hearing the Record

Song 205: This week's playlist song is Why Baby Why by Charley Pride, written by Darrell Edwards and George Jones. If there were any truth to the rumor that I played bass in a country bar pickup band in the San Francisco Bay area back in the mid-'80s, then this song would have been one of the numbers we covered. I could say I got to know this song from hearing Charley's version of it, which is a fine update on an old George Jones classic, but it's quite possible that I actually learned it one night on stage running through it live in front of an audience, after the band leader called the tune and told us what key he wanted for it. If I was there that night, then I learned it the way I learned a lot of country songs I didn't know, which was by just watching the guitar player's hands to figure out the chords he was playing. So if it happened that way, I would have then gone to a record store in the next day or so to get a copy of Charley's record, and very quickly -- in less than a minute's time -- would have learned to really like a recording that I hadn't even known existed until that gig shortly before. This song also squares the circle for the 4 country singers mentioned in the chorus of my song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard -- I posted a Merle track for Song 191 (Mama Tried), a Waylon Jennings tune for Song 190 (Are You Sure Hank Done it This Way?) and a Willie Nelson cut for Song 197 (Crazy), so that does it for "As long as Merle is still Haggard, as long as Charley still has his Pride, as long as Willie is still willin' and Waylon keeps on wailin'" but of course, now I'll have to start adding in the singers mentioned in the verses. If you know the song, then you'll know that further along on this list, you might very well see Pam Tillis, Johnny Cash and Randy Travis, among others. If you’d like to hear As Long as Merle is Still Haggard just click on the title and you’ll get to see the song video on YouTube.

Top of the List for Being Over the Top

Song 204: Today's addition to the playlist is Precious by The Pretenders, written by Chrissie Hynde. I first heard The Pretenders while riding in a car with my friend Eddie Spitzer, on our way going to or coming from one of our flea market selling adventures. Eddie knew the song Brass in Pocket well enough to sing along, and he was amused that I hadn't heard the track before. Over the next few months, I heard a few other cuts from that first album, and I liked them all, particularly for the over the top quality of Chrissie Hynde's persona that came through in the lyrics. Then I heard this song, and it instantly became my favorite Pretenders track, also instantly topping my list for over the top lyrics. Three and a half decades later, it's still at the top of that list, with those lines about shittin' bricks and not me, baby, I'm too precious, fuck off! Add that last line to the previous 2, which are Now Howard the Duck and Mr. Stress both stayed / trapped in a world that they never made, and you have the perfect distillation of the rock-and-roll attitude -- I doubt I could find a better one among the thousands of LPs, CDs and cassettes in my collection.

Not Part of the Plan

Song 203: This weeks addition to the playlist is As the Raven Flies by Dan Fogelberg, who also wrote the song. Since Dan originally hailed from Illinois, his first LP, Home Free, which appeared in 1972, got some local play in the Chicago area, and since I lived there at the time, I heard a few of those tracks, but I didn't get that excited about them. Two years later, not long after his followup album Souvenirs arrived, I started hearing a song called Part of the Plan a lot, but that one also didn't move my meter much. However, when I heard this song on the radio not long after PotP arrived, it got my attention before it even got to the second verse, and I decided I'd have to find out more about Mr. DF and his new record. While I never warmed up to the hit song that opens the LP, I heard plenty of other good songs on the record, though this track remains my personal favorite, but I also included 2 or 3 other tunes from the album on the listening cassettes that I compiled back in the '80s and early '90s. The Souvenirs LP was typical of many 1970s-era albums, with its opening commercial AM hit track that got so much radio overplay the listeners would come to know every musical moment of the song, and wish to forget but be unable to do so. At friendly get-togethers, the person handling the turntable would often start such a record from the second track, omitting that all-too-familiar hit, and the conversation would momentarily center around how everyone couldn't stand to hear that hit song even one more time, but that the album had a bunch of other good songs which the radio seldom if ever played. This song was one of those other songs, though it did get some air time, but not nearly as much as I would have liked.

Couldn't Resist the Devil's Music

Song 202: This week's playlist song is The Pusher by Steppenwolf, written by Hoyt Axton. When figuring out what to post for last week, I originally thought of this week's song and last week's song around the same time, and decided to do them back to back. The two seemed possibly related in some way, and both do have the word damn in the chorus, but I didn't realize until I started writing last week's post that Hoyt Axton, the songwriter who wrote The Pusher, also wrote Greenback Dollar, which explains a lot of the similarities between them, despite the two very different eras in which they emerged. Growing up in a Christian fundamentalist home, I didn't hear the word damn from my parents, and they sure didn't want to hear that word come out of my mouth. This song, however, set up an even greater tension in my teenage soul. From the moment I first heard it, I couldn't deny its power over me -- I loved to hear it, and wanted to hear it again and again, but I also felt an intense sense of guilt for my enjoyment of it. My parents probably never heard it, for if they had, they surely would have made this song, with the words God damn repeated many times in the chorus, their Exhibit A as absolute proof that rock and roll was the devil's music. At the time, I would have had no defense, and a part of me feared the thought that my parents might actually be correct, but I loved RnR so much, not only did I have to hear it as often as I could, but I wanted to spend my spare moments writing, singing and playing it myself. Lucky for me, within a couple of years, no longer living under my parents' roof, I came to conclude that RnR was not at the center of some great moral conflict between warring eternal spirits, and I could freely enjoy it at my pleasure, to the extent that I could afford to buy the records I wanted. Not too long after that, President Nixon declared a new war on drugs, and I remember him saying the war was designed to target the pusher and not the user. Four decades and millions of arrests later, his lie couldn't be any clearer, especially to the millions who have had their lives ruined by his ill-conceived war. Nixon being the political animal that he was, no doubt he queried his advisors beforehand about the best way to sell his bogus war to the young people, and I wonder if one of those advisors hit upon the pusher angle because of knowing about this song. Maybe someday someone will find a reference to it while digging through those old Nixon tapes. I would bet there are at least a few smoking guns and steaming heaps in those tapes, if you know where to look and you understand the context. Bravo to the folks at nixontapes.org for all their work in digitizing the tapes and making them available to the public, and good luck to the diggers.

A Missing Word in the Chorus, or Not

Song 201: Today's playlist song is Greenback Dollar by The Kingston Trio, written by Hoyt Axton. I mostly missed the folk boom of the late '50s and early '60s, with a couple of exceptions, mainly Green, Green (song 189) and the Peter Paul and Mary version of If I Had a Hammer (song 184), both of which hit the airwaves in the summer of 1963. I had heard of the Kingston Trio but didn't know much about them, and when I heard the song Tom Dooley in a grade school class, and we then sang the song, I wasn't that thrilled with it. Living in Berkeley in the early 1980s, though, I bought one or two old Kingston Trio LPs at a garage sale, and after listening to them, I started picking up more of them. The more I listened to the old KT records, the more I liked them, and the more I would get the next time around. A couple of years into this process, I mentioned to my friend Jeff Larson something about a Kingston Trio song, and that sparked a conversation where I learned that he had also started a major KT album collection. From then on, we would often share Trio songs during our musical get-togethers, and we also went to a KT show at the Concord Pavilion some time during that era. Today, hearing the YT video of this song at the link above, I noticed that it has the word damn in the chorus, unlike the LP version that I have, which is the only one I've listened to in the last 3 decades. On my album version, you hear the singers sing I don't give a ---- about a greenback dollar with a pause between a and about, which indicates that they're obviously leaving a word out. Hearing the YT video, it's clear that for the record I have, the engineer just dropped the word damn out of the vocal mix, though he also must have created a mix with the word left in. I think I was vaguely aware of the controversy about the word damn on this record at the time of its release, but only vaguely so. Growing up, my family would not have allowed me to listen to a record with the word damn in the lyrics of a song, so I well understand the wisdom of having two different mixes of the track, one with the word and one without. As an adult, though, I don't give a ---- about a singer using the word damn.

Bet You Can't Listen to This One Just Once

Song 200: Today's playlist addition is Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana, written by Kurt Cobain. When I realized that I almost got to number 200 on the list without a Nirvana song, I knew what song number 200 would have to be. I liked Nirvana, though I wasn't quite as crazy about them as some of my friends, but when I heard this song, I knew I had to get the new CD as soon as possible. Certain songs come along that grab you in such a way that you just have to hear them again and again, and this song wrapped itself around my ears in that manner. I really liked the opening verse riff, and apparently so did Courtney Love, according to the official stories, because when she first heard it she asked Kurt if she could use it. Some of the lyrics on this song I really like, such as the baby's breath line and the priceless sarcasm of the forever in debt to your priceless advice chorus, while others really don't do much for me, like the eat your cancer line, but I don't let that interfere with my enjoyment of the track. The YouTube video here is the official award-winning music video that accompanied the song's release, and I feel like it has a few good moments, mostly when the guys are mugging for the camera, but I also feel that the song far outshines the video, and I don't care much for the scenes with the old man on the cross or the woman wearing the suit with human organs painted on it. Kurt sure did have very blue eyes, though, didn't he!

Trouble in a Small Town

Song 199: Today's addition to the playlist, regardless of whether YouTube lets me add it or not, is The Come Heres and the Been Heres by Chuck Brodsky, who also wrote the song. It's been 7 weeks since the last song by a personal friend on this list, so today's song is by my friend Chuck Brodsky. Chuck and I were both members of a Berkeley songwriter circle in the 1980s, and Chuck even did a background vocal for a recording I started then, which I still haven't finished (I have plenty of those). I learned this song from listening to Chuck's recent videos, and I didn't hear it back in the Berkeley days, so I'm guessing that he wrote it after that era, though I could be wrong. In this song he paints a pretty clear picture of the conflicts that can arise between long-time residents and newcomers in some little country towns. His title and his subject bear a close resemblance to a 1993 magazine article, so perhaps that's where Chuck found his inspiration, although it could be the other way around, depending on which came first, the song or the article, and again, I don't know for sure, but also, it really doesn't matter -- most Dylan fans know the tale of how Bob came to write a very striking song after reading a New York Times story. Anyway, no matter when Chuck wrote this song, it definitely resonates in the present day -- the older residents in the little town don't like the way the newcomers take over the school board, thereby ending the morning school prayer and leading teachers to start covering evolution and sex ed. I might have read a similar headline lately, and probably you have too.

Pure Magic

Song 198: Today's addition to the playlist is Crimson and Clover by Tommy James and the Shondells, written by Tommy James and Peter Lucia, Jr., though I'm currently having issues with adding more videos to that YouTube playlist. To my ears, this song is pure magic, and always was, from the moment I first heard it playing on local station WENE back in the winter of 1969. The record dominated the AM radio dial for 2 to 3 months, hanging on well into the spring, and no one I knew ever complained that they'd heard it too much. In fact, I can remember still hearing it on the radio in early June, and still feeling like I couldn't get enough of it. Though probably no one would have called TJ a particularly poetic lyric writer from his previous work, the words on this song have a very poetic feel, while at the same time they defy an easy and exact interpretation -- somehow when I hear this record, I feel like I know just what the singer means, but I also couldn't explain it. One side note worth mentioning is that this record was one of the first songs done on 16-track, which had become the industry standard by the time I booked my first multi-track recording session a few years later.

It Would Be Crazy to Leave This Song Out

Song 197: Today I posted Crazy by Willie Nelson, on the playlist -- a song that Willie also wrote. Not too long ago, I realized that I had gotten well into my second 100 songs on this list without including a single one by Waylon, Willie, Merle Haggard or Charlie Pride, and since I mention them all in the chorus of my song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, and I listen to their music quite a bit, I decided to start adding some of their songs to the list, starting with Waylon's Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? (Song 190) and Merle's Mama Tried (Song 191). This song marks Willie's first appearance on the list, and as it gets longer, more of his songs will certainly show up here. A couple of years before the Beatles turned my whole world around, I was hearing mostly folk and country during the times when my parents would play the radio in the car, which they didn't often do. The Ohio relatives we visited and stayed with in the summer during those years had a nice stereo and a good collection of country LPs, and during our visits they would let me play the records I liked. One record I played quite a bit was a double album of then-current country classics, and it included the Patsy Cline version of Crazy, so I got to hear it quite a bit then, and I liked it a lot. I didn't know anything about the story behind it, of course, and how Patsy couldn't even do the vocal on the first session, when she was still recovering from a car accident, and that she had to come back a week later to finish the vocal track, which she did in one take. I also didn't know that apparently Patsy didn't like the song a whole lot when she first heard it, that her producer talked her into doing the recording, and that she was surprised and amazed at how well the record did, all of which you wouldn't know from listening to the single. On another level of Crazy, one of the crazier things I did for a few years in the 1980s while living in Berkeley, CA, involved playing bass for a country bar pick-up band, and I can confirm that the audience always loved to hear this song. In places where the club had a juke box, very often the Patsy Cline single of Crazy would get played during breaks, so it didn't surprise me to learn that, according to the Amusement and Music Operators Association, as reported on Songfacts.com, PC's Crazy tops the official list of most-played juke box records -- after all, they'd be Crazy to pick a different song. On a side note, you can find the song video for As Long as Merle is Still Haggard by clicking on the title.

A Brother You Might Not Have Heard

Song 196: Today's song is Sit on Back by Livingston Taylor, who also wrote the tune, but I didn't add it to the YouTube playlist because the YT video link, which you can find at DaveElder.com, plays a video that starts with this song but includes all the tracks from LT's first 3 albums. I had listened to James Taylor's album Sweet Baby James a lot over the summer of 1970, so when I heard later in the fall that he had a brother with a new album out as well, I did something I almost never did, and almost never could afford to do -- I bought Livingston Taylor's debut LP without first hearing even one track from it. When I put the record on the turntable, this song, being the opening cut, was the first one I heard, and from the very start I felt pretty good about my investment -- I knew the album would be a good one. I felt even better as it went along, and I found that I liked every song on the LP. I could hear some similarities with his brother, both in the singing and the songwriting, but Livingston was clearly charting his own direction. I also liked the fact that Liv would mix up the moods and the tempos more than James, and that he had more upbeat songs on his record than James had on his. As much as I liked the SBJ album, I also felt that it leaned very heavily to the low key end, and I liked the fact that Liv's first album didn't. Thanks to the internet, recently I found the lyrics to this song, which I couldn't do in 1970, and finally knowing the words, I do wish he'd worked a bit harder on some of them, for his lines on this one don't seem to have the evocative quality of his brother's songs from the same era. Still, he makes his lyrical points well enough, and clearly enough, so my advice is to Sit on Back and enjoy. If you let the Capricorn playlist go on long enough, you'll hear the whole LP, plus a couple of others, even if all you'll see will be the album covers, and I guarantee that if you like the singer/songwriter genre and you haven't heard the Livingston Taylor LP (with him on the cover looking down from a box car door), it will be worth your time.

Possibly the Most Depressing Song Ever

Song: 195: Today I posted Dress Rehearsal Rag by Leonard Cohen on the playlist. My first time through this one, listening to the Judy Collins version, I felt it was probably the most depressing song I had ever heard, until it got close to the end, when the stand-in stunt man makes his appearance, which relieved the oppressive darkness of the previous five minutes. I might not have cared to hear it again, if all the song had to offer was that hopelessness, but I also felt something very compelling in those dark phrases that drew me back again and again. Hearing the songwriter's version added another layer to the darkness, as Cohen makes himself the subject of it, rather than the you of the J.C. cover. I wouldn't recommend listening to this song if you're at a point where you need something uplifting, but if you find yourself in a place where your gravity fails and negativity won't pull you through, then maybe this song can bring you back down to earth. You have to love the cover of the album that contains this track, Songs of Love and Hate, for the wording on the back: They locked up a man / Who wanted to rule the world / The fools / They locked up the wrong man. On the front, L.C. has a smile that conveys the idea that quite possibly he is a man who wants to rule the world, and on this song, he finds himself falling far short of that goal, not even getting out of bed until some time in the afternoon.

Can't Help Being the Winner

Song 194: Today I posted Born to Run by Emmylou Harris on the playlist. Not to be confused with the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name, this song, which was written by Paul Kennerley, came out in late 1981 shortly after I moved into a house in Berkeley where I lived for most of that decade, and though it did well on the country charts, I wasn't paying much attention to any of the charts at the time, so I didn't know about it. A couple of years later, though, in adding to my Emmylou LP collection, when I got to Cimarron, I knew some of the songs but not her versions of them, so the first spin on the turntable was my first time hearing of all the recordings on that album. On first listening, I liked this song the best of the bunch, and having heard the LP many times over the last 3 decades, I'd still say so. The song is a brag, and a very appealing one at that, saying, in effect, I can't help it, I was born to be the best, to run the race and win, to get ahead of everyone else -- it's just in my DNA to be better and to do better than others. It's a common idea among teenagers and those in their twenties, and one that often fuels the creative drive of younger people, though it's not so appealing in real life if someone hangs onto it for too long. On a side note, the man who wrote this song had connected with Emmylou on an earlier project, and as it turns out, he married her a few years after this record, but then the marriage dissolved in the early 1990s.

The Opening Act Sounded Really Good

Song 193: Today I posted Wait 'Til We Get Home by Lone Justice (written by Marvin Etzioni, Ryan Hedgecock and Maria McKee) to the playlist. When I lived in Berkeley in the 1980s, my housemate Bob worked as a stage hand at the Greek Theatre there, and he got me a few free tickets to shows, including one by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on July 26th, 1985 (thank you Songkick for supplying the date info), with Lone Justice as the opening act. I might have heard a bit about LJ before the gig, but I didn't really know their music at all, and as I walked over to my seat a few minutes after the start of the show, the band was already well into this song. By the time I sat down, I already knew that I really liked the tune they were performing, and I could also tell that the lead singer (Maria McKee) had a really strong and impressive voice. Of course I enjoyed the headline set that followed, but well before the TP crew got to the stage, I had decided that I would have to add a Lone Justice LP to my collection as soon as reasonable, because of how much I enjoyed the opening set. That Lone Justice album has a bunch of really good songs, and it has spent a lot of time on my turntable. When I got it I didn't know anything about the Petty connections with LJ, and I'm not sure I even took much notice of their names among the songwriting credits on the LJ record, but a couple of years later I had the good fortune of seeing Lone Justice as an opening act for another band I liked a lot, when U2 took the stage at the Cow Palace across the bay on April 25th of 1987 (once again, thank you Songkick for the date). LJ performed a good set that night, as did U2, but with the dismal acoustics of the Cow Palace weighed against the fine acoustics of the Greek Theatre, not surprisingly, I have a much clearer memory of the Berkeley show, and I can tell you they sounded very good on that day in July of 1985.

A New Song Flying Around the Bay Area

Song 192: Today I posted the song Wings by Wendy Beckerman, who also wrote the song, on the playlist. Every seventh song on the list is one by a friend, and since it was time for another friend's song, today's song is by my friend Wendy Beckerman. She was one of the regulars of the Fast Folk songwriter's group that used to meet once a week in Jack Hardy's Greenwich Village apartment back around the turn of the '90s, at a time when I was also making that Thursday night scene when I could, and I liked a lot of what I heard from her during that era. I also got to play the hero for her one afternoon when she moved into a new apartment. A group had assembled to help her with the move, and I was down on the street level with a couple of other guys, getting stuff off of the truck, when word came down that the couch a couple of other guys had carried all the way up to the 6th floor wouldn't make it around the bend at the apartment entrance. I walked up to check out the situation, since the building didn't have an elevator, and I suggested that if they just stood the couch up on one end, it would fit through the door and down the hall, which it did. The other guys liked not having to carry the couch back down six flights, but they were also surprised that I had reached such a simple solution so quickly. On reflection, it didn't surprise me that none of them had thought of it, because I had already concluded that most of the Fast Folk bunch were sound people, and not visual people, so visualizing alternatives did not come naturally to them the way it does to me. Some of us are visual people, some are sound people, and some are kinetic (touching) people, as a scientist I once heard on the radio explained it, so that afternoon, having one visual person on a crew saved the day for Wendy and her couch. These days she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I lived back in the '80s, and I hadn't heard much of her recent music, but then a couple of newer Wendy Beckerman songs showed up on YouTube a few weeks ago, and I really like both of them. I'll have to hear this one a few more times before I get all the lyrics down, but only hearing it a few times, I really like the sound of the melody and the chords, and the lyrics sound intriguing -- I really think I'm going to like the lines when I figure them out.

He Turned 21 in Prison

Song 191: Today I posted Mama Tried by Merle Haggard on the playlist. The YouTube video visual is a bunch of stills of Merle, and I really like the one of him holding a guitar while standing by a stream -- the perspective of the pose reminds me of a similar picture of me, taken by Su Polo. I also like the picture of him sitting on a bench, which reminds me of some of the footage of me sitting on a bench that shows up in the music video of As Long As Merle is Still Haggard. Last week I posted a song by Waylon Jennings, and in doing so, I realized that I hadn't previously included any songs by him, Merle, Willie, or Charlie Pride. Since I mention all of them in the chorus of the Merle song, and they've all done songs that I really like, it seemed like I ought to get at least one song by each of them onto this list, and especially Merle. This song tops my list of Merle favorites, at least in part because of the lines about riding a freight train. Merle had an adventurous youth, as the Pure Prairie League song I'll Fix Your Flat Tire, Merle happens to mention, though I'm not sure about the telephone booth part, but that adventurous youth included riding freight trains, and also doing a stretch at San Quentin Prison in 1958, where he turned 21, though he was not doing life without parole. While at San Quentin, he got to see a Johnny Cash performance, and that inspired him to join the prison country band, though he had already developed an interest in singing country music. I've read that when Merle met Johnny Cash for the first time, he mentioned that he saw him at San Quentin. Cash, thinking that Merle was referring to his 1969 show there (which yielded the live LP At San Quentin), said he didn't remember Merle being on that show, and Merle replied that he was in the audience (at a much earlier concert, of course). Fortunately for Merle, and for people who like country music, Hag got himself into a slight-less adventurous lifestyle in the early 1960s that led to songs like this. I got to see Merle playing at a small club in Manhattan a couple of times in the late 1990s, and he and his band were putting on a pretty good show then, as I would expect they probably are still doing these days as well. On a side note, you can find the song video for my song As Long As Merle is Still Haggard by clicking on the title.

A Song the DJ Really Liked

Song 190: Today I posted Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? by Waylon Jennings on the playlist. As the early '70s became the mid-'70s, Chicago-area radio just seemed to get worse, but still, spending time in traffic back then usually meant depending on the radio for music. Generally I would switch between stations searching for a song I liked, or at least one I could stand to listen to, and once in a while I found a gem. On an afternoon some time in 1975, DJ Larry Lujack played this song, but before he did, he gave it a really good introduction. On air, Lujack had a very sarcastic manner, and on this particular afternoon, he mentioned that listeners had been commenting that he didn't seem to think much of the music he played. He then said that as he saw it, rock and roll was getting worse, not better (I silently nodded in agreement), but his job was to air songs listeners wanted to hear, so if it made the charts and got requests, he'd play it no matter how he felt about it. But hey, were there any new songs that he did like? Well, here's one... Before those opening chords, I knew nothing about Waylon, his past connections with Buddy Holly, or his contemporary collaborations with Willie, but not long into this song, I knew I not only had to get the record, I had to find out more about the guy who made it. I would soon start adding Waylon LPs to my collection, and finding out a lot more about the man and his music. As I mention for song 179 (Bob Seger's Turn the Page), in this era, I heard a lot of Been on the Road Too Long songs, and most of them made me want to say, "Oh, Cry Me a River" (song 67), but once in a while, someone like Seger or Jennings would actually breathe some genuine life experience into the tired old cliches. In this song, Waylon calls up the ghost of one of the original country singer-songwriters and pays homage to that spirit while also painting a clear picture of his own day-to-day struggles. If you like country music, then most likely you too have some favorite Hank songs, just as Waylon did, and as I do. One sad side note -- I knew that Waylon died in February of 2002, but I only learned today that Larry Lujack died in December of 2013. On a different side note, this is the first posting on the list of an artist mentioned in my song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, and you can find the song video for that song just by clicking on the title.

Singing Along With a Hit Song

Song 189: Today I added Green, Green by The New Christy Minstrels (written by Barry McGuire and Randy Sparks) to my Favorite Songs Playlist. As a rule, my family didn't listen to the radio much during my younger years, and so in the era before the Beatles came along, I mainly heard songs from the radio in public places, or on visits to friends. Once in a while they did turn the radio on in the car going somewhere, though, and I think that's how I first heard this song, when it came along in the summer of 1963, and it then suddenly became a reason for me to try to get them to put the radio on. I had heard and learned a few other folk and country songs over the previous year, but this was the first hit song that I really, really learned. After only hearing it a few times, I had the words memorized and I would sing along with it, much to the amusement of my parents and grandparents. They must have truly enjoyed hearing their primary-school-age son deliver lines like I told my mama on the day I was born, "Don't you cry when you see I'm gone." I even tried to imitate Barry McGuire's rough-edged voice, but I couldn't really get it down. About 6 months later, the Beatles would open up a whole new world for me, and a new-found adoration of rock-and-roll, which I thought they and the other English bands had invented. That would so overshadow my previous enjoyment of a handful of folk songs that when Eve of Destruction blasted out of a transistor radio only 2 years after Green, Green, I didn't even recognize the singer. At the time that Green, Green came along, though, I quickly learned every word he was singing, and I tried to sound like him when I sang along, though I really couldn't sound like him, no matter how hard I tried. That summer, though, it was a lot of fun hearing that song and singing along in the family car on the way to somewhere, which would not happen when the English Invasion came along the following winter.

Be Careful of Loving a Wild Thing

Song 188: Today I added Wild Things by Cris Williamson to my Favorite Songs Playlist, to offer some contrast to last week's post, in a song with almost the same title. In the late '70s one of my folkie singer/songwriter friends, Nancy Milin, performed this song one night, probably at either Freight and Salvage or La Val's Pizza, which were the 2 major venues for our circle at the time. I liked the tune a lot, so I asked her about it, and not long after hearing it I got a copy of the CW album. The song offers a more serious and thoughtful tone, in contrast to the playful and raucous feel of the Troggs recording, as a cautionary tale about the reality of trying to live with a wild thing. The Wild Thing of the Troggs tune makes everything groovy, but then Cris Williamson reminds us that Wild Things can turn on you, and that no matter how much you might love the see the spirit of a wild thing, as we all so often do, in the end, you've got to set them free. She reminds us that wild things can have sharp teeth, and that they live another way. This song also made me do a bit of soul-searching, asking myself if I had hurt someone close to me by following the call of the wild, and having to admit to myself that surely I had, whether I had meant to do so or not.

For the Love of a Wild Thing

Song 187: Who doesn't love the song Wild Thing? Or, to put it another way, if you don't love Wild Thing, then the love of rock and roll is not in you. It practically exploded out of the radio in the summer of 1966, at a time when I also was watching the TV show Batman quite a bit. The following summer I got to go to Expo 67 in Montreal, which was fun in a lot of ways, and while there, at one point the radio played Wild Thing as a golden oldie from the previous summer, so now when I hear this song, it takes me back to that moment in Montreal and also makes me think about the Batman TV show as well. Chip Taylor is the stage name for the songwriter who wrote this tune, James Wesley Voight, and he is the brother of actor Jon Voight and the uncle of actress Angelina Jolie. He's written a number of other notable songs, such as Try (Just a Little Bit Harder) from Janis Joplin's Kozmic Blues album, the 1966 Hollies hit I Can't Let Go, the 1968 Merilee Rush hit Angel of the Morning, and Waylon Jennings' recording Sweet Dream Woman that he covered on his 1972 Good Hearted Woman album. I once heard Chip talking about Wild Thing, and he gave a quick rundown about how he came to write it, after which he recorded a quick home demo of it and then mailed it off, all in a very short time. After he mailed the demo to a friend in England, he didn't give the song another thought until suddenly, many months after he posted that demo, an English band cover of it came blasting out of his radio one day -- a cover version that he loved just as much as the rest of us did. On a side note, in the fall of 1966, after Wild Thing had peaked, Chip, who was not born with the name Taylor, got involved in a project with someone who was born with that name. He and his partner Al Gorgoni produced a session for James Taylor's band, and while the single Brighten Your Night with My Day/Night Owl from that session did not make a dent in the charts, a few years later, after the success of Sweet Baby James, the recordings from that session surfaced as an album called James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine. I once owned the record, and I would recommend it only to high-end JT fans -- if you absolutely have to have a copy of everything he ever did, then you'll probably want that too, but much better versions of those songs surfaced on the Apple album James Taylor, so getting the Flying Machine record is on about the same level as collecting Basement Tapes bootlegs is to a Dylan fan, or maybe even one level above that.

Slouching Towards Plutocracy and Foolish Military Adventures

Song 186: Today I posted Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival as this week's new song on the favorites playlist. I linked to a YouTube video of the song that features scenes from Tour of Duty, and certainly when John Fogerty wrote the tune, the Vietnam war set the background for those fortunate sons who wave the flag but make someone else fight the wars they start, and who fill their pockets with wads of taxpayer cash while some unfortunate sons dodge the bullets, but the songwriter covers a lot of other territory as well in his 3 short verses. Now nearly 4 and a half decades since CCR recorded this song, lines like I ain't no senator's son have taken on additional shades of meaning, in an era when average workers' salaries are declining but over half the members of Congress are millionaires. At the time this song rocketed up the charts, I knew a little bit about some of those folks who are born with a silver spoon in hand, and how they help themselves, but these days, they help themselves so much you really have to close your eyes if you want to see no evil. In the post-Reagan era, those silver-spoon types don't need to make the inside of the mansion look like a rummage sale because they've already bought off the taxman, along with a whole lot of politicians, and so the taxman very likely won't even come to the door. If anyone has a suggestion for a better song about our country's slouch towards plutocracy and foolish military adventures, I'd love to hear it, but for me, John Fogerty's song says it best, and I understand it very well, because, like him, It ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son.

A Song That Left Us Speechless

Song 185: Yesterday I posted Kelly Flint doing her song Drive All Night as this week's addition to my favorite songs playlist. When I started the playlist in June of 2013, posting a song every day of the week, Friday was Friend's Day on the playlist, so now that I only post 1 song per week, I post a song by a friend once every 7 weeks, and this song is one of those. Kelly and I were never close friends, but we were both part of the Fast Folk songwriter circle in the early 1990s. I well remember, somewhere around the turn of the '90s, the first night Kelly Flint walked into the Thursday night song swap that Jack Hardy used to host at his apartment on Houston Street in Manhattan, because when the circle came around to her, she sang this song. When she finished, it took a few moments before anyone said anything, I think because we all felt that it was one of the most moving songs any of us had ever heard. Kelly didn't talk about the story behind the song, and if she ever shared it with anyone in that group, they never confided it to me, so I don't know that story, but I'm quite sure that she wrote this song about something that happened to someone she knew. Songwriters can sometimes write strong and moving songs purely from imagination, but I don't think I've ever heard a song conjured up from a writer's imagination that conveys the depth of feeling I hear in this piece.

A Small Tribute to Pete Seeger

Song 184: I posted the Peter Paul and Mary version of If I Had a Hammer as today's addition to the playlist because Pete Seeger died last Monday, so this is my small tribute to him. In the summer of 1963 the PPM version of The Hammer Song was all over the radio, and I couldn't get enough of it. Growing up in a conservative household, I didn't hear any sort of subversive message in this song, and I still don't -- it sounds like a very American point of view rolled up into a song. At the time that I began hearing the PPM hit version of the song, I didn't know Pete and Mr. Hayes had written it before I was born, and I also knew nothing about Mr. Seeger himself. I did take note of his name on the record label, but I didn't connect it with the guy who I started hearing about a few years later who was this subversive Communist. My religious Christian fundamentalist family had no interest in rock-and-roll, except for my younger brother and myself, and a few times I found myself attending presentations and short films about the evils of RnR. I heard about how RnR was actually a Communist plot derived from Pavlov's findings about dogs, and to prove the Commie connection, I heard all about 2 rockers who admitted being Commies -- Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. All my friends were listening to The Beatles, The Doors, Steppenwolf, Simon and Garfunkel, Cream, Hendrix and the like -- I didn't know anyone who had Baez or Seeger records, and I'm not sure who among my friends even knew who they were, but I heard a lot about them and their Commie connections at these church presentations. Then one day I happened to catch this guy on an episode of The Smothers Brothers, playing acoustic guitar and singing a song about The Big Muddy that had a very intense feel to it. Was this really the crazed Commie I was supposed to fear? He certainly didn't look subversive to me -- he looked like a very straight-ahead standup guy, and when I learned years later about the nature of his testimony before HUAC in the 1950s, it seemed very much like the guy I saw on The Smothers Brothers that day. Later, in the 1970s, I got to attend a TV show taping as an audience member, in a small crowd of a few hundred who all won free admission through a contest, for a show with Pete, Arlo Guthrie and Judy Collins, honoring Arlo's father Woody. Then when I returned to the East Coast in the late '80s, I volunteered at the Clearwater Festival for a few years, which was fun, and I got to meet a lot of good people and hear a lot of good music in the process, including a few performances by Pete. Both Pete and Woody, along with a few others, gave the following generations a living example of how to write and perform songs that speak the truth about the times you live through, and as Pete said not so long ago, there are now literally thousands of songwriters -- and I count myself among them -- who are actively following their example. If you only hear music from corporate channels, you won't hear very many of these songs, just as you didn't hear much of Pete or Woody during most of their lives, but if you really start looking, you will find lots of contemporary songs that have plenty to say about recent events, and most of the singer/songwriters who do them owe at least some of their inspiration to Pete Seeger and his circle of singer/songwriters.