Historic Memorable Evening

 Song 595: This week on the playlist you’ll find December, 1963 (Oh What a Night) by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, written by Bob Gaudio and Judy Parker, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Now at the last week of the year and in the first week of the winter season, we can celebrate by picking a hit with December in its title. This chart topper brightened the winter of 1976, and I remember shivering so much in the freezing Chicago temperatures of that stretch while at the same time learning about the milder climate of the SF Bay Area, leading me to plan on making a western move in the coming summer, though tooth problems would lead to a 2-year delay in that trip. With frost on the apartment windows, I could savor riding along an energetic heated amorous lyrical jaunt. Hearing it, sometimes I felt a rush like a rolling bolt of thunder spinning my head around and taking my body under, making it a very special time for me, whether or not it ended much too soon.

Colorful Observance

 Song 594: This week the playlist comes around to Blue Christmas by Elvis Presley, written by Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Considering the special day that will arrive at the end of the week, this seems like the appropriate moment to feature a major noel classic. Mr. Presley's version of this yuletide ride first appeared on his 1957 LP Elvis' Christmas Album, but growing up in a household where the adults despised the devil's music, I knew next to nothing about the RnR star, the exception being Hound Dog (Song 433). As a young man in the 1970s, though, I soon learned a lot about the 1950s rockers that had laid the foundation for the musical style I had come to savor, and at a certain point I got an Elvis hit collection 33 that included this shiner, which would become one of my repeated 12/25 spinners. Last year my neighborhood had a white Xmas after a record blizzard at the beginning of December left behind very deep piles that lasted well beyond the holidays. This year, the community looks quite green, but that doesn't bother me. If those blue snowflakes start fallin', however, I will know that's when those blue memories start callin'. Regardless of what does or does not come out of the sky this week, Merry Happy!

Associated With Darkness

 Song 593: This week the playlist applauds Because the Night by Patti Smith Group, written by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Other than my personal friend song post 2 weeks ago (which I do every 7 weeks), all the artists I featured in the last 6 weeks appeared in this group for the first time, including Prince, Carly Simon, Woody Guthrie, Queen, The Animals and now PSG. This compelling jaunt arrived just before the spring of my final year in the Chicago area, as I planned to point my thumb towards the West Coast in the unfolding summer of 1978, and it enlivened the radio waves during the stretch when the daylight hours grew longer. I had not gotten that thrilled with most of the Springsteen releases of the previous years, but this one did grab my attention, as Ms. Smith took a Bruce idea and added her inspired soundings to it, getting listeners like me to relish singing along with her memorable lines. As the unresolved pandemic situation keeps going on, try and understand that love is a banquet on which we feed. With love we sleep, whereas, with doubt the vicious circle turns and burns, so hopefully those who sew the doubt can't hurt you now because the night belongs to us.

A Dawning Residence

 Song 592: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on House of the Rising Sun by The Animals, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this mover got everyone's attention at the end of the summer after the Fab Four rocked my world, I didn't get to hear it. My religious parents and grandparents did not approve of The Devil's Music, so I couldn't listen to RnR in their presence, and over the coming years, I found other ways to tune in on the rocking gems. I actually first got to hear this hit during my junior HS year, when another student brought the 45 to my French class, and the teacher gave it a spin. I really liked what I heard, and a couple of years later, as I started becoming a major Dylan fan, I began to learn the story behind the disc. The song had evolved over many generations through various folk channels, and prominent folkies like Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, the Weavers, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez had all done recordings of it. Then Bob Dylan basically grabbed Dave Van Ronk's arrangement of it, putting it on his own premier LP. The Animals got a lot of audience notice when they started rocking that chord sequence, and when they captured a studio version of it in just one take, the single soon rose to the top once it got released. I learned the chord pattern a while before I found out it came from Van Ronk, and I even used part of it, in a different key, as the foundational sequence for a sparkler I wrote soon after I turned 18 called The Wanderer (and you can find a lyric video of that by clicking on the title). Back then, I did feel like I had one foot on the platform and the other foot on the train, and I have felt that way other times as well, but I never had to wear that ball and chain.

Confined to Uncertainty

 Song 591: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's intriguing jaunt Stranded in Limbo comes from a Bay Area comerade Jim Bruno, who also wrote the song. He joined the Berkeley songwriter circle that I hung out with in the late 1970s and most of the 1980s - in fact, I introduced him to the group that gathered at the pizza parlor just north of the U.C. campus. I heard this gem for the first time recently which enlivens his 2017 release Long Story Short, but as soon as I did, I thought it sounded very appropriate for the pandemic era that we and our fellow humans have experienced in the last year and a half, and which arrived over 2 years after Jim’s record appeared. The whole scenario feels like an endless road to a hollow home with plenty of broken promises like broken bones, and as it keeps going, do you wonder where it will end? I sure do, and maybe we shouldn't have expected much, since no one owes you the human touch, so every day it's fade to black, no going forward, no going back - at this point, we're stranded in limbo. In the morning, sometimes it's drought, sometimes it's flood, and they say the problem is in our blood (or our lungs), although perhaps we'll get to another angle of the story someday.

Nonconformist Composition

 Song 590: This week the playlist recognizes Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, written by Freddie Mercury, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Along with Prince 3 weeks ago, Carly Simon 2 weeks ago and Woody Guthrie last week, this week Queen appears for the first time in this bunch. I lived in the Chicago area back in the middle of the 1970s when this rocker got everyone stirred up. Unlike the majority of radio wave riders, it came with a quite unique form, not relying on the typical verse & chorus pattern that animates most hits, but instead running along a suite path going through differing segments one after another. As a songwriter, I found this an intriguing exception to the basic rules that we tune-crafters generally pursue, and, like Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (Song 566), it inspired me to explore some additional options at least 2 or 3 times, opening the door to endless possibiities. In fact, even compared to that CS&N trailblazer, the Queen groundbreaker went a lot further from the traditional verse & chorus formula and into some rare encapsulating territory. Under the current pandemic situation, people might ask Is this the real life or Is this just fantasy? Are we caught in a landslide with no escape from reality? I'd say to anyone open your eyes, look up to the skies and see, and pay attention to the signs so you can know any way the wind blows.

Continue Streaming

 Song 589: This week on the playlist you can hear Roll On Colombia by Woody Guthrie, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Two weeks ago marked Prince's initial appearance on this list, last week was Carly Simon’s premier here, and now Woody has arrived at the gathering. Given the role that Mr. Guthrie played in laying the groundwork for the singer/songwriter phenomenon, it does seem remarkable to have gotten so close to 600 before featuring him, and I'll probably give him a few more numbers in the near future. I think I first heard this mover during my HS years, but I definitely knew more about it in my early twenties as I evolved my own personal singer/songwriter style and I learned about the multiple landmarks created by WG's pioneering. At the time, I would have agreed with the concept that dams can wonderfully provide clean energy, although in recent decades I have learned about how such structures can damage aquatic wildlife communities. Still, we can all feel grateful when a river’s power is turning our darkness to dawn, including when other great rivers add power to it. As a songwriter, I understood someone having a vision that would not let him rest, and I respect how often in the past mighty men labored by day and by night, and that by doing so, they won the hard fight.