Time to Testify

Song 244: Marking his first appearance on the playlist, this week's record Can I Get a Witness by Marvin Gaye, written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland, predated my awakening to rock and roll (and related genres like rhythm and blues) by a few months, and so I knew nothing about it the first time around. When I began filling out my collection of Rolling Stones LPs, at the turn of the '70s, I soon got acquainted with their cover of this song, and liked it quite a bit. As those next few years rolled along, I also began to learn a lot more about whole regions of the musical landscape that I had previously missed, including the '50s rockers, and also including a major portion of Motown recordings that I hadn't heard on my local hometown radio. Marvin Gaye was really hitting his stride in the early '70s, both artistically and commercially, making some really fine records and then selling a whole lot of them, so it seemed like a good time to catch up on his back catalog as well, and when I heard his original hit version of this song, I liked it even better than the Rolling Stones cover. Sadly, in 1984, Marvin's own father shot and killed him the day before he would have turned 45, and while I've read the story about why the older man did that, still, decades later, the shooting makes no sense to me -- somehow, somewhere, it just seems like it wasn't fair. Can I get a witness? On a side note, I crafted this piece today as a companion to my political blog entry entitled Witness to Injustice which appears on both Politics 106 and Daily Kos.

Fine Rhyme Time

Song 243: Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan (who also wrote the song) comes into the playlist this week at number 243. I knew, and really liked, a bunch of Dylan songs during high school, but I only knew them as covers. Yes, Dylan wrote that amazing Hendrix single All Along the Watchtower, that magical Byrds track Mr. Tambourine Man, that cool Turtles hit It Ain't Me Babe, that Peter Paul and Mary heavy-hitter Blowin' in the Wind, and a lot of other really good songs, but I had never heard his versions of them until I got to Northwestern in September of 1969. There, a guy named Smiley Collins, who had a room near mine in Bobb Hall, played the John Wesley Hardin album for me one day, and my first reaction to hearing Bob's voice at Bobb was, "Oh, that's why everybody covers his songs -- his own voice isn't that great." I heard a bit more of Bob around Bobb over the next few months, and then in January, after the winter break, I had a new roommate, who was himself a big Dylan fan, and so a certain Greatest Hits record starting spinning on the player quite a bit. Soon I started to notice that Bob's voice no longer bothered me, and that I'd actually started to like the sound of it. Not only that, but I'd also got to liking every track on that LP, and really liking 2 or 3 of them, this song being one. Within a year I would go from Dylan novice to major Dylan fan, scouting the record stores for Bob bootlegs, weighing the true meaning of Newport '65 and discussing lyric interpretations with other Dylan faniacs. This track remained a favorite, although I didn't even catch the sly drug references until a Rolling Stone piece happened to mention them. The revelation didn't affect my affection for the lyrics in any way. A few years later, when I happened into a situation as an occasional caregiver for someone a few years older than me who suffered from autism so severe that he could barely speak, I would regularly sing this song to him, and his face would beam with pleasure, which made me feel good to think that I could offer him some small measure of joy to counter his pain. Whether or not you pick up the sly references between the lines on this song, the rhymes will surely catch your ear and likely put a smile on your face. On a side note, D.A. Pennebaker created one of the first rock song videos with this track so that it could act as the trailer for his Don't Look Back film of Bob's 1965 tour, and when I was putting together a song video for But But But, the drummer who played on that track suggested doing a segment to parody Dylan's trailer, so on a very cold November afternoon, my good friend Ed Campbell set up his VHS camera and filmed the scene that makes up most of verse 3. You can see the But video here.

Hearing Some Rumours

Song 242: The playlist song for this week is Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac, written by Lindsey Buckingham. Fleetwood Mac had sounded pretty good to me the first time around with Buckingham and Nicks added to the mix, but I thought the next record they put together kicked it up a notch, and this track, as the first single from that LP, completely fulfilled the promises that their earlier efforts had hinted at. The match that lit the fire of anger in Buckingham's searing vocals and smoking leads on this cut came from the Rumours (U.K. spelling) of love entanglements swirling around the band. These whispers provided not only the title for their album but also the inspiration for the songs it contained, including one by all 5 band members. While I didn't often make it to major concerts back then, I did happen to catch the Mac on the Rumours tour, and they put on a very good show that summer, with each band member in turn showcasing their talents and creating a whole performance even greater than the sum of those very impressive parts. Lindsey B left the strongest mark, though, as he burned through the riffs of Oh, Well (an FM song that predated his membership in the band by about 6 years), deftly handling multiple guitar lines that the record version had needed at least 2 players to cover. My good friend and fellow music traveler Jeff Larson (who has appeared on this playlist a few times) recently visited the Record Plant in Sausalito, which is the place where FM began the Rumours recording and did much of the work. Jeff posted a picture on his Facebook page of himself standing at the door, but as he mentions in his post, it is sadly no longer a place where musicians craft magical recordings.

The View from the Top

Song 241: Seven weeks after my last personal friend song post, this week's song is Top of the World by my NJ friend and former neighbor Joe Canzano, also known as Happy Joe. I don't have much of a history with this one -- I actually only heard it for the first time 2 or 3 weeks ago, and I would guess that it's probably a fairly recent composition, but I also would rate it as one of his best. In fact, I'm obviously not the only one who thinks so -- the song made the short list as one of Cafe Improv's Best Performances of 2014. I know I'll be listening to this version quite a bit in the near future, and I look forward to a studio rendition when he gets around to it. Right now, though, Joe is otherwise occupied, promoting his first novel, called Magno Girl, and that will probably keep him busy for a while. I wish him luck on that enterprise, but I also want to include a small plug here for his most recent CD, Big Mouth, which comes rocking out of my iPod speakers on a regular basis -- it's definitely his best recording to date, and one I never get tired of hearing. You can find out more about Joe's CD, novel, live performances and other endeavors here.

That Was the Day

Song 240: This week's playlist track is That'll Be the Day by Buddy Holly & the Crickets, written by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison. I think I first heard of Buddy Holly from reading John Lennon's story about the origin of the Beatles name, which was inspired by the Crickets. At some point in my high school Beatlemania phase I also learned that my favorite musical quartet had covered a Holly song called Words of Love and I liked that cover quite a bit. I happened to hear Peggy Sue on the radio one summer night in 1965 and liked it, but didn't know that it was a BH golden oldie. Back then, I knew nothing about the day the music died, and in the early '70s when I started catching up on the '50s rockers that I had missed, I was saddened to learn about the plane crash that had cruelly cut short such a very promising career. The more I heard of Buddy's music, the more impressed I was about how much he had accomplished in so short a time, though for all the fine songs he wrote and recorded in that short time, I always liked his first hit (this one) the best. I recall hearing Dick Clark (American Bandstand) mention that he had heard the music of the Beatles initially described as Buddy Holly style guitar coupled with Everly Brothers style vocals, which seems accurate for their early recordings, and makes it clear how much this son of Lubbock, TX, influenced the English foursome that would become the most influential rock and roll ensemble of their era. It's sad that Buddy had to leave us as soon as he did, but that bad news on the doorstep on a chilly early February day in 1959 -- that would be the day that he died.