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.