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.