Confined to Uncertainty

 Song 591: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's intriguing jaunt Stranded in Limbo comes from a Bay Area comerade Jim Bruno, who also wrote the song. He joined the Berkeley songwriter circle that I hung out with in the late 1970s and most of the 1980s - in fact, I introduced him to the group that gathered at the pizza parlor just north of the U.C. campus. I heard this gem for the first time recently which enlivens his 2017 release Long Story Short, but as soon as I did, I thought it sounded very appropriate for the pandemic era that we and our fellow humans have experienced in the last year and a half, and which arrived over 2 years after Jim’s record appeared. The whole scenario feels like an endless road to a hollow home with plenty of broken promises like broken bones, and as it keeps going, do you wonder where it will end? I sure do, and maybe we shouldn't have expected much, since no one owes you the human touch, so every day it's fade to black, no going forward, no going back - at this point, we're stranded in limbo. In the morning, sometimes it's drought, sometimes it's flood, and they say the problem is in our blood (or our lungs), although perhaps we'll get to another angle of the story someday.

Nonconformist Composition

 Song 590: This week the playlist recognizes Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, written by Freddie Mercury, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Along with Prince 3 weeks ago, Carly Simon 2 weeks ago and Woody Guthrie last week, this week Queen appears for the first time in this bunch. I lived in the Chicago area back in the middle of the 1970s when this rocker got everyone stirred up. Unlike the majority of radio wave riders, it came with a quite unique form, not relying on the typical verse & chorus pattern that animates most hits, but instead running along a suite path going through differing segments one after another. As a songwriter, I found this an intriguing exception to the basic rules that we tune-crafters generally pursue, and, like Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (Song 566), it inspired me to explore some additional options at least 2 or 3 times, opening the door to endless possibiities. In fact, even compared to that CS&N trailblazer, the Queen groundbreaker went a lot further from the traditional verse & chorus formula and into some rare encapsulating territory. Under the current pandemic situation, people might ask Is this the real life or Is this just fantasy? Are we caught in a landslide with no escape from reality? I'd say to anyone open your eyes, look up to the skies and see, and pay attention to the signs so you can know any way the wind blows.

Continue Streaming

 Song 589: This week on the playlist you can hear Roll On Colombia by Woody Guthrie, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Two weeks ago marked Prince's initial appearance on this list, last week was Carly Simon’s premier here, and now Woody has arrived at the gathering. Given the role that Mr. Guthrie played in laying the groundwork for the singer/songwriter phenomenon, it does seem remarkable to have gotten so close to 600 before featuring him, and I'll probably give him a few more numbers in the near future. I think I first heard this mover during my HS years, but I definitely knew more about it in my early twenties as I evolved my own personal singer/songwriter style and I learned about the multiple landmarks created by WG's pioneering. At the time, I would have agreed with the concept that dams can wonderfully provide clean energy, although in recent decades I have learned about how such structures can damage aquatic wildlife communities. Still, we can all feel grateful when a river’s power is turning our darkness to dawn, including when other great rivers add power to it. As a songwriter, I understood someone having a vision that would not let him rest, and I respect how often in the past mighty men labored by day and by night, and that by doing so, they won the hard fight.

Arriving at the Proper Circumstance

 Song 588: This week on the playlist you’ll find That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be by Carly Simon, written by Carly Simon and Jacob Brackman, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Last week marked the first appearance of Prince among this group and this week is Carly's premiere here. Again, I don't know how I got so far along before including a CS gem, but I will certainly give her more numbers in the near future. This shiner arrived in the spring of my college sophomore year, and I recall enjoying the moment when it enlivened a car's radio speakers as I rode along with friends on a rural cruise one afternoon that summer. A couple of decades later I would actually get to know a woman who had resided in Carly's circle around the time of this hit and who had hooked up during that era with a young guy working as Ms. Simon’s ivory player and song arranger - that former boyfriend Billy Mernit got credit on the LP jacket for his keyboard contributions to this cut and other tracks from the album. In the present day, I expect that my friends from college they're all married now, and regardless of the pandemic, I would hope most of them still have their houses and their lawns. I want to believe that as humans we can keep our love alive, someday soon resolve the question marks, and then soar like the birds through the clouds.