Rambling Rhoads: 2025-03-16

As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Jesse Colin Young

https://variety.com/2025/music/obituaries-people-news/jesse-colin-young-dead-youngbloods-get-together-singer-1236339723/

I was fortunate to see Jesse Colin Young do a great show in Annapolis several years ago. Best known as the lead singer and main songwriter for the Youngbloods, he also had an extensive solo career following the band’s breakup. Although the band is primarily remembered for “Get Together” (its only actual hit), it had a worthwhile if relatively brief career overall, resulting in one of my favorite live albums.

Favorite songs (Youngbloods, except as otherwise noted):

Sunlight

Songbird*

Light Shine*

Ride The Wind

Get Together

Ridgetop*

Sugar Babe

Morning Sun*

Darkness, Darkness

Grizzly Bear

* -- Jesse Colin Young solo

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

What Mister Rogers would have thought of Donald Trump

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/insight/2025/03/09/fred-rogers-donald-trump-king/stories/202503090064

Great column by Maxwell King, who wrote a biography of Rogers. The column concludes as follows:

The creator of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood believed there are two qualities that, more than anything else, make an individual great: kindness and empathy. And he felt those qualities are precisely the ones that make America great.

The destructive brutality of the recent work of the Trump Administration will never make great the neighborhoods we all share today.