Sunday, April 29, 2018

Time to Make a Decision

Song 405: This week the playlist you will find Him or Me - What's It Gonna Be? by Paul Revere & the Raiders, written by Mark Lindsay and Terry Melcher, and you can check out a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This 45 was blossoming around the same time as the May flowers during my sophomore year. I knew that those revolutionary rockers had a new hit, and I even knew its title, a couple of weeks before I got to actually hear it. While the older generation at church would rail against the Devil's music, my fellow fundamentalists in the church youth group shared my enthusiasm for RnR, so after one Sunday night service, a few of us had gathered at one member's family car for some reason, with, of course, the radio being on, and this record then lit up the airwaves, creating yet another memorable teenage music moment for me. I especially relished the vocal interplay in the verse sections, which sharply contrasts with the more rocking chorus parts and seemed a bit surprising the first time through. Well before Paul got to the line, So, if you'd be so kind, would you please make up your mind, I had already made up my mind about how much I liked this track, and 51 years later, it still sounds just as good to me.

Sunday, April 22, 2018

A Well-Grounded Self-Portrait

Song 404: This week on the playlist you can find Face of the Earth by Days of the New, written by Travis Meeks. During the later stretch of the 1990s, I often listened to Howard Stern, and in addition to hearing him say plenty of entertaining things, plus a sizable share of truly crazy stuff, I also caught some intriguing new music. When Days of the New appeared in the middle of 1997, it impressed me every bit as much as it did him. I especially savored the way the band managed to generate a genuine hard rock sound via acoustic guitar and strong vocals. Most rockers, myself included, usually reach for an electric guitar and/or an electric keyboard when seeking to produce a hard rock sound, but the band Days of the New proved that, in the right hands, an acoustic guitar can rock just as hard as an electric one. Being an earth sign myself, I take pleasure in sprinkling my own lyrics with mentions of dust, stones, etc. (for example, my song Just a Stone),  and I relish it when others do too (such as Taurus Patti Rothberg on Treat Me Like Dirt, which is Song 17 on this list), so when Taurus Travis Meeks sings, I am the ground and the dirt/Walk on me/Face of the Earth, it resonates strongly in my domain. FWIW, Travis turns 39 on Friday, so HB, TM!

Sunday, April 15, 2018

A Fantastic Way to Travel

Song 403: This week the playlist comes around to Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf, written by Rushton Moreve and John Kay. You can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this hit came along in the fall of my HS senior year, a few people panned it as an obvious drug reference, and a celebration of hallucinogenics, but to me, it perfectly embodied the spirit of rock and roll that I had come to treasure. The record featured the kind of sound that grabbed me, and the lyrics spoke eloquently about the marvelous ride that the sound would provide as it moved the listener from here to there, going to places near and far, to the stars away from here. Nearly 50 years later, I still feel that fantasy will set you free if you let the sound take you away, and I personally don't need any chemistry to assist in catching the ride, but I also don't condemn those who feel that they do. For me, today, the same as 50 years ago, all I have to do to take that Magic Carpet Ride is to hear the record. All aboard!

Sunday, April 8, 2018

How The Parts All Fit Together

Song 402: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week on the playlist you’ll find The Part That Repeats by my good friend Gregg Cagno, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This clever musical message about the intersection of songwriting and romance touches on a subject we both know well, and I would readily echo his thoughts about how The Part That Repeats fits into the picture, both in relationships and in melodic narratives about them. In fact, if you'd like to understand more about the craft of writing a song, you might do well to spend some time studying the lyrics of this tune. While, as the old saying goes, rules are made to be broken, generally, you would start off with a line about love gone bad, and after that, list all the things you've done since she split, and how that makes you feel like shhh… Then, upon crossing over a short bridge, you would wrap it all up in the third verse, always coming back to The Part That Repeats in the appropriate places. I personally feel his words fill in the whole scene pretty well, but if, after hearing and absorbing the complete track, you still have unanswered questions about these instructions, surely Gregg would gladly fill you in.

Monday, April 2, 2018

Advice About a Good Way to Move

Song 401: This week the playlist comes around to Walk This Way by Aerosmith, written by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I guess it makes sense to follow up last week's saga about a Steppin' Stone with a musical suggestion about how to walk, and/or where to do so. From at least my HS days a decade earlier, the phrase that became the title of this track had been a standard joke that played on the dual meaning of the term, with comic scenes in TV shows and cartoons that toyed with those three words, so when the record came along, it seemed to have fulfilled some sort of destiny. Aerosmith got a lot of criticism back in the 1970s for sounding too much like Led Zeppelin, and that critique seemed accurate to me at the time, but I truly enjoyed their records anyway. Toys in the Attic got plenty of spins on my turntable, and this particular cut gave me a few clues about how to make certain moves. Maybe, like them, I was a high school loser too, but a little bit later in life, I appreciated it when Aerosmith came along and gave me the word about somethin' I missed.