The Comic

 Song 713: This week the playlist features The Joker by The Steve Miller Band, written by Eddie Curtis, Ahmet Ertegun and Steve Miller, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. With tomorrow being this year's April Fool's Day, tonight feels like a good time to feature a particular musical comedian. When this farcical gag came along in the fall of 1973, my wife and I had lived in the southern part of my college town of Evanston, IL, for about a year. During that stretch, I got to know a fellow I would describe as a low-level crook, and who once said to me, "Getting high is not my thing." While I soon concluded that I had little in common with this guy, I did share his POV regarding alcohol and/or drug intake. I did not become a smoker or a midnight toker, despite being a picker and a grinner. I would gladly play my music in the sun whenever possible, though I had limited options during the Windy City frigid months, but I would get to do it a lot more often starting in the following February when my partner and I moved to the much milder Atlanta, GA, area. Back in that era, I had decided that regardless of my own personal situation, I sure don't want to hurt no one and it would bother me if I did do so, even in some unintended manner.

Enjoying Wet Evenings

 Song 712: This week on the playlist you can hear I Love a Rainy Night by Eddie Rabbitt, written by David Malloy, Eddie Rabbitt and Even Stevens, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this amorous anthem came along around the beginning of 1981, I had gotten a few months into a third year at an attractive comfortable home in Oakland, CA. I would often spend time sitting by the place's small front porch with my housemate and close friend Doug, listening to the interesting sounds the radio brought our way as we savored the moderate Bay Area temperatures, and this one quickly got us both roped in. While I didn't feel the same enjoyment of precipitous experiences that the singer expressed, I greatly appreciated having left the frigid Windy City, and, given the choice, I would much prefer warm downpour over chilly white flurries. I might NOT love to hear the thunder, but I could watch the lightning when it would light up the sky at night, and it felt good to know I would probably wake up to a sunny day the next morning.

Small Pair Vehicle

 Song 711: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Little Deuce Coupe by The Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson and Roger Christian, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. After the Beatles rocked my world 60 years ago in February, I mostly paid attention to the British Invaders, but a few hits from this side of the Atlantic Ocean also lit my ears, including a handful of chart toppers from a particular West Coast quintet of seashore fellows. This moving hot rod ride had arrived during the previous summer, before I got pulled into the RnR airwave current, and when I heard it soon after I started spending more time with the transistor radio, I probably didn’t know it was a golden oldie, but I sure did know that I enjoyed the musical zone that it quickly covered. Hearing it felt like coming off the line when the light turns green, and it made me feel like maybe I had a set of wings so that, in a tuneful way, I could fly. On a sad side note, I decided to do a Beach Boys song this week after hearing the sad news that Brian Wilson lost his wife in January of this year. I feel sorry for his loss, and I wanted to send some good vibes his way.

Fantastic Guy's Aging Difficulties

 Song 710: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's amusing lift Superman's Midlife Crisis comes from a buddy who I connected with in the 1990s named Joe Giacoio, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. He joined my mailing list after attending a performance I did on a Bronx folk stage, and not long after, I heard him play at another place in the area and I liked what I heard from him. We soon developed a close friendship, and when he compiled the 1997 album CD that would have this ballad as its title track, I took pictures of him for the project and helped him put together the record's imagery, which I'd say personifies this tune's message. If you haven't heard the song, you might not know that Spiderman took a job with accounting, but you may very well understand that you can't turn back the clock for a quick trip home and you probably realize that you can't change clothes behind a cellular phone.

Checked You Out

 Song 709: This week the playlist recognizes I Looked at You by The Doors, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Three years and a half after the Fab Four rocked my world, just as they started heading in a psychedelic direction, a fresh L.A. quartet rocked the charts and while I couldn't own a devil's music 33 at the time, I had plenty of friends who could, and did, open up The Doors LP and ride around its spins, so I soon got to know the entire album, even though I never listened to it at home, and it quickly became one of my favorite discs. Over the next two years, as I worked on the student newspaper with a handful of my fellow classmates, we would put together the periodical in a certain room at the HS after classes ended, leaving the school when we finished it a few hours after most of the other students had departed. As we put together each issue, we would also listen to records we liked, and I know we always had The Doors on the turntable for every edition we assembled in those years. When I remember the student newspaper work we did, I always associate it with The Doors, to the point that I don't recall any of the other records we listened to, even though I know we did spin other discs on the player as well. When we started getting an issue's articles together and editing the contents, once we were on our way, we could, and would, never turn back - we would get the job done, even when it meant that a few of us might get home from school too late.