Deadly Business

Song 292: This week on the playlist you can hear Smuggler’s Blues by Glenn Frey, written by Glenn Frey and Jack Tempchin. I wanted to post a Glenn Frey track on the playlist today as a sort of small tribute to him because of his recent death, which I only learned about over the last 2 weeks, though he died about 6 weeks ago, on January 16th. I had mixed feelings about much of the Eagles work — some of their songs I really liked, and others I didn’t care to ever hear again once they had finished their initial radio run. After the Eagles broke up in 1980, I had no particular expectations for the individual members, so when this cut came along a few years later, it totally took me by surprise, and it quickly became a favorite. I felt it encapsulated a very real concern of the time, and did so to the accompaniment of some very impressive slide guitar riffs. Unfortunately, this song has lost none of its relevance over the last 3 decades, and until we end the authoritarian War on Drugs, the unnecessary violence and mass incarcerations will continue, with the U.S. taxpayers footing a bill that now exceeds $1.5 trillion.

I Confess, or Maybe I Don’t

Song 291: This week on the playlist you can hear Midnight Confessions by The Grass Roots, written by Lou Josie. You might notice that the linked video (on the daveelder.com home page) of the band performing on a TV show sounds exactly like the record, and you’ll also hear the sound of a horn section in some places, though you don’t see any brass players onstage with the band. While it’s possible that a TV show could have a horn section playing along in a pit next to the stage, it’s not possible that a live ensemble could sound exactly like a record, especially back in that era, and most certainly when the sound includes a horn section coupled with a typical RnR instrumental quartet. Without question, the band was lip-syncing to the record here, but they do so in a truly entertaining way. This hit song from the summer of ’68 seemed like a good track to post for this week since my political blog for the week (at Politics 106 or on Daily Kos as DaveElder) concerns a confession that I’m making about the election season of 1968, which roughly corresponds with the time this cut graced the airwaves. The single peaked just as summer turned to fall, not long after I began my senior year at HS, and the varsity football team that included a handful of my classmates began what would end up being its second undefeated season in a row, and probably its last one ever. Before one of those Friday night home games, I spent some time sitting in a car parked next to the bleachers, talking with a girl who I really wanted to talk with, though the conversation did not go the way I had hoped. The radio played during our chat, and at an awkward moment this cut offered some welcome relief to an otherwise heavy silence. As much as I liked the track, I didn’t learn all the words until a couple of years later when I owned the record, and then I realized that the singer is confessing to loving a woman in his social circle who wears a little gold ring on her hand. I always enjoyed the musical bit near the end where all the other players drop out, and the singer delivers his line backed up only by the organ, which slyly hints at a kind of holy confession. While I had wanted to confess to the young woman in the car before the football game that I loved her, I didn’t  confess anything, but it would take some more time before I finally understood that, like the singer in the song, I too was wasting my time. She inspired lots of songs, and on my YouTube channel, I have referred to her as Ms. Yellow Shoes, alluding specifically to one of those songs.

Valentine’s Day Card

Song 290: Seven weeks after my last personal friend song post, this week on the playlist you can hear I Was a Loner by my friend Monty Delaney, who also wrote the piece. I met Monty one Thursday night at the songwriters’ gathering at Jack Hardy’s apartment on Houston Street in Manhattan. His debut in that circle made a distinct impression, and during the era when I frequented that conclave, I heard him sing a number of memorable tunes, including this one, and also “I Was Not a Victim, I Was a Volunteer” which he performs on the Town Crier live video link (at daveelder.com) after he plays this song. Today being Valentine’s Day, it seemed appropriate to feature Monty’s touching love song for his wife, especially in light of the fact that less than 2 weeks ago, his 4th grandchild arrived. I reconnected with Monty on Facebook a couple of years ago, and I truly appreciate the way that social media platform provides a simple and easy way to locate old friends that I haven’t had any contact with for a decade or longer, and to share some of the ups and downs of their current lives. I offered my congratulations to Monty on the happy occasion of his grandson’s birth, as it adds another layer of meaning to this song that he wrote long ago for the woman who made his family life a reality.

What to Do With an Empty Glass

Song 289: This week on the playlist you can hear Let Go by From Good Homes, written by Todd Sheaffer. It’s only been 6 weeks since my last personal friend song post, so this isn’t one of those, but I almost had the chance to meet Todd Sheaffer, who wrote this song, and if I had gotten to meet him, perhaps he might have become a very good friend of mine. Back in the early '90s, Todd came to one of the Thursday night gatherings at Jack Hardy’s Houston St. apartment, and he played a couple of songs for Jack before the regular festivities got started, but then he had to leave early. I got the impression that he and Jack knew each other well, and that he may have been a more frequent guest in the era before I started making that scene. Anyway, I knew who he was, having heard him perform with his band From Good Homes at the folkie MacDougal St. club that a bunch of us singer/songwriter types frequented in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I liked quite a few of the songs on the band’s set list, but from the first time I heard it, this track moved me the most. It took a few years before it finally made it to CD, but once it did, I made sure to get a copy, and not long after, I made it the opening cut on a personal favorites CD, around the time when CD burners became an affordable home appliance. One day when I had that personal favorites CD spinning on the player, a friend remarked on how this track reminded him of Satisfaction, with the singer singing “let go” instead of “I can’t get no.” I could hear the similarity that he was pointing out, but I didn’t hear as close a connection as he did, and nothing about that similarity did anything to dampen my satisfaction with this cut, which I continued to enjoy as my 90s Faves 1 CD later gave birth to a playlist that still graces my iPod. While the track doesn’t really break any new musical or lyrical ground, it conveys such a quality of perfection, from the lead solo to the basic rocking recorded sound to the clever lyrical turns of phrase, that it feels like this is as good as it gets. I could wish that all of my recordings would sound this good, but that might be a hard dream to hold onto, and I might have to Let Go.

Take the Stairs

Song 288: The honor of being this week’s playlist track goes to Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. While I liked a lot of LZ’s first 3 LPs, I felt that somehow they hadn’t yet painted that musical masterpiece that lurked somewhere in the soul of the band. Then in the late fall of ’71 came word about a new Zeppelin record soon to rock the airwaves, and on the day of its official release, I caught the beginning of one of the tracks on my radio that immediately grabbed my attention. The opening riff had a bit of a different sound from their earlier work, but it sounded good, and when Robert Plant’s voice came across, I knew it was a cut from the new disc. The track sounded similar to the earlier LPs, but better and clearer, and as the song went on, it continued to build, getting stronger and heavier, in a way that carried the listener along for an unforgettable ride. Instead of following the usual verse to chorus structure of almost every other song in prevailing musical genres, from rock to country to pop to soul, this new track moved linearly, from the mellow folky opening section to the heavy rocking climax, in a way that felt musically consistent, as it fully developed every musical thread on its journey. Soon, everyone was talking about this incredible new Zeppelin song, which, despite its 8-minute length, started conquering not only FM radio but the AM dial as well. Sometimes AM stations would cheat by playing shortened and sped-up versions, but with the smaller playlists that dominated radio in that era, inevitably, it became too much of a good thing. I can remember, about 6 months after the song’s release, wondering if I’d ever choose to want to hear it again, given how I couldn’t escape hearing it, even in the grocery store or walking down the street. Going on into the late ‘70s, when I rarely if ever heard it, I would still instinctively turn the dial when those opening chords came out of the speaker, and I cringed if someone started fingering those familiar riffs at a song swap. Fast forward a few decades, and a couple of weeks ago, on a trip to Brooklyn, I inserted into the player a homemade compilation CD that a friend had given me years ago, not knowing what to expect. Track 2 turned out to be Stairway to Heaven, and even though I knew very well the roads that we were winding down, both with the van and with the CD player, the moment brought back much of the fine feelings that this song had inspired 4 decades ago, and I felt like the tune had come to me at last.

Good Question

Song 287: For this week’s playlist track you can hear Why Not Me by The Judds, written by Harlan Howard, Sonny Throckmorton and Brent Maher. In the mid-‘80s, the Judds made a very big splash on the country charts, with a string of songs that sounded good and did well on the radio, and this track, which was the title cut for their first album, grabbed my attention the first time I heard it. I remember checking out an LP cover of the mother and daughter duo, not knowing which one was the younger, and deciding that I found the mother more attractive than the daughter, though they both looked pretty good on that record jacket. During that era, it’s possible that I might have been spotted on a stage in the East Bay area playing bass for a country bar pickup band, and if so, a female lead singer might have covered this song, as well as a few others by the Judds. On a side note, this track is a second sly reference to the second verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, which begins with the line Should Patty Loveless when Wynonna, she’s Judd fine(?), Wynonna Judd being the daughter in the mother and daughter singing duo. You can find the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video here. The songwriter’s name Harlan Howard may look familiar, as it appears on a bunch of standout country songs, from early classics like I Fall to Pieces, Busted, and Heartaches by the Number, to more recent hits like the Pam Tillis cut Don’t Tell Me What to Do (Song 210) which I used as my first sly reference to the opening line of verse one of As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, that line being Now Pam Tillis, the truth now.

Browne-eyed Guy

Song 286: For this week’s playlist track, you can listen to Doctor My Eyes by Jackson Browne, who also wrote the song. I had noticed Jackson Browne’s name on the credits of a handful of excellent cuts in the 2 years before this single appeared. Tom Rush had a pair of very good JB songs on an LP he released in the spring of 1970, which was a record I had spinning on my own turntable a lot back then. The Byrds also had a JB track on one of their albums, as did Brewer and Shipley, so I already had a lot of respect for Jackson’s songwriting long before word came that he would soon have his own LP available. During the spring of 1972, I happened to do a lot of hitching, shuffling between Chicago, Atlanta, and New York a few times, and somewhere along the way, I heard this cut for the first time while in a grocery store or drug store. I knew Jackson had a single out, and when this track started playing, I felt certain that it had to be the one. From that very first hearing, I really liked the catchy piano riff that kicks off the song, as well as the track’s uptempo feel, which suitably supports the thoughtful and reflective words. So often in that era, in the early years of crafting my own lyrical stories, I would hear a new record and imagine some sort of accompanying deeply-poetic lyric, only to be disappointed, when I learned the actual lines, by mundane cliches and cheap rhymes. In stark contrast, Jackson’s single, and indeed, his entire first album, totally lived up to my expectations, both in words and music. Doctor My Eyes always sounded very good to my ears, and quite illuminating to my imagination as well.