Widespread Desire

 Song 813: This week the playlist recognizes Everybody Loves Somebody by Dean Martin, written by Irving Taylor and Ken Lane, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I had paid some attention to the sounds coming from nearby transistor radios in the early 1960s, but when February of 1964 arrived and the Fab Four rocked my world, they became the center of my musical circle. At first I mainly focused on the British Invaders, but as August unfolded, I started singing along with Mr. Martin's claims about complete universal affection as well. At the time, I felt obsessed by a young female my age that I shared school classes with, but I didn't speak with her because I felt too shy to do so. My attraction to her made if well worth waiting for the moment when we would touch, but although my dream was overdue, that never happened, in part because her family decided to move to California as the following year's summer arrived.

Adolescent Odors

 Song 812: This week on the playlist you can hear Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, written by Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, and you can find an entertaining YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Around the time the end of the summer of 1991 arrived, so did a musical description of the odor associated with young energy. Early in the year, a hot war with Iraq had occurred, and I felt relieved that it had ended fairly soon and that not many U.S. veterans had to sacrifice their lives for the conflict, so even if they had to load up on guns and bring their friends, only a small percentage of those troops had to get buried. Maybe when a hot war becomes a possibility, then With the lights out, it's less dangerous, and whenever you ask a country's leader about the real reason for starting a war, the response you'll usually get is a denial, a denial, a denial, and a denial.

Enamoured Attorneys

 Song 811: This week the playlist applauds Lawyers in Love by Jackson Browne, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I first saw Mr. Brown's name as the songwriter for a pair of tunes I really liked on a Tom Rush album I had gotten in 1971 and the next year I got a copy of Jackson's first 33 soon after he had it released. I bought at least one or two other JB 33s in the following years, but in early 1978 I unloaded my album and single collections as I planned to head westward from the Windy City area. Not long after I got a lift to the East Bay, I found a nice place to reside in Oakland and discovered a pizza joint in Berkeley where a bunch of fellow singer-songwriter types shared their tuneful rambles. In 1981 the house I lived in got sold and fortunately a room became available at a Berkeley home where a group of my musical friends lived and I moved into that available space. About two-and-a-half years later, the J.B. fellow put out an album where he informed us about some affectionate legal experts and I felt the title track deserved some thoughtful attention. Back then, I couldn't always keep up with what was going on, but at the time, we did not face the risks of World War III that we had faced a couple of decades earlier and that would return soon after the New American Century arrived.

Pale Hare

 Song 810: This week the playlist comes around to White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, written by Grace Slick, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Whenever I hear this song, I always automatically picture the outside area just behind my parents’ house, so I probably heard it out there on a transistor radio in a prominent moment of some kind while it rode the charts. Grace and her flying friends had given me a lift in the spring of 1967 with their previous chart-topper about having a romantic partner (Song 267) and a few months later they expanded the rock fan attraction to them by handing us a moving description of a bright vegetarian mammal. During those teenage years, I felt that I was too small, so I would have liked taking a pill that makes you larger but would not have wanted one that makes you small. Back then, I shared a lot of time with friends on the chessboard, but I don't remember ever having some kind of mushroom.