What’s Your Job?

Song 283: Seven weeks after my last personal friend song post, this week’s track is Gravedigger by my friend Richard Julian, who also wrote the song. He performed this track as part of a Fast Folk show at the Bottom Line in Manhattan in February of 1990, with Richard Meyer, Lisa Gutkin and Margo Hennebach adding the vocal backup, Mark Dann playing lead electric guitar, Jeff Hardy doing the stand up bass, Howie Wyeth handling the drums and Margo Hennebach playing the keyboard part as well as singing backup. I met Richard soon after arriving in NYC at the end of the summer of 1988, one night in a small folk club on MacDougal St. A few months later, when we’d gotten to know each other a bit better, he invited me to the songwriters gathering at Jack Hardy’s Houston St. apartment one Thursday night, and that became a regular weekly stop for me for the next few years, and also led to my involvement as a contributor to Fast Folk. During the 4 years that I made that regular Thursday evening stop, I heard Richard debut a number of excellent songs, but I always liked this one the best, and I first heard him play it not at Jack’s apartment but on the stage at that little MacDougal St. folk club where we’d met, one night a month or 2 before he invited me to Jack’s place. The words go by pretty quickly and you might have to play the video a few times to get some of them, but he packed a lot of understated humor in those lines, and if you appreciate that kind of lyric, then I think you’ll feel it was worth the effort when you get the full picture. If you’ve ever felt like a square peg being forced into a round hole, then quite likely you will understand the feeling that Richard is putting across here.

Some Guy in a Red Suit

Song 282: For this week’s playlist track, you can hear The Pause of Mr. Claus by Arlo Guthrie, who also wrote the song. The live cut that appears on the album Arlo includes a hilarious 6-minute-long spoken introduction preceding the song itself, which lasts about 2 minutes. When I posted the first Arlo track on the playlist 10 weeks ago (Song 272: Running Down the Road) I mentioned that I probably should have included him much sooner, but that I would make up for the oversight by posting another Arlo cut shortly, and with the holiday coming up this week, this one seemed like a good way for the playlist to observe the season. As I mentioned in the post for Running Down the Road, my appreciation of Arlo’s music took a little time to develop, but once I got there, his records were spinning on my turntable quite often, and the Arlo disc always made me laugh, long after I’d gotten to know the jokes very well. I played that LP so often, in fact, that without trying, I memorized the 6-minute spoken introduction on this track, and could recite it by heart, without hesitation. While the sheer absurdity of lines like “Santa Claus has a red suit, he’s a communist” never fail to entertain, in this modern era when some fool might throw a brick through the window of a book store named after the mythical Greek goddess Isis because that fool believes the store has some connection with a terrorist army in the Middle East, the parody actually lands much closer to reality that I would have guessed 4 decades ago, when I was first enjoying this cut. Sadly, the repeated question “Why do police guys beat on peace guys?” still needs to be asked, and could even be updated with timely references to pepper spray, but around this holiday, the phrase “peace on earth” comes along more often than it does in other seasons, and as it does, this song may also put a smile on some faces. Watch out for that Santa Clause guy, though, because, after all, “What’s in the pipe that he’s smoking?”

How Much Shakin’?

Song 281: If you’re feeling some rumblings, it might be this week’s playlist track Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On by Jerry Lee Lewis, written by Dave “Curlee” Williams. The writing credit on this song is sometimes shared between Mr. Williams and James Faye “Roy” Hall, and Mr. Hall is also sometimes referred to as Sunny David in the songwriting credits. For a good long time in my teenage years, I thought the Beatles and their companion English bands had invented rock and roll. I knew nothing of the ’50s rockers except Elvis, and “Hound Dog” being the only Presley track I had heard then, I thought Elvis was some kind of hick singer. It truly surprised me in late ’68 when the official Beatles biography landed and I read about how much the fab four idolized EP. Devouring that book, I slowly began to get a clearer sense of the origins of the musical style that had started shaking my world back in February of 1964.That process continued over the next few years, particularly as the early ‘70s brought along a revival of interest in the ’50s rockers. During that era, more than once I heard the radio play the Woodstock recording of the 10 Years After cut “I’m Going Home” which seemed to incorporate (or steal) some ’50s references. I had also read in the Beatles book about Jerry Lee Lewis’s attempted English tour that came to a quick end due to a scandal generated by press revelations about his 13-year-old bride. Getting to know the ‘50s rockers, when I got to this record, I had to admit it sounded really good. I liked his other hits too, but I didn’t truly appreciate Jerry Lee until I saw an old video of him around 1975 or so which conveyed a Madman at the Piano energy that just about knocked me over. At that moment I very well understood why Lewis had created such a sensation during his hit record days, prior to the marriage scandal that scuttled his career, and I had to wonder what else he might have done if that scandal hadn’t broken his momentum. It also seemed highly ironic to contemplate that kind of history during a time when rock promoters had perfected the art of scandal publicity for grabbing headlines and furthering careers, but then maybe someone had to set the stage first, and get a whole lotta shakin’ going’ on, which is what Jerry Lee did, and what got people to notice him — everyone could tell when they saw him perform that he surely wasn’t fakin’.

Which Room?

Song 280: Maybe you’ve been there and maybe not, but this week’s playlist cut is White Room by Cream, written by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. When this single came rocking across the airwaves in the fall of my senior year at HS, I thought it sounded even better than all of Cream’s other records, as good as those were. I especially liked the way the slow sections build a musical tension that finds release in the fast parts, though until I read the Wikipedia entry today, I hadn’t noticed that those slow sections are in a 5/4 time signature, further setting them off from the faster 4/4 parts. I also really liked the way EC handles the solo, starting off in a more slow and deliberate way and then building from there. I have always felt — and I think most lead players would agree — that while speed and dexterity do have their place, the best-sounding lead part for a song doesn’t have to be the hardest or most impressive one possible, and, as often as not, simplicity can be the key to crafting a catchy and memorable lead. My favorite part of Clapton’s solo on this track comes with the first group of riffs, and while he certainly does a fine job with the rest of it, for me, it reaches the peak almost immediately, although, of course, he plays the rest of it so well that it never loses my attention. His use of the wah-wah pedal throughout the lead also adds a decorative quality to the notes. Sadly, not long after this record hit the charts came news that the trio had already broken up, though, as a consolation, the word also included the promise of one more LP to follow shortly, so we could still look forward to a final album. I heard many times during that era and over the following decades about tensions between the players pulling the band apart, but never got the details. At some point in the early to mid ‘90s, I saw a piece on TV about Ginger Baker, who was then living on a horse ranch in Colorado, and I thought he looked like he was doing well, especially considering the talk I had heard as a teenager about Baker’s severe drug issues which at the time had made it seem like he might not survive more than a year or 2 at best. Then in 2005 I got to see, and enjoy, a TV broadcast of the Cream reunion concerts, and also to learn that it was heat between Baker and bassist Jack Bruce that had torn the band apart in late ’68 and that continues to present a challenge to possible reunions. Fortunately, at least for a short time in 2005, the two were able to perform together before an audience, and to show that while they may not get along so well on a personal level, they can, along with Clapton, still make some very memorable music together on a stage. Music is truly the language of peace, isn’t it!

North of the Border

Song 279: The name of this week’s playlist track is Coyote by Rank and File, written by Chip and Tony Kinman. After hearing the Rank and File debut album Sundown once or twice at the record store, I quickly decided that I wanted a copy, and it soon became a favorite, as one of those LPs I listened to from beginning to end, sometimes tempted to replay. While I enjoy all of the record’s cuts, The Conductor Wore Black (Song 180) tops the list, with this one coming in a close second, and in light of the recent (and ridiculous) controversy over accepting Syrian refugees, it seemed like an appropriate song to post at this particular moment in time. The track tells the kind of tragic tale that had occurred on the north side of the Mexican border for decades when the Kinman brothers wrote it, and that still continues in shameful variations to this day. My own song End of the Highway (which you can hear here) tells a somewhat different melancholy story, but basically comes out of the same border conflict, with similar tragic consequences. The lyrics of Coyote paint a clear picture of a boy who has ended up alone, separated from his family, in a strange place that’s “too far north” with no place to go and no way back to where he came from. Anyone familiar with this border conflict will recognize the callous attitude in the lines, “What’s all the fuss, they ain’t like us, they don’t matter anyway.” Those words, that come from a rancher’s son’s following his reply to “what happened to the lad” where he says “Oh, I don’t know but we didn’t do nothin’ bad,” tell the listener that they most certainly did do something bad, confirmed by the rest of verse 1 when the listener hears “took their hands and we bound them up with wire and when the sun went down they felt the fire.” The Kinman brothers crafted a very powerful and timeless tale three decades ago that sadly resonates much too strongly in the present day as well, with types like Trump only adding fuel to the fire. In watching an Austin City Limits video of this song, I wondered if any of the dancers actually understood the story painted in the lyrics, although this is the kind of song that you can enjoy without grasping its deeper meaning, and I will confess that at the time of the ACL performance, I myself hadn’t picked up on that thought, and wouldn’t do so for quite a long time. Today, though, I can’t miss seeing the fear in the eyes of those who would say, and believe, “they ain’t like us, they don’t matter anyway.”

Where Are We Going Now?

Song 278: For an illustration of how music can take you to some unexpected places, this week’s playlist track is Upstairs By a Chinese Lamp by Laura Nyro, who also wrote the song. In the fall of 1970 i saw Laura Nyro perform a concert in Chicago, touring to promote her latest album Christmas and the Beads of Sweat which included this cut, and she probably covered it that night, but it was her performance of another track from the record that left a deeper impression on me (Song 174 — Been on a Train), plus a couple of her older hits that she did to close out the show. Fast forward a few years, and on a typical bone-chilling Chicago winter night, as I entered a woman’s apartment in the process of helping her move some items out to a car, I heard her stereo playing a song that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t identify it, and had to ask her what it was. When she answered, I felt as if I should have known, and when I got back to my place, I soon had Christmas and the Beads of Sweat on the turntable, reacquainting myself with music I had learned to love a few years earlier, but that I had somehow lost track of at some point along the way. One thing that always impressed me about Laura Nyro was the way in which she varied the timing in her songs to fit the emotion and the movement of the track. In most forms of music, from classical to RnR, musicians usually follow time signatures religiously, or try to do so, but Ms. Nyro made some very impressive recordings in her career that did not adhere to strict timing, and those tracks convey a sense of freedom, taking off and flying in any direction, in a way that could change at any moment, and perhaps coming in for a landing in a very unexpected place. This song provides an entertaining example of this type of unexpected flight of fancy, and along with a number of her other cuts, such as Been on a Train, it opened my ears to possibilities for playing with timing, and inspired some of my own personal flights of fancy, such as Shake the Dust. On a side note, for anyone who thinks I might be pushing the season by posting a song from an album with Christmas in the title, just remember that four days from today is a day commonly known as Black Friday, and I think most of us know that it has earned that name because of its connection to a certain December holiday.

Feel It In Your Bones

Song 277: For this week’s playlist track you’ll get Jealous Bone by Patty Loveless, written by Steve Bogard and Rick Giles. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, you could often hear Patty Loveless in the mix on the NYC station that played music that at the time they were calling New Country, and I liked a lot of the cuts I heard from her, with this one being a particular favorite. As a songwriter, I never had any great interest in records about jealousy, and I tend to hear jealousy songs as a sign of lazy songwriting. Of the other 276 posts on this list, maybe a half dozen could be considered genuine jealousy tracks, and there might be about a dozen others where jealousy is part of the lyrical picture, along with other factors, so lyrics about jealousy don’t generally get me that excited, but there are a few notable exceptions, such as the Beatles You Can’t Do That, and I include this cut among those notable exceptions as well. Personally, I guess I’d have to say that if I have a jealous bone somewhere in my body, it must not be very big, especially compared to some other people I have known who seem to have a much larger jealous bone that they don’t try to hide in any way. On a side note, this track is a sly reference to the second verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, which begins with the line Should Patty Loveless (?) You can find the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video here.

From Where?

Song 276: For this week’s playlist track, you can hear I’m From New Jersey by John Gorka, who also wrote the song.  Once again it comes around to seven weeks since my last personal friend song post, and in this case, I’d probably more accurately call John a friend of a friend. From the late ‘80s up through the mid-‘90s, I moved through the same folk circles as him, and a number of my singer/songwriter friends knew John well. We met occasionally, and were quite friendly, though I’m not sure that he would recognize my name, but I well remember once playing a short set at Godfrey Daniels Coffeehouse in Bethlehem, PA, (a set that included Under the Table, which is the latest lyric video from the Who Said What CD to be posted on my YouTube channel), and John had good things to say about my songs after the set, which made me feel pretty good. I saw John perform in a number of settings, from intimate coffeehouse rooms to expansive outdoor festival stages, and he often sang this tune, which never failed to please the crowd. Doing it live, he would often draw out a few of the funnier lines, for comic effect, and it worked every time, bringing smiles and laughter to the entire audience. The line about which exit would often get a smile from people in the area around NJ because residents from the state would regularly refer to their home area by exit number rather than place name, which is a phenomenon I never encountered anywhere else. I’m not from New Jersey, but I have lived there for a few stretches, and somehow I could never remember what number my exit was, though maybe that happened because I sometimes took different routes, and I often caught the train when and where I could do so. There were a few different ways to get to Maplehurst Farms, where I lived when I recorded As Long As Merle is Still Haggard, and where my friend Gabriel Lopez shot the scenes for the Merle song video that included my landlord Herb, but not long after we shot the video, he sold the place, and now Maplehurst Farms is just a set of soulless McMansions, or Houses in the Fields, as John would have called them. When I lived on that farm, at least one of the other tenants referred to it as paradise, and I felt it was a very special place to live, like a hidden island of country surrounded by clueless suburbia, but the For Sale sign was already up before I moved out, so I didn’t expect too much. These days, if I drive down to the end of Maplehurst Lane in Piscataway, I don’t like what I see, but the old Maplehurst Farms ended, and so I have to adjust. Somehow, I think John would understand.

Things May Change

Song 275: Listening to this week’s playlist cut, you can meet Society’s Child by Janis Ian, who also wrote the song. When this track hit the airwaves in the summer before my HS junior year, I liked the sound of it, and I quickly learned to sing along with the chorus, but I didn’t know most of the verse lyrics, and I had no idea about its subject matter — I thought it was just a song about a girl breaking up with her boyfriend. I also didn’t even know the name of the song — I assumed it was called Can’t See You Any More or some variation on that theme. Hanging out with an Asian friend, at a time when there weren’t many Asians living in our town, he asked me if I liked that new song Society’s Child and I told him I wasn’t sure if I’d heard it. He soon had it spinning on the turntable, and of course I recognized it, so I told him I had heard, and liked, the record, but I just hadn’t connected with the title. He then asked me what I thought about the controversial topic of the lyrics, and I had to admit that I had no idea what he was talking about. He promptly quoted me the opening lines, and I quickly realized that this was much more than just a simple love song. At the time, I considered myself a political conservative, as did my parents and grandparents, but I had no problem with the idea of an interracial couple, and as far as I knew, neither did anyone in my immediate family, so I admired the song, and the songwriter, for the powerful message that came wrapped in a very personal narrative. I also took it as a good sign that someone only a few months older than me could have a hit record riding up the charts. I had been writing songs for a year, and sharing dreams of musical fame and fortune with my classmate Brian Johnson, even occasionally playing guitar with him, though the dreams, some talk, my songwriting and the sporadic guitar jams were as close as we ever came to actually having a band. Still, the fact that a girl my age could have a hit song that summer made me feel that my own dreams should have some possibility of coming true. The fact that Leonard Bernstein gave Janis and her song his official stamp of approval, via a TV special, plus accompanying press promotion in at least one of the major weekly magazines that my family subscribed to (probably Life, Look or the Saturday Evening Post), banished that Devil’s Music shadow that sometimes followed my pop music favorites, because, as a violin player in the HS orchestra, I knew the name Bernstein quite well, as did my family, at least in part because of my involvement with the violin, so his very public praise of Janis’s music carried a lot of weight in my family circle. In the final verse, Janis sings “When we’re older things may change,” and at the time, I fully expected big changes in the realm of race relations during the time frame from then to now, but sadly, as recent events with conflicts over the Confederate flag and KKK icons have illustrated, it’s just as possible today that Janis could play this song on stage and have to hear people in the audience screaming “Nigger lover! Nigger lover!” just the way they did at a concert she played when she was 15. She showed bravery then in performing the song, as she had in writing and recording it, and she crafted a classic record that endures, and that conveys a very important message that needed to be heard in 1967, and that still needs to be heard today.

That Title Sounds Familiar

Song 274: This week on the playlist you can hear If I Was Your Man by Joan Osborne, written by Joan Osborne, Joseph Arthur, Louie Pérez, Rick Chertoff and Jack Petruzzelli. It seemed like a good time to post a Joan Osborne track because she's performing in my town tonight, though, due to some contrary circumstances, I can't make the gig, as much as I might wish I could. Back around the turn of the new millennium, I happened to catch a Joan set on TV, and I liked what I heard, both in the sound of her voice and in the songs she sang. She performed cuts from her then-current CD Righteous Love, and when she got to this one, it grabbed my attention with its layered sitar sound and an alluring melody that lingered in my mind. I still remember that magic TV moment, and I soon added Righteous Love to the CD collection. A few years later, when a friend gave me an iPod for Christmas, I made a place for RL in the iTunes list. Around the turn of the new decade, working on Who Said What, I would sometimes key up mixes of my own songs on the iPod as I rode the train into Manhattan, and sometimes other people's music, often including Righteous Love, so I might listen to my song If I Was You and then, not long after, I would listen to Joan's song If I Was Your Man. Both her song and mine are incorrectly worded -- the correct form of both phrases would use Were instead of Was -- and Daisy, who is the wife of my recording partner, engineer and co-producer David Seitz, didn't hesitate to mention that to me, mainly because she's a teacher and she doesn't appreciate the way performing musicians can lead her young charges astray, but the way I figure it, Joan's probably leading more of them astray than me at the moment, and if she can get away with it, then maybe I can slide too. Of course, I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but If I Was You, I'd cut me some slack on that one, and give Joan some room as well. You can find the song video for my track just by clicking on the title.

Time to Stop Running

Song 273: This week's playlist track offers a bit of advice in its title which is Walk, Don't Run by The Ventures, written by Johnny Smith. In the summer of 1960 I knew nothing about rock 'n roll, even though I had posed for a picture wearing a hat with those words on it a few years earlier, and at the turn of the '60s my family did not yet own a transistor radio, but those magic little music boxes had started popping up in my neighborhood, so sometimes I would hear some music somewhere, though I didn't have much of a focus on it at the time. Once during the previous school year, in 3rd grade, a classmate had passed me a radio during a break and I put it up to my ear for a few minutes, as everyone else was doing, but I didn't really connect with what I was hearing, so I gladly passed it on to the next kid sooner than might have been expected. That summer, though, I heard this cut coming out of transistor radios a lot. About a half mile from my home, the town held a regular summer activity program for kids, which involved a lot of fun pursuits like board games, plaster sculptures and picture painting, taking place outdoors on folding tables under tents, and the setup always included a radio, so I remember hearing this track a number of times at that park, and it seemed to go well with the activities. Fast forward 2 decades, and in the early '80s, the surf music of bands like the Ventures experienced a revival, so one day I tumbled into a conversation with Mark Worsley, the brother of my band mate Clive who was himself a musician as well, and he talked about the differences between Walk, Don't Run (the 1960 version) and Walk, Don't Run '64 (the 1964 version, which was also a hit for the Ventures). I played along without letting on that I didn't recognize what song he was actually talking about, but when I got back to my place, I soon had the platter on the turntable, and the instant recognition felt like reconnecting with a long-lost favorite old friend. Since then, I've made sure not to let too much time go by without reconnecting with that favorite old friend once again. The YT link for this song on my website connects to a video of a TV appearance the Ventures did around the time of the record's chart run, and you might notice that the band's electric guitars have no cords connected to amps, so they were evidently wireless long before there was wireless, and their performance does sound remarkably like the record, doesn't it -- so much so, in fact, that it might make you wonder if the musicians were just miming to the record. Of course, the audience didn't seem to mind, rocking right along, with some of them even looking like they were chewing gum in time with the song, and I'm sure when they left the theater that night, they all knew that they should walk and not run.

Time to Run

Song 272: This week's playlist track turns out to be Running Down the Road by Arlo Guthrie, who also wrote the song. Somehow I got to a pretty high playlist number before posting an Arlo track, so I'll need to make sure his second appearance on the list comes along sooner than later, but for now, this week's cut about running follows last week's song about walking. (If you haven't guessed what's up for next week, I'll just give you a hint that it's an instrumental track.) All I knew of AG in the late '60s was the chorus to Alice's Restaurant -- I didn't hear the record, but only heard a couple of people sing the chorus and play it on guitar. It sounded old-timey to me, and a bit quaint in the context of Break on Through, Born to Be Wild and similar songs of the era. I didn't get the joke, and I also knew nothing about Arlo's father -- my mother sang songs like This Land is Your Land and Do Re Mi but I doubt she had any idea who wrote them, any more than I did. When I landed at Northwestern in the fall of 1969, one of the first things I planned to do was to begin collecting LPs, and a couple of months into that plan, I made the mistake of joining a record club, which led to receiving a few albums in the mail that I hadn't actually wanted. One day, Arlo's latest LP Running Down the Road arrived, even though I had mailed in my card telling the club not to send it, and so I had to own it, whether I wanted it or not. I played it through once or twice, and I decided I didn't want it, but I had to pay for it, so I wasn't going to throw it away. When I mentioned to Hank Neuberger, who lived in the dorm room across the hall from me, about my frustration at getting a record I didn't want, he told me he'd like to have the album, and so I sold it to him right then and there. Over the next few months, I started listening to more singer/songwriter music, and started moving more in that direction as a musician, plus I heard more of Arlo, and learned more about him and his father, to the point that, by the fall of 1970, I was wishing I hadn't sold the LP to Hank, and I ended up getting another copy at the local record store. As soon as I got it back to my apartment, I had it on the turntable, and it would take many spins there in the coming years, leading me to ask myself more than once how I could have misjudged the album so badly. I had become quite picky in my listening, and on some records I would only play certain cuts, so I really appreciated LPs like RDtR where I could enjoy every track from start to finish. Some albums put the best track first, which in the CD era happens more often than not, but in the LP days, sometimes the last cut would be the best, and in this case, the title track that closes the album always had my vote for number one.

Watch Your Step

Song 271: If you get around to the playlist this week you'll get to Walk Like an Egyptian by The Bangles, written by Liam Sternberg. From the first time I heard this song I assumed that Steve Martin's King Tut skit from a few years earlier must have played a main role in inspiring it, although the songwriter does not credit the Tut bit at all. Martin's sketch became a standard comic routine between me and my Oakland housemate Doug not long after we first saw it, and we both would often Walk Like an Egyptian for a few moments of shared personal comedy, so when this track lit up the airwaves in the early fall of '86, it felt like such a natural fit that it sounded as if I'd heard it before, in a previous life or something, perhaps in the incarnation of an old painting on a tomb in the shadow of the pyramids. This cut, BTW, is but one highlight on an excellent album called Different Light that contains many more, and I highly recommend it, particularly if you like this track. No matter how many times I've listened to it, to this day, it still makes me smile, and brings back images of Doug and me clowning for each other with our Egyptian hieroglyphic moves. I lost touch with Doug a few years ago and haven't managed to reconnect, so I can't speak for him, but for myself, I still can slide my feet up the street, bend my back, shift my arm and so on, and it feels good to do it, even in the absence of my old friend. If you don't believe me, give it a try yourself, and I'll bet that you'll like it -- try to Walk Like an Egyptian for a few moments and see how good it feels.

Come Along for the Ride

Song 270: If you feel like taking a ride, this week's playlist track is really The Trip by Donovan, who also wrote the song. I mentioned in my post for Song 267 (Somebody to Love) about hearing the Donovan album Sunshine Superman at some point in the months following its release, but however I managed to hear it, I did not have regular access to the LP until a few years later when, as a college kid, I began to slowly build my own album collection, quickly adding Sunshine Superman to that group. I could find good things to say about every cut on the record, which frequently took a spin on my turntable, but this track soon scored a spot near the top of my preferences. I often tried to sing along with it, but, in that long ago era before online lyric searches, I could only guess at some of the words. I did enjoy the reference to Dylan, coupled with a Mad Hatter image, and the line about Joanie that follows which sounded like an allusion to Joan Baez and some sort of sly hint about the nature of the connection between those two. I also felt proud of the fact that I knew who Fellini was, and could name a couple of his movies that I'd seen, but many of the other lyrics eluded my grasp. I could hear the chorus quite well, though, and if you listen to it a few times, and then check out my song Under the Table, you may notice a certain similarity between Donovan's chorus and mine, and I will admit that this similarity is more than mere coincidence. Luckily, I got saved from having my chorus sound too much like The Trip by the "Down, down, down" background vocal part that spontaneously showed up the first time I played my newly-written piece for a songwriting circle of friends -- a guy who I didn't even know very well just started adding that part to the chorus as I was going along, and it sounded so good to me that it naturally became part of my song, disguising the Donovan influence to such a degree that, if I didn't point it out, probably no one would notice. My lyrical question is a bit more pointed than his, though -- he asks "What goes on all around me?" and says "Please tell me" whereas I want to know "What goes down under the table?" and I say "Don't tell me any fables." However, that difference might be due to the fact that I haven't had the experience of getting "caught in a colored shower" while "driving downtown L.A. about the midnight hour" and perhaps if I had, my question might have come out sounding more like his. On a side note, I do plan to have a lyric video of Under the Table posted to YouTube some time in the next 2 weeks or so.

The View From the Bottom

Song 269: This week the playlist gets down to Bottom Rung by Jim Allen, who also wrote the song. Seven weeks after my last song post by a personal friend, this week's track is by my friend Jim Allen, and comes from the December 1992 issue of Fast Folk. I don't remember exactly when Jim first showed up at Jack Hardy's Thursday night gathering on West Houston Street, but I do remember that he made quite an impression on every one of us in that apartment. I often had a different take on the songs performed in that room than most of the other songwriters, but if there was one thing we all agreed on, it was Jim's songwriting talent. Jim impressed us all with his truly unique approach, both musically and lyrically -- he had his own guitar tuning, different from every tuning variation I'd ever seen, and, as this song illustrates, he came up with lines that no one else would have imagined. Jim included this song on his first CD, Weeper's Stomp, which was released on the Prime CD label in 1996, and around that time, while designing the cover for Aztec Two-Step's Highway Signs CD, I had Weeper's Stomp on the CD player at the Prime office, and in talking with one of the Two-Step guys, with Jim's music playing in the background, inevitably, the conversation turned towards how much we both admired Jim's abilities. Among the singer/songwriter types in the greater NYC area during the early to mid-90s, there were probably very few who didn't know and respect Jim Allen -- I thought of him then as the era's songwriters' songwriter. During this period I often got junk mail from agencies offering to set poems and/or song lyrics to music for a price, and once, as a lark, I sent them the lyrics for this song, just to see how they'd react. This was well after the song appeared on the FF record, so I knew Jim was covered as far as his copyrights, although I also thought it unlikely that anyone would actually try to steal the words of this piece. I expected that I'd find any reply from the song sharks amusing, though I also didn't expect there to be one. When I mentioned to Jim, some months later, what I had done with his lyrics, while pretending to be him and using his return address, he said, "Oh, that's why I've been getting some strange mail lately," though he also confirmed that, as expected, the song sharks had not offered to actually put this particular set of lyrics to music. One further note -- I probably should have waited until December to post this song, but don't be frightened by the 12 shopping days bit in the final verse, because, in reality, there are a lot more than 12 shopping days left before you-know-when.

Can You Hear That Beat?

Song 268: For this week's playlist track, you can open your ears to Listen to Her Heart by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, written by Tom Petty. I happened to catch Tom and the gang as the other act for Elvis Costello's Chicago show in the fall of 1977 -- EC was the main act, so the TP crew technically would have been considered the openers, but they actually followed Costello, so I guess they were his closing act. The word at the time was that EC was charting a new course, whereas TP and Co. were following a well-worn rock-and-roll path, but even though people said the Petty crew was basically just doing the same old thing, I liked their set better. A year later, I had found a place in Oakland, CA, and I headed down towards Santa Cruz one sunny day on my way to visit L.A. Thumbing my way south of San Jose, I caught a ride near Santa Cruz from a woman who was listening to the relatively-new You're Gonna Get It album, and after I told her that I hadn't heard the record before, she later mentioned, as an introduction, just as the first track on side two faded away, "This next one is really nice!" I had to admit, after hearing it, that Listen to Her Heart, all by itself, could almost justify the entire cost of the LP, though I had already heard some other fine songs, with more to come, including another stand-out cut called Restless (Song 156) that quickly became a favorite as well. As nice as it might be to Listen to Her Heart, though, evidently this song came into existence because of something not so nice -- according to a Wickipedia entry, Tom said in a radio interview that he wrote this song in response to Ike Turner hitting on his wife. Still, regardless of the source of Petty's inspiration, whenever I hear this cut, I feel like I know everything is okay.

A Better Way to Fly

Song 267: This week on the playlist you can find Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane, written by Darby Slick. Somehow I knew the name Jefferson Airplane for a little while before I heard this song, and I believe that name came to me from 2 different directions. First, I think someone in my social circle had a copy of the Donovan LP Sunshine Superman, and in a casual listening to the record, the words "Fly Jefferson Airplane, get you there on time" floated by my ears once or twice. I also seem to recall a magazine article mentioning that newer rock groups were choosing names less like the Byrds or the Seekers and more like Buffalo Springfield or Jefferson Airplane, which was a change I didn't necessarily welcome. At any rate, I had no particular attachment to the JA name until this single took off all over the airwaves in the spring of '67, at which point I decided that maybe the name Jefferson Airplane actually did have a good sound. I couldn't get enough of this single in that spring, no matter how many spins the radio gave it, and on a sunny midsummer afternoon when I snuck the transistor radio out into the back yard, at the magic moment the local station played this track, life felt very good indeed. I had very quickly learned the lead singer's name Grace Slick, and at some point saw the name Slick listed as the songwriter on the 45, so I mistakenly assumed that the woman with the very impressive voice had also written the tune. She did actually write the follow-up hit White Rabbit, but it would take a couple of years before I found out that it was her then brother-in-law Darby Slick who had penned this track. That little piece of info doesn't add or take anything away from this amazing recording, but as a songwriter, I've always paid attention to who writes the songs, and I always want the writer to get some share of the credit for a magic song. Decades later, I still feel that magic rush of joy when I hear Grace sing "When the truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you... dies!"

Why Can't You Go Back There?

Song 266: This week on the playlist you'll hear All My Ex's Live in Texas by George Strait, written by Sanger D. Shafer and Linda J. Shafer. If the rumor about me playing bass in a country-bar pickup band back in the mid-80s in northern CA happened to be true, then it's quite possible that during the final year of that crew, I could have been seen plunking out the 1-5-1-5 as the lead singer led the way through this track, and if so, then the performance of it carried its own small unintended piece of irony, as that lead singer delivered lines about his ex's while his ex-wife added the harmonies. Though I won't try to credit this song as conveying any sort of poetry or depth, from the first time I heard it, I liked the clever and entertaining lyric that automatically registered on my "Oh, I wish I'd thought of that" button -- you don't have to think too much about this one, just sit back and enjoy. On a side note, this track is my fifth (and final) sly reference to the first verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, which begins with lines that mention Pam Tillis (Song 210), Johnny Cash (Song 218) and Randy Travis (Song 231), followed by a line about Reba (Song 239) and George: does Reba McEntire-ly too much and should George Strait-en her out if that's so? You can find the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video here.

Who's at The Wheel?

Song 265: This week's playlist song sails Upon the My-O-My by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, written by Don Van Vliet, Jan Van Vliet and Andy DiMartino. The first name among the songwriters on this cut is actually the Captain, going by his legal name, and  Jan Van Vliet was his wife. In the spring of 1970, during my freshman year at Northwestern, someone stuck a sticker for Captain Beefheart's Lick My Decals Off, Baby album near the entrance to my dorm building, so I remember seeing it a number of times, and the understated humor always made me smile, putting that one near the top of my list of favorite LP titles, but I had the impression then, having heard a few cuts from Trout Mask Replica, that Mr. B's sound largely ventured into an area of experimental rock and jazz that didn't appeal to me, so I didn't pay much attention to him. However, in early 1974, I had a good gig for a few months playing piano in a Shakey's Pizza place in Atlanta, GA, and around the time that the gig came to an end, in June, I happened to hear Sugar Bowl (Song 148) on my car radio one day, and I liked it so much, I decided to get a copy of Unconditionally Guaranteed soon after. This track opens the LP, in a very strong way, as I hear it, followed by Sugar Bowl and then 8 other cuts that I truly enjoy. The lyrics paint an impressionistic picture of some sort of happening aboard a ship at sea, and include the line "Tell me, Captain, how does it feel to be driven away from your own steering wheel?" Since this song, and all the cuts on the album, where written as collaborations between the Captain and his wife, I wonder if she actually originated that question, perhaps doing so in the context of a car episode. At any rate, despite how much Unconditionally Guaranteed appealed to me, the critics didn't like the LP, and when I tried to interest a friend or 2 in the album, I didn't get much traction. A few years after its release, the Captain disavowed the record as a commercial sellout, and some of his players have had bad things to say about the LP as well, but I never cared -- I always liked the album, from my first time through it. In fact, it got me interested in giving his earlier music a listen, and along that way, I discovered many other cuts that I really like. While the Captain came to disagree with the label of his record, I still feel that the LP qualifies as "100% Pure and Good" and that, 4 decades after its release, the warranty that applies to "all sounds, vibes, feelings, light waves, projections, auras, test patterns, etc., which originate from this record" still holds up pretty well. I would advise listeners, though, to heed the label warning that the album "could be harmful to closed minds" and so therefore take caution to "check ears and other sensory equipment for socially induced limitations" and act accordingly, especially if you might happen to venture anywhere close to the My-O-My.

A Musical Spelling Lesson

Song 264: This week's playlist track goes to the Mississippi Delta by Bobbie Gentry, who also wrote the song. This track served as the B side to the Ode to Billie Joe single as well as the opening cut for the LP of the same name, and was even originally considered as the possible A side for the single. This song may also be the best-sounding spelling lesson you'll ever hear, and even if you only listen to it once, afterwards you will have no excuse for not knowing how to spell Mississippi. I followed up on last week's James Taylor track with a Bobbie Gentry one because, while I had heard the Ode single during its time on the top 40, I didn't get to hear the album until the warmer months of 1970. That summer, working as a camp counselor, I had JT's Sweet Baby James on the turntable every day, turning the other counselors in our cabin into James Taylor fans, while the head counselor, who owned the fancy stereo system, was spinning BG's LP every day, turning me into a Bobbie Gentry fan. I got to liking every track on the album, and a couple of them showcase Bobbie's sense of humor in a very entertaining way, but on this opening cut, she really rocks out, with a bit of gravelly bite to her voice, which appeals to me even more. While I will admit that I too have had me a little of that Johnny cake, I never got into any of that apple pandowdy, but I truly enjoy the way BG paints a picture of life on the Mississippi delta through the details that her lyrics share. If I ever head down towards the Mississippi Delta, I'll know enough, thanks to this song, to be wary of a chigger bite, and I hope I'll know enough not to bet five dollars to win two bits (that's 25 cents, for those who have never heard the stadium 2 bits, 4 bits, 6 bits, a dollar cheer).

Something in the Way He Sings

Song 263: This week the playlist gets Fire and Rain by James Taylor, who also wrote the song. I first heard of James Taylor on a visit with Hank Neuberger. Hank occupied the room right across from me in the college dorm, and had the most amazing record collection, plus a high-quality component stereo setup. Hank happily introduced me to a lot of fine music, and one day when I dropped in to see him, I picked up a copy of JT's first album (on Apple Records) and checked out the lyrics. I noticed the song Something in the Way She Moves, and I remarked about how he had apparently borrowed some lines from the latest Beatles single, only to be told that it was actually George Harrison who had borrowed from Mr. Taylor. Having a subscription to Rolling Stone, I read a review of Sweet Baby James a few months later which made it sound like a record I might want, so I soon got a copy of it. The first few spins on the turntable, I wasn't that excited about the latest addition to my small but growing LP collection -- it didn't curl my socks the way Revolver or Surrealistic Pillow did. However, after a half dozen spins, I began to like the album more and more. I started getting to know the lyrics, and felt a real sense of "Won't you stay inside me, month of May" when June 1 rolled around. I spent a good portion of that summer of 1970 working as a camp counselor, and the cabin where I bunked included a truly impressive component stereo system. I played Sweet Baby James almost every day, and by the end of camping season I had converted the other counselors into James Taylor fans. My study of JT's music that summer, along with a handful of others, also helped me to find my own personal singer/songwriter voice and style, as I pieced together what I heard and connected it with all of the guidance that my roommate Abby had provided over the preceding winter and spring, which I mentioned in my Song 243 (Subterranean Homesick Blues) post. In late August, I visited the Glorieta Southern Baptist center near Santa Fe, traveling with some of my SBC friends from Northwestern U., and I met a Christian songwriter there who spoke to a group of us about songs that had a Christian message, such as Jesus is Just Alright. I thought about mentioning Fire and Rain, but I didn't because I was quite he wouldn't have heard of it. On returning to Evanston, I tried to spread the James Taylor gospel, and I played SWJ for a few friends. I didn't seem to get much traction with anyone, but I remember playing the LP for a woman I knew, and singing along with it, which didn't convert her to being a JT fan, but did elicit a remark that my voice had come to sound just like his. A few years later, when I started hitting the stage more often, at first I felt both bewildered and relieved when people told me that my sound reminded them of Neil Young. While I have great respect for Neil, and I have listened to him often enough, from the beginning, I focused on James Taylor, from his guitar to his voice to his onstage persona, listening to and studying his records way more than Neil, even to the point of consciously imitating a few of JT's techniques, and yet, over 4 decades later, not one listener has ever connected a single element of my style to James Taylor. Anyway, back in that September of 1970, I continued trying to tell my friends about Mr. Taylor, and then suddenly one day, one of them said, "Oh, he's the one that does that new song Fire and Rain" and I said, "Yes, that's the one." My friends began to know about him then, but at first, they said they didn't get that excited about his song. Then, a week or 2 later, they started talking about how good the song was. Before long, JT made the cover of Time, and by then everyone knew who he was, and they knew this track, so I no longer needed to tell people about him. Even so, after listening to this cut hundreds of times over the years, and the entire Sweet Baby James album countless times over the decades, still, hanging out with some friends at a lunch counter in southern CT in the summer of 2001, I can remember the moment when Fire and Rain came across the restaurant radio speakers, and in my life "I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend," but hearing this track made me feel as if an old friend had just walked into the room.

Who Was That Girl?

Song 262: This week the playlist features Other Guys Girls by Mindy Jostyn, who also wrote the piece. Seven weeks after my last personal friend song post, this week's track is by a woman who I met and became friendly with at an open mike night in the fall of 1992 at The Turning Point in Piermont, NY. She played this song on stage that evening, and it excited me so much that I told her I'd like to get a copy of it to submit to Fast Folk for inclusion on an upcoming album. She sent me a cassette of it, which I listened to a lot (and still do), but at the time, no one at FF had any interest in the piece. I took her cassette with me when I headed back to the Bay Area of northern CA for a visit the following summer, and when I played the cassette for my former Oakland housemate Doug, it totally rocked his world. He said to me, "Who IS this woman?!!" I answered him, "She's pretty good, isn't she!!!" Fast forward 3 short years, and when I began my enduring association with David Seitz, who now engineers and co-produces my recordings, he was running a small indy record label called Prime CD that issued Mindy's first album Five Miles From Hope, which does not include this track, but which I will also recommend highly. That summer of 1996, I volunteered to work the Prime CD table at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, and when friends dropped by and asked which CD I felt was the most prime, without hesitation, I reached for Five Miles From Hope. My connection with Prime CD also brought me back into the Fast Folk orbit that summer, after having drifted away from the organization 3 years earlier when I had concluded that no one there paid any attention to my suggestions. In reconnecting with Fast Folk, it pleased me to learn that Other Guys Girls would finally make it onto an FF record. A bit earlier, Mindy, who often worked closely with Carly Simon, had married Carly's songwriting partner Jacob Brackman, and during my time associating with Prime CD, I signed at least one company card to Mindy offering congratulations on the birth of a son -- she had 2 sons, and there might have been 2 cards, but time has fogged over a few of my Prime CD memories. All the same, those were moments to celebrate, but sadly, in March of 2005, Mindy died at the young age of 48. She had so much talent -- in addition to singing and writing amazing songs, she played many instruments, including all that wonderful harmonica stuff on this track -- and it's a shame that she wasn't able to reach a larger audience during her lifetime, because she certainly had the talent to deserve a much bigger following, but at least she left behind some fine recordings that can continue to showcase her special gifts, as well as her sense of humor. Whatever sadness I might feel over her death, whenever I hear this song, it always makes me smile.

No Laughing Matter

Song 261: This week on the playlist, we've got Peace Love and Understanding by Elvis Costello, written by Nick Lowe. It might seem a bit soon for Costello to show up again, since I posted Girls Talk not so long ago, but that was Linda Ronstadt covering his song, whereas here he's covering a Nick Lowe composition, so I believe that spreads the spotlight around a bit. As you may notice, this week's track continues the peace theme from last week in recognition of the historic agreement reached with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the resulting clash swirling around D.C. as the pro-war gang struggles to derail that deal. In the fall of 1977, I saw EC on his first U.S. tour, and I enjoyed his show, although I liked the opening act (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) a bit more. I thought this new late-1970s Elvis sounded pretty good, though, and when he came along with this song a year or two later, I felt he had exceeded my expectations. Certainly Dylan, Pete Seeger and a few others had written some good songs about war and peace, but I longed for one that really rocked out, and that also took on the issue with some genuine feeling while delving into the complexity of human conflict instead of painting a simplistic, two-toned good vs. evil picture of the matter, so then EC suddenly had this new track that accomplished all of that, in a way that made it sound easy. As a songwriter myself, I had wanted to meet that challenge, and at the time, it certainly did not come easily to me. I especially like the way this lyric asks why so many people would laugh at the very suggestion of wanting to have peace, when, as H. G. Wells warned us, "If we don't end war, war will end us." Now, more than ever, in this era of atomic weapons, we need to take peace, love and understanding seriously, and to get there while we still can, before we set ourselves on a path to our own destruction.

Peace, For a Chance

Song 260: For this week's playlist track, why not Give Peace a Chance by The Plastic Ono Band, written by John Lennon. While it might seem a bit soon to feature another Lennon song, having posted Ticket to Ride as Song 229, in light of the historic peace deal that the Obama administration, under the guiding hand of Secretary Kerry, has now reached with the Islamic Republic of Iran, I can think of no better song to fit this political moment. The pro-war contingent in Congress has vowed to do everything possible to scuttle this deal, so right now they really need to hear the message of this song. Actually, the entire D.C. government throng needs to hear it, regardless of party affiliation, position or ideology -- hear it, understand it and act on it, as if the future of humanity depended on it, because it very well might. Back in the middle of the summer of 1969, not long before my 18th birthday, I toured Europe for about a month with my high school singing group The Vestal Voices, and near the end of the tour we visited Venice, on Wednesday, 8/13, though we didn't perform there. When we split into smaller contingents, according to the tour rules, we were supposed to chaperone each other so that no one ended up walking around alone, but once again, as usual, my designated companions deserted me. I think they mostly wanted to get some alcohol, which I didn't care to do, but for whatever reason, I soon found myself exploring the streets of one more European city on my own, and while I have always had a good general sense of direction, this time, I did get lost. I had wanted to get beyond the touristy parts of the city, and I managed to do so, finding myself totally alone in an area that was a bit funky, and not at all like the picturesque Venice that graces most photographs of the famous city. I felt a touch of anxiety, not quite knowing where I was, but I had some time, and I expected that I'd find my way back to the group. As I walked along, I heard the sound of an acoustic guitar and John Lennon's voice coming from an upper-story window. About a week earlier, a bunch of us had located the latest Beatles single (The Ballad of John and Yoko/Old Brown Shoe) on a juke box in Munich, and listened to both sides, though the sound quality of the machine made it difficult to hear clearly. Now, here was another new Lennon recording, though it didn't exactly sound like a Beatles track. I liked it a lot on first hearing, even though at the time I still worried about dominoes falling near Viet Nam, and Lennon's view, as expressed in this song, seemed a bit simplistic and naive, but I still wanted to give peace a chance whenever possible. Over the years, as I have gained a deeper understanding of the causes of war, I have come around to John's POV. Meanwhile, not long after I heard this song, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the Bridge of Sighs, as I later wrote in my diary entry for the day. I didn't mention this track in my diary, but 46 years later, I remembered the song moment very well, and also being lost, but didn't recall the Bridge of Sighs until I read the diary. At any rate, over the next 2 months, we all need to strongly aim this message towards D.C. in whatever way we can convey it, because the future survival of humanity may very well depend on whether enough government people there make the right choice to give peace a chance.

Another Turn Comes Around

Song 259: For this week, Tomorrow is My Turn by The Fifth Estate, written by Wayne Wadhams and Don Askew, rocks the playlist. In that long ago era before you could own a movie, the once-yearly broadcast of The Wizard of Oz become an annual event for my school mates and me, well enough established by 1967 that some of my chums, knowing it so thoroughly, might even choose to skip the annual viewing ritual, though it never lost its magic for me. However, when The Fifth Estate released their updated hit version of Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead in the summer of '67, I had no interest in it -- I liked the movie soundtrack and, despite my passion for '60s-style music, I didn't feel that any of the Wizard material needed an update. I had similar feelings about TFE's hit version of Heigh Ho! that followed some months later, so I had no great expectations at that point about liking anything the band did. The following spring, I somehow managed to talk my parents and grandparents into allowing me to buy a small box of rock and roll 45s -- they didn't approve of my interest in the devil's music, but I persuaded them to make a solo exception to what had previously been an unbending rule. The box contained 10 singles, for a very good price, and though I recognized less than half of the titles, I thought it would make a very good start for a record collection, and it did, although not in the way I had anticipated. I already had a small record player set up in my own basement area that could play 45s, and I soon discovered that most of the titles I didn't recognize also didn't thrill me. The existence of that box of singles gave me cover, though, as I began smuggling in 45s that I bought from neighborhood friends when they got tired of their golden oldies, and before long I owned 2 or 3 dozen, but my parents never knew the difference, since my records all sounded the same to them, and I kept most of my vinyl collection hidden except for a handful that I would be playing at any given time. My parents and grandparents said more than once that they regretted allowing me to buy that box of records, but as far as I know, they never caught on to how I had greatly expanded on the original 10 singles. Among that first bunch, though, there was one that I really liked, and that I played a lot, and it was this track, which was actually the B-side of the Morning, Morning 45. I liked and played the A-side as well, but this B-side track left a deeper mark on my musical landscape, to the point where I knew it well enough to sing along even when it wasn't spinning on the turntable, and I understood exactly what the singer meant about when the circle comes 'round.

Play It Again

Song 258: This week's playlist track will get you to Do It Again by Steely Dan, written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Rock and roll had begun to lose its luster by the fall of '72. The radio still played plenty of good songs by new and established artists, but music fans felt the lack of something truly dynamically new. The previous decade had featured acts that practically exploded onto the scene, with a dizzying variety that ranged from The Beatles to Hendrix, Dylan to the Doors, and many seemed to widen the range of possibility with each new release. Near the end of the following decade's 3rd year, rock and roll had not yet produced any really exciting new sounds, and as the listeners wondered how much longer it would take until the Magic Next Big Thing would arrive, this single popped up on the airwaves. It sounded dramatically different from everything else, suggesting magic new musical directions, with lyrics that hinted at poetic possibilities. The album title Can't Buy a Thrill payed homage to Dylan, and raised the prospect that perhaps the Supergroup of the '70s had finally arrived -- a band which would mix the best of the '60s RnR influences together into a unique and timely brew, with words and music that matched the current calendar page. This track sounded so good then, and still does today, but alas, the rest of the album didn't quite fulfill the expectations raised by this cut, even though the LP had plenty of other fine songs. As it turned out, that decade did not produce any acts that truly qualified as the '70s Beatles, the '70s Hendrix or any other updated versions of '60s musical icons, but for a brief moment in the fall of '72, this track raised the possibility that Steely Dan might blaze a new musical trail that would define the era. If you had waited for the arrival of the mythic Supergroup of the '70s, and you thought the wait was over when you heard this song, unfortunately, you had to go back, Jack, and do it again -- waiting, that is, and specifically, waiting for the band that never arrived.

Do You Like It Strong?

Song 257: This week seems like a good time for the playlist to feature a taste of Expresso Love by Dire Straits, written by Mark Knopfler. Dire Straits had already become one of the few bright spots in the late '70s (see Song 132: Down to the Waterline) during an era when rock and roll didn't appear to have that many, and when the band's 3rd LP Making Movies came along in the fall of 1980, they seemed to shine quite a bit brighter. A few friends picked up the album right away, so that by the time I bought my own copy I had heard the whole set a few times through, but still, for the first spin on my turntable, this track, which opened side 2 back in the vinyl days, sounded so good that I felt like it might jump off the record and spin up through the ceiling of my room. I don't drink coffee, but I've got several good friends who do, such as Jeff Larson (who wrote a song called Coffee at Midnight that will probably appear on this list at some point), so I well understand the lyrical reference to a lover who makes the singer feel a very strong, edgy spark similar to what a cup of expresso might inspire. My Oakland ex-roommate Doug and I had at least one conversation where we laughed about the line Boys don't know anything and about how true it is that guys like us would so often be clueless about women and relationships. About 9 years after the record's release, I met a woman who reminded me of the character in this song, to the point that, even though she never said the line contained near the end of it, I felt like I wanted to say to her, "No, I'm not just another one just like the other one." We actually didn't have that conversation, but during the few months that we interacted, I listened to this cut over and over. If you're wondering who the keyboard player was who added all those tasty riffs to this mix, that would be Roy Bittan, who is best known as a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, and who just happens to have a birthday coming up on Thursday of this week (7/2).

Get Some Satisfaction

Song 256: This week Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, rocks onto the playlist. Summer had already started rocking with a bunch of marvelous new songs like Ticket to Ride (Song 229), but then, in the middle of summer, along came this amazing new Rolling Stones single that topped them all. One of my friends got a pool party from his parents as a birthday gift, and that afternoon a handful of us enjoyed the water, the sun and the radio, which must have played this track at least 3 times in as many hours. Of course, a song this suggestive drew the ire of many of our religious parents who objected to our embrace of the devil's music, but I well remember a home gathering of our church youth group in '67 or '68 when one of the family's sons played a few RnR singles as we teenagers assembled, with this 45 as the very first, and we all quickly slipped into the groove. In that era of the generation gap, many of our parents felt a strong visceral repulsion to the music that turned us on, to the degree that they believed we couldn't possibly like what we heard -- they thought we were pretending to like the music simply for the sake of peer approval and acceptance. A Christian anti-RnR movie I saw back then featured an adult woman who reacted with extreme revulsion on hearing the lines of the 3rd verse of Satisfaction. I struggled with RnR, and at points tried to give up on the devil's music to live up to the religious ideals that ruled my family, but the pull of that back beat proved too strong for me to resist for very long. Keith Richards had me wrapped around this simple riff from the first time I heard it, and I wrote at least 1 song during my high school years by making mistakes while trying to figure out how to play the chords and riffs of this tune. Then during my first year at N.U., my roommate Abby, who I mentioned in my blurbs about Girls Talk (Song 246) and Subterranean Homesick Blues (Song 243), wanted to sing Satisfaction, and he assumed I knew it, so we blundered our way through it, and I mostly figured it out, but I was still missing one piece. I had the verses right, but for the riff on the chorus, even though I had the riff notes right, I just played the E first chord and the D third chord, leaving out the A middle chord. Playing the tune that way, it sounded close, but still not quite right, like I was missing something, which I truly was. When, a couple of decades later, I stumbled onto that missing piece, it seemed so obvious that I could hardly believe I hadn't figured it out sooner. The E-A-D-A repeated chord pattern was already a highly-overused RnR sequence the night Keith put it down on a tape in a hotel room just before dozing off, so it's understandable that even coupled with the lead riff, he still didn't think it was necessarily something special when he first played it for Mick, but lucky for us all, Mick understood on first hearing the real value of what Keith had stumbled upon. The Stones got plenty of mileage from this track, including their first chart-topper, but they followed it with plenty of others, so that by the time I saw them in Chicago in the summer of '78, everyone knew that despite how much fans might like to hear it, the band never played Satisfaction. Except, in this case, when they came out for their encore, they actually did play it! Whenever I've felt dissatisfied in my life, this track has perfectly expressed that feeling, and in so doing, has given me plenty of Satisfaction.

No Two Alike

Song 255: Seven weeks after my last playlist song by a personal friend, this week's track is Snowflakes by my friend Terry Kitchen, who also wrote the song, and since we're only a few days away from the first official day of summer, why not post a tune about snowflakes? This track closes Terry's 2009 CD Summer to Snowflakes and presents a moving eulogy to a young woman bullied into taking an overdose as a means of escape. As I mention in my post for Song 122 (Break the Same Heart Twice by TK), I spent a memorable weekend as Terry's guest back in March of 1993, just about the time a major blizzard hit the Boston area, so for a couple of days, he and I both saw quite a lot of snowflakes. For that weekend, he had jokingly nicknamed his apartment Ice Station Zebra, and I will forever remember it by that moniker. As much white stuff as we saw from that blizzard, though, the winter of 2015 brought a much greater storm of snowflakes and I can't quite imagine how the neighborhood around Ice Station Zebra looked only a few months ago, but for this track, Terry has made good use of an image quite commonly seen in his vicinity.

Delivering the Goods

Song 254: This week Mason-Dixon Line by The Long Ryders, written by Stephen McCarthy, takes its place on the playlist. Back in the mid-'80s I played bass briefly with a quartet doing mid-'60s-style songs under the name The Jet Set, and the group's leader was a big fan of the Long Ryders. He gave me a cassette with a bunch of their songs on it, and not too long after that, I started collecting their albums. If you like the Byrds as much as I do, then you'll probably also like State Of Our Union as much as I do. This cut will give you a good feel for what to expect from the record. Being a song about a truck driver, it works particularly well as traveling music, and coming from the era when the ICC was still keeping an eye on truckers, the lyrics have a line about the agency, just as Six Days on the Road (Song 224) does. Of course, the trucker doesn't much like the agency, since most of the money he sees goes straight to the ICC, according to the lyrics. The government does have a good reason for taking a big bite out of the trucker's income, though, which has to do with how his rig tears up the highways he travels on, but the song's words don't cover that angle. The chorus does mention driving on a 6-lane highway, and I often think of those lines when driving on one of those roads myself. The song lyrics paint a clear picture of a guy who has already driven 16 hours but has no time to sleep and who takes his whites just to get through the night. If you've ever known any truckers, then you know how real that picture is, as they commonly work incredibly long hours for a paycheck that ends up amounting to less than minimum wage. What you may or may not know, even if do you know a truck driver, is that the title of this song comes not from the line that defines the MD/VA border but from the name of an actual trucking company -- I know that because I've seen those trucks on the highway. On the music side, I especially like how the Ryders work a banjo into the mix, and keep it rocking as they do, so I'd have to say that on this track, the band really delivers!

The Sound of Texas

Song 253: Somehow I managed to get past the 250 mark on this playlist before posting a song by that Little Ol' Band from Texas, so this week's track is 10 Dollar Man by ZZ Top, written by Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard. It makes sense to follow up a Jimi Hendrix cut with a ZZ Top one because Jimi and ZZ lead guitarist Billy Gibbons had been friends, to such an extent that Jimi reportedly gave Billy a pink Stratocaster and mentioned in an appearance on the Dick Cavett Show that Gibbons would be the next big thing as a guitarist. That took a while to actually happen, but by the summer of '74 BG's guitar work was sizzling all over the airwaves on the single La Grange. Their next album Fandango the following year got almost everybody's attention with a huge hit all about Tush, and they followed that up a year later with Tejas, which is the Spanish word for their home state of Texas. As much as I had liked their earlier records, I felt that Tejas sounded even better than what came before. This track, which opened side 2 of the LP back in the vinyl days, features some interesting musical twists and turns, including a few intriguing opening riffs that hint at the song's groove before getting to it and a coda that plays off that groove by switching gears to move in a totally different direction for the fade out. I happened to catch ZZ Top on the Tejas tour when they played Chicago in the winter of '77, and they had a very entertaining stage show that included a live steer, a couple of vultures and some native Texas plants. I enjoyed the show, but I also couldn't help noticing that they cheated a bit on the sound. Being a musician, I could clearly hear, along with the sound of the drummer, bass player and guitarist that I saw performing, a second guitar in the mix, with no second guitarist on the stage. The woman who attended the show with me was also a singer, and she later confirmed to me that she had gotten the word through back channels that the band had indeed used a click track for the show. While I still have plenty of respect for Billy Gibbons as a player, I was disappointed that he hadn't found a way to translate his dual recorded parts into a single performance part, which made it all the more impressive when I saw Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac manage to do this a few months later (see Song 242). Still, I had a pretty good time at the show, and ZZ Top really did make me feel all right.

Stirring Up the Devil

Song 252: This week Purple Haze by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, written by Jimi Hendrix, takes its place on the playlist. I knew Hendrix mainly for his amazing single of Dylan's All Along the Watchtower until just around the time of his death in September of 1970, when I started adding his albums to the collection, and his first LP just about knocked me over. I did have a friend who admired his guitar work but didn't care much for Jimi's voice, but I liked his singing just fine, even if it wasn't quite as stellar as his playing. From the first time through on the LP, this cut stood out as possibly the best one among a very good collection of tracks, but I also felt that the opening riff had an odd quality to it. I soon got used to that strangeness, and all but forgot it until a few years later when a friend mentioned Jimi's use of the devil tone. Until that discussion, I hadn't ever focused on exactly what 2 notes he played in that strange beginning, and the realization made me appreciate his mastery of music even more. The 12-tone musical system that Europeans developed during the Middle Ages primarily as a vehicle for sacred music had identified harmonious intervals between notes, particularly the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth that made up, for instance, the harmonies of Gregorian chants. The perfect fourth and the perfect fifth are essentially the same, but between them another possibility exists, sometimes called the flatted fifth or the augmented fourth, that has a jarring tone -- so much so that it has found use in modern society as a common emergency siren -- and church leaders believed that its use in music would disturb listeners, possibly even making them do bad things. Thus it became know as the devil's interval, and naturally jazz players in the '30s and '40s had to make room for it in their compositions, but until Jimi put it down on this track, it probably hadn't shown up in rock and roll. Of all the thousands of songs by hundreds of artists that I've heard in rock, blues, country and folk, I couldn't name another track that uses the devil tone. So far I haven't found a place for it in any of my records, though I have plenty of songs yet to record, and maybe someday I'll find a spot for that jarring tone in one of them.

Riding the Freight Train

Song 251: Life imitates art, and Rolling Stone imitates... Dave? I've been doing this playlist for almost 2 years now, and the cover of the latest issue of RS (5/21/15) announces a Playlist Special that includes the likes of Brian Wilson, Bob Seger, Eric Church and Mavis Staples (all of whom have appeared on this playlist), each one naming their favorite records. Did Rolling Stone get the idea from me? I couldn't say for sure, but it does make me wonder. Either way, onward and upward to this week's playlist song Detroit City by Bobby Bare, written by Danny Dill and Mel Tillis. The summer before the Beatles rocked my world, a few folk and country records grabbed my attention in a major way, including this one, which I learned so well that I soon knew all the lyrics and could sing along with every line when the radio played it. In the early '80s, I happened to see Bobby Bare doing a short set for a Bread and Roses concert at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, and the female friend who sat next to me during the performance tolerated my singing along with Bobby until he got to the spoken part about how he rode the freight train north to Detroit City, at which point she insisted that I stop, so I did. Having learned those lines so well in the summer of 1963, I later wondered if the spoken part about riding the freight train might have influenced my writing of The Wanderer a half-dozen years later, in the fall of 1969. On a side note, I have an incidental connection with Mel Tillis due to a double-exposure that my friend Brian Groppe accidently took, and that I liked so much I used it on the inside of the Elder Street CD. Brian took a picture outside the Berkeley club called The Keystone which we played on this particular night, and then took a picture of our band on stage, with me at the mic playing acoustic guitar. The two images worked well together, and include a billboard above the club that announced an upcoming Mel Tillis show at a Reno hotel, so in this odd and distant way, Mel and I remain forever linked.

What Is This Guy Selling?

Song 250: The playlist track for this week is Step Right Up by Tom Waits, who also wrote the song. In writing about TW's 2nd LP Heart of Saturday Night, the Rolling Stone reviewer suggested that Tom might be losing the heart of Saturday night, and his musical soul, behind the mask of the stage persona that he had crafted, and when I saw him perform a set on a TV show not long after reading that review, I thought the writer might have been correct. However, a couple of years later, along came Small Change, where TW took the updated '50s beat poet persona and his music to a whole other level, breathing more heart and soul into that artistic vision than I could ever have imagined. On this, the second track of the album, he shape shifts into the ultimate fast-talking salesman, making an endless stream of claims about the product which he knows (and we know) cannot possibly be true. He even adds in get away from me, kid, you bother me near the end of the cut, which is a line comedian W. C. Fields used, and which was a phrase commonly uttered by carnival barkers when they felt the need to try to keep children from causing a distraction that could potentially interfere with the fast talk. Even though batteries (are) not included, and I'm not quite sure of the nature of the terms available, I'm quite willing to step right up and buy what's Tom's selling here, especially when it sounds this good, and this funny.

Don't Waste Time

Song 249: This week's playlist song is Ain't Wastin' Time No More by The Allman Brothers Band, written by Gregg Allman.  Before the plane I was riding touched down in Atlanta in June of '71, I had never heard of The Allman Brothers Band, but practically everyone I met there had ABB records, and midway through that summer, At Fillmore East arrived, making such a big splash that the wave extended across the whole country, so that by the time I returned to the Chicago area in the early fall, all my RnR friends there were rocking with the Allmans as well. After years of struggle and hard work, the Brothers had finally achieved at least a measure of the acclaim and success they had earned, which made it all the more tragic when lead guitarist Duane Allman, the heart and soul of the band, died suddenly a couple of days before Halloween in a dreadful motorcycle accident, at the age of 24. I still remember the sad radio announcement of that event, and I wondered how the band would carry on. Well, carry on they did, largely to honor Duane's name and his memory. Brother Gregg had written the music to this song before Duane's death, and Duane had heard it, so following the tragedy, Gregg then wrote the words to convey a message about how fleeting life is, and how people need to appreciate the moments of their lives, doing what they can when they can, because life might end at any moment. This track opened the LP Eat a Peach that appeared in February, a few months after Duane's accident, and it showcased the band at the top of their game on all levels. It got a substantial amount of airplay, as did a few other notable tracks from the album, for good reason. The title of the LP had come from an answer Duane had given in an interview when asked about peace, to which he had said that whenever he was in Georgia (his home state) he would eat a peach for peace. Sadly, Gregg's lyrical vision that someday all the war freaks would die off and leave the younger generation alone to raise their children in peace has not yet happened -- there are still plenty of war freaks around, and the fight for peace continues (see my latest anti-war song video If I Was You here).

Friends and Strangers

Song 248: Being 7 weeks since my last song post by a personal friend, this week's playlist track is Perfect Stranger by my friend Patti Rothberg, who also wrote the song. I met Patti in the fall of 2003 when she was working on her Double Standards CD, which was her third album-length recording, and in the process of working with her on the EPK for DS, she gave me some VHS performance tapes of her earlier songs, plus her first 2 CDs. I hadn't previously heard any of her earlier music, and I remember that the first time through with one of her VHS tapes, listening casually while in the middle of some other task, I noticed that I was liking every track, and not just kinda liking them, but really liking them, which is quite unusual for me. I followed with the Candelabra Cadabra CD, and well before the final song, I had become a major PR fan, catching clever lines and savoring prime musical moments. Following up with Between the 1 and the 9 just pulled me in even deeper, and this track comes from that collection. If you don't know Patti's music, this song can make a fitting introduction, as a solo performance that showcases her strong voice, her tasty guitar technique and her mastery of the songwriting craft, both lyrically and musically. It features her sweeter side, with some serious reflections, but she can also rock out with the best of 'em -- check out Alternate Universe (Song 87) and Treat Me Like Dirt (Song 17). Both of those cuts also illustrate her understated humor, while this one shows that she's got serious and thoughtful things to say as well. Patti is no longer a stranger to me, but even as she adds to her discography, including her recent Black Widow CD, she still manages to stay perfect to me.

A Little Bit of Respect

Song 247: This week Respect Yourself by The Staples Singers, written by Luther Ingram and Mack Rice, takes its place on the playlist. In the middle of the fall of 1971, you almost couldn't go anywhere without hearing this song (or at least anywhere in the Chicago area where I lived at the time), and I considered that a good thing -- a very good thing, actually. Previously, I hadn't known anything about The Staple Singers, but I really liked the altitude and the attitude of this song, from their Be Altitude: Respect Yourself LP. I especially savored the line Take the sheet off your face, boy, it's a brand new day, with its implied thought that the members of the KKK did their dirty deeds with their faces covered so they could hide their identities, which proved that they didn't respect themselves. The track makes the fundamental point that if you truly respect yourself, then you will show that same respect to others, and conversely, if you routinely act disrespectful to others, then at your core, you don't respect yourself either. These ideas resonated strongly in that era with connections to both civil rights and feminism, but today, in a much different time and context, there still are, and will likely always be, plenty of people who need to hear and understand the message when someone says you ought to respect yourself. On a side note, this message of self-respect also relates to my political blog for this week, called Ayn Randed Part 3: The Hypocrites, which appears on both Politics 106 and Daily Kos.

What Did You Say?

Song 246: This week must be time for Girls Talk on the playlist, by Linda Ronstadt, written by Elvis Costello. Linda's LP Mad Love arrived in the fall of 1980 as a welcome surprise, and I felt it marked another high point in her recording career, in contrast to the previous 3 or 4 years when she seemed to be drifting along without a clear sense of direction. Critical reaction to the album varied, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride along both sides of the vinyl, and especially this track, plus one or two others. I felt that Costello really hit his songwriting stride during this era, and anyone who savors clever puns (as I do) can't help but smile on hearing lines like You may not be an old-fashioned girl but you're going to get dated. This week seems like an appropriate time to post a song with such a strong lyrical structure because I just reconnected with my old college roommate, who I've had no contact with for a good 4 decades -- I give him most of the credit for helping me to find my own lyrical voice, as well as bringing me to an understanding of the importance of doing so, as an essential key to the craft of songwriting. He got me listening to his LP Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits and also, in that space of less than 6 months, he often opened my ears to the good and the bad lines of songs that I already knew, he introduced me to some other songs with strong lyrics, and he offered some good general advice that helped me to find my own direction with words. During the days, I would struggle with trying to get more chemistry and calculus into my head, and then, in the evenings, back at the dorm room, I was learning what I really wanted to know, because he was teaching me. Thanks mostly to him, I learned to figure out what to say whenever I've got a loaded imagination being fired by girls' talk, or whatever.

That Name Sounds Familiar

Song 245: This week A Simple Desultory Philippic by Simon and Garfunkel, written by Paul Simon, takes the spot as the playlist entry. During my HS days, I spent a number of good Saturday afternoons hanging with my buddy Ed (who I mentioned in Song 243 post from 2 weeks ago for his video camera work on the But video) listening to his Simon and Garfunkel collection, and I soon got to know all of their albums by heart. I truly enjoyed Paul Simon's lighter side, even though I didn't quite recognize all of the names the first few times around. I felt I should know all, or most of them, and being a fan of the Mamas and the Papas, I did know who Lou Adler was, plus I recognized Roy Halee from the credits on the SnG LPs, but it took a while for me to connect Mick Jagger as the lead singer of the Rolling Stones. As I noted in that post from 2 weeks ago (Subterranean Homesick Blues), I also didn't hear any Dylan recordings until I got to college, so while I recognized some references to Dylan, I didn't know how much this track is really a parody of Bob. As I got to know Dylan's records very well, I also came to appreciate an additional level to the understated humor of this track. Further on, in the fall of '74, I read Atlas Shrugged and a few more pieces by Ms. Rand, but at the time, I was still mispronouncing her first name, like many people do, as if it rhymed with Stan. A year or 2 after that, listening to this track, I realized that Paul Simon had shown us, a long time ago, that her first name actual rhymes with sign. By then, I also felt like I'd been Ayn Randed but had gotten past it, maybe because I too had learned the truth from Lenny Bruce. On a side note, I crafted this piece today as a companion to my political blog entry entitled Ayn Randed which appears on both Politics 106 and Daily Kos.