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.