Heading Towards a Historic Location

 This week the playlist features Going Down to Liverpool by the Bangles, written by Kimberley Rew, and you can find an amusing YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When the first LP by the Bangles started spinning in the spring of 1984, I resided in a 6-bedroom house in Berkeley, CA, which had become the home for a half dozen of us singer/songwriter types who had made a nearby pizza parlor our favorite hangout and performance arena. Having grown up in a lightly-patriarchal religious abode, even when I began my second independent adult decade, I sometimes still held onto bits of an inherited male supremacy ideology until I saw and heard such ideas contradicted by reality. I wondered if only guys could do hard rock, but then this female quartet proved to me that women could indeed hit a heavy beat, and I liked hearing them do that.  As a clue about the musical ramble I intend to highlight next week, I'll admit that I do plan on going down to Liverpool, but not simply to do nothing - I want to share my fascination for a hit by that urban center's most famous four.

Fair Phantom

 Song 651: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Guinnevere by Crosby, Stills and Nash, written by David Crosby, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Since the sad news about Mr. Crosby arrived a few days ago, I decided to add another one of his sparklers to this bunch - the one that he once said in a Rolling Stone interview "… might be my best song." Not long after the Byrds took off in 1965, they became my #2 group, just behind the Fab Four. Then, 4 years later, around the time I started my freshman year at N.U. and moved into a student dormitory, a supergroup trio that included a former Byrd got their harmonies riding the airwaves. Of course I relished their opener Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (Song 566), but I also soon noticed, and quickly began appreciating, the third track on side one of their premier LP. I thought the tune had a very innovative cool-sounding melodic and timing approach, and that the chording sounded unique as well. I liked Mr. Crosby letting us know that Seagulls circle endlessly, and since they do, that fact could give someone a reason to sing in silent harmony, understanding that as a result, he/she would be free.

Singular Perception

 Song 650: This week the playlist comes around to One Vision by Queen, written by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I lived in Berkeley, CA, back in the mid-1980s when this sounding arrived, and I don't recall exactly when it first caught my ears, but I did find its unique quality quite entertaining. In fact, it reminded me of some of my own personal keyboard rambles, which, other than Can't Catch the Train - a song from my 1985 cassette release Going My Way which will soon come around to CD form - I never got around to recording any of those other wild rides in a studio, and I still haven't yet done any of them. Queen got their inspiration for this excursion from Martin Luther King, Jr., and with today being his actual birthday - he would have been 94 had he made it to today - plus tomorrow being the holiday that honors him, tonight is the appropriate moment to feature this record. I still remember hearing the speech where he expressed having a dream that someday his children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. That was truly a dream of sweet illusion, a glimpse of hope and unity and visions of one sweet union. However, a cold wind blows and a dark rain falls, and I don’t know if that dream can ever come true, but maybe at some point in the future we can really have One Vision.

Appetizing and Chilly Hangers

 Song 649: This week the playlist recognizes Popsicles And Icicles by The Murmaids, written by David Gates, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This cool and tasty piece hit the menu shortly before the Beatles rocked my world in February of 1964, and once I started paying more attention to the radio because of the Fab Four, it probably crossed my radar soon after. I relished the way the female trio took the listeners along an appetizing lyrical word game. Growing up, I personally enjoyed having Popsicles whenever I could, and my working-class parents and grandparents could afford to offer me that kind of gift a lot more often than other more expensive fancier ones that a few of my middle-class friends regularly got to ingest which I didn't. In that era I frequently had fun during the chillier season playing with buddies in the outside piles of white stuff, which would sometimes get adorned with Icicles. Back then, very rarely did I wear fancy clothes but in the warmer months I did get to play baseball and then I could find a bit of heaven right before my eyes.

Roving Feline Swagger

 Song 648: This week the playlist applauds Stray Cat Strut by Stray Cats, written by Brian Setzer, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Happy Meow Year! Just like 3 of my last 5 blogs here, tonight marks the first appearance of this particular group in my favorite song gathering. Despite my admiration for felines, somehow it took well over 9 years before I got around to adding this striking mover to the collection. When it first arrived, I had gotten halfway through my third year at a very comfortable Oakland, CA, residence, but then when September rolled around, a room became available at a friend's home in Berkeley, so I soon had an address within a few blocks of the pizza place where the singer/songwriter circle I had joined hung out. Spending more time in Berkeley soon made it obvious to me how lots of stray cats (human ones, NOT felines) had made the city sidewalks their new living quarters, mainly due to POTUS Reagan having essentially ended federal funding of mental institutions. During that era, the word cat had become a slang reference to a guy, and as the 1990s unfolded, I started writing a song I originally titled It Takes a Jealous Cat, implying a human male's jealousy over a human female. As I plan to explain in a video about The Story Behind My Song One More Cat Tale, at some point in that decade, the title evolved into It Takes a Cat and became a melodic ramble about a real furry fellow, so it now enlivens my Purrfection CD single, and you can hear and see a YouTube lyric video of it by clicking on the title. Like other stray cats, I don't bother chasing mice around, but I also don't get my dinner from a garbage can, even when I strut right by with my tail in the air.