Provide Your Complete Passion

 Song 708: Last week's thought was Let's Work Together and the week before was the moment for All My Loving, so this week seems like the right time to Gimme All Your Lovin' by ZZ Top, written by Billy Gibbons, and you can find an amusing YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. By the time such a rocking plea got a lot of listeners going along with that request in early 1983, I had resided for about a year and a half in a really pleasant home in Berkeley, CA, that sat near the pizza joint where the singer/songwriter circle that I had joined a few years earlier would regularly gather and share compositions. I had become a fan of the lurching Texas trio soon after they appeared near the beginning of the 1970s, and had actually attended a concert they did in Chicago in early 1977, so it didn't take long for them to get me singing along with their 1983 bluesy call. I soon understood that when someone has got to move it up that they should work it like a screwball would.

Common Efforts

 Song 707: This week on the playlist you can hear Let's Work Together by Canned Heat, written by Wilbert Harrison, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Shortly before my sophomore college year began in September of 1970, this bluesy anthem started getting everyone to sing along, and it conveyed a message that most of my classmates, and probably the majority of university scholars around the country, had come to understand quite clearly in the spring of that year. Soon after the 5/4/70 event, I joined demonstrations at N.U. which echoed gatherings across the nation that expressed our anger at the killing of four Kent State pupils, and while our voices speaking out didn't end the Vietnam War, as far as I know, no other student protesters in the U.S. got shot down during the following years as opposition to the Southeast Asia conflict continued to swell. Many of us would walk hand in hand when we had a good place to stand to voice our disapproval of that mass murder.

My Entire Passion

 Song 706: This week the playlist applauds All My Loving by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Sixty years ago, fairly soon after I got to my junior high school on the morning of 2/10, I started hearing my classmates use a word that I thought referred to a group of insects, but I couldn't imagine why such conversations would happen in the middle of a cold upstate NY winter. Since I had no clue about the big story I had missed, I also didn't know what question to ask, but after a couple of days I finally did pose a question to my neighbor playmate. He chuckled to learn that his smart buddy didn't know the biggest news of the previous week. Finding out about what my family and I had missed on Sunday night, we all planned to watch the 2/16 Ed Sullivan Show, and when we did so, although the rest of our circle had no interest in what they heard and saw, my younger brother and I got roped in, and we insisted on viewing the entire program, contrary to other family members who wanted to shut off the TV. Watching them perform She Loves You, (Song 653), the Fab Four rocked my world. I thought their next tune sounded really cool, and then they got to this one, which felt even better. Witnessing that performance sparked a whole new view of the musical world for me, and gave me hope that my dreams will come true.

Transporting Over a Notable Stream

 Song 705: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Ferry Cross the Mersey by Gerry and the Pacemakers, written by Gerry Marsden, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Not long after a certain Fab Four rocked my world six decades ago, I started paying a lot more attention to the radio than I ever had before, and particularly riding along with a whole bunch of British Invader musical rambles. This lift arrived about a year later, and became yet one more anthem from the English noisemakers that moved me in a very rocking way. I had probably not known much about the United Kingdom's geography previously, but by the time this ride came along the airwaves, I had learned about the stream that the ferry crossed and its proximity to an urban area that had achieved a lot more public recognition, thanks to the quartet who I plan to feature next week. While Life goes on day after day and People they rush everywhere, I personally have not taken a Ferry Cross the Mersey, and I don't expect to do so any time soon, but maybe it could happen someday.