#15 Going In Circles -- The Friends Of Distinction (1969)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBkYN7wYQFk

My most vivid memory associated with this song happened about ten years after its release. I was living in an apartment in Rockville, lying awake in bed with the window open, while somebody either outside or in a nearby unit had tuned in legendary area DJ Melvin Lindsey on WHUR. Lindsey was just finishing off a countdown of listener favorites, and “Going In Circles” was #2 on the list. (Oddly enough, the #1 song is also my all-time favorite.)

#16 Hello Stranger -- Barbara Lewis (1963)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VDbbjIto4

I actually never heard this song until I got to Lebanon Valley College in 1971. The freshman class decided to have a dance marathon, and since I had been elected President of the class (a long story ...) I certainly wasn’t going to miss it. Most of the live entertainment was provided by a freshman-based “grease band”, which played 50s and early 60s rock songs (“Teen Angel”, etc.) along the lines of Sha Na Na. At one point, however, Jane Garlock (a junior) went to the piano and did a version of “Hello Stranger” – I fell in love with the song immediately. Yvonne Elliman and Queen Latifah have both done nice cover versions, but Lewis’s original (she also wrote the song) remains definitive.

#17 Ridin' In My Car – NRBQ (1977)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRK2o3EkOUw

NRBQ never had much commercial success in terms of selling either singles or albums, but in their heyday they had a well-earned reputation as a great live band. I saw them once, at Wolf Trap on a double bill with Los Lobos. I was surprised when Los Lobos came out first, since they were certainly the more famous of the two, but after NRBQ’s set I understood the reasoning; you really wouldn’t want to have to follow these guys on stage. “Ridin’ In My Car” may be the greatest road song of all time – if you have a convertible, be sure to listen on a gorgeous summer day with the top down.

#18 Someday Soon -- Judy Collins (1969)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jn90y9H9S4

In late 1968, folk singer Judy Collins (to whom Stephen Stills paid tribute in “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”) had her only top 10 hit with Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” In August of 1969, she released “Chelsea Morning” (another Mitchell song) as a single; it didn’t do much on the charts, but is well-known for inspiring the name of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s daughter.

In between these two, Collins put out “Someday Soon” as a single. This one didn’t have much commercial success either, peaking at #55, but this poignant ballad written by Ian Tyson (of Ian and Sylvia fame) is my favorite Judy Collins recording (although her version of “Amazing Grace” comes close).

Shuffle #31 (October 11, 2014)

Groovin’ – Booker T. & The MGs

Fire On The Bayou – Neville Brothers

Manic Monday – The Bangles

Which Way Does That Old Pony Run – Lyle Lovett

Saved – LaVern Baker

You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me – Dusty Springfield

Three Little Birds – Bob Marley & The Wailers

Johnny B. Goode – Chuck Berry

Ruby Baby – Donald Fagen

#19 Bustin' Loose -- Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers (1979)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwHi10qX8u8

While “Bustin’ Loose” is certainly one of the best-known examples of Washington’s go-go music, for me it’s a great piece of music regardless of genre. I was only vaguely aware of it when it first came out – it only reached #34 on the Hot 100, although it topped the R&B chart for four weeks – but it grew on me the more time I spent in the DC area, especially after seeing Chuck live a few times.

Prior to moving into their new stadium for the 2008 season, the Washington Nationals had fans vote on ballpark music – home run song, seventh-inning stretch song, and victory song. When I saw that “Bustin’ Loose” was one of the nominees for the song to be played every time a Nats player hits a home run, I did a little gentle lobbying with all the baseball fans I knew to urge them to vote for the song. I’m not sure how many of them went along, but in the end justice triumphed, and to this day it’s played whenever a National hits one out of the park.

#20 The Curtain Falls -- Kevin Spacey (2004)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTJZHxdviKA

“The Curtain Falls” was the song that Bobby Darin used to close his shows in the 1960s. Not being that much of an expert on Darin (and never having seen him live), I wasn’t aware of this until I saw Kevin Spacey’s 2004 Darin biopic Beyond The Sea. It doesn’t show up until near the end of the film, at which point the audience knows that Darin is ill and doesn’t have much longer to live. (He died at the age of 37, after his second open-heart surgery.) The song is the closing track on the soundtrack album, but to avoid sending the audience bawling into the lobby it is actually followed in the film with the far-more-upbeat “As Long As I’m Singing”.

The song itself is an amazingly poignant ballad, even without the foreshadowing. I had initially assumed it must have been written by one of the classic songwriting teams of the 1930s or 40s, and was surprised that none of the crooners of that era had a hit with it. It turns out that it was written in 1961, not by a well-known musical legend but by a guy named Sol Weinstein, who couldn’t read or write music or play any instruments. While this song seems to have been Weinstein’s only musical legacy, he did have a notable career as a comedy writer (and at one point had a call-in radio show on WCAU in Philadelphia).

#21 Ride Away -- Roy Orbison (1965)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8jkPsFy2Lk

Roy Orbison started out doing rockabilly, with one minor hit (“Ooby Dooby”) on the legendary Sun record label. He achieved his greatest success and fame in the first half of the 1960s, mostly with ballads (“Only The Lonely”, “Running Scared”, “Crying”, “In Dreams”), although his biggest hit was the atypically upbeat “Oh, Pretty Woman” (which Van Halen would desecrate quite a few years later) in 1964.

I didn’t really start listening seriously to rock music until late summer 1965, just in time for “Ride Away”, which is still my favorite Orbison track, as well as the first single I remember buying. It was the first single he released after his ill-fated switch from the Monument record label to MGM; he had 9 Top 10 hits on the former, while not even cracking the Top 20 with any of his MGM singles. It’s still one of the great road songs ever; its melody is deceptively simple, but I once spent hours trying to work out all of its chord changes on guitar, especially the song’s bridge. (Give it a try, but no fair looking it up on the Web.)

[UPDATED 3/11/2015 -- now a Geico commercial!]

#22 She's Gone -- Hall & Oates (1974)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpR8r0D2EyY

Not surprisingly, Central Pennsylvania where I grew up was not among the first areas in the country to get a progressive rock radio station in the latter half of the 1960s. Around 1970, however, “Starview 92.7” made its debut, to my great joy. Its name came from its frequency on the dial and its location. I had never heard of Starview PA and had to look it up on a map – turns out it’s near York, and is (or at least was) basically a trailer park. At any rate, it had a signal strong enough to cover York, Harrisburg, and Lancaster, which was good enough for me.

After high school, I went to Lebanon Valley College in Annville, which is maybe 35-40 miles northeast of Starview as the crow (and the radio signals) fly. The only window in my dorm room faced north with a nice view of a mountain range that was accommodating enough to bounce the WRHY signal back to the T-antenna that I taped to the window. Things worked great except for the times when a freight train rumbled by on the tracks just across the parking lot outside my window; the tunes were so great, however, that we tolerated these disruptions to our reception. (Yes, kids, there was no Internet back then.)

Daryl Hall and John Oates released “She’s Gone” as a single in early 1974. It wasn’t a hit, but Starview played it. I fell in love with the song and bought the Abandoned Luncheonette LP, which frequently found its way onto my (Technics SL-5) turntable for many years thereafter.

Hall & Oates followed up Abandoned Luncheonette by collaborating with fellow Philadelphian Todd Rundgren on their next album, which although interesting was so commercially unsuccessful that Atlantic Records dropped the duo. Two years later, after they were signed by RCA and had a big hit with “Sara Smile”, Atlantic re-released “She’s Gone”. Be warned, however, that the 3:28 edited version that they sent to Top-40 radio stations to induce them to play it* is an atrocity – the intro and the bridge are shortened almost to nothing, and as an additional insult half of the first verse is mashed together with half of the second. You need to hear/get the original version, which is over 5 minutes long, to hear the song the way it was intended.

* - It did work. The song hit the Top 10 in 1976.

October 4-5, 2014 – Giants 2, Nationals 1 (18 innings, NLDS Game 2) – Nationals Park

Bummer of a decision, Matt (with apologies to Gary Larson)

Ejections: Washington Nationals second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera ejected by HP umpire Vic Carapazza (10th); Washington Nationals Manager Matt Williams ejected by HP umpire Vic Carapazza (10th)

Umpires: HP: Vic Carapazza. 1B: Tom Hallion. 2B: Hunter Wendelstedt. 3B: Mike Winters. LF: Brian Knight. RF: Laz Diaz.

Weather: 61 degrees, partly cloudy.

Wind: 7 mph, Varies.

T: 6:23.

Att: 44,035.

It’s impossible to beat the first paragraph of Adam Kilgore’s game story in this morning’s Washington Post, so I will repeat it here:

“Saturday night was about heroes and ghosts and everything in between. The marathon at Nationals Park included mastery and meltdowns, players warming their hands by a heater in the dugout and little-known relievers pitching their guts out. The Washington Nationals and the San Francisco Giants engaged in the kind of game that makes you love baseball and curse its existence and pace around the living room and ask the person next to you, what inning is it again? They played the kind of game that makes you feel alive until it makes you sick to your stomach.”

Incidentally, I have been hard on the Post in the past, but I was astonished to retrieve my newspaper around 8:00 this morning and find full coverage of the game, which went a couple of minutes past midnight – front page photo, box score, game story, columns, complete play-by-play, the works. Way to go guys! I hereby forgive them for running the same page of comics on two consecutive days earlier in the week.

For those of you living either on another planet or in a sterile sports-free environment, the Nats and Giants yesterday (and early today) played the longest postseason game in recorded history (breaking the previous record by more than a half hour), tying for the most innings at 18. We should have all been home at a decent hour, enjoying a 1-0 Washington victory, but Nats manager Matt Williams lifted starting pitcher Jordan Zimmermann in the ninth inning, one out away from victory. After the game, Williams justified his ill-fated decision as follows:

“Hindsight is a great thing. You know, if our starting pitcher goes out there, and he’s at 100 pitches, third time, fourth time through the lineup, he gets in trouble in the ninth, we’ll go to the guy who was perfect for us since he has been in that role.”

Well, Matt, here goes:

·        In the first place, it’s not “hindsight” for the many of us who questioned his call even before Drew Storen reached the mound. And that’s not a knock on Storen – I wouldn’t have taken JZim out at that point even if I had Mariano Rivera warmed up in the pen.

·        “100 pitches” is hardly an evening-ending load for a veteran stud starting pitcher (with an extra day of rest, no less).

·        They weren’t even particularly stressful pitches. The Giants never had more than one baserunner in an inning against Zimmermann, and the only runner to even reach second base was back in the third inning.

·        He wasn’t exactly struggling. Prior to walking Joe Panik with two out in the ninth, Zimmermann had retired 20 (!) consecutive batters. Giants starter Tim Hudson was quoted as saying the Nats “probably could’ve brought in Sandy Koufax and we would’ve had a smile on our face.”

·        You want “perfect”? Zimmermann entered the ninth on a streak of 19 consecutive scoreless innings, during which he allowed a total of 4 hits – all singles.

·        Today’s closers much prefer to come in to start an inning, rather than in the middle with someone on base. I haven’t checked, but I’m sure that most if not all of Storen’s regular-season saves were of this variety.

Williams also took another risk. If he leaves Zimmermann in the game, he gives up the lead and the Nats lose, JZim gets credit for a valiant effort, and the Nats have their backs up against the wall needing three straight wins. As things unfolded, not only are their backs up against the wall, but they once again have a potential problem at the back of the bullpen, since it’s hard to imagine that Storen could be completely unaffected by being one out away from victory in his last two postseason appearances and unable to close things out either time.

Tom Boswell put it much better than I have in his column in this morning’s Post.

To add injustice to injury, Williams got ejected in the bottom of the tenth inning. So, rather than freezing like us innocent victims, he had a presumably warm and comfortable seat in the clubhouse for the final eight innings.

If Williams is goat #1 in the defeat, the Nats “offense” comes in a close second. Their only run came in the third inning on a leadoff double by Asdrubal Cabrera and a two-out RBI single by Anthony Rendon. Rendon wound up setting a franchise playoff record with a total of 4 hits in the game. Everyone not named Anthony Rendon managed just 5 singles in 55 at-bats, with 19 strikeouts. They were particularly feckless (fecklesser?) in extra innings, with only two hits over the final 9 frames.

There were a few moments of one kind or another, other than the second consecutive transcendent performance by Zimmermann. DC Washington did his usual superb job with the National Anthem and God Bless America. The Nats ditched Garth Brooks and Taylor Swift in favor of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” for the 7^th and 14^th inning stretches – great song, albeit one whose lyrics rival “Take On Me” in terms of being difficult to sing along to. The oddest sight was when at some point in extra innings I left my seat (right after the Nats finished “hitting”) for the men’s room, only to see about a dozen other men literally sprinting across the concourse in that direction. I had the same luck getting in the slow line as I usually have at the grocery store, with the guy at the very front resembling the Dice-K of urination. By the time I finished, it was completely SRO, with a five-yard line out the door.

Given our loss in Game 1, I decided to change things up for Game 2 – drove down myself instead of catching a ride with the Pierce clan, walked down to Subway to pick up a sandwich, bought a bottle of Coke instead of bringing in water. I did forget to pick up a new rally towel on the way in, so maybe that was the problem.

The drive home actually wound up being quite an adventure. Washington Ave. was completely messed up -- the section leading up to where I get onto 395 South seemed to be closed, so I wound up getting routed in the wrong direction, eventually getting into the 3rd Street Tunnel, going north under the Mall, winding up on Second St NW not too far from the Capitol. Pulled over to get my bearings, decided that trying to get back on the Freeway was too dicey, so I headed west and south, eventually finding my way to Constitution Ave. and then to 14th. Even with that, I got home around 1:20 after leaving the lot at 12:30, which I guess isn't too bad all things considered.

Now we just have to hope that the Nats can pull off what would be a miracle comeback, beginning against the formidable Madison Bumgarner. Otherwise, they may be well on their way to joining the Caps in the local pantheon of perennial postseason underachievers.