Tom Sawyer

This song was hot in 1982 when I was in a fifth-sixth grade combination class at Daves Avenue School in Los Gatos, California. One of the sixth graders convinced Mrs. Ringsted to play it in class during the time we were reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The class also took a field trip to the Town & Country shopping center on Winchester and Stevens Creek Boulevard in San Jose to see a revival screening of the 1973 film Tom Sawyer, starring little Johnny Whitaker and everybody's favorite Surprise! Hollywood! Lesbian! Jodie Foster.

Post Script: The janky, underpopulated Town and Country Village is long-since defunct, and currently the site of upscale "Satan Row" as we call it in the San Jo vernacular. Where have all the old strip malls gone? Sigh.

And this is the string of memory I recall whenever I hear that opening Middle Earth-Meets Outerspace synth line and firm Neil Peart drum intro.

Artist: Rush
Year: 1981
Rating: Hot!

Dreams of Merlin

I had a dream this morning in which my dear friend Marck and I were at an open mic. The performer on stage challenged audience members to stand up and sing if they thought they had a good command of the Eagles' oeuvre. Marck and I simultaneously and defiantly arose. The performer then presented us with the sheet music to a song about Merlin the magician, and proceeded to teach me chords on a banjo.

I woke up, flummoxed to try to find an Eagles song about Merlin; the song that then arose in my brain was "Tin Man" by America, evoking another Arthurian character, Sir Galahad.

In a seemingly unrelated occurrence, I learned via the Facebook this morning that Marck had just been listening to a mix I'd made years ago, entitled "My Fantasy K-Tel Album," on which I clustered an array of enticingly schmaltzy and wonderful 70s and 80s gems. This is surely a piece of evidence that Marck and I are tapped into the collective unconscious. I think today might be ripe for some trans-continental telekinesis experiments.



Artist: America
Year: 1974
Rating: Luke Hot

Louie Lime Green

Yesterday at work, I was whistling to myself all afternoon. I do this a lot (it helps that my Friday bookkeeping gig is at an awesome local music school). Working down column upon column of credit card transactions, the mind can automatically conjure up tunes and still manage accurate data entry. I thought I'd share with you the sequence of songs I was whistling. The thematic progression: roots rock, prog rock, Elizabethan minstrel music. Somehow it flowed. It helps that Rush is like, totally, Ren Faire.





Louie, Louie
Artist: Richard Berry (writer); The Kingsmen; etc.
Year: 1957; 1963; various
Rating: Warm

Limelight (Redux; last in my head on July 13, 2010.)
Artist: Rush
Year: 1981
Rating: Warm

Greensleeves
Artist: various; unconfirmed origin.
Year: c. 1580
Rating: Warm

Dream Away

This song and its nonsensical refrain (Oh-Ry-In-Eye-Ay?) has been creeping 'round in my head for nearly thirty years. I knew it was from Time Bandits, Terry Gilliam's indelibly entertaining epic about a band of dwarves traveling through time to steal the world's most wonderful historic treasures. I watched that movie on cable when I was a kid probably dozens of times. But I had no fracking* idea it was a George Harrison song! Holy smokes, how weird!

Artist: George Harrison
Year: 1981
Rating: Warm
Note: *Yes, I did just use the term "fracking."

Closer to the Heart

Not the most epic in the Rush canon; nevertheless, an extremely positive message that I find to be personally quite meaningful - we could all benefit from operating "closer to the heart" in this life. In other words, doing everything we do with as much love and care, or positive intention, as we can muster.

And, by the way, Blacksmiths, philosophers, and ploughmen certainly qualify this song for the Ren Faire Aesthetic tag. As do Geddy Lee's flowing mane and cloak-like garb.

Artist: Rush
Year: 1977
Rating: Luke Hot

Carry On Wayward Son

This one's been milling about in my head since playing Rock Band with Amber and the nieces and nephews last weekend. At the risk of tipping the vote on my geo-band poll, I will share that my nephew Jonathan said, "Definitely the best song by a 'location' band."

Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher, but I flew too high...

It should be mentioned that even more than the bitchin' guitar riffs, I love/loathe this song for its epic hero's journey lyrics, so emblematic of the crossover between certain proggy classic rock bands and the Ren Faire aesthetic.

(Right - the album from whence this song came; Left - another great example of prog-meets-medieval times on Jethro Tull's album The Broadsword And The Beast.)

Artist: Kansas
Year: 1976
Rating: Hotter than a bubbling cauldron of the witch's brew!
Link: Check out this survey of absurd prog rock album cover art at the Onion AV.

Ramble On by Led Zeppelin

Ah, the Zep. Many people have very strong opinions about this band, love/hate feelings usually more than just that they're meh (and, by the way, did you know that "meh" is now officially a word?) Not that I wanted intentionally to start a debate about whether Zeppelin's songs are meh, but a good many of them are, at least to me.

Here's my feeling about this band: they were musically excellent—some of their songs are beautiful—and hugely influential, if lyrically a bit too "Middle Earth" for my aesthetic. But the vast majority of bands that patterned themselves after Zeppelin were mediocre hair bands. So thank you, Plant/Paige/Jones/Bonham for rocking hard and leaving a legacy of metal dudes screaming at the top of their lungs trying to mimick Plant's tenor vocal peaks that even he was straining to reach.

Year: 1969
Rating: Warm (no, not meh.)