Allow Solar Illumination

 Song 621: This week the playlist applauds Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures) by The 5th Dimension, written by James Rado, Gerome Ragni and Galt MacDermot, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Tonight marks the first appearance of The 5th Dimension in this gathering, and I chose this particular hit because, on this past Tuesday, 6/21 - the first official day of summer, and the longest day of the year - songwriter James Rado left the land of the living, as did a personal friend, the realist artist I have long admired named Harvey Dinnerstein. Mr. Rado's real last name was Radomski, and he and his co-author Gerome Ragni had begun writing the musical Hair in 1964, getting it premiered off-Broadway in October 1967 and moving it to Broadway 6 months later. The musical got a lot of attention, and at some point during that stretch a group of singers/performers at my HS staged a segment from it for an audience of their fellow students which included me. I had already enjoyed the 5D record and experiencing the live display made it seem even better. Of course, I didn't even mention the incident to my fundamentalist family since they didn't approve of the devil's music and I did have a bit of a moral quandary over relishing a Broadway jaunt which I knew included onstage nudity in the professional version, but I didn't give myself too much guilt because I figured it unlikely that I'd ever see that sort of show. All these decades later, we still haven't reached the era of harmony and understanding with sympathy and trust abounding, and we have to have no more falsehoods or derisions to get to golden living dreams of visions, but perhaps mystic crystal revelation and the mind's true liberation can arrive when peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.

Deity Departed From the Windy City

 Song 620: This week on the playlist you’ll find Jesus Just Left Chicago by ZZ Top, written by Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Last week might have been a better time to highlight this rocker, since on the day before, Saturday, 6/11, the trio’s drummer Frank Beard celebrated his 73rd birthday, but it had to appear this week because Song 619 had to be a personal friend composition, following the schedule of doing one of those every 7 weeks. Regardless, I would bet that Rube, as he got called on the LP that featured this jaunt, probably had an enjoyable natal day celebration. Not long after La Grange (Song 366) grabbed everyone’s attention in the summer of 1974, I added Tres Hombres to my 33 stack, and it soon got a lot of turntable spins. This shiner comes on just after the album opener, with no pause, and quickly moves the listener in a slightly different, but just as strong, direction. Ironically, I had left Chicago early in 1974, but had unintentionally returned during the summer. Listening to TH while continuing to reside in the Chicago area for a few years, I often wished I could have once again Just Left Chicago, though I had no interest in getting bound for New Orleans or taking a jump through Mississippi. I did, however, relish the idea of getting out to California through the forests and the pines, and eventually I DID get to make THAT trip.

Swine Sign

 Song 619: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's comic ramble Pigs comes from a buddy who I connected with back in the 1990s, Joe Giacoio, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. He became a fan of my music and joined my mailing list, and as I got to know him, I soon started to relish what I heard coming from his end. This cut appears on his 2015 CD I Love Hamburgers and it provides a shining example of his humorous approach. If, when you're on church steps, suddenly everybody's runnin' for cover because those aren't doves up there, it might be hard to keep them up in the air, but evidently some folks love it when pigs fly, including the noises they make - ooh, ooh, ooh, what a happy sound!

Your Particular Profile

 Song 618: This week the playlist recognizes The Shape You're In by Eric Clapton, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Oddly enough, this marks Mr. Clapton's first appearance in this group. I of course have already featured 3 Cream sparklers and will certainly add a few others over time, but I got well past #600 before adding one of Eric's solo gems. In the era when he released the 33 that included this cut, I lived in Berkeley, CA, and hung out with a circle of fellow singer/songwriter types there. When I got to hear the tracks from Money and Cigarettes, I thought it sounded like one of the best EC discs overall, even though it didn't have any particular shiners that outdid the Cream chart-toppers. I had already started working on the recording project that would become my first cassette release Going My Way in 1985 which has 4 blues-flavored rambles in the 14-song collection, and I have to give Eric some credit for influencing my guitar riffs in pieces of those jaunts. I hope to have an updated CD version of GMW ready for release in a few months. Over the last year, Clapton got a lot of criticism for telling the story about his personal adverse reaction to a jab, but I don't know how sharing facts about a bad effect makes someone anti-vaxx. Maybe he had to take it easy, take it slow, but it was OK with him for the whole world to know about the shape he was in.