Unrestrained Fowl

 Song 643: This week the playlist recognizes Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, written by Allen Collins and Ronnie Van Zant, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this anthem started riding the air waves in the winter of 1975, I had just found an available room in an apartment on the south end of the Chicago-area locality where I had spent most of the preceding 4 years, so I personally did not feel like the Free Bird that had relaxed in the Atlanta, GA, region the previous spring, but I did appreciate having a warm space to rest. As much as I initially enjoyed listening to the signature song of this septet, which marks their premier appearance among this collection, I would eventually, over the next decade, get tired of hearing other performers do their own versions of it. By the time the 1980s arrived, whenever I attended a night club show, whether by a low-level musician or a prominent star, if the singer gave the audience a chance to make a request, I always heard at least one person - and often many more - shout out Free Bird, to the point where it became rare NOT to hear that. This phenomenon continued well into the 1990s, and may even still happen these days, because, after all, this bird you cannot change.

Vibrate Your Income Source

 Song 642: This week the playlist comes around to Shake Your Moneymaker by Elmore James, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. In researching last week's Doors trailblazer Break on Through I learned that guitarist Robby Krieger has credited Paul Butterfield's version of this EJ hit as the inspiration for the riff that he used to drive the Doors' first album opener, so this seemed like an appropriate moment to feature Mr. James' rendition of the tune which he gets recognition for as the songwriter. This marks Elmore's second appearance in this group, with Dust My Broom being Song 307. When this shaker arrived in 1961, a few years before the Beatles rocked my world, I had no knowledge of such earlier heavy movers, and during my HS stretch I still found out very little about them, but as the 1970s unfolded and I had, as a young adult, the freedom to explore musical pathways that interested me, a 1950s RnR revival hit the Chicago radio waves and I got to hear many classics that had never previously crossed my ears, some of which I highly appreciated, such as this stunning rocker. As a male, I can certainly enjoy watching a woman shake her moneymaker and roll her activator, but it doesn't surprise me when she won't do a thing I tell her to do.

Fracture Barriers to Reach Opposite Conclusions

 Song 641: This week on the playlist you can hear Break on Through (To the Other Side) by the Doors, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. As the summer of 1967 arrived, some of us RnR fans scratched our heads when the Fab Four took on a very different Lonely Hearts Club appearance and sound, but around that time, a new L.A. quartet got everyone's attention with their fiery hit, and soon enough, plenty of my friends had a copy of their premier 33, so I thereby got to hear it frequently. During my final 2 HS years that disc got a lot of spins on the turntable that adorned the classroom where my colleagues and I put together the monthly student newspaper, to the point that when I remember those journalistic exercises, The Doors LP is the main - and sometimes the only - one that I associate with those gatherings, with this sizzling rocker being the opening lift on that enlivening jaunt. Last month I had the pleasure of meeting realist artist Susan Kapilow and getting to enjoy perusing the drawings she did of Jim Morrison. Not long after she received an award for a sculpture she did of his head, one day he appeared on her Manhattan doorstep, and she then had the opportunity that afternoon to sketch him as he hung out with her. Whether someone examining those images found an island in his arms and/or country in his eyes, I would say Susan's illustrations definitely made the scene!

Avoiding Discussions About Labor

 Song 640: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's enlivening ramble I Don't Want to Talk About Work comes from one of my Fast Folk buddies Jim Allen, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I hung out with the FF gang of Manhattan and regularly attended the weekly gathering at Jack Hardy's apartment, Jim soon earned a reputation as one of the standout songwriters of the group, and this jaunt arrived during that stretch, later becoming part of the FF Volume 8 Issue 7 disc that I did the cover for in 1996. I myself sure do understand a certain kind of sadness that has been driven from the door of the rich to the poor, and as the situation keeps getting worse, it's a funny kind of strange, how the weather won't change, but like Jim, I still will send my good wishes for the sucker washing dishes and one more for the drugstore clerk.