Continue Holding

 Song 826: This week the playlist applauds Hang On Sloopy by The McCoys, written by Wes Farrell and Bert Berns, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Soon after the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, their fellow British Invaders started catching my attention as well, and at the end of the summer of the following year, just before I started ninth grade, another British quartet began encouraging a sailboating female to maintain connections. I really liked singing along with the chorus of that anthem whenever it came rising from a nearby radio speaker. For a few previous years, I had felt obsessed by a female classmate who I hoped to eventually embrace passionately. She lived in a very good part of town in early 1965, but then her family moved to California, so I never did get to feel her hair ever hang down on me.

Heavy Burden

 Song 825: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on The Weight by Spooky Tooth, written by Robbie Robertson, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Back in the summer vacation of 1968, I would walk down the road about a mile-and-a-half from my parent's house at least once a week to visit my best friend, and when his brother wanted to part with recent top-40 singles after he got tired of hearing them, he would hand them to me for $1 apiece, which was cheaper than their original price. When I walked back into my parent's home, I would keep the 45s hidden so they wouldn't see them, and I put them in the area where the other singles sat. This hit got a place within that pile and I gave it plenty of listens during my final HS year as I often got those discs spinning on the player in the basement where my folks, on the first and second floor, didn't have to hear the devil's music. While listening down there, I went lookin' for a place to hide since my folks felt that when I played those 45s, I was with the Devil walkin' side by side.

Carelessly Toppled Into Passion

 Song 824: This week the playlist features Fooled Around and Fell in Love by Elvin Bishop, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. In the middle of the frigid season of early 1976 in the Windy City area, I often spent a lot of time behind the wheel, and in doing so, I got to hear some pleasing musical rambles coming from the radio speakers, including one that slyly admitted some frolicking which led to an amorous obsession. I understood and relished the implications of that tuneful confession. Back then, I could have imagined having access to a million girls if I achieved the kind of success the tune's lead singer had, which I thought I deserved, and I wouldn't have cared how much they cried if they did so in response to me treating them as heartlessly as Mr. EB had done - their tears would have left me cold as a stone.