Billy Boy

I haven't been focused on the song blog in quite some time, but this tune arrived so out of the blue, I had to post it. I'm sure I haven't heard any version of it in more than 30 years. The internets date its origins in the 18th Century, but it looks like the most popular versions weren't published in England til about WWI era and not in the States til 1930.

Thanks to YouTube user LDsongscreen for posting this sweet rendition of the song.

Artist: Unknown
Year: c. 1790s; 1910s; 1930s
Rating: Warm

Summer Breeze, Redux

Hard to believe this song was last in my head in 2009 but, then, I haven't been attending to the blog very well. Hoping to remedy that.

Artist: Seals & Crofts
Year: 1972
Rating: Hot!
Last in my head: February 13, 2009.

Country Road

Great performance, with Ms. King on the keys!

Artist: James Taylor
Year: 1970
Rating: Hot!

If You Could Read My Mind

This is one of those songs that makes me so deeply grateful that I was a kid in the 70s and got to hear it on the radio in my mom's car, in my sisters' cars, over and over again. The words are so seemlessly embedded in my head and so beautifully constructed that the specific, sad beauty is easily glossed over.

Artist: Gordon Lightfoot
Year: 1970
Rating: Luke 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

I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (Coke version)

I'm a bit backlogged in updating the blog. I woke a few days ago with this classic ditty from the 70s: but, to be sure, it was the commercial jingle and not the adapted pop song that arose in my mind that day. If you hadn't known this before, the song is a rare instance in which the commercial came before the later radio hit. True fact!

Artist: The Hillside Singers
Year: 1971
Rating: Warm

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

Untouchable Face

I presume that Ms. DiFranco came to mind because I was discussing her music with Scott the other day. This particular song seems suited to some mental tangents of late as well. The song is not analogous to what has happened between me and my recent ex-girlfriend, but certainly I've had some of that "Fuck you, and your untouchable face" feeling lately.

Also, I was at a post-Thanksgiving feast with a bunch of poly friends last night, and finding the company worthy of stirring several mild but burgeoning crushes. This song exemplifies the conflict in monogamy, in which someone is "taken" and therefore, "untouchable." This is not the case in my scene of choice. However, the combined factors of 1. a close-knit circle of friends wanting to maintain good boundaries with each other and 2. most folks in the circle seeming to have fairly full dance cards right now, leads me to assume that any number of those faces may very well continue to be untouchable. For now.

Artist: Ani DiFranco
Year: 1996
Rating: Luke Hot

Note: The main guitar line leads me right into The Who's Baba O'Riley. Funnily enough this is the second entry in which a song has strongly mingled in my mind with Baba O. The last time this happened was with REM's Supernatural Superserious. I guess this happens when your band is palpably influential over the course of decades.

There Is A Mountain

Fun performance, though he's having a tough time rallying the crowd on the chorus. I have no idea why I was triggered to remember this song this morning. I can appreciate the spiritual simplicity better now than when I first heard it as a wily teen and had to mock it. It was still amusing to wake to, though.

Artist: Donovan
Year: 1967
Rating: Warm

Sticky Shoes

The song in my head is about 20 seconds into this montage from The One with Joey's New Girlfriend. Phoebe loves her sexy phlegm.

Artist: Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay
Year: 1997

A Case of You

One of the most perfect songs ever written about the beauty and the pain of love. Um, yeah.

Artist: Joni Mitchell
Year: 1971
Rating: Hot!

Note: was in my head right after "Waddaliacha." Strange combo platter.

Tumbalalaika

An old Russian-Yiddish folk tune that only came into my life a few months ago. My sister Jodi requested it for our family songbook at the annual retreat in Monterey this year. I didn't get to adding it this time, but this mournful/hopeful love song still resonates. See a translation here.

Artist: The Barry Sisters
Year: Unknown, c. 1920s-1930s; Barry Sisters version, c. 1940s.
Rating: Warm

Tzena Tzena Tzena

No idea why this Israeli folk song was in my head this morning. Its melody is most familiar to me, because it was repurposed as the Camp Shalom alma mater that I sang on an almost daily basis every summer of my life from age five til my early twenties. The above version is by the Wellingtons from 1964.

The most popular version of the song was the Weavers' spin, in which the simple Hebrew lyrics (encouraging the girls to go find a good army man) were replaced by English words with an entirely different narrative (about dancing and celebrating in the city square). The web search for this song yields some surprisingly wonderful results, including an Arlo Guthrie rendition in which he riffs, in signature trickster style, on the "Gaelic" language in the song, and even a cover of the Weaver's version by trashpop icon Mink Stole and L.A. drag queen Vicky Boofont! Enjoy 'em.

Artists: The Wellingtons, 1964; The Weavers, 1950; Arlo Guthrie, c. 1978; Mink Stole/Vicky Boofont, 2005.
Written by: Issachar Miron, c. 1941; English lyrics by Gordon Jenkins
Rating: Warm

Galileo, Redux

Last in my head on January 15, 2010.

Artist: Indigo Girls
Year: 1992

Fire and Rain

Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.

An old favorite, but a weird head space, nonetheless, to conjure up the calling out of one's own name in such a melancholy lyric.

Artist: James Taylor
Year: 1970
Rating: Luke Hot

Send in the Clowns

This might very well be the most random song I've had in my head since starting the blog. The melancholy '70s ballad floodgates are now fully open!

Artist: Judy Collins
Written by: Stephen Sondheim
Year: 1973 (original); 1975 (Collins)
Rating: Lukewarm

Eisler On The Go

"I don't know what I'll do." The refrain came to me the other day concerning personal matters, which led to the refrain from this Mermaid Avenue song. I doubt that what I was thinking about that day had the same gravitas as when Woody Guthrie was contemplating Hanns Eisler's HUAC trial, but it was heavy enough for me.

Artist: Billy Bragg and Wilco
Written by: Woody Guthrie
Year: c. 1947/1998
Rating: Luke Hot

The Ballad of Davy Crockett

In my head 'cause I saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox a while back, and it's used in the opening credits. I can't find much info about this version of the song out there, but it's a resonant tune, lodged in the brains of many of us born in the States in the post-WWII era through maybe my generation. I wonder how many Gen Y'ers and younger know it.

Artist: The Wellingtons
Year: 1954 (original)
Rating: Warm

Mellow Yellow

I'm just mad about Saffron/And she's just mad about me.

Could have sworn I'd blogged about this song before, but nope.

Artist: Donovan
Year: 1966
Rating: Warm

Pomp and Circumstance/The Riddle Song

So, I got the graduation march, Pomp and Circumstance, in my head, specifically as heard in a movie which I thought was Animal House. I've searched for a graduation scene online, but I can't find it, and the song isn't listed as in use in the movie at imdb. Anyway, here's some amazing footage from 1931 of the original composer conducting the song at the opening of the Abbey Road studios in London.



Artist: Sir Edward Elgar
Year: c. 1905
Rating: I'll pass

The thought that the march appeared in Animal House inspired another song from the movie to get stuck, an old folk tune that I thought was called "I Gave My Love a Cherry" (actually called The Riddle Song) which was performed in the film by my mental soundtrack staple, 70s singer/songwriter Stephen Bishop. View cliphere

This then lead me to get another filmed version of the song in my head, from one of my most beloved movies, Little Darlings. Armand Assante, as Coach Callahan, sings it 'round the campfire.



(The song is at minute 9:10, the very end of the clip, just after one of Angel and Randy's failed attempts at teen coitus!)

Artist (original): Unknown, English traditional
Artist (covers): Stephen Bishop and Armand Assante
Year (original): c. 15th Century
Year (covers): 1978, 1980
Rating: Lukewarm