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.