Sizzling Pleasure

 Song 734: This week the playlist applauds Hot Fun In The Summertime by Sly and the Family Stone, written by Sly Stone, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Around the time this scorching anthem started climbing the charts, I joined a bunch of my fellow HS vocalists in riding a bus to NYC and then riding a plane to Switzerland. Our select choir group did a European tour that lasted about four weeks, Them summer days sure felt good to us all, and gave us a lot of memorable moments that we could treasure for the rest of our lives. We got to ride cloud nine to get back to NYC, and as we rode the bus back to our hometown, we saw a bunch of fellow teenagers hitching for rides in the Bethel area. Our bus driver explained that a major music festival had just happened in that area, and I later found out that the performers on that Woodstock stage had included a certain crafty fellow and his rocky relatives. When we got back to our neighborhood, we all sure did feel like everything is cool, and we could smile at each other as we waved Bye, bye, bye, bye there.

Extremely Self-Centered

 Song 733: This week the playlist recognizes You're So Vain by Carly Simon, who also wrote the song, and you can find an entertaining YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this roving accusation started riding the airwaves in early 1973, my wife and I resided in a comfortable apartment on the south end of my college town, Evanston, and I worked as a local cab driver, having left my university education behind without achieving a graduation. When I found out that Mick Jagger sang harmony on the tune, I thought he might be the target of the lyrics, though I also considered Ms. Simon's former husband James Taylor as an alternative possibility. I had no idea back then that a couple of decades later, I would hang out with someone who had met Carly shortly before she became famous. CS has played a number of games over the years about the identity of the vain guy, and when she made a new recording of the song in 2009, she whispered a moniker that a radio crew thought sounded like David. To be clear, that could not be me. I never flew a Lear jet up to Nova Scotia, and while I have visited Saratoga at least once or twice, I never had a horse there that naturally won.

Roasting Precipitation

 Song 732: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Summer Rain by Johnny Rivers, written by Jim Hendricks, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Given how much downpour we've had in my neighborhood over the past week, it seems appropriate to feature a song that focuses on warm falling moisture. This roaming weather report actually arrived in the late fall of 1967 as I rolled through my junior HS year, and JR mentions how during the previous warm season, the jukebox kept on playin' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I knew exactly what he meant by that, and at the time I still did not know what to make of the new psychedelic direction that the Fab Four and some other prominent rockers had decided to start rumbling around. I could, however, easily picture a romantic partner who had stepped out of the rainbow with golden hair shinin' like moon glow, and as this song’s numbers got higher and the thermometer numbers got lower, I enjoyed imagining the warmth that such a companion could bring to moments when the snow drifts by my window and I could hear the North wind blowin' like thunder.

Focused Recollection

 Song 731: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's stirring vision Forget Me Not comes from another one of my Fast Folk colleagues, Jack Hardy. In fact, Jack was essentially the leader of FF, and this actually marks the first time I've included him in this collection. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, I regularly visited Jack's apartment on Houston St. in Manhattan once a week, along with many others of the group, as we shared our most recent anthems and did critiques of each other's work. I really respected him doing what he did for the organization, and though he left the land of the living in 2011, those of us who had been part of that circle will not forget him and the role he played in our past. However, we also might possibly hear another voice in time, before or after summer's end, that sounds as blue as his once did.