This song was originally performed by a small, little known group called the Beatles. The song itself was written by an obscure songwriter named Paul McCartney. I think he may have written one or two other songs that also charted as a hit somewhere. None come to mind.
I preferred the cover of this song by a guy name Joe Cocker. Not many people are familiar with his work but he had a minor hit with his cover of this song, ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’, in nineteen seventy. I find it a soothing song to stream while tramping about. Cheers
In these through the looking glass sort of days, I think today’s song is appropriate. Besides, I like its slow beat and long crescendo sort of style as it builds toward a conclusion.
‘White Rabbit’ was written by Grace Slick in the mid nineteen sixties. She and Jefferson Airplane released it in nineteen sixty-seven, and it became a hit. More, the song became forever associated with that era and the psychedelic movement. In me, an eleven-year-old growing up in America, was inspiration to think more and challenge beliefs and opinions, but it also fired my creativity. The song references Lewis Carroll’s characters from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and discusses sensory distortion with those characters. The lyrics employ the logic that I always enjoyed, an encouragement to look at the world differently.
Of course, its drug overtones and association with drugs through popular culture worried mom. Still, I like streaming it in my head as I walk about, especially the way that Grace sings, “If you go chasing rabbits.”
It’s a treat to find this YouTube offering from the Smothers Brothers. Loved that show.
The weirdest thing for me now about Grace Slick and this song was that she was just four years younger than mom, and Grace is now seventy-seven years old.
I was listening to Uriah Heep for years. My wife didn’t know anything about them but began listening to my albums extensively while I was on a fifteen-month unaccompanied tour to the Philippines a year into our marriage.
Like a lot of albums from that era, I played the whole album extensively. That’s how it was done in my youth. We had one segment, it seemed, who liked to load and listen to forty-fives. I was of another school. We put on one side of the thirty-three LP, listened to it, turned it over and listened to the other side. As my memory functions, that means that I will often automatically recall and begin streaming the next song from the album in my head.
Now, of course, with downloads, it’s way different.
Originally part of their ‘Demons and Wizards’ album, Easy Livin” was a song released by Uriah Heep in 1972. It became their only U.S. hit, and only reached something like the high twenties on the top forty playlists. I don’t think I ever hear it, or anything else from Uriah Heep, played on the radio. But this one, with its hard pressing guitar, fast pace, quick bass and spread of organ has taken a place in my heart.
Today’s song is another hit from Wayback because I’m thinking about progress. This one, ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair’), was written by John Phillips but released by Scott McKenzie in 1967.
The song attracts me today because I heard it on the radio this morning. Some of the lines include, “All across the nation, such a strange vibration, people in motion. There’s a whole generation, with a new explanation. People in motion.”
Yes, I thought. That’s one of the things about the last Presidential election in the United States. Donald Trump preached a movement back. He appealed to people stuck in time. They weren’t in motion and weren’t moving forward. If they were moving, they were going backward to when men had more rights and white men had the most rights and privilege of anyone, and the wealthy were on pedestals as capable people. While these voters and supporters wouldn’t say they’re against these things, the man they selected is against regulations that protect people, animals, the environment, and the poor, sick and needy. Tearing down the public school system through Betsy DeVos isn’t a move forward, as that billionaire who never attended a public school will try to do. He’s gutting every system save defense while he promises new jobs and to rebuild the infrastructure. Yet, he also is going to cut taxes, reduces revenue, so there will be no money to pay for that infrastructure. He preyed on them with fear and promised he will build a wall to protect them. The Trump Wall will be beautiful, he claims, a big beautiful wall.
Many of those voters are in impoverished areas where industry has disappeared or pay minimum wages. The areas are dominated by elderly people, and the disability rates for these area are higher than the national average and increasing at a faster rate. These are the very people that the social net Trump is tearing about helps the most. Trump said he was draining the swamp and that he would change business as usual. His attack on Syria and his selection of wealthy cronies and family members to staff his White House show very much that it’s still a swamp. He criticized Obama for golfing too much while he golfs almost every weekend.
He is not the path forward. I’m going on without him and his supporters. Yes, the song may be fifty years old, but the sentiment that there are people moving forward and causing change is older yet. Yet, for some, it’s all new, strange and dangerous.
I’m doing more streaming out of the Wayback Machine. This morning, we jump back to the year of my high school graduation, 1974.
Ah, exciting times. Vietnam. Nixon. Whip Inflation Now. Watergate. Cold War. ‘The Godfather’. ‘The Exorcist’. Eight track and cassette tapes. Princess phones, wall phones and extra-long telephone cords were in vogue.
Cable television viewership was rising. Microwaves were riding in on the first wave of availability. Companies were messing around with smaller computers but they were still focused on business. VCRs, DVDs, and Compact Discs were all in the future, as were Microsoft and Apple. There were still two Germanys. No European Union. Cell phones were just being used for the first calls but they were huge, expensive, heavy clunkers.
We were still recovering from the oil crisis of 1973. The national fifty-five miles per hour speed limit was upon us. The Phantom F-4 was our front line fighter, along with the F-111. The F-16 was still a prototype, and the F-14 was just entering service, with the F-15 coming along behind it. The Expos still played in Montreal, the Nationals didn’t play in Washington, and the Rockies and Marlins were still dreams.
From that stew, we have the Troggs with ‘Wild Thing’. I loved the song’s use in the film, ‘Major League’, in 1989. Charlie Sheen played Ricky ‘Wild Thing’ Vaughn, a Cleveland Indians pitcher. Of course, the Troggs hit was a cover of a song written, recorded and released in 1965 and the song in the movie was a cover by X.
So, here we go, a 1965 song, 1974 hit, from a 1989 movie, in which it was covered by a punk band, enjoyed in 2017.
I awoke with this song stuck in my head. It wasn’t the song I had in mind for today.
Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote ‘One Less Bell to Answer’ in the 1960s. The ‘Fifth Dimension’ had a hit with it around 1970.
The 1960s and 1970s was a great era of music. We had surfer music, blues, R&B, folk, psychedelic, country and western, and the British Invasion all being blasted from our AM radios. Many of the acts appeared on television and music shows, like ‘American Bandstand’ with Dick Clark, or ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’.
Oddly, the song is connected to a time of transition for me. That gives me pause as I wonder why the song is stuck in my brain today. My family lived in the Pittsburgh, PA, area, having moved to that area in the late 1950s. We had lived in a brick duplex in Wilkinsburg. My aunt and her family lived next door to us in a like duplex. Her son, my cousin, was my age. We were best friends for a long time.
His family moved to a new housing development in Penn Hills in the 1960s. We also moved there a few weeks later. I ended up living about two blocks from him.
Meanwhile, though, my other friends remained in Wilkinsburg. I made it a habit to return to visit them. I usually rode my bike the miles between the two locations. Then my bike was stolen and I walked.
But my friends changed. I no longer felt a part of them and moved on. That’s why it’s interesting this song is stuck in my head this morning. Between my dream and my writing and this song, I wonder what conference is going on in my subconscious mind.
Here’s Marilyn McCoo and the Fifth Dimension, performing ‘One Less Bell to Answer’ on Soul Train.
My wife reminded me of this one. It came out waaaayyyy back in the 1960s. That seems like three lifetimes to some, and yesterday to others. It’s like the day before yesterday to me.
The Isley Brothers wrote it, but this cover, by The Human Beinz, is the one I know. The Human Beinz release made it to the Top 10 in 1968. My wife called it the ‘no-no’ song. Its real title is ‘Nobody But Me’, but listening to the lyrics, it’s easy to understand her confusion. They sing no thirty-four times in a row. Featuring a fast, jaunty beat with lively bass, the words and melody are easy to learn. My little sister likely doesn’t recall this, but I used to sing this song to her; it amused me as a twelve-year-old jerk to sing, “No, no, no, no no, no no,” to a toddler.
Man, I’ll tell you what, the music emerging during the 1960s and 1970s was part of an amazing scene. Listening to those old songs give me a lift. This particular group, song and album were polarizing. When Mom heard me listening to this, she asked, “What is that you’re listening to?”
“Black Sabbath.”
Two words which probably did little to calm her. “Black Sabbath?”
“Yes. This is ‘Paranoid’.”
This woman who enjoyed Barbra Streisand, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, the Ink Spots, Platters, Nat King Cole, and on and on, studied me for seconds with mild distaste. Announcing, “It sounds paranoid,” she returned to her housekeeping routine and then called back, “Turn it down.”
Turn it down was something I’d hear a lot in those days.
Here we have it, a little gem called ‘Paranoid’, with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, Tony Iommi on lead guitar, Geezer on bass and Bill Ward playing the drums, from 1970.
I dreamed I was in 2025. I’ll tell you, I looked good for 2025.
With some friends, we were discussing something that had happened in 1985 involving them. Their news amused and astonished me while it depressed and frustrated them, as a clerical error from the beginning of their military career in 1985 had just been found in 2025 and needed to be fixed.
Meanwhile, we were getting ready to party. Guests were already arriving. I don’t recall hearing any particular music in the dream. Awakening, I remembered this old hit, from 1969, ‘In the Year 2525’. Although I remember all the words and the melody, I realized that I didn’t know who performed the song or anything else about it. For this, I trusted Wikipedia.org.
Zager and Evans are the performers. This was their only hit. Rick Evans wrote the lyrics. His words, about what’s going to happen to Humans, are fascinating to contemplate. At least they were for a thirteen-year-old reading science fiction in 1969. This was the number one song in the U.S. when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.
I put the mental music cloud on shuffle. ‘Fortunate Son’ by CCR was one of several songs that came up.
I know it from its initial release in 1969, when I was thirteen. CCR is an awesome band that gave us a hellabunch of memorable hits like ‘Suzie Q’, ‘Heard It Through the Grape Vine,’ Who’ll Stop the Rain,’ and ‘Run Through the Jungle’. Many of later generations know this ‘Fortunate Son’ because it’s been part of so many movies and video games about war or that era in America’s history, or from one of the many other performers who have covered the song. ‘Fortunate Son’ reflected the country’s mood as the Vietnam War raged and body bags came back. It also mirrors the trend that the world’s wealthy and powerful start and sustain war, but it’s the poor, minorities and those beguiled by their desire to do their patriotic duty that end up carrying the burden.
I was one of those last, joining in 1974, serving until 1995.
