Shuffle #32 (October 18, 2014)

All I See Is You – Dusty Springfield

Losing My Religion – R.E.M.

Happy Hour – The Housemartins

There She Goes Again – The Beat Farmers

Violet Hill – Coldplay

Money’s Too Tight To Mention – Simply Red

Fire On The Bayou – Neville Brothers

Shining Star – Earth, Wind And Fire

If You Could Read My Mind – Gordon Lightfoot

#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.