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.