A Mysterious Magical Quality

Song 518: This week the playlist recognizes Every Little Thing She Does is Magic by The Police, written by Sting, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. A few months before this tune hit the airwaves near the end of 1981, I had moved over from a place in Oakland, CA, into a friend's house in Berkeley. During that stretch, I had a romantic obsession with another Berkeley resident, which had begun two years earlier and would continue for about another year, so the lyrics of this hit sounded like an appropriate expression of my own personal emotions at the time. My buddy and new housemate had had his own short-lived affair with the woman who had lit my flame, and when I told him about my feelings for her, he advised me to disregard them, but I did not follow his advice. Back then, I felt like Every little thing she did was magic, Everything she did just turned me on, and my love for her would go on, even though I couldn't exactly identify the mysterious quality that made her so special. Well, about seven years ago, I finally pinpointed the match that lit her charisma (and plenty of others), and when I release the second edition of my book shortly, its subtitle will have an added third term. In the first edition of Expecting the Broken Brain to Do Mental Pushups, I focused on the psychiatric conditions of schizophrenia and depression, but in the updated volume, I also outline a third one which I now see much more clearly - bipolar disorder.

Better Not Touch This One

Song 517: This week on the playlist you’ll find Poison Ivy by The Coasters, written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I don't actually recall which version of this tune first came across my radar, and exactly when, but at some point after The Beatles rocked my world during the winter of my 7th grade year, I did get to hear it, and I relished the suggestive message in the playful lyrics. The rendition that enticed my ears could have come from The Dave Clark Five, The Hollies, The Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann or The Kingsmen (who got their first appearance on this list with song 507 which was Louie, Louie), but regardless of who crafted the one I heard in my HS years, as the 1970s arrived and unrolled, I got to know this original hit, as I did so many other first generation RnR recordings, and I appreciated the musical texture created by the originators. The track does also seem to fit the first week of summer quite well, as I strongly suspect I have some genuine Toxicodendron radicans growing in at least one or two spots on my property. Now most of us know that Measles make you bumpy and mumps'll make you lumpy, and plenty of us learned the hard way that chicken pox'll make you jump and twitch. In addition, The common cold'll fool you, and whoopin' cough will cool ya, But even worse, Poison Ivy, Lawd, will make you itch! In the warmer weather months in the northeastern states, be careful where you step and don't scratch too much.

Stay in Touch

Song 516: This week the playlist comes around to Hang On Sloopy by The McCoys, written by Wes Farrell and Bert Berns, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This hit came along a little over a year before last week's tune Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron. My parents and grandparents did not approve of the Devil's Music, but they actually liked the Snoopy tune, which did have at least one follow-up 45 not long after its release, so when I saw a package of 10 singles with this record on top, I mistakenly told the folks that the front one was another Snoopy disc. Going along with that incorrect info, they allowed me to buy the box, and they soon regretted their decision, but I made extensive enjoyable use of my purchase. Over the next few years, I would often get used singles from my best friend's younger brother, and I would sneak them into the basement, where my turntable and the singles box resided, while the folks continued to believe that my entire 45 collection had come from that one box of 10, and I never did or said anything to lead them to think otherwise. I would play the newer discs a lot, but this one continued to get plenty of spins as well. If the old folks had ever tried to put my Sloopy down, I would have prevented them, because I was truly in love with the record, and 55 years after it hit the charts, it still sounds really good.

A Funny Dogfight

Song 515: This week the playlist applauds Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron by The Royal Guardsmen, written by Phil Gernhard and Dick Holler, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. As a kid, I regularly enjoyed the Charles Schulz comic strip Peanuts, including the series that started in the fall of my HS freshman year, in 1965, when Snoopy began fighting the Red Baron (an actual German WW1 historical figure), so when this single came along a year later, it grabbed me the first time it came across the airwaves. I always relished the part where someone does the count off in German (eins, zwei, drei, vier), and the lines about Snoopy asking the Great Pumpkin for a new battle plan made me smile every time. Imagining the cartoon character challenging the famous WW1 flyer to a real dogfight had me laughing as much as the Baron was when he got him in his sight. Decades ago, this 45 went spinning out of sight, but those of us who treasured it never forgot the grins it gave us.