Tiny Holy Figure

 Song 751: This week the playlist features Little Saint Nick by The Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this yuletide anthem arrived 61 years ago, I might possibly not have heard it, since I didn't start paying much attention to the radio until after the Beatles rocked my world a couple of months later, but maybe I did hear it then and I just don't remember doing so. When the green wreaths started appearing the next time around, though, I definitely did get to hear it, and sing along with it when it rode the airwaves. While my folks disparaged the devil's music, this kind of tune could become an exception to the rule, so if the car radio featured it as we all rode along, heading somewhere around the time of year when the air gets cold, they would allow my brothers and me to sing along with run run reindeer and celebrate a real famous cat all dressed in red.

Brush It Colorless

 Song 750: This week the playlist comes around to Paint it, Black by The Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. The week with the shortest day of light in the northern hemisphere seems like an appropriate time to feature this RS anthem, despite the fact that it actually first appeared around the opposite point of the global illumination cycle. Near the end of my freshman HS year, as we students began to enjoy summer vacation in 1966, the circling five that had become major British competitors to the Fab Four got our attention with their advice to apply a dark tone to our surroundings. Similar to the previous summer when their complaint about a lack of satisfaction (Song 256) got us teenies singing along, during that warm season our transistor radios had us chanting about seeing a red door and wanting it to get painted black, and also wanting to see the sun blotted out from the sky, although I doubt that any of us actually would have wished for such a dark reality.

Magenta Drizzle

 Song 749: This week on the playlist you can hear Purple Rain by Prince, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. As we in the northeast section of the U.S. get close to the end of the fall season, our precipitation might look darker than it did a few months earlier, but I don't expect the downpour to take on a lavender tone. Back when the Orwellian year arrived, I lived in Berkeley, CA, and most of the music that I paid attention to at the time came from the singer/songwriter group that I hung out with there, but I also did still listen to the radio sometimes, particularly when I rode in one of the cars I obtained during that stretch. It didn't take long for Mr. Prince's anthem to grab my ears and if I rode in a car by myself, I soon could sing along with his lines. Back then, we knew times were changing, and we would have liked to reach out for something new, but I did not see anyone bathing in the purple rain, and perhaps I should feel good about that.

Observatory Occupancy

 Song 748: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on All Along the Watchtower by Bob Dylan, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. About a year and a half after I had the experience of hearing the Jimi Hendrix version of this tune, which I featured last week, I had the unexpected privilege of getting to hear the songwriter's original recording of it. My folks dropped me off in the parking lot of Bobb Hall at Northwestern University in early September of 1969, and when I got up to the floor of my dorm room, I met another student who had a room close to mine, and he invited me to come in and hang out with him, which I did. His name was actually Smiley, and he soon put his John Wesley Harding LP on his turntable, so then I got to hear Mr. BD's voice for the first time. My initial reaction to hearing Bob was to think that his rough singing sound explained why he had greater fame as a songwriter than a performer. Living in that dormitory, though, it didn't take long to get to hear a lot more of Mr. Dylan's recordings, and my appreciation of his talent quickly moved past any critique of his vocal tones. Before long, I also concluded that even when there's too much confusion in my area, personally, I COULD get some relief.