During the Warm Season

 Song 778: This week on the playlist you can hear In The Summertime by Mungo Jerry, written by Ray Dorset, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. At the end of my freshman year at Northwestern University, I returned to my parents' home in upstate NY for the 1970 summer vacation, and then got hired as a counselor for a northern PA music and arts camp. I spent the warmer months in a very attractive rural area, and I liked helping youngsters have a better understanding of the way musical notes ride their scales. Sometimes we counselors would listen to the radio during our breaks, and this heated seasonal description often gave us a clearer sense of our comfortable dwelling. In fact, it occasionally made us feel that we could stretch right up and touch the sky, and it also encouraged us to go out and see what we could find nearby in that woodland area.

Identify the Reason

 Song 777: This week the playlist focuses on Because by The Dave Clark Five, written by Dave Clark, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Not long after the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, a bunch of their fellow British Invaders started catching my ears, including the D. Clark quintet who shared their motivation and also their widespread pleasure (Glad All Over, which is Song 606). I would get to hear a free live set by those Five the following spring, though I don't know if they performed this song that day. I did understand, though, even back then, that It's right that I should care about my romantic partner and try to make her happy when she's blue. It's right to feel the way I do because, because, I love her.

Circadian Occurrence

 Song 776: This week the playlist recognizes Day After Day by Badfinger, written by Pete Ham, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When I returned to my Evanston, IL, apartment in September of 1971, after having acted as a summer missionary in Atlanta, GA, one of my friends introduced me to an attractive young woman he knew that I soon developed a strong romantic relationship with, and in light of our daily passionate exchanges, this tune that we started hearing a couple of months later gave a good background sound for that situation where I could give my love to someone who liked receiving it, and who gave me her love in return. On a side note, I did not have a lonely room in that apartment since I had to share it with another guy, but perhaps one, or both, of the other apartment mates could have had a lonely room since they each slept in a room by themselves.

Precipitation Pattern

 Song 775: This week the playlist comes around to Rhythm Of the Rain by The Cascades, written by John Claude Gummoe, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Ordinarily you might think April would be the appropriate month to highlight this classic, but in the Northeast, we had a lot of wet weather in May and the first half of June, with the coming week's forecast so far indicating more of the same pattern. I might possibly have heard this drizzle anthem when it first appeared in the fall of 1962, but before the Fab Four rocked my world in February of 1964, I rarely paid attention to the airwaves. Around the middle of the next decade, though, as I resided in Evanston, IL, as a young adult, at least one radio station in the area had shows that featured hits from that first rocking decade, and I soon got to know this one well enough to sing along when it rose out of the speakers. Back then, I did sometimes listen to the rhythm of the falling rain telling me what a fool I had been, and that pitter patter lesson gave me a clearer idea of which direction to head towards in the near future.

Final Coach to a Scribe Town

 Song 774: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Last Train To Clarksville by The Monkees, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When I found the YouTube video for last week's song Monkey See, Monkey Do, the tune’s title was misspelled Monkee See, Monkee Do, even though it was spelled correctly on the LP that has it and the FF print issue that came with the 33, so it makes sense to feature a ride this week by the 1960s primate quartet. This rolling excursion introduced me to them in the late summer of 1966, shortly before I began my sophomore HS year, and I probably first heard it on the transistor radio, since at that point I often spent time outside in the family home's back yard in the warmer months catching the Top 40, and singing along with the ones I recognized. Soon enough, I also started viewing The Monkees TV show whenever I could watch it without the folks who disapproved of the devil's music shutting it off, and I know I caught this tune there at least a couple of times. In addition, during that era I developed an interest in model railroads, so it felt enjoyable to sing about meeting someone at the station around the time when the morning brings the train.

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).