Sizzling Pleasure

 Song 734: This week the playlist applauds Hot Fun In The Summertime by Sly and the Family Stone, written by Sly Stone, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Around the time this scorching anthem started climbing the charts, I joined a bunch of my fellow HS vocalists in riding a bus to NYC and then riding a plane to Switzerland. Our select choir group did a European tour that lasted about four weeks, Them summer days sure felt good to us all, and gave us a lot of memorable moments that we could treasure for the rest of our lives. We got to ride cloud nine to get back to NYC, and as we rode the bus back to our hometown, we saw a bunch of fellow teenagers hitching for rides in the Bethel area. Our bus driver explained that a major music festival had just happened in that area, and I later found out that the performers on that Woodstock stage had included a certain crafty fellow and his rocky relatives. When we got back to our neighborhood, we all sure did feel like everything is cool, and we could smile at each other as we waved Bye, bye, bye, bye there.

Extremely Self-Centered

 Song 733: This week the playlist recognizes You're So Vain by Carly Simon, who also wrote the song, and you can find an entertaining YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this roving accusation started riding the airwaves in early 1973, my wife and I resided in a comfortable apartment on the south end of my college town, Evanston, and I worked as a local cab driver, having left my university education behind without achieving a graduation. When I found out that Mick Jagger sang harmony on the tune, I thought he might be the target of the lyrics, though I also considered Ms. Simon's former husband James Taylor as an alternative possibility. I had no idea back then that a couple of decades later, I would hang out with someone who had met Carly shortly before she became famous. CS has played a number of games over the years about the identity of the vain guy, and when she made a new recording of the song in 2009, she whispered a moniker that a radio crew thought sounded like David. To be clear, that could not be me. I never flew a Lear jet up to Nova Scotia, and while I have visited Saratoga at least once or twice, I never had a horse there that naturally won.

Roasting Precipitation

 Song 732: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on Summer Rain by Johnny Rivers, written by Jim Hendricks, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Given how much downpour we've had in my neighborhood over the past week, it seems appropriate to feature a song that focuses on warm falling moisture. This roaming weather report actually arrived in the late fall of 1967 as I rolled through my junior HS year, and JR mentions how during the previous warm season, the jukebox kept on playin' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I knew exactly what he meant by that, and at the time I still did not know what to make of the new psychedelic direction that the Fab Four and some other prominent rockers had decided to start rumbling around. I could, however, easily picture a romantic partner who had stepped out of the rainbow with golden hair shinin' like moon glow, and as this song’s numbers got higher and the thermometer numbers got lower, I enjoyed imagining the warmth that such a companion could bring to moments when the snow drifts by my window and I could hear the North wind blowin' like thunder.

Focused Recollection

 Song 731: Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's stirring vision Forget Me Not comes from another one of my Fast Folk colleagues, Jack Hardy. In fact, Jack was essentially the leader of FF, and this actually marks the first time I've included him in this collection. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, I regularly visited Jack's apartment on Houston St. in Manhattan once a week, along with many others of the group, as we shared our most recent anthems and did critiques of each other's work. I really respected him doing what he did for the organization, and though he left the land of the living in 2011, those of us who had been part of that circle will not forget him and the role he played in our past. However, we also might possibly hear another voice in time, before or after summer's end, that sounds as blue as his once did.

Hot Urban Season

 Song 730: This week the playlist features Summer in the City by The Lovin' Spoonful, written by John Sebastian, Mark Sebastian and Steve Boone, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I think I made my first visit to NYC in the spring of 1966 when my ninth grade biology class did a field trip to the Bronx Zoo, and I really enjoyed that outing. This musical excursion appropriately arrived soon after summer vacation started, and growing up in a somewhat rural area, I had at that point never experienced the kind of boiling discomfort that the singer complains about in the tune, but I could imagine how it might feel. My family had previously acquired a transistor radio, and during warm weather spells, I relished hearing the current hits while engaging in outdoor activities. It didn't take long to learn this saunter's chorus notes and lines, and then I could sing along when I felt like doing so. I did not know then that a few years later, I would spend my young adult phase residing in a place where in the summer, when I went walking on the sidewalk, the concrete could feel hotter than a match head.

Scorching Urban Juvenile

 Song 729: This week the playlist recognizes Hot Child in the City by Nick Gilder, written by Nick Gilder and James McCulloch, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When the warm weather season arrived in the Windy City area in 1978, I took some necessary steps and then started stretching out my thumb in a westward direction. It didn't take very long for me to get the rides that brought me to the East Bay in CA, where I would then reside for a decade. A few months after I reached my destination, Mr. Gilder got a lot of attention with this anthem about a fiery youngster, and understandably so. Back then, I did not notice the child prostitution implications of the piece's lyrics, but taking a closer look now, I did wonder about that angle, and then found out that Nick really did get his inspiration from an observance of that phenomenon. All too often, a female so young to be loose and on her own is, in reality, NOT on her own, and when she's runnin' wild and lookin' pretty, most observers don't know what her game is, and that when she goes downtown, that's not really her decision.

Quite Bright Affection

 Song 728: This week the playlist comes around to Sunshine of Your Love by Cream, written by Pete Brown, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. During the summer of 1967, I started hearing about a rocking Cream trio who had begun amazing audiences, and then, a few months later, as the cooler and darker season arrived in my upstate NY hometown, a shiny moving banger by those three came across the airwaves and grabbed my attention. Before that hit made the scene, I had questioned how just three rockers could make as strong and heavy a sound as the common quartets and quintets of that era did, but then I truly had a striking answer to my question - one that I really relished riding. Every time I got to hear this mover, it felt like I could see the light shinin' through on my old question mark and giving me a clue about where I could be going in the near future.