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.