Sunday, June 25, 2017

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.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

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.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

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.

Sunday, June 4, 2017

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.