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.