The Role Not Played

Song 400: This week on the playlist you can hear (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone by The Monkees, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I heard this cut not long after it appeared as the B-side of I'm a Believer, perhaps courtesy of a friend spinning the 45, although I also might have heard it on the TV show, which I tried to catch whenever possible. Soon enough, a number of friends had copies of More of the Monkees, and thanks to them, I got to enjoy the LP quite a bit, as it quickly became a personal favorite. In particular, I always liked hearing the chorus harmonies on this track, picturing the shifting musical intervals as I listened. Somehow I gained access to the music book for the album, and from studying that manual to play this tune I learned all about the concept of bar chords and got a lot of practice doing those fingerboard moves. It surprised me to learn recently that the band actually did not like the record very much, even though it spent 18 weeks at #1 on the Billboard chart, also hit #1 in the UK and became the best-selling album of the year. Band member Mike Nesmith told Melody Maker magazine that More of the Monkees was "probably the worst album in the history of the world" but I personally think it deserved the honors it got, I liked it even better than their first 33, and I still prefer it to this day.

Hanging Around For a Long Time

Song 399: This week on the playlist you can hear Tom Dooley by The Kingston Trio, which is a traditional song arranged by Dave Guard on this hit. You can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I actually first heard this single in my 5th grade classroom, as we were learning and doing some folk songs, probably around this time of year, back in 1962. In that era, it didn't  impress me, and I felt the lyrics didn't  tell the story very well. Over the next couple of years I would hear some other folk music that I liked, but when the Beatles and their fellow British invaders rocked my world in the winter of 1964, my interest in folk music waned, and would not rekindle itself until the turn of the 1970s, when my circle at Northwestern U. widened my listening experience with their LP collections. Still, during that stretch, music fans in my sphere tended to see the Kingston Trio as commercializers of folk music, and therefore generally unworthy of serious consideration. Fast forward to the middle of the 1980s, when flea markets became a good place to buy used albums, and I started to expand my collection, with a bunch of Kingston Trio 33s among the many added to the stash. I soon found that the more of them I got, the more I liked what I heard, including this cut, which sounded a lot better to me than it had a couple of decades earlier. At a certain point, maybe 6 months into my new-found appreciation for the KT, I happened to mention them to my good friend and fellow singer-songwriter Jeff Larson, and I discovered that he had begun collecting their records around the same time I had, developing a similar admiration for them in the process. Whether or not the real life Mr. Dooley died a long time ago by Hangin' from a white oak tree, the record about him still sounds pretty good to me almost 6 decades after 3 guys in a small room put it down on tape.

Not So Easy to Read

Song 398: I wonder if anyone could have predicted that this week’s playlist track would be If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Around the time this 45 topped the charts 47 years ago, when I headed over to the record store, I could only afford one LP/week, so I asked the clerk if he would recommend Lightfoot's Sit Down Young Stranger or Arlo's Washington County, and when he chose the former, I followed his advice. From the first spin on the turntable it felt like the right choice, and over the next few months, I added a few additional GL albums to my stash, soaking up a lot of his vision, and in the process, teaching myself a bunch of his tunes. That stretch also coincided with a romantic roller-coaster up and down that led to a whole pile of my own songs, including Elder Street's Stormy Winds and At the Crossroads. I recently did lyric videos for both of them, and you can catch those depictions by clicking on the titles. I would credit Bob Dylan and James Taylor as the primary influences on Stormy Winds, but when I wrote At the Crossroads I felt myself channeling Lightfoot, along with the Rolling Stones, and Read My Mind was the Gordon cut on the top of the stack. Interestingly enough, that summer, I met a songwriter in Atlanta who claimed that Lightfoot had stolen Read My Mind from him, and I thought it unlikely, but I won't claim to know for sure. Later, in 1985, my good friend Jeff Larson treated me (and himself) to a Lightfoot show at the Concord Pavilion on 9/12 as a birthday gift, and though from Gordon's sarcastic between-song banter, it seemed like he himself wasn't enjoying the event, Jeff and I had a pretty good time, and I still treasure the memory of that late summer afternoon.

Turn the Burner Down

Song 397: This week’s playlist track is Melting Pot by John Mellencamp, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I had gotten Rain on the Scarecrow as a gift a few years earlier, but it was the 1991 Mellencamp LP Whenever We Wanted that really got my attention. I remember the NYC buses plastered with ads for it, and hearing plenty of good stuff from it on the radio, so I soon had my own personal copy as a regular spinner on my turntable. Two other favorites from it already made this list - Crazy Ones (Song 285) and Get a Leg Up (Song 111) - so it surprised me to read today that John, while quite pleased with the album at release time, later lowered his own opinion of it. Personally, I still like the record, and the lyrics on this tune sound even more meaningful to me now than they did 2 decades ago. Back then I understood the basic reference to the U.S. working class, and how The hawks live upstairs and they use Money, sex and power to gnaw at your brain to Keep you bleeding, begging and snotty if you make your home in that Melting Pot, but this seems more true now than ever. Sadly, it's understandable why you might feel the need to Get yourself a weapon after being Beat up and lied to For your whole life but perhaps it might be a good time to lower the heat on the Melting Pot instead, and lift the working class up rather than continuing to make things worse, which a group of selfish super-rich types wants to continue to do. On a side note, I will admit that I didn't plan this interesting bit of synchronicity where last week's cut has a 2-word title PM and this week's one has a 2-word title MP, or the fact that I featured a CCR track the week before my previous Mellencamp post, just as I did this time around. Stuff happens, doesn't it!

On a Roll

Song 396: This week the playlist comes around to Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater Revival, written by John Fogerty, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this 45 came along 49 years ago, in the winter of 1969, it was the first I heard of CCR, and it made me an instant fan. Their followup Bad Moon Rising (Song 284) confirmed that status, but they already had me with this one. Of course, I initially thought the title was Rollin' on the River so mentions of Proud Mary did confuse me for a bit, until I got it sorted out. When I began my LP collection in the fall of 1969, Bayou Country in due time became part of it, and subsequently I surmised how to perform this piece, so I would regularly share it during guitar circle gatherings. Upon moving to the Bay Area, I soon started hanging out with a bunch of other songwriter types at a Berkeley pizza place reportedly owned, in partnership, by former CCR member Tom Fogerty. In that era I would often joke with fellow musicians about the El Cerrito bayou, since that East Bay municipality was actually CCR's home, rather than the southern Louisiana area implied by their early record lyrics, but rollin' on the river still felt pretty good, even when it was actually a modern ferry heading to Angel Island in the SF Bay rather than an old steam riverboat moving along the lower Mississippi.

Figuring Out Directions

Song 395: Seven weeks after my last personal friend song post, this week the playlist track would be Toward the Road On the Left by my old San Francisco buddy Jim Bruno, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Jim and I both moved to the Bay Area from IL in the summer of 1978, though I don't think he thumbed his way there, which I did, and I arrived from the Chicago area, whereas he had lived further downstate, but we met soon after arriving, and I liked what I heard from him. I persuaded him and his sometime partner Shawn Colvin to make the scene at the Berkeley pizza joint where I had started spending time, and soon enough, they became part of that musical circle that included myself, Bob Nichols and Carol Denney, along with some other talented singer-songwriter types. Last spring, when I decided to put together a Spotify playlist called Me and My Songwriter Friends, I included Jim among the 19 melodic mates that enliven that experience, with this cut being one of the two JB numbers on it. I had only heard it shortly before I added it, but I think it aptly showcases Jim's gifts, and it sounds pretty good to me every time I hear it. You can find that Spotify playlist by clicking on the title.

No Advance Notification

Song 394: This week’s playlist track is Without a Word of Warning by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, written by Gary Lewis, Leon Russell and Tommy “Snuff” Garrett, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I decided to post a Gary Lewis number this week as a roundabout tribute to his father Jerry, who died in August of 2017. I knew very little about the father's comedy, but the son's music made a major impression quite early in my songwriting fixation. As I mention in the Song 303 post (about Green Grass), at the point when that 45 teased my ears, along with Monday, Monday and a few other spring 1966 hits, I ceased to even pretend to resist the devil's music. Not long after, I picked up the acoustic guitar my mother gave me and wrote 8 songs in my first week of fretboard obsession. My appreciation for Lewis & crew grew as his discography did, and I added a couple of his singles to my stash, but I didn't have this one, which was evidently the b-side of Save Your Heart for Me. I did get to hear it on a regular basis, though, thanks to its inclusion in a greatest hits LP owned by a family who I spent a lot of time with during my final 2 years of HS. I played pool with all of the 6 siblings in their basement, but it was the eldest daughter (the one my age) who I imagined I heard at night calling me, wanting me and needing me by her side. True to the background music that I treasured, at some point, Without a Word of Warning she tore all my dreams apart.