A Difficult Waking-Hours Evening

 Song 835: This week the playlist comes around to A Hard Day's Night by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. After the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, I did pay attention to their fellow British Invaders as well, but I also continued to keep an eye (and ears) on them, and during the summer vacation of that year, I really liked hearing about their difficult time period! I soon found out that they had a movie for which the tune served as a title and a theme, and I would have liked to see (and hear) that film, but my family did not approve of viewing a movie in a theater, so the only ones I got to see back then were the ones that appeared on TV. The radio did give me some chances to hear the moving anthem, and then later, in my young adult years, I did get to view the classic film!  During my school years, I tried to be a good boy, working like a dog on homework, but even when I did, oftentimes I could NOT spend the night sleeping like a log!

Metropolitan Illumination

 Song 834: This week the playlist focuses on Lights of Downtown by The Long Ryders, written by Stephen McCarthy, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this enlightening description started emerging from radio speakers at the end of the summer of 1985, I resided in a comfortable home a few blocks from the downtown area of the city of Berkeley, CA, which I shared with five of my singer/songwriter colleagues. A few years earlier, soon after POTUS Reagan ended the federal funding for mental health institutions in early 1981, the number of homeless people wandering around that downtown area greatly increased, and when Mr. Ron essentially said that homeless people choose to live on the street, I got a very different impression from the ones I saw and heard wandering through the Lights of Downtown Berkeley, though, at the time, I had no idea what caused their insanity! Now, however, I DO have a much clearer understanding of such mental problems, so I share that understanding in my book Expecting the Broken Brain to Do Mental Pushups, and you can get a copy from Amazon of the most recent edition of it by clicking on the title.

A Wave

 Song 833: This week the playlist rides on Ripple by Grateful Dead, written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. In the fall of 1970 I began my sophomore year at Northwestern University, and in the Evanston apartment that I shared with three fellow students, I had a friend who had become a big fan of the GD quintet and he liked introducing me to their new vision of a moving wave. Being a word-game player myself, during that era I gave the band the nickname The Dreadful Grape but I did like hearing their excursions. As I developed my own style, I hoped to have songs to fill the air, wanting my words to glow with the gold of sunshine. Regularly heading down a road somewhere between the dawn and the dark of night, I often found a path that was for my steps alone.

Excellent Movement This Evening

Song 832: This week the playlist frolics to Good Rockin' Tonight by Elvis Presley, written by Roy Brown, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I probably did not get to hear this anthem during the era when it rode the charts, since my folks had no interest in the sounds coming across the air waves. When the Fab Four rocked my world a decade later, i became more focused on the Top 40 and at a certain point, I found out that both John and Paul had been big fans of the Elvis guy, so when, as a young adult, I began acquiring a collection of 33s, I did add a few EP gems to the pile, including one that featured this hit. When I got that disc riding on the player, I heard the news and that would rock away all my blues.