A Song With a Muscular Subject

Song 388: The Butt Song by The Fast Folk Ensemble, written by John Gorka, seems like a fun way to start out the new year, featuring a live ensemble from 25 years ago. 7 weeks after my last personal friend song post, the performers here include some old friends, 3 of whom - vocalists Wendy Beckerman, Kelly Flint and Richard Julian - have appeared on this list before. I played a role in Fast Folk during this era, though I didn't actually make this particular show in February of 1993, but my name appears on the masthead (under GENERAL STAFF) of the FF 702 print issue that accompanied the CD, as does the moniker of my recording partner David Seitz (under RECORDING ENGINEERS). A friend had told me a few years earlier about watching the writer John Gorka perform this opus, and in describing the lyrics a certain way, he conveyed a sense that the piece didn't impress him, but I suspected that I would like it, and when I got to hear it, within moments it had me smiling. I also found it particularly inspiring because it didn't actually go the way I had pictured from my friend's description, so I ended up crafting the jewel that would eventually shine on The But Single CD a few years later (and my website daveelder.com contains some hidden gems in the form of newsletters about that record, on the Stuff page). If you're curious, you can find the video for my But But But recording by clicking on the title. David Hamburger, who played pedal steel guitar with the Fast Folk Ensemble on The Butt Song, later added his golden tones to As Long as Merle is Still Haggard and you can likewise hear that by clicking on the title. Happy New Year! May the wisdom of 25 years ago bring you a smile today: “Some butts wind up as presidents who wish they could be kings.” Enjoy! Laughter is the best remedy!

A Very Different Leader of the Pack

Song 387: This week on the  playlist you’ll find Leroy The Redneck Reindeer by Joe Diffie, written by Stacey Slate, Joe Diffie and Steve Pippin, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I only recently discovered this cut a couple of years ago, though it dates from the middle of the 1990s, but I find it a highly-entertaining take on the flying reindeer tale, and a welcome alternative to the ever-present repetitive background music you'll get in the stores at this time of the year. Personally, I'd much rather catch Joe blabbing about Leroy leading the pack than Gene crooning about Rudolf, but it hasn't happened yet. Even though that down home party animal Leroy might have made history that night, perhaps not enough people know About that crazy Christmas That the North Pole can't forget. On a side note, this track is a first sly reference to the third (and final) verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard. Leaving aside the first 3 references in it, the middle of the third verse begins with the line and would Joe know the Diffie, and you can find the Merle video by clicking on the title.

Moving Along

Song 386: This week’s playlist pick is Truckin' by the Grateful Dead, written by Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Robert Hunter, and you can find a YouTube video of it here. Back in the early 1970s, if you listened to any rock FM radio station long enough, you would surely hear this cut. I picked up on it pretty quickly, though it took me a while to warm up to the rest of American Beauty. The LP did eventually become a regular spinner on my turntable, as I grew to appreciate it more than I had initially, but this closing track remained the highlight of the record. For a while, I struggled to decipher some of the lines, though I soon understood that Houston was too close to New Orleans and that New York had the ways and means. At that point in my life, I was indeed sick of hanging around and really thought I'd like to travel, so I hit the road when I could, though I surely wasn't Truckin' nearly as much as this band. On a side note, earlier today I uploaded a new song on YouTube called Wheel - a Reinvention that includes, in the first verse, a sly reference to this classic, which, as I just found out from doing the research tonight, was recognized by the United States Library of Congress in 1997 as a national treasure. I sure would like to have my reinvention of the wheel achieve that status someday!

Can’t Quite Keep It Together

Song 385: This week on the playlist you will find I Fall to Pieces by Patsy Cline, written by Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard. Though this single topped the country charts in August of 1961, I first heard it the following summer, as our family visits to OH relatives changed from yearly trips in the 1950s to even-numbered-year excursions in the 1960s. Aunt Mary and Uncle Dick had an extensive country music stockpile, and during our stays I had total access to it. This track graced a greatest hits collection that soon became a favorite, so that by the time we headed back towards the east, I had it memorized. On our repeat journeys 2, 4, and 6 years later, I often had the LP spinning on the turntable while I sang along. Sadly, I did not know that between the time I first enjoyed this cut and my further enjoyment 2 years later, Patsy had actually literally fallen to pieces in an unfortunate airplane crash, though if I had known that, it would have only increased my appreciation of her recordings. On a side note, the songwriter name Harlan Howard has appeared on this list a couple of times before (Don't Tell Me What to Do by Pam Tillis as Song 210 and Why Not Me by The Judds as Song 287) and will surely appear again, when I get around to posting Johnny Cash's Busted, Buck Owens' Tiger By The Tail and a few others. He earned my respect as a songwriter a long time ago, and the more I learn about his career, the bigger the nod I'd like to give him.

Picking Up a Hitcher

Song 384: This week on the playlist you can hear Coyote by Joni Mitchell, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it here. I became a big Joni Mitchell fan around the time For the Roses came along in 1972, to such an extent that I titled one of my tunes For the Flowers thanks to her inspiration, and by the time Hejira came along 4 years later, I quickly added it to my collection, which already included all of her other LPs. On this cut, which opens the album, she identifies herself as a prisoner of the white line on the freeway and a hitcher, which exactly matched my own songwriting lyrical self-image, so she had me hooked with this one before she got to the end of it. I could easily imagine the two of us riding thumb together, and I even wrote a love song to her (maybe more on that one day), but of course, if we had hitched as a couple, a Coyote driving by probably wouldn't have stopped to pick anyone up. On a random side note, this lyric was the first I had ever heard about the Bay of Fundy, and in that long-ago era before the internet, I don't recall how I did the research on it, but in doing so, I learned that it has the highest tidal range in the world, so listening to Joni widened my knowledge of the world as well as resonating with my traveling spirit.

Recognize That Sound

Song 383: This week on the playlist you can find I Hear You Knocking by Fats Domino, written by Dave Bartholomew, and you can find a YouTube video of it here. This week's playlist pick pays tribute to another 1950s RnR icon who died recently, in late October. Up to and through my HS years I knew almost nothing about the 1950s rockers, believing that the Fab 4 had invented the form. Not long after I began my college career, the early 1970s brought a revival of that first generation music, including this cut, which got my attention. While I soon came to understand how Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard and others had figured into the picture, I didn't know how big a role Fats had played until near the end of the decade, when my Oakland housemate Doug filled me in on Mr. Domino, thereby vastly increasing my appreciation of his contributions. On a strange side note, I only learned today that Fats had lived in New Orleans at the time Hurricane Katrina hit back in August of 2005, and, as I'm currently working on a studio version of Blackwater Boys, I now realize that he may have been one of those I was addressing when I wrote about when that rising water came so fast you couldn't get away you climbed up on your roof and then you had to wait. You can check out a rough cut YouTube video of Blackwater Boys just by clicking on the title. Fats died on October 24 from natural causes at the age of 89, and may his musical soul rest in peace, knowing he left behind a generous helping of his creativity.

The Place to Shop

Song 382: This week’s playlist track is Downtown by Petula Clark, written by Tony Hatch, and you can find a YouTube video of it here. On the week that includes the biggest retail day of the year, AKA Black Friday, this 1960s shopping anthem seems fitting. When the single came along at the beginning of my teenage years, people usually went Downtown to do their shopping, although perhaps a modernized version would carry the title At (or To) the Mall. When I heard it back then, I knew exactly which 3-block stretch to picture, and I certainly would have enjoyed the chance to Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty (or at least once were). I didn’t often get the opportunity to listen to the music of the traffic in the city, though, or take in all the noise and the hurry, because I didn’t have much change in my pocket, and my family couldn’t contribute much either, so even if Petula had graced the scene, she probably wouldn’t have seen me there, but yet, listening to her singing could, at that moment, help me to forget all my cares, and it sometimes still can.

Helping Each Other

Song 381: Seven weeks after my last personal friend song post, this week on the playlist you can hear Life is Hard Enough by my good friend Terry Kitchen, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it here. The video features a live performance of a cut from his 2006 CD Heaven Here on Earth, and I will admit that I don't recall hearing it before today. Terry sent me a message about a new YT video where he covers an old favorite called Nature's Way (originally done by Spirit, and sure to be featured on this playlist one day soon). After enjoying that video, I clicked on the link to this one, and I really liked what I heard. While the song has been around for over a decade, it seems to fit the present moment quite well. The currently-ascendent conservative political narrative emphasizes selfishness, competitiveness, and a supposedly-innate war-like characteristic of our species, but a more scientific analysis of human nature and history comes to a completely opposite conclusion that humans largely have succeeded through cooperation, or, as Terry would put it, We are all strong enough to help each other through. Today you might need me, tomorrow I'll need you.

Fond Romantic Memories

Song 380: This week’s spot on the playlist goes to Yankee Lady by Jesse Winchester, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it here. At the turn of the 1970s, the solo singer/songwriter era unfolded, with acoustic-guitar-wielding types like James Taylor, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell getting a lot of attention. Jesse Winchester, with an eponymous debut LP produced by The Band's Robbie Robertson, might have had a similar shot at the spotlight, but perhaps because of his inability to tour the U.S. due to his status as a Vietnam War draft dodger residing in Canada, he never got the acclaim that those other artists did. I liked what I heard from that first album, though, and I made sure to add it to my collection, soon learning to play this tune, as well as a couple of other cuts from the record. Like Jesse, I too have taken An autumn walk on a country road With a million flaming trees and these days, I understand feeling a little uneasy when there's a winter chill in the breeze, which I have felt once or twice lately. I will also confess to finding inspiration in Jesse's last verse here, where he speaks of seeing himself as a stranger by his birth. I used that as the basis for the lyric of my song Waylaid the Stranger, and you can find a rough cut YT video of that by clicking on the title.

Teaching the Players

Song 379: This week the playlist comes around to Learning the Game by Buddy Holly, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it here. From the moment the Beatles rocked my world in February of 1964, I believed the Fab Four had invented RnR, and I knew almost nothing about the 1950s pioneers until I began my college era in the fall of 1969. Not long after, a 1950s revival began on the radio, and that, along with a subscription to Rolling Stone, quickly acquainted me with some very significant talents, including this guy in the glasses. By the time The Buddy Holly Story hit the screen in 1978, I had come to understand what the music world had lost to a plane crash on The Day the Music Died in February of 1959, though at the time it happened, I had no idea what had occurred. I added a BH compilation LP to my collection in the mid-1970s, and it truly impressed me to recognize how much good music Buddy had laid down in such a short career. If the comment on the linked YT video is correct, this track (which did not appear on my BH album) was actually the last one Holly did. I wouldn't even know about the tune until later, in the 1980s, when one of my Berkeley musician friends taught it to me, and we then regularly played and sang it together. During that stretch, learning the song, I felt like I was also learning the game, but when I found that I was not the one she's thinking of, I couldn't really blame her, because she had never said I was the only one she'll ever love.

Scary Season

Song 378: This week on the playlist is time for Season of the Witch by Donovan, written by Donovan and Shawn Phillips, and you can find a YouTube video of it here. With Halloween a little more than a week away, it seems like a good time to post this track. I must have had a friend who owned Sunshine Superman because I did know the record during my HS years, but I didn't hear it that often, so I didn't get to know it well until I started my own LP collection when I began my college era. Once I had the disc, it became a regular spinner on my turntable, and while I enjoyed side 1, I preferred side 2, starting as it did with this cut, followed by The Trip (Song 270). I quickly figured out how to play the tune, and would sometimes share it with fellow players in guitar circles at parties and campfire gatherings. Looking back, I can now see how this song and The Trip both influenced my composition Under the Table (and you can find a lyric video of that on YouTube by clicking on the title). During my time in Oakland, CA, my housemate Doug told me a story about how another musician claimed that Sunshine Superman's producer Mickie Most stole Season of the Witch from him and gave it to Donovan, but at this point, I don't remember any of the details, such as who that other songwriter might have been, or if there might have been any reason to believe the story, so while this track reminds us that we've got to pick up every stitch, I don't think I could say who that other cat looking over his shoulder at me might be.

Ghostly Timing

Song 377: This week on the playlist you can hear Sundown by Rank and File, written by Chip Kinman and Tony Kinman, and you can catch a YouTube video of it here. With the days getting shorter at this time of year, Sundown comes along sooner every day, so this song seems appropriate for the season. It's the title track for the first Rank and File LP, which appeared in 1982. During that stretch, my good friend Eddie Spitzer started his own guitar store in the back of a record shop on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley, and so of course, I visited him there a number of times. In so doing, I caught some music that I might not have otherwise, including the R+F debut disc, and some of what I heard didn't move me at all, but the Kinman brothers quickly did get my attention, and my investment in a copy of their album. While I still haven't figured out all the words on this tune, and they're not yet available on any internet lyric pages, I can clearly hear a couple of lines close to the end which seem to fit the second half of October pretty well, and so I  guess we can Let the ghosts come around, and perhaps, if I look (and listen) closely, I can see them now. On a side note, I recently reconnected with Eddie, who now runs a business selling guitars to wholesalers online, and he's got some pretty good stuff which you can find at spitzco.com.

Sweet Memories

Song 376: This week’s playlist track Magnolia by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, written by Tom Petty, pays tribute to an RnR icon who died on Monday (10/2), and you can find a YouTube video of it here. While I haven't seen all that many concerts in my life, I have actually had the good fortune of seeing Tom Petty 3 times. First, on the Friday evening of 12/2/77, for the bargain price of $3, I caught him and his band as the opening act for Elvis Costello in Chicago, although, as I remember it, EC, who headlined the show, also did his set first. At the time, I knew nothing about TP, but I liked his performance even better than Costello's, though I certainly appreciated Mr. Elvis as well. Then, less than a year later, in the early fall of 1978, having hitched across the country and resettled in Oakland, CA, I did a hitch down to Santa Cruz one day, and a woman who gave me a lift in that area, and who lived near SC, told me about the new Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers LP You're Gonna Get It (which included this cut) and before she played it for me, she said, "You're gonna like it." She was quite right about that, and as much as I have relished all of the band's other recordings, YGGI still tops the list. In July of 1985 I had the good fortune of seeing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers once again, this time at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, with Lone Justice as the opening act (see Song 193). and then, less than a year later, in June of 1986, I had a very good seat in that same venue to enjoy a performance by Tom Petty and Bob Dylan together. I will cherish these memories even more, now that Tom is no longer out there somewhere in the world, and, like so many of his other fans, I will remember him.

Very Bad Political Proposal

Song 375: This week on the playlist you’ll hear Political Science (Let's Drop the Big One Now) by Randy Newman, who also wrote the song. In the early 1970s, Rolling Stone carried a number of articles talking about what an essential songwriter Randy Newman was, and how people needed to pay attention to him. Back then, still catching up on the music I already knew and wanted to add to my collection, I let Sail Away (which included this cut) slide by when it came along in 1972. When Good Old Boys started making some noise 2 years later, though, I did get a copy of that, and it sounded so good that I soon picked up on Randy's other works as well. During that stretch, this track provided an amusing commentary on the small-minded jingoistic rhetoric that might occasionally pop out of the mouths of quirky strangers in random public settings, but I did not expect that 4 decades later, a major TV news host would make this same kind of stupid and short-sighted suggestion. I sincerely hope, for the sake of our species, and all other higher life forms on this planet, that these fools never have even half a chance to Drop the Big One. From my earliest years, the nuclear nightmare has at times disturbed my dreams, and I have my own recording about that, called Dream Revelations.

People of a Different Color

Song 374: 7 weeks after my last personal friend song post, this week on the playlist you will find Everybody Woke Up Green by my good friend Joe Canzano, who also wrote the song, and you can hear a YouTube video of it here. The first time I heard Joe perform this tune, in the early 1990s, it became an instant favorite, and on the night when he showed up at the Jack Hardy songwriter gathering on Houston St., I suggested that he use it as his calling card, which he did. As much as I always enjoyed the deft commentary on racism and other ethnic phobias embodied in this recording's lyrics, the current political environment has highlighted their meaning to a degree I could not have imagined 2 decades ago. Given recent racist episodes in Ferguson and other similar events across the country, the line about cops out in Loa Angeles might sound odd at first, but if you recall the Rodney King riots of 1992, then you understand that while the bad news has lately come from other places, L.A. certainly earned its reference in the words here. I savor the science-fiction vision of a world where everyone's skin has turned green, and the folks at Breitbart etc. would plead for a new method to determine who we're supposed to hate. To give Joe the last word, truly, there is no proper color to cover ignorance.

Celebrating the Season

Song 373: For the last post before autumn officially begins, I wanted to add A Summer Song by Chad and Jeremy, written by Chad Stuart, Clive Metcalfe and Keith Noble, onto the playlist, and you can view a YouTube video of it here. This hit actually came along in the early fall of 1964, 8 months after the Beatles had rocked my world, with Chad and Jeremy creating their own kind of magic noise as part of the British Invasion that the Fab Four had launched. My good friend Ed (the subject of my tune So Long Friend) enjoyed the music of this duo as much as I did, and he at some point acquired the Yesterday’s Gone LP that contained this cut, which meant that I got to savor its catchy melody and wistful lyrics many times during my teenage years. Soon enough, autumn leave must fall, (in my area they already started coming down, even though the fall doesn’t formally arrive until later this week), and the good things of summer will end, but when the rain beats against my window pane, this record can offer some comfort, and serve as a reminder to think of summer days again. On a side note, you can watch a YouTube lyric video of my track So Long Friend just by clicking on the title.

Words of Warning

Song 372: This week on the playlist you can hear London Calling by The Clash, written by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, and you can watch a YouTube video of it here. With Hurricane Irma hitting the coast of FL, threatening nuclear facilities there, this track about the hazards of a nuclear meltdown seems to fit the current moment. My initial impression of the British punk bands was that the press about them made them sound a lot cooler than their actual records did, but when this single came along near the end of 1979, I definitely liked what I heard. I had started to make the anti-nuke rally scene, and in addition, I had written a tune about Three Mile Island called Wind Whistle, but in that long-ago era before azlyrics.com and musixmatch.com, not knowing all of the lines on this cut, I picked up more of an anti-nuclear war message, without realizing that the words could also refer to nuclear power plant troubles. I sincerely hope that A nuclear error does not occur in FL due to Irma (or anything else), but that very possibility should serve as a reminder of the dangers that nuclear power plants can pose, and the fact that everyone will be better off when all such facilities are retired, and that we should not build any more of them. On that note, you can watch a YouTube lyric video of my song Wind Whistle just by clicking on the title.

Heavy Work

Song 371: This week’s playlist track is Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford, written by Merle Travis, and you can find the YouTube video of it here. It seems appropriate, in honor of Labor Day, to post a work song, and I learned this golden oldie at quite a young age, though when I first heard it, on a TV show in the early 1960s, it had already been around for a few years. It also appeared among my Ohio relatives' extensive country collection, so during our even-numbered-year summer visits there in that decade, I would usually include this record as part of my listening fun, with my aunt and uncle letting me choose the discs I wanted to spin. While my father didn’t work in a coal mine, what he got from his full-time job was also another day older and deeper in debt, which is a line that came from a letter written to the songwriter by his brother. It was their father, a coal miner, who said to them, "I can’t afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store." All too often in our history, a group of wealthy greed-heads have succeeded in dividing and conquering the working class, through techniques such as segregation, racism and xenophobia, to keep the workers from uniting in large-enough numbers to demand and receive a living wage. Until laborers get beyond such divisions, most of them will continue to owe their souls to the company store.

Flowers in Full Bloom

Song 370: This week the playlist comes around to San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers In Your Hair) by Scott McKenzie, written by John Phillips. When this song came along in the late spring 50 years ago, I was already a big fan of Papa John's songwriting, having gotten hooked a year earlier on the music of The Mamas and The Papas, but I had no idea about the community that had gravitated to the Haight-Ashbury district, so I really liked the record the first time I heard it, but it took a while for me to get the message. Growing up in a conservative and fundamentalist religious home, I didn't necessarily connect with the hippie counterculture, as much as I did with the music, but by 3 years later, having lived nearly a year outside of the family circle after graduating HS, I had fully plugged in with hippiedom and the peace bohemians. This year, on the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, one of those peace types defused and ultimately entirely deflated a scheduled neo-Nazi rally in San Francisco. The gathering was due to happen yesterday, August 26, but, unlike Charlottesville, where antifas met nNs with serious signs and protests, and serious injury and death ensued, in SF, an artist named Tuffy Tuffington created a Facebook event page that recommended greeting the nN assembly with flowers for their hair, and a carpet of dog poop. Tuffy’s inspired hilarity quickly galvanized an opposition force that included clowns, kayakers and kids, and the Flowers Against Fascism actually succeeded in getting the alt-righters to cancel their gig. Kudos to Mr. Tuffington for putting the Turd Reich into context, using humor to defuse the fascist absurdity, which is, I think, the best and most effective way to face neo-Nazis.

Can’t Turn Around

Song 369: This week on the playlist you will find It's a Little Too Late by Tanya Tucker, written by Roger Murrah and Pat Terry. (For the YouTube video, click on the title.) After last week's post in honor of Glen Campbell, who recently died, Tanya seemed like an appropriate follow-up, in light of their famous love affair. For the first 2 decades of her career, I knew very little about TT, aside from her dalliance with Campbell, so when this record came rocking along in 1992 courtesy of country radio, it surprised me, and immediately got my attention. In addition to the clever lyrics about romantic entanglement, I also really liked the drummer's wild and frenzied accompaniment, which perfectly compliments the words Tanya sings. Having been more than once in that same spot where I was too far gone to turn this heart around, I'd say that Tucker and her backup players nailed it. On a side note, this track is a final sly reference to the second verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, which ends with the line but after what Holly Dunn (my 5/28/17 post) you should have Tanya Tucker up. Appropriately enough, the late Mr. Haggard was also someone who had hooked up with TT, and you can find the video for my tribute to him by clicking on the title.

Pleasant Memories

Song 368: This week’s playlist track is Gentle on My Mind by Glen Campbell, written by John Hartford, and I offer the post as a tribute to a very talented singer and guitarist who died last Tuesday after an extended struggle with Alzheimer's disease. I thought this 45 sounded really good when I first starting hearing it in the early summer of 1967, and when I saw Glen perform it on TV, I thought it sounded even better. I liked the way he included a banjo in the mix, which didn't happen much at the time. The character sketched in the lyrics here helped to shape the image that I outlined in The Wanderer when I wrote that a couple of year later, in the fall of 1969, and then the following summer, as I was seeking to define my own original artistic and musical persona, I decided to learn to play and sing this tune. In so doing, I made a melodic mistake that inspired a new piece which I called Country Highway when I completed it a few days later. While I thought highly of Glen during the era when he did this record and a bunch of other memorable cuts, only in recent years did I learn of his earlier career when he performed as Brian Wilson's stand-in on a Beach Boys tour, and also recorded guitar parts for Pet Sounds and other BB discs, which increased my respect for his artistry. While GC has left the land of the living, the magic moments he created will without a doubt keep him in the backroads by the rivers of my memory, and maybe yours too.

Conveying a Disturbing Message

Song 367: This week on the playlist you can hear The Cruel Lullaby by Carol Denney, who also wrote the song. As usual, seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post which featured Bob Nichols comes one by Carol. Bob, Carol and I were all members of a Berkeley songwriting circle back in the 1980s, but sadly, Bob died in November of 2005. Checking out Carol's website today, I noticed that she has a short story inspired by Bob's generosity to the Berkeley homeless, which you can find here. This cut is the title track from Carol's second CD, which she released in 2002, and a few years ago she performed it live at Viracocha in San Francisco, in front of a video camera. Her performance begins with an entertaining explanation of the song's inspiration, which evidently occurred when she found herself at a Berkeley potluck seated between 2 Buddhists who discussed their views on life after death. Following that experience, Carol crafted a lullaby meant to convey to a young child the cruel reality of life and death that she sees, cutting through the sort of comforting fantasies that she heard at the potluck, and giving a youngster the real story, which is one a child might not want to hear. The audience at Viracocha most certainly did enjoy hearing this lullaby, though, and their laughter throughout the performance makes that quite clear.

A Well-known Location

Song 366: This week the playlist comes around to La Grange by ZZ Top, written by Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard. To quote one of the lines from last week’s track, “We’d put on ZZ Top and turn ’em up real loud" and now here we are, visiting a place that would be memorialized in the late 1970s by a Broadway play called The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Around the time that this hit reached its peak in the summer of 1974, I read a Larry King article in Playboy about the place, and realized the connection to this recording, though Billy, Dusty and Frank had to have a prior source for their info, since the cut appears on the Tres Hombres LP that the trio released a year earlier. I liked it from the first time I heard it, but I also thought that it borrowed heavily from a Canned Heat groove. Actually, the boogie blues rhythm that it rides evidently owes its inspiration to much older sides by John Lee Hooker and Slim Harpo, with a failed lawsuit concluding that the rhythm was in public domain by the time ZZ Top put it down. One of my musician friends remarked that the singer on this mix doesn’t really sing, to which I replied that I thought he handled the vocal just fine, and I didn’t feel the need to nitpick technicalities when listening to it. In fact, I hear it’s fine if you got the time.

Explosive Ride

Song 365: This week on the playlist you can hear Metal Firecracker by Lucinda Williams, who also wrote the song. One of my songwriter friends, John Sonntag (who appears on my Spotify playlist Me and My Songwriter Friends), had introduced me to the music of Lucinda Williams back in 1991, so when the Car Wheels on a Gravel Road ride came along in 1998, I hopped on. The CD quickly found a place in my collection, and, unlike some others, it became one that I would always listen to from the beginning to the end. This track paints a very clear picture of a moving relationship, and it's a scene that I easily recognize, having ridden in more than one Metal Firecracker myself. I might not have a clue about the secrets Lucinda told her former lover, but I certainly understand her plea, since I’ve picked up a few juicy tidbits over the years, and while I can’t speak for her old flame, I can assure my own past sweethearts that I won't tell anybody the secrets. I will confide, though, that I share LW's enjoyment of a certain RnR band that she mentions in this cut, and her lyrics provide a clue as to the feature artist for next week's playlist pick.

Spicing Up the Mix

Song 364: This week on the playlist you can find Little Bit O' Soul by The Music Explosion, written by John Carter and Ken Lewis. 50 years ago, this 45 sailed over the airwaves, peaking in early July. Even with my situation, growing up in a family that didn't approve of the devil's music, which often compelled me to get sneaky with the transistor radio, I still managed to hear this hit quite a bit that summer. On one Saturday, the church youth group did an outing that included some baseball, and as I played the field, I remember one of my teammates humming this cut, and I think we might have also heard it on the car radio during the ride. Ironically, at the time I didn't even know about the existence of soul music, so I picked up a different message from the lyric than what the writers probably meant, plus, given the older generation’s disapproval of the music, I might have heard the line make like you wanna kneel and pray as suggesting a sacrilegious undertone, but I had already been playing guitar and writing songs for a year at that point, so I planned to raise the roof with my rock 'n' roll anyway, and 50 years later I plan to continue doing that for as long as I can.

Moved and Moving

Song 363: This week’s playlist track is All Shook Up by Elvis Presley, written by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley. In my younger years I knew nothing about Mr. Presley, except for Hound Dog, which made him sound like a hick to me, even in light of my interest in old Hank Williams records and other country music that I would spin when visiting my OH relatives and cruising through their C & W collection. It truly surprised me in the fall of 1968 when I got my hands on a copy of the Beatles official biography, reading that The King was the one who had lit the musical spark for each of the Fab Four. In that era, I shared many weekend afternoons with my good friend Ed (the subject of my own song So Long Friend), energized by his Simon and Garfunkel LPs, but I had no idea about his mother’s extensive stack of Elvis vinyl, of which I heard not even one sample. When the 50s revival came along in the early 70s, then I started hearing the Presley cuts, which quickly brought me around to an understanding of his place in the original RnR scene. On this hit, he makes itching like a man on a fuzzy tree and actin' wild as a bug with insides shakin' like a leaf sound pretty good, making the listeners wish they could be wearing his shoes when his hands are shaky, his knees are weak and he can’t seem to stand on his own two feet. On a side note, having nothing to do with Elvis, you can find a lyric video of So Long Friend by clicking on the title.

Glory to Whoever

Song 362: This week on the playlist you can hear Gloria by U2, with music written by U2 and lyrics by Bono. In the early months of 1983, my good friend Eddie Spitzer started a guitar store in the back of a record store on Telegraph Ave. a couple of blocks south of the U.C. Berkeley campus, in a place that was also only a couple of blocks east of the house where I lived. I visited that store quite often, and in doing so, I would sometimes hear music that I might not have heard otherwise, including local heroes Rank and File and a new Irish band called U2. I liked what I was hearing from the Irish quartet, and soon enough, I picked up a copy of Under a Blood Red Sky and walked up to the register. Other people in my Berkeley songwriting circle also started tuning in to U2, and a few years later my housemate Michele and I would get to listen to them live at the Cow Palace one night in April of 1987. I had somehow gotten a vague idea about the group being Christian, and in that long-ago era before the internet and cyber spaces like A-Z Lyrics and Musixmatch, I could only guess at the words on this cut, but I detected some Latin phrasing, giving me an impression of a Christian message, though I didn't know for certain. I had to admit, though, that no matter where the door in this recording might be, U2 makes a very convincing case that The door is open.

Persistence of Attachment

Song 361: This week the playlist comes around to You Keep Me Hangin' On by Vanilla Fudge, written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland.  In the summer of 68, a bunch of my friends were talking about this amazing new version of a Supremes hit (which I had missed the first time around), and I still remember the moment, riding in a car with a few others on a summer night along the main drag on the south side of town when the young woman at the wheel turned up the radio volume and said, "This is that new record everybody's talking about." The cool organ intro immediately grabbed my attention, and then it just got even better as it went along. After only one listening, I understood why it had attracted so much acclaim, and after hearing it as many times as I have over the past 5 decades, it still keeps me hangin' on but I don't mind, and I have no need for it to set me free. In fact, it can keep coming around Playing with my heart for another 5 decades and that won’t bother me a bit.

Following the Boss’s Orders

Song 360: This week on the playlist you can find Company Men by Bob Nichols, who also wrote the song. Seven weeks after posting a track by my friend Jeff Larson, this week's cut is by my late friend and former Berkeley housemate Bob Nichols, who died back in November of 2005. It comes from a cassette release Bob called Ordinary Eatery. He gave me a copy of that tape during our stretch as housemates in the 1980s, and I have given it many spins on the player, though, of course, these days I mostly listen to the SanDisk, but it's on there too, along with a few other Bob releases. From the beginning of our friendship, I liked his music, and his death over a decade ago has not dampened my enthusiasm for it. When I hear him sing "We tow the company line but the line gets faster all the time“ it sounds even more meaningful today than it did 3 decades ago. He and I both knew that he borrowed his closing lyric here from Mark Twain, but he adds an ironic twist to it that I always relished.

No Destination

Song 359: This week on the playlist you can hear My City Was Gone by The Pretenders, written by Chrissie Hynde. I caught the first Pretenders single on the radio not long after its release while riding in a car with my good friend Eddie Spitzer, who would, a few years later, go on to start and run a store called Eddie’s Music on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley for a number of years. I last saw him on my last visit to CA, back in the summer of 1993, and had since lost touch with him, but we recently reconnected a few months ago via email. Anyway, a couple of years after The Pretenders made their first big splash, this track started making the rounds, justifiably getting a lot of airplay, and I thought it pretty well conveyed the malling of our country, as the shopping malls and big box retailers took over, slowly crushing small local merchants. Walmart and Lowe's came to my old home town, with a big parking lot that paved over what had been a drive-in movie theater, while the small stores along the former main drag started to display For Rent signs in their windows. Evidently Mr. Limbaugh believes he’s being clever by using such a pro-environmental tune as a theme for his anti-environmental show, but Chrissie Hynde reportedly puts his royalty payments to work supporting environmental causes, so perhaps a small section of her pretty countryside might be getting a little bit of help from an unexpected place.

Going A Different Way

Song 358: This week on the playlist you’ll find It's Not My Cross to Bear by The Allman Brothers Band, written by Gregg Allman. When I posted an Allman Brothers cut 10 weeks ago, I didn't expect to return to them so soon, but Gregg Allman died a week ago yesterday, so I felt the need to honor his passing in this way. In June of 1971 I knew nothing about The Allman Brothers Band when I got off the plane in Atlanta, but the new friends I made there soon introduced me to their hometown heroes, and I certainly liked what I heard, including this track. I felt I would have some fine music to share with my Evanston buddies when I got back to the midwest, but then in July, the live At Fillmore East LP rocked the airwaves so strongly that by the time I returned to the Chicago area in September, my RnR chums already knew the Allmans, and we all felt the loss when a motorcycle accident took Brother Duane’s life. The band valiantly carried on, despite also losing bassist Berry Oakley to a Macon motorcycle accident about a year after Duane's fatal crash a few blocks away. Duane and Berry both died at the age of 24. Sadly, in January of this year, drummer Butch Trucks took his own life, at the age of 69, and about 4 months later, Gregg, at the age of 69, lost his battle with liver cancer. By one other number coincidence, Brother Duane died in '71, and Brother Gregg died in '17. At this point, of the 6 members who posed for the cover of the band's eponymous debut album that featured this recording, only Dicky Betts and Jaimo Johanson remain, and I hope that they will continue to make music for as long as they reasonably can. As for Gregg, now he’s gone, but his music will live on and be strong, so this tune seems like a fitting way to remember him.

A Moving Experience

Song 357: This week the playlist comes around to There Goes My Heart Again by Holly Dunn, written by Joe Diffie, Lonnie Wilson and Wayne Perry. Is there some hidden meaning to the fact that last week's song title and this week's both start and end with the same letter? Mystery, or destiny, I certainly didn't plan for that, or even notice until I finished typing up the original bit. Anyway, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I listened to a lot of country radio, which sounded pretty good at the time, and while the songwriting didn't come across as musically adventurous, the so-called New Country of that era did feature clever word plays that I enjoyed, with this single serving as a prime example. I certainly understood, and appreciated, lyrics like my heart has a mind of its own, as I imagine plenty of listeners did. One of my songwriter friends said back then that the only place you could hear good songwriting on the radio was the country station, and I essentially agreed with him. Inspired by that style, I went on to craft my own country word play, called As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, and on the second half of the second verse, the line goes, but Dwight was only Yoakam when he said Eddie's Rabbitt died but after what Holly Dunn you should . . . Sadly, Holly died in November of last year, struck down by ovarian cancer at the age of 59. On a happier note, you can find the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard song video here.

Luck of the Draw

Song 356: This week on the playlist you can hear Time of the Season by The Zombies, written by Rod Argent. In the honor society lounge during my last 2 years in HS, a few of us would actually do some studying occasionally, and the ping-pong table got plenty of use, but the most frequent activities were listening to 45s and playing cards, which were pleasures I didn't speak of at home since my extremely religious family did not approve of the devil's music or the devil's deck. I well remember one sunny late spring day in 1969 when 4 of us stepped out of the lounge door and sat down in the grassy area just outside of it to play a round of pinochle. It was the time of the season when our senior finals lurked on the horizon, but at that moment, we had no cares, and this record, though it had peaked a couple of months earlier, provided a perfect memorable piece of that game’s soundtrack. While I knew that the opening lyric used the word love, in my mind, as our pleasured hands passed cards to the sound of this singer’s lines, I translated the phrase to the time of the season when luck runs high, and indeed, it did for us, as my partner and I won the game.

A Whole Other Country

Song 355: This week’s playlist track is Down Under by Men at Work, written by Colin Hay and Ron Strykert. When this 45 hit the U.S. in the fall of 1982, having already topped charts elsewhere, my Berkeley housemate Bob and I watched the group perform it on a TV segment, and he latched onto it right away. It took me a few more radio spins before I got it, but once I could sing along with the lines, the cut’s understated humor had me hooked. At the time, I had an Australian songwriter friend who had already told me about vegemite, so I immediately grasped that lyric, but for most of the other slang I had to guess, and I guessed wrong in more than one case, not that it mattered or affected my enjoyment of the record. Thanks to Wickipedia, I now know that a fried-out Kombi means an overheated VW van rather than a group of wasted traveling companions, but here in the Northeast, just as in the land down under, when you hear the thunder, as I have a few times lately, You better run, you better take cover, so that warning was always well understood.

Mark on the Calendar

Song 354: This week the playlist comes around to Foreplay/Long Time by Boston, written by Thom Scholz.  After walkin' 2 weeks ago and riding a railroad last week, this week's cut aims to Sail on, on a distant highway. Boston's debut LP arrived near the end of summer in 1976, and it marked a rare high point in a largely lackluster era for RnR. Although I understood those who critiqued the album's songwriting as somewhat tame, I liked the record a lot, and I also agreed with those who remarked on the disk's exceptional sound, which came courtesy of band leader Scholz's phenomenal production skills that he had worked long and hard to acquire. I had just begun my own first foray into 16-track recording, and those initial attempts only made me respect Mr. Scholz's work all the more. Sadly, Boston lead singer Brad Delp committed suicide a little over 10 years ago, in March of 2007, but while It's been such a long time since he exited, we the audience won’t forget about him any time soon, despite the words he sang here that predicted he would be forgotten after he was gone.

Come Along for the Ride

Song 353: Seven weeks after my last post by a personal friend, and after walkin’ last week, this week the playlist takes a different track via California Rail by my friend Jeff Larson, who also wrote the song. Back around the time he wrote this one, Jeff rode that California Rail a few times on his way to meet up with the woman who he would soon marry, so she provided the main inspiration for him writing this piece, but I believe I can still take a small portion of the credit, because I had already written my own bunch of train ramblings which I shared with him on our get-togethers, plus I had spoken with him about my fondness for trains (and train songs, such as the Hank Williams record Lonesome Whistle from 2 weeks ago), so I think I might have influenced him to also take a musical journey along a railroad line. Mixed in with his trademark tasty acoustic guitar sound, Jeff stirs some lively harmonica and banjo into the locomotion, and while he cautions that the trip might include maybe sun, maybe rain, maybe hail, I would bet that you’ll enjoy the ride, and after all, it’s California, so how bad could it be?

Footwear That Fits

Song 352: This week on the playlist you can find These Boots Are Made for Walkin' by Nancy Sinatra, written by Lee Hazlewood. Frank's daughter took this cut to the top of the charts 51 years ago, in the winter of 1966, and no matter how many times I've heard it, the track always makes me smile. Reviewers in that long-ago era criticized Nancy for not exhibiting the vocal ability that her father conveyed, but what she communicates on this single grabs me in a way that none of Frank's records ever did, and I feel it even stronger when I watch her saucy lip-syncing performance in the song video. Fast-forwarding to the present day, the words here can take on an even stronger punch when pointed at a certain prominent political figure who keeps lyin' when he oughta be truthin', keeps losin' when he oughta not bet, and so on, because what's right is right and he ain’t been right yet. I probably don’t have to name the obvious source of the current glut of trumpery, but he sure has made lots of people feel like it’s time to Start walkin’!

Soothing Sounds

Song 351: This week on the playlist you’ll find (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle by Hank Williams, written by Hank Williams and Jimmie Davis. Before the Beatles rocked my world, I knew nothing about RnR, but I heard plenty of country music on the family summer visits to Ohio relatives, so I got to know Hank Williams quite well. On those hot summer nights when we could hear the B & O railroad crews switching freight cars just a couple of blocks away, this cut seemed to fit the moment better than any other, and I soon learned it well enough to sing along. After only 2 or 3 nights of hearing the local freight car switching moves, I quickly realized that no matter how loud they became, they rarely if ever interrupted my sleep or kept me awake, but rather, I found those sounds relaxing enough to put me to sleep, just as the sound of lonesome whistles on the train line that ran nearby the family home would do. Even though at the time, I too was Just a kid acting smart, I didn’t have a darlin’s heart to break, and I guess I was too young to know how that might feel, but Hank’s song seemed to echo in my soul, as if I had always known it, probably because I had been hearing that lonesome whistle since before I could even walk or talk.

Believe in The Supernatural

Song 350: This week on the playlist you can hear Magic Be by Captain Beefheart, written by Don Van Vliet, Jan Van Vliet and Andy DiMartino. Walking outside without needing a jacket on a sunny early April day less than 4 weeks after a record-setting blizzard can certainly make a walker feel that magic be in sunshine. Ironically, the musicians who made the magic on this cut did not feel very enchanted by it, or any of the other tracks on Unconditionally Guaranteed, and even the Captain disavowed the LP less than a year after its release. Despite what Don Van Vliet and his crew felt about the record, I always liked it, I have listened to it a lot, and this marks the 3rd UG song to make the list, following Sugar Bowl (Song 148) and Upon the My-O-My (Song 265). While the music makers in this case did not believe in their own sorcery, to me, the disk easily lives up to the claim on the jacket of being 100% Pure and Good, and it provides ample proof that magic be. Give it a listen and maybe you too will find it spellbinding.

Not Welcoming the April Showers

Song 349: This week on the playlist you can listen to Don’t Let the Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man) by The Serendipity Singers. The large amounts of snow that fell a few weeks ago are now almost gone, thanks to warmer temperatures and rain, though a few scattered patches of white stuff remain, so now time has come for those April showers. Just as Beatlemania arrived in the winter of 1964, opening the door for the rest of the British Invasion, this traditional song by a large American folk group also popped up on the airwaves and got my attention just as much as the English RnR. I never tired of the way the 9 singers delivered the understated humor of the lyrics, and while a crooked cat and a crooked mouse might live together in a crooked house, I wouldn’t recommend buying crooked nails and a crooked little bat to try to fix a roof with a rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, especially with April showers on the way.

Headed for the Exit

Song 348: This week’s playlist pick is One Way Out by The Allman Brothers Band, written by Elmore James, Marshall Sehorn and Sonny Boy Williamson II. Following last week’s post of a Chuck Berry song to honor him a day after he died, I chose this week’s Allman Brothers track as a way to honor drummer Butch Trucks, who sadly took his own life in late January of this year at the age of 69. When I got on a plane in Chicago on June 10, 1971, I don’t think any of my RnR friends knew anything about the Allman Brothers Band, nor did I, but within days of landing in Atlanta, I was hearing their music a lot, and hearing about them quite a lot. In the middle of that summer, their live LP At the Fillmore hit the airwaves, and justifiably made such a splash that by the time I returned to Chicago in September my RnR friends there also knew all about the Allmans. Following Duane’s tragic death in late October, many of us wondered about the band’s future, but then in February they released a double album that showcased them at their peak. This cut opened side 3 on a very strong rocking note, and made it quite clear just what a talent the RnR world lost on the day Duane died. Now, in early 2017, the RnR world has lost another of the talented crew that created this magical brew, which they recorded live in front of a packed house back in June of 1971. We may never know why Butch Trucks decided to head for the exit, but though he took the One Way Out, gone he is, but he should not be forgotten, and this track is but one of many musical reasons why his memory should live on.

Sounds Berry Good

Song 347: This week on the playlist you can hear Rock and Roll Music by Chuck Berry, who also wrote it. Only 11 weeks ago, when I posted my second Chuck Berry track on this list, I did not expect to be posting another so soon, but following his death yesterday at age 90, I feel the need to commemorate the man as one of the major pioneers of Rock and Roll Music. Back when the Beatles first rocked my world in February of 1964, I knew nothing of the 1950s rockers, and I thought the Fab Four had invented RnR. It took a while before I clearly understood that 2 of my favorite Beatles recordings — Roll Over Beethoven (Song 236) and this song — had actually been written by an American musician I knew nothing about. Then, it wasn’t until I had finished my regular School Days, a bit after the turn of the 1970s, that I came to understand Chuck Berry’s pivotal role in the birth of the musical style that had captivated me. With a sort of 1950s revival happening on rock radio, I got to hear the classic golden oldies, and a Rolling Stone subscription filled in the details, to the point where it surprised me when a blues booking agent I knew told me that his girlfriend didn’t know who Chuck Berry was. Having realized Berry’s significance, I found it strange that someone with an interest in the music didn’t know about him. I would guess that these days most RnR fans recognize the value of Berry’s contributions to the form, and personally, I plan to honor his legacy by following his advice to keep on rocking that piano. Sure thing, Chuck! I’m glad to do it. It’s got to be Rock and Roll Music! 

Time to Give Back

Song 346: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week on the playlist you can find The Favor by my friend Terry Kitchen, who also wrote it. On a cold March evening, I once again recall the March weekend 24 years ago when I visited Terry at his Boston area apartment, in the midst of a major blizzard, so it seemed like an appropriate week to post another of his creations. About a year and a half after our shared blizzard experience, as we traded tunes around a campfire at a folk festival, upon hearing my song Curiosity, Terry insisted that I needed to expand the story. Not long after that festival, I followed his advice and added a fourth verse. A few years ago, in exchange for a copy of Who Said What, Terry sent me one of his CDs that included this cut, and it made me feel like it was time for me to return the favor, so to speak. I think the chorus line on this piece is one of the best ever, and when I hear it, I imagine it taking off in many different directions, so I plan to urge him to consider additional lyrical possibilities, although, since he already has a good recorded version, he may not want to do so, but maybe he could be persuaded to put a little time into exploring some other ways the favor can be returned.

The Time for Action

Song 345: This week on the playlist is a good week for Takin’ It to the Streets by The Doobie Brothers, written by Michael McDonald. This record from 4 decades ago seems to generally fit the current political moment better than perhaps any other track, articulating an urgent call for solidarity and large public demonstrations to express the prevailing mood of discontent and the critical need for responsive leadership not twisted by the pull of the super-wealthy. Back when this single first took off, the large demonstrations against the Viet Nam war had subsided, with the war having ended, but then, only a few years later, many of us would be takin’ it to the streets to oppose nuclear power plants like the one that got built in Diablo Canyon, despite all of our efforts against that nonsense. Over the decades, foolish and corrupt political leaders would, by their actions, often stir up that feeling of I ain’t blind and I don’t like what I think I see, with the 2003 Iraq invasion taking its place among the most prominent of follies, but the early months of 2017 have managed to top all of the previous eras as a time for takin’ it to the streets.

The Offspring of Affection

Song 344: This week on the playlist is the week to hear Love Child by Diana Ross & The Supremes, written by R. Dean Taylor, Frank Wilson, Pam Sawyer, and Deke Richards. In the fall of 1968, not long after I started my HS senior year, this single hit the airwaves, and as much as I might have liked earlier Supremes cuts, I felt like they had just topped all of their previous efforts. In that era I often had trouble picking out the words on a track, and I had enjoyed listening to this record many times before one of my friends expressed moral disapproval at the suggestion of premarital sex wrapped in some of the lines. As the conversation progressed, he also enlightened me about the street meaning of the term love child, which I had never heard before this 45 came along. While a clearer understanding of the message did rattle my ongoing internal religious conflict over enjoyment of the devil’s music, it didn’t dampen my appreciation of Diana’s saga, and when I heard her sing, “Don’t think I don’t want to please you,” I felt quite certain that she did want to please me, which she managed to do very well by the end of the song, with her voice fading into the distance as she repeated, “I’ll always love you.”

Keep On Truckin’

Song 343: This week on the playlist seemed like the right time for Drivin’ My Life Away by Eddie Rabbitt, written by David Malloy, Eddie Rabbitt and Even Stevens. As the 1970s unfolded, the RnR scene seemed to sink deeper and deeper into a sea of slick commerciality, losing much of its soul along the way, but among the occasional bright spots that would still shine in that era came a few courtesy of the country charts, with this one showing up shortly after the turn of the 1980s. While I didn’t recognize Eddie Rabbitt as the writer of the Elvis hit Kentucky Rain, I had become aware of some of his records as he racked up a string of major successes over the previous 2 or 3 years, but this 45 immediately grabbed my attention when it hit the airwaves in the spring, exceeding my expectations, and though he had even greater success with the follow-up I Love a Rainy Night, I soon had my fill of that one, whereas I never tired of hearing this cut. If there’s any truth to the rumor about me playing bass in a country-bar pickup band in the mid-1980s, then it’s quite possible that Eddie’s truck-driving anthem featured prominently in that bar band’s set list. On a side note, this track is a fifth sly reference to the second verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, where the second line begins with But Dwight was only Yoakam when he said Eddie’s Rabbitt died. That line is, by itself, a sly reference to an old pregnancy test, and I did not mean it in any sort of derogatory sense, or as a death wish, but sadly, Mr. Rabbitt did die of lung cancer in May of 1998 at the age of 56. On a happier note, you can find the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video here.

A Heart in the Right Place

Song 342: This week on the playlist you’ll find Righteous Love by Joan Osborne, written by Joan Osborne and Louie Pérez. As I mentioned in an earlier post about JO, I first heard her on a TV show where she performed songs from her Righteous Love CD, and this cut is the title track for that album. I liked what I heard on the TV program, so not long after, I picked up a copy of the CD, and it quickly found a place on my iPod as well as my CD player. With Valentine’s Day arriving very soon, this record seems like a good way to observe the heart holiday, particularly during a time with so much hate on the rise, because personally, I’ve never been so sure of love, and especially sure of the power of love to change the world. For this 2/14, I sincerely wish everyone peace and righteous love, and I wish it even more so for those most in need of it.

Getting In Too Deep

Song 341: This week's playlist pick is Over My Head by Fleetwood Mac, written by Christine McVie. Sometime in the middle of 1974, I caught Fleetwood Mac on a TV broadcast doing a song about the Bermuda Triangle, and while I thought it was an OK cut, I wasn’t all that excited by it, but I remember having this notion that someday FM would finally get their act together. The following September of 1975, this single hit the airwaves, showing off a finer sound that the group had achieved through a personnel shuffle that included the addition of the Buckingham-Nicks duo, and the LP it showcased made it clear to me that they had arrived at their together moment. Around the time of that record’s release, I made my first and only attempt at ice skating, which went about as badly as my first and only roller skating attempt a couple of years earlier. It was early fall, but back then, Evanston had, and probably still does have, an ice rink open to the public year-round. That bad skating experience remains forever linked with this track in my mind, though it doesn’t diminish my listening pleasure. It sure didn’t feel nice that day to be over my head so often, and a lot more got hurt than just my pride in that room that was cold as ice, leading me to conclude that any further skating effort would be wasting all of my time, but, given how it turned out for the singer and her bass player husband, my dark side was probably not as bad as hers.

A Very Solid Type

Song 340: This week on the playlist you’ll find I Am a Rock by Simon and Garfunkel, written by Paul Simon. Not long before school let out in the late spring of 1966, as I was finishing my freshman year, this cut started making a lot of noise on the airwaves, and I remember hearing it one afternoon from a passing convertible as I was walking back up to the school building from down in the football field/running track area. Not long after that, my best friend got a copy of the Sounds of Silence LP, and it became a regular spinner that he would play during my visits with him, as would the other S&G albums over the next few years. I quickly got to know this song, not just from listening, but also courtesy of a music book I managed to find at our HS, so I learned how to play it both on the guitar and on the piano. In that long ago era before Musixmatch and A-Z Lyrics, I always appreciated having an official source for lyrics, which meant I wouldn’t have to guess. My best friend and I both being bookish types, we had at least one conversation about how each of us identified with the singer who had his books and his poetry to protect him. I don’t know that I would have ever claimed to be a rock, though, but I certainly wouldn’t mind calling myself a rockstar, and I guess I now can do that, thanks to my spot on the latest Coast to Coast Rockstars Mix Tape, which you can find here.

What It’s All About

Song 339: Seven weeks after my last song post by a personal friend, this week on the playlist you can hear All About Love by my friend Wendy Beckerman, who also wrote the song, and whose name partly rhymes with the artist on last week’s cut, Randy Newman. I knew Wendy from the weekly songwriter gathering at Jack Hardy’s place in lower Manhattan back in late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and she was always one of my favorites of the bunch. I still remember the night when she performed this song, and she had me hooked the first time through. I thought many of the songwriters in that room didn’t know or care much about crafting a compelling musical setting for their lyrics, and Jack often quoted Woody’s line that “anyone using more than three chords was just showing off” but Wendy stood out from the crowd in her melodic approach, which I admired and appreciated. Having been a part of that Fast Folk circle, I might know one or two of the secrets Wendy gave away that she hints at in the chorus line, but those secrets are safe with me — all I’ll say is that when she sings “It’s all about love” she’s telling the truth.

A Different Red Dawn

Song 338: This week on the playlist you can hear Rednecks by Randy Newman, who also wrote the song. I got a subscription to Rolling Stone in September of 1969, not long after I arrived at N.U., and I remember reading a lot about Randy Newman long before I ever heard one of his recordings. The reading sparked a bit of curiosity about his music, but I felt I had so many other artists to catch up on that for a few years I couldn’t seem to get around to him. Then in the fall of ’74, Good Old Boys came along, and after hearing a few cuts on the radio, I decided the time had come to get to know RN better. This track, which opens the record, sets the stage for the territory that the concept album travels through. Living in the Chicago area during that stretch, I understood the references to the cage on the South Side and the West Side. In that era, I mistakenly believed that modernity, in the form of mass media, scientific technology and larger social networks, would eventually put an end to the redneck mentality that felt the need to keep the nxxxxxs down, yet, over 4 decades later, the Senate is currently debating the nomination of a man for AG who has made a career of keepin’ the nxxxxxs down, and who intends to continue doing so, whether he gets the appointment or not. Sadly, these Rednecks still do not have the ability to judge someone according to the content of character rather than the color of skin, and as Martin Luther King Day of 2017 dawns, the fight against ignorance and prejudice hangs over the U.S. Senate, with the outcome remaining uncertain, but I guess you can’t expect much from fools who can’t tell the difference between a certain part of their anatomy and a hole in the ground. 

Smell and Taste

Song 337: This week on the playlist you can get into Incense and Peppermints by Strawberry Alarm Clock, written by John S. Carter and Tim Gilbert. As the summer of ’67 unfolded, the world of RnR seemed to start revolving in a very different direction, with the Beatles turning into a Lonely Hearts Club Band while a bunch of fresh faces such as the Doors and Jimi took the stage, and during that stretch, the phrase psychedelic rock starting popping up quite a bit, with this 45 acting as a prime example. I brought home a copy of the single when my best friend’s younger brother decided he didn’t want it any more, and the disc would spend a lot of time spinning on my turntable over the next 2 years. In that long-ago era before AZLyrics and similar resources, I could only guess at some of the words on this cut, and evidently I guessed wrong on many of them, but even back then I did understand that life would bring with it many things I can’t define. I mistook the line beatniks and politics for beatniks in politics, but either way, I clearly got the word that nothing is new, though that word came to me through a recording that did sound very new to my ears. Such a realization may illustrate just one point of view, but it also might make you wonder who cares what games we choose? Indeed, upon reflection, it wouldn’t matter to anyone who has little to win, but nothin’ to lose, so the best course of action under most circumstances would probably be to turn on, turn in, turn your eyes around.

A Familiar Face in That Car Window

Song 336: This week on the playlist you can hear Maybellene by Chuck Berry, who also wrote the song. This track seems like a good way to get in gear for starting a new year. During my HS days I knew almost nothing about the first generation of rockers who had created the musical style that my world revolved around, but in the early ‘70s this ‘50s revival came along, filling in a lot of the spaces in that history, and I quickly came to understand Chuck Berry’s pivotal role in getting Beethoven to Roll Over. Berry began his career by motivatin’ over a hill, or perhaps even motorvatin’, as some of his interpreters have suggested. Anyway, he not only caught a Cadillac going a hundred and ten, but he also got himself a chart-topping single on his first outing, with the disc hitting its peak a day after my 4th birthday in September of 1955. While these days the alt-u-right (alternate universe right) tries to tell everyone that only white people are truly creative, the man who wrote Maybellene, Roll Over Beethoven, Johnny B. Goode, No Particular Place to Go, Too Much Monkey Business, and lots of other classics, long ago secured his status as an icon in the real world of Rock and Roll Music.