A Clever Take on an Old Fairy Tale

Song 418: After hearing about Little Things last week, this week's playlist track centers on a specific little one, in a very entertaining way: Li'l Red Riding Hood by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, written by Ron Blackwell, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. During the stretch when this novelty number graced the airwaves in the summer of 1966, my family did our warm-weather visit to the Ohio relatives, which during that decade had changed from the yearly routine it had been in the 1950s to being an even-numbered-year outing. Our stay in 1966 included my cousin treating me to my first motorcycle ride, and also him spinning If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears for me and my brothers in a sparkling bedroom of the uncle's newly-completed house — the family had previously lived in the building's basement for at least ten years. Then one sunny afternoon, a bunch of us played miniature golf at a nearby course that featured background music courtesy of the local Top-40 station, and hearing this hit made the game even more fun. I always savored the word play about the wolf wearing his sheep suit, and the way the singer ends by making a wolf sound followed by a sheep sound. Since he had such a big heart, the better to love her with, perhaps she (Red) really would have seen things his way before they got to grandma's place.

How the Small Stuff Can Add Up

Song 417: This week on the playlist you can hear Little Things by Bush, written by Gavin Rossdale, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title.  Bush first got my attention when Everything Zen (Song 89) made a big noise on the airwaves in the winter of 1995, and soon enough, after hearing a couple of other tracks from the album, I added Sixteen Stone to my collection. This cut from the record vividly portrays, in both music and words, the all-too-common life experience of small annoyances quickly adding up to much greater difficulties and defying attempts at resolution, along with the feeling of being pulled strongly in 2 polar opposite directions. Like songwriter Rossdale, I too can claim a talent that might make me best at forget, but his word play on the lines Here comes a lie/We will always be true never fails to make me smile. I would guess, though, that Gavin is probably not Loaded on wrong when he suggests Going up when coming down/Scratch away - that might actually be good advice.

Someone You Might Not Have Noticed

Song 416: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week the playlist features Laundromat Girl by my good friend and former Berkeley housemate Carol Denney, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I had heard her do this cut live at least once, and I didn't really get it the first time around. When I got to hear it as the opening track of The Rich Will Never Be Poor, though, I did get it right away, and I liked it a lot more than I would have expected, given my initial reaction to it. Soon enough, I had The Rich Will Never Be Poor loaded onto my iPod, and over the last decade I have listened to the record a lot, with this opening tune setting the mood for the listening experience. Having lived in the Bay Area for about a decade, it's possible that I might have met the Laundromat Girl sketched here, but since I cannot claim her interest, it may not matter. Similarly, I would not know how to tell if something's wrong with that girl, but whether there is or not, Carol sure makes her sound intriguing. When I got the CD back in 2010, I still lived in Highland Park, NJ, and when I would head over to do laundry, I would hear this chorus in my head while looking at the woman behind the counter, because, even though I knew she was not the original subject of the piece, at that moment, she was the Laundromat Girl in my life.

Get Wise to the Divisive Hustle

Song 415: This week the playlist honors Us And Them by Pink Floyd, written by Roger Waters and Richard Wright, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Warren James, as my first dorm roommate at NU, introduced me to the music of Pink Floyd because he really liked them, but what I heard didn't interest me at the time. When Dark Side of the Moon came along a few years later, though, it did grab me, and I felt it deserved all of the attention it got. This particular epoch paints a very clear picture of the simplistic, fearful authoritarian mindset that fuels all large-scale violent conflicts, up to and including major wars. The lyrics also make the point that theft underpins the us vs. them mentality. While this kind of hostile rhetoric never disappeared, lately it has gotten a lot louder, which makes this cut all the more meaningful for the present moment. Us? We're always the good ones, even if we start wars for oil. Them? They're always the bad ones, even when they feed the hungry. Listen, son, said the man with the gun, there's room for you inside. Well, If I Was You, I wouldn't go inside the war machine - better to recognize that at the core of the divisive Us And Them phrase lies a strategy as old as the Roman Empire: Divide and Conquer. If you don't want to be conquered, tune out the authoritarians sowing the division. On a side note, you can now find the If I Was You song video pinned to the top of my FB musician page if you just click on the title.

A Dying Man’s Instructions

Song 414: This week the playlist comes around to Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport by Rolf Harris, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. During the summer of 1963, I heard this novelty tune coming out of transistor radios at least a few times while hanging out at the nearby park down the road where kids gathered to play games like chess and checkers and to do simple, fun, crafty stuff. I really liked the catchy chorus, although at the age of 11 I didn't have any clue as to the nature of the story, other than that it obviously referred to the kangaroo country Australia. When, as a young adult a decade later, I added this hit to my record collection, I learned the lyrics and understood the basic context of the extended joke. Even then, though, I did not know what the Abos were - I pictured some sort of horse/donkey type of animal, but only recently did I learn that Abos referred to Aborigines, meaning that the singer had enslaved a group of Australian indigenous people. If I had known that, even as an 11-year-old, it might have clouded my pleasure in the cut, but this one isn't meant to be taken seriously anyway, so maybe they tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that's it a-hangin' on the shed, but I can still smile about it.