Meandering Replies

Song 761: This week the playlist comes around to Blowin' in the Wind by Peter, Paul and Mary, written by Bob Dylan, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Back in my single-digit years, I would sometimes hear.a song I liked coming from a radio nearby, but I didn't generally pay much attention to them. However, early on during my second decade, a musical trio started getting plenty of recognition in the summer of 1963 from an anthem about rambling answers to major questions, and it soon became the first current hit that got a lot of my focus. The folkie style wouldn't have bothered my parents the way the devil's music did when it showed up six months later, and the values expressed in the lyrics seemed to align with basic Christian concepts, so I saw no conflict between my religion and the hit. I quickly learned the songwriter's name, and over the next few years I would notice that moniker a few times, such as with Mr. Tambourine Man (Song 326), but I wouldn't actually hear his voice until I got to my college dormitory. When I first heard the breezy song, I didn't know how many roads I'd have to walk down before people would call me a man, but even now, no matter how many times some of the cannonballs did fly since then, I don't expect them to get forever banned any time soon! 

500 Years from Now

 Song 760: This week the playlist recognizes In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans, written by Rick Evans, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Around the time that I went to the graduation ceremony where I got my HS certification in June of 1969, I started hearing a folkie duo expressing their musical predictions of the distant future, and while I had no way to evaluate the validity of their prophetic assertions, I did enjoy listening to their melodic foresights. Actually, still living with a fundamentalist family at the time, I believed that the rapture would come along at some point in the near future, and I did not expect human civilization to even make it to the first quarter of the 21st century, so back then, I felt certain that humans would never get to that same point in the 26th one! Now I don't really know, and I do not dismiss the threat of nuclear armageddon, but currently I do know that sometimes when you have something to do, maybe some machine's doin' that for you, and possibly humanity will advance to the point that if someone wants a child, they can pick a son and pick a daughter too from the bottom of a glass tube.

Amusement As the Only Option

 Song 759: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's entertaining ramble All You Can Do is Laugh comes from another one of my Fast Folk colleagues, Jeff Tareila, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Not long after I moved from Berkeley, CA, to Brooklyn, NY, in September of 1988, I found out about the weekly songwriter gathering at Jack Hardy's Manhattan apartment, and that soon became a regular part of my schedule. Getting into the FF circle, I became good friends with JT, to the point that when he had a wedding a few years later, my romantic partner and I got to attend that marriage ceremony. For much of my adult life, both before and after that event, some people have told me that certain difficulties I experience stem from my hair, and if I would just cut it all off, I would really get somewhere. How does someone respond to such advice? All you can do is laugh!

Unable to Purchase Passion

 Song 758: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Can't Buy Me Love by The Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and originally credited to him and John Lennon, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. About a month after the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, they had another amazing chart topper getting everyone's attention. It didn't take long to learn the chorus lines and melody of the anthem about the lack of a connection between cash and affection, so I could soon sing along with it when the radio featured it. During those school years, a class I attended would sometimes do a field trip to NYC to visit places there such as the Bronx Zoo, and on those trips, we would get to hear the bus's radio station playing the Top 40. On one of those excursions, which I think happened in the spring of 1965, while riding on a freeway in Manhattan, we riders got to hear this Beatles classic, which at that point had already become a golden oldie. Growing up in a working-class family back then, I would truly have appreciated a romantic partner that valued the kind of things that money just can't buy.

Moving on Nothing

 Song 757: This week on the playlist you can hear Running on Empty by Jackson Browne, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I recently realized that I had gotten to quite a high number on this list while only including three Browne tunes in it, so now at least I'll have a fourth one by him as part of the group. I initially started seeing his name as the writer of a few notable recordings by Tom Rush that I really liked, and then in early 1972 he released his own first LP, which featured his hit Doctor My Eyes (Song 286). I soon added that 33 to my collection, and it got lots of spins on the turntable. However, by the time the album that included this title track came along, in December of 1977, I did not buy one of those because I already intended to point my thumb towards the west when the next warmer months arrived, and I had started unloading my pile of 33s and 45s. Still, I really did like hearing, and singing along with, this moving lift, especially when sitting behind the driver's wheel myself, as I often did during that era. Back then, even with the road regularly rushing under my wheels, rarely, if ever, would I find myself running blind, or even running behind.

Blustery Air Movement

 Song 756: This week the playlist recognizes Windy by The Association, written by Ruthann Friedman, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Over the past week, in my area we had a couple of breezy days where we had some major amounts of moving air that brought down a few tree branches, so it seems like the appropriate moment to feature this gusty ride, which first raised listeners' ears in the summer of 1967. At that point I got to hear the top 40 on the transistor radio, which I would often do in the back yard during the warmer weather, since that way, I wouldn't have to make noise near the folks who disparaged the devil's music. In my HS years, I also had a friend who sold me cheaply his singles when he got tired of hearing them, so I might have had this 45 in my collection soon after it dropped from the charts. Giving that disc lots of spins on my single player would have moved me to start reaching out to capture a moment.

Frigid Evening Ballad

 Song 755: This week the playlist comes around to Song for a Winter's Night by Gordon Lightfoot, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Not long after I got to Northwestern University in the late summer of 1969, I started hearing and learning a lot more about the music I liked. Being a singer/songwriter type myself, I added some LPs to my collection by folkies like Judy Collins and that new James Taylor fellow. In the fall of 1970, I expanded my interest in the Gordon guy and soon had a few of his 33s in my stack, including The Way I Feel, which contains this gem. It didn't take long to learn the lines and melodies as the disc got plenty of spins on the turntable. Living in the Chicago area for most of that decade, during the darker months I would often notice when the snow was softly falling, and then, when the morning light would steal across my window pane, I could tell where some webs of snow were drifting.

Twelve Feline Months

 Song 754: This week the playlist applauds Year of the Cat by Al Stewart, written by Al Stewart and Peter Wood, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. During my childhood years in the 1950s and 1960s, my family would visit friends and relatives who had both feline and canine companions, and while I always enjoyed a pet's company, I soon figured out that, if given the choice, I would rather hang out with a cat than a dog, although my own family could not have either kind of pet at the time. When Mr. Al decided to let us know what the year 1976 would become, I shared an apartment with a few friends on the south end of Evanston, IL, and spending a lot of time at a driver's wheel regularly, I got to hear the anthem quite a bit as it topped the charts. Depending on who rode in the vehicle, I sometimes would sing along with it, but other times could not do so, even though I might have wished that I could. Of course, back in that era I had no interest in contemplating a crime, and I usually didn't bother asking for explanations, so even when I found that I had thrown away my choice and lost my ticket, I still enjoyed riding along with those meowsome lines.

Cloudy Frost Season Tone

 Song 753: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on A Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon & Garfunkel, written by Paul Simon, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Those of us who reside in the northeastern section of the U.S. will probably in the next couple of months see a substantial amount of white stuff falling from the sky and accumulating in areas along the ground, so this folkie anthem pretty well describes a lot of what we'll see in the near future. While I might possibly have heard the piece when it climbed the charts in October of 1966, soon after I began my sophomore HS year, I would get to know it quite well after it appeared on the S&G 1968 Bookends LP. I did not have 33s at the time, but my closest friend Ed did have all four of the S&G discs, and every time I visited him during our senior HS year, which I did quite often, he would play all of those records at least once, so during my final HS year I got to hear Paul and Art a lot more than any other music stars. While I looked around for my possibilities that year, when I headed out to college the next year, that truly became the springtime of my life as an adult.

Satanic Perspective

 Song 752: This week the playlist recognizes Devil's Angle by Patti Rothberg, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This time around, it's been eight weeks since my last personal friend song post, instead of seven, as it usually is, because I didn't, and couldn't, do a song post last week. I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Patti in a recording studio back in 2003 - my studio partner David worked with her, and he introduced me to her at a recording studio one night. I soon got to enjoy her music, and when she released her Black Widow CD in 2013, she sent me a copy, I appreciated that gift, but unfortunately, when I played it on a CD player, the machine messed up the first track, which is the title tune. I never played another record on that player, but I was able to convert the other BW songs into mp3s and I got to hear the album that way via my mp3 players. Of course, long before the first time I heard this tune, I already understood how it feels looking for an angle for a new way to be, and perhaps, now that the new year has arrived, maybe a substantial number of people currently find themselves making that kind of search.