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.
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