Frigid Evening Ballad

 Song 755: This week the playlist comes around to Song for a Winter's Night by Gordon Lightfoot, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Not long after I got to Northwestern University in the late summer of 1969, I started hearing and learning a lot more about the music I liked. Being a singer/songwriter type myself, I added some LPs to my collection by folkies like Judy Collins and that new James Taylor fellow. In the fall of 1970, I expanded my interest in the Gordon guy and soon had a few of his 33s in my stack, including The Way I Feel, which contains this gem. It didn't take long to learn the lines and melodies as the disc got plenty of spins on the turntable. Living in the Chicago area for most of that decade, during the darker months I would often notice when the snow was softly falling, and then, when the morning light would steal across my window pane, I could tell where some webs of snow were drifting.

Twelve Feline Months

 Song 754: This week the playlist applauds Year of the Cat by Al Stewart, written by Al Stewart and Peter Wood, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. During my childhood years in the 1950s and 1960s, my family would visit friends and relatives who had both feline and canine companions, and while I always enjoyed a pet's company, I soon figured out that, if given the choice, I would rather hang out with a cat than a dog, although my own family could not have either kind of pet at the time. When Mr. Al decided to let us know what the year 1976 would become, I shared an apartment with a few friends on the south end of Evanston, IL, and spending a lot of time at a driver's wheel regularly, I got to hear the anthem quite a bit as it topped the charts. Depending on who rode in the vehicle, I sometimes would sing along with it, but other times could not do so, even though I might have wished that I could. Of course, back in that era I had no interest in contemplating a crime, and I usually didn't bother asking for explanations, so even when I found that I had thrown away my choice and lost my ticket, I still enjoyed riding along with those meowsome lines.

Cloudy Frost Season Tone

 Song 753: This week the playlist puts the spotlight on A Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon & Garfunkel, written by Paul Simon, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Those of us who reside in the northeastern section of the U.S. will probably in the next couple of months see a substantial amount of white stuff falling from the sky and accumulating in areas along the ground, so this folkie anthem pretty well describes a lot of what we'll see in the near future. While I might possibly have heard the piece when it climbed the charts in October of 1966, soon after I began my sophomore HS year, I would get to know it quite well after it appeared on the S&G 1968 Bookends LP. I did not have 33s at the time, but my closest friend Ed did have all four of the S&G discs, and every time I visited him during our senior HS year, which I did quite often, he would play all of those records at least once, so during my final HS year I got to hear Paul and Art a lot more than any other music stars. While I looked around for my possibilities that year, when I headed out to college the next year, that truly became the springtime of my life as an adult.

Satanic Perspective

 Song 752: This week the playlist recognizes Devil's Angle by Patti Rothberg, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This time around, it's been eight weeks since my last personal friend song post, instead of seven, as it usually is, because I didn't, and couldn't, do a song post last week. I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Patti in a recording studio back in 2003 - my studio partner David worked with her, and he introduced me to her at a recording studio one night. I soon got to enjoy her music, and when she released her Black Widow CD in 2013, she sent me a copy, I appreciated that gift, but unfortunately, when I played it on a CD player, the machine messed up the first track, which is the title tune. I never played another record on that player, but I was able to convert the other BW songs into mp3s and I got to hear the album that way via my mp3 players. Of course, long before the first time I heard this tune, I already understood how it feels looking for an angle for a new way to be, and perhaps, now that the new year has arrived, maybe a substantial number of people currently find themselves making that kind of search.

Tiny Holy Figure

 Song 751: This week the playlist features Little Saint Nick by The Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, and you can find a cool YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. When this yuletide anthem arrived 61 years ago, I might possibly not have heard it, since I didn't start paying much attention to the radio until after the Beatles rocked my world a couple of months later, but maybe I did hear it then and I just don't remember doing so. When the green wreaths started appearing the next time around, though, I definitely did get to hear it, and sing along with it when it rode the airwaves. While my folks disparaged the devil's music, this kind of tune could become an exception to the rule, so if the car radio featured it as we all rode along, heading somewhere around the time of year when the air gets cold, they would allow my brothers and me to sing along with run run reindeer and celebrate a real famous cat all dressed in red.

Brush It Colorless

 Song 750: This week the playlist comes around to Paint it, Black by The Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. The week with the shortest day of light in the northern hemisphere seems like an appropriate time to feature this RS anthem, despite the fact that it actually first appeared around the opposite point of the global illumination cycle. Near the end of my freshman HS year, as we students began to enjoy summer vacation in 1966, the circling five that had become major British competitors to the Fab Four got our attention with their advice to apply a dark tone to our surroundings. Similar to the previous summer when their complaint about a lack of satisfaction (Song 256) got us teenies singing along, during that warm season our transistor radios had us chanting about seeing a red door and wanting it to get painted black, and also wanting to see the sun blotted out from the sky, although I doubt that any of us actually would have wished for such a dark reality.

Magenta Drizzle

 Song 749: This week on the playlist you can hear Purple Rain by Prince, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. As we in the northeast section of the U.S. get close to the end of the fall season, our precipitation might look darker than it did a few months earlier, but I don't expect the downpour to take on a lavender tone. Back when the Orwellian year arrived, I lived in Berkeley, CA, and most of the music that I paid attention to at the time came from the singer/songwriter group that I hung out with there, but I also did still listen to the radio sometimes, particularly when I rode in one of the cars I obtained during that stretch. It didn't take long for Mr. Prince's anthem to grab my ears and if I rode in a car by myself, I soon could sing along with his lines. Back then, we knew times were changing, and we would have liked to reach out for something new, but I did not see anyone bathing in the purple rain, and perhaps I should feel good about that.