Primate Observation and Action

 Song 773: This week on the playlist you can hear Monkey See, Monkey Do by Josh Joffen, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's playful outline comes from one of my Fast Folk colleagues. He had written it a few years before I met him, and the recording of it comes from an April 1988 appearance that the FF group did at The Bottom Line in Manhattan. I started hanging out with the FF bunch not long after I moved to Brooklyn in September of 1988, and fairly soon, Josh and I both did solo performances at live events where I did the driving in my van to get us to the stage. It didn't take long to learn a lot of the lines from this ride, and I probably could have added a harmony to it during those onstage events if he had wanted me to do that. It's been a long time since those halcyon days, and back then, Josh warned everyone that sooner or later there is gonna be a hell of a sound. Fortunately, it hasn't happened yet, but in recent years, I have gotten more concerned as some public figures seem to want to push us over that nuclear brink, and if they succeed, there'll be nothing left to pass around.

Periods of Bright Enlightenment

 Song 772: This week the playlist applauds Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks, written by Jacques Brel and Rod McKuen, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Back in the middle of the Windy City frigid months of early 1974, my wife and I waved farewell to Evanston, IL, and moved down to a moderate and comfortable neighborhood in Atlanta, GA. A couple of months later, this Jacks fellow started reminding us all that spring was in the air, and it didn't take long to learn, and then sing along with, his rhymes about having joy and having fun during the seasons in the sun. Living in that area, we did get to hear all the birds more clearly when they were singing in the sky, and five decades later, now residing in a semi-rural area, I also have the pleasure of hearing those flyers crooning in the nearby airspace. In fact, my Western Dreams CD project for this year will include a tune in which I ask a blackbird to Sing on the Window (the song’s title).

Repetitive Neurotic Crash

 Song 771: This week the playlist recognizes 19th Nervous Breakdown by The Rolling Stones, written by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. At first, when the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, I mostly paid attention to them and a few other similar British Invaders, but then, in the summer of 1965, I tuned into a rougher English quintet that became their top competitors by expressing a lack of Satisfaction (Song 256). When those moving rockers released this single nine months later, during the winter of 1966, I soon could sing along with it too. Having a mother who had had numerous nervous breakdowns, the chorus lines had some depth for me, though I did not truly understand the term at the time. Back then, a lot of people saw mental problems as an indication that someone was never brought up right, but, in reality, the ones who were always spoiled did not inevitably slide over the mental edge. I got to a much clearer understanding of nervous breakdowns a couple of decades ago, and I try to pass that understanding along to others with my book Expecting the Broken Brain to Do Mental Pushups. You can get a copy of the latest edition of that book from Amazon by clicking on the title.

Mood Stabilizer

 Song 770: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Lithium by Nirvana, written by Kurt Cobain, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this single arrived in the summer of 1992, I thought it sounded good, but it didn't grab my attention the way a couple of other Nirvana ones did - one before, called Come as You Are (Song 513), and one after, called Heart-Shaped Box (Song 200). When the Cobain suicide story unfolded two years after it came along, I still had no understanding of the pain that people on the low end of bipolar disorder suffer, and at the time, I disparaged Kurt as another cry-baby junkie. I suspected that the tune's title actually slyly admitted Mr. KC's prescription, and his later actions might have indicated the drug's inadequacy at helping the problems in his head. Understanding these mental dynamics now way more than I did then, I get how a guy could be so happy, so ugly, so lonely, so excited and so horny. On a side note, if you'd like to know more about these mental conditions, I share my own experience of learning about them in my book Expecting the Broken Brain to Do Mental Pushups, and you can get a copy from Amazon of the latest edition of it by clicking on the title.

Bipolar Disorder

 Song 769: This week the playlist comes around to Manic Depression by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, written by Jimi, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Jimi included this gem in his first released album, which arrived in the U.S. in the late summer of 1967, but I would not get to hear the tune until I bought the record in the fall of 1970. I first encountered the term in the song's title two years earlier, soon after the beginning of my senior HS year, and what I read at the time was that those with the condition tended to make mountains out of molehills. My first thought in reaction to that phrase was that everyone does that to some extent, and I saw no reason to give any further attention to the ailment. When I got Jimi's album, I gave it lots of spins on the turntable, and I liked all of what I heard, including this diagnosis, but I wondered if Mr. Hendrix was playing a word game with the term. I knew that we songwriters sometimes do that, so I didn't necessarily connect him with the condition in the piece. When, three decades later, I got to the point of having to understand the nature of that problem, I thought it quite likely that he did have bipolar disorder. Then, about another decade later, as I figured out the connection between the manic phase and a charismatic quality that manic types sometimes exude, seeing video footage of JH performing made it clear to me that Manic Depression had indeed captured his soul. If you'd like to know more about manic depression/bipolar disorder, I share my own experience of learning about it in my book Expecting the Broken Brain to Do Mental Pushups, and you can get a copy from Amazon of the latest edition of it by clicking on the title.

Required Downpour

 Song 768: This week the playlist applauds Rain Must Fall by Queen, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. My final playlist tune for April of this year has a title that gets said a lot in my region during this month. Back when Queen started to give us all a forecast about necessary precipitation in May of 1989, I had returned to the East Coast the previous September, after having spent a decade in the East Bay. In that area, the rainy season would have ended by May, but in NYC, the record's timing seemed quite appropriate. At that point, I had joined the Fast Folk circle, and I spent more time listening to my folkie colleagues than I did tuning into the radio, but certain airwave sounds would still get my attention. Back then, some folks did seem to think that others were over-dramatizing problems at work, whereas now, a lot less workers have the position to call the shots, and even for the few that do have it, into every life a little rain must fall.

Spring Arrival

 Song 767: This week on the playlist you can hear April Come She Will by Simon & Garfunkel, written by Paul Simon, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This positive prediction came along during the frigid months of my freshman HS year, giving us all a good reason to anticipate the expected arrival of moderate climate in the spring of 1966. While I might have heard it a few times on the radio, the main place I got to hear it was at my best friend's house. My close buddy Ed had become a big fan of the folkie duo and he had acquired all of their LPs, so whenever I would visit him during our HS years, as I often did, he would spin all of those 33s on his turntable. As a result, I soon got very familiar with their entire collection of captivating musical adventures, to the point that I could have sung along with a foresight about how a romantic partner would come during a certain warming time frame, would stay the following month and then change her tune a month later, so that when the hot weather arrived, she would fly.