Uniting to Make a Heavy Load Lighter

Song 444: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, and one week after posting the song Hey Joe, this week the playlist features Workers by my good friend Joe Canzano. He already had a couple of worthy CDs in his catalog, but when he released Big Mouth (as Happy Joe) back in 2010, it quickly became my favorite of his albums. It soon found a place on my iPod, as well as my CD player, and I have listened to it quite regularly over most of the last decade. This track opens the record with a forceful call to Workers to wake up, understand how the system is screwing them over, and then to unite together to make a better world. And it's all true, that guy you're voting for is helping to keep you down there on the floor - this reminds me of a certain current president, who conned a lot of the working class into believing that he would improve their lives, though plenty of them have already seen how things have continued to get worse for them. Of course, we've all seen this movie far too many times over the past few decades, so the latest rerun is not so unusual. It's all about the money, and the money is not your friend, but if the Workers of the world unite and join the fight, together, we could all make this ugly world go away, and I don't think I could have said it better than Joe did.

Singing About a Very Dangerous Friend

Song 443: The week the playlist comes around to Hey Joe by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, written by Billy Roberts, and you can find an interesting YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I began adding Hendrix LPs to my collection shortly after he died, and his debut album soon became a major favorite. I quickly figured out how to play this tune, though I never even tried to deduce the lead solo, which, as on just about every Jimi recording, is the most compelling sequence of the track, and one that I've often heard in the back of my mind. At a social gathering in the early 1970s, I played and sang this piece, eliciting negative comments from a Jesus-freak chum who didn't like the violent message in the lyrics. Obviously, he hadn't heard the JH version, or any other model, but to me, the murder story in the words always sounded like an old Hollywood movie that you don't take seriously. I would not write a composition of this kind, or even perform one, but I didn't give it much thought when hanging out with friends - I was just playing a Hendrix classic that they would probably recognize, and maybe sing along on. Near the end of this cut, Jimi says Good-bye, everybody, and by the time I first came around to it, he had already left the stage for good, but he had also left behind some truly captivating music that can still spark up our lives 5 decades later.

The Color Red in Two Very Different Forms

Song 442: The week the playlist features Blood and Fire by the Indigo Girls, written by Amy Ray, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. The Indigo Girls made waves across the folk circles that I frequented in the early 1990s, and their eponymous major-label debut LP (which was actually their second studio album) became a regular spinner on my turntable as soon as I acquired it, though I also learned, from trying to introduce the record to a different bunch of friends in that era, that some of my other pals did not share my enthusiasm for the duo. However, that cool response (which might have had judgmental anti-gay undertones) could not douse the flame that the pair had lit in my own soul, and I sympathized with singer Amy's desire to find someone who can take as much as she could give. Recalling the points in my past where I felt intense,  . . . in need,  . . . in pain, and  . . . in love, I would hope that when she truly had Nothing left to hold, she made it back to her lover's fold.

A Piece of Music That Has Wings

Song 441: The week on the playlist you can hear Bird Song by Jerry Garcia, written by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. Clicking on the title will open up a YouTube video of it which features some amusing footage of bird behavior that might trigger a smile or two. In the fall of 1969, I began hearing a lot of RnR that I had missed, thanks to Hank Neuberger, who lived in the dorm room across the hall from mine and who had both a state-of-the-art stereo and an amazingly-extensive LP collection. Greatly expanding my regard for artists like The Rolling Stones, he also introduced me to groups like The Grateful Dead who didn't impress me that much initially. However, by the time Garcia's first solo album appeared a couple of years later, I had developed a much greater appreciation for Jerry's band, and his eponymous release vastly amplified that admiration, particularly after I added it to my stack. When I lived in Berkeley, CA, in the 1980s, I had a musical housemate who included this piece in his performing repertoire, and I respected him for doing so. Of course, anyone who sings a tune so sweet is passin' by, so If you hear that same sweet song again, will you know why? Sadly, Jerry died well over two decades ago, but he left behind a treasure trove of lively recordings, some of which might make us cry in the dark, while others might make us Laugh in the sunshine, and the totality of his creative work can lift our spirits to help us fly through the night.