Dee de dee dee dee dee…
Continue reading...Song Of the week
254: Vince Guaraldi/We Five, ‘Cast Your Fate to the Wind’
Life can be quirky.
So you might as well cast your fate to the wind.
And don’t sit under ledges where pigeons are roosting.
078: Paul Simon, ‘The Late, Great Johnny Ace’
John Lennon was murdered 40 years ago today. Paul Simon wrote a song around that event. Even today, my mind gets teary when it lights on John Lennon’s death. He appears in Paul Simon’s song only obliquely, because the song isn’t about John Lennon, and it’s not about Johnny Ace. It’s about Paul Simon, and about you, and about me.
Continue reading...252: The Beatles, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
‘Strawberry Fields’ was born of Lennon’s genius. But it was engendered by the miraculous, unique, liberating status of The Beatles.
Continue reading...034: Dionne Warwick, ‘Walk On By’ (Burt Bacharach)
So much of the best music of the last hundred years has come from Jewish men writing songs for female Black singers. And it don’t get no better than the Burt Bacharach/Dionne Warwick, ‘Walk on By’.
Continue reading...225: Brad Mehldau, ‘The Falcon Will Fly Again’/Luis Bonfa, ‘Manha de Carnaval’
A great contemporary artist inspired by an iconic original. Lilting, uplifting, in π/4.
Continue reading...249: Bobby Vee, ‘The Night Has a Thousand Eyes’
Bobby Vee died in 2016 from Alzheimer’s. That’s pretty surprising, considering that he’s still an 18-year old pop star and I’m still a pimply 13-year old with my ear glued to a Top 40 transistor radio.
Continue reading...246: Tom Waits, ‘Kentucky Avenue’
The things you wonder about at 12. Airborne by wonder, lifted on the wings of imagination, from Lima or from Whittier, all the way to places we couldn’t yet even dream of.
Continue reading...