One Great Song

     It’s likely that, if you remember the Youngbloods at all, you remember them for “Get Together,” the anthemish Sixties tune that everyone seemed to be humming, whistling or otherwise abusing back then. It evoked a lot of warm-fuzzies among the warm-fuzzy-head set...but musically, it was nothing special.

     Here’s the Youngbloods’ best piece, by my wholly idiosyncratic standards:

The time has come now for me to leave you
To stop my foolish hanging on
To yesterday's dream of tomorrow's true love
The shadow cast by children's new love
There is no time for tears or talking
There is no time for you
No time for you

Time has painted all my dreams blue
Pieces falling all around you
Around you around you around you

The doorstep of your heart is cluttered
With broken dreams and pieces of the
World we once lived in a world for dreamers
A world of warm words sparkling colors
That shone to keep us through days of wishing
And nights of coming true
Coming true

Time has painted all my dreams blue
Pieces falling all around you
Around you around you around you

The place is empty my eyes are red now
But hopelessness is not forgotten
Days of living and nights of dying
Streets of talking rooms of crying
Where is the end to all this sadness
Where is the end of you
The end of you

Time has painted all my dreams blue
Pieces falling all around you
Around you around you around you
Around you around you around you

– Jesse Colin Young –

     I’ll be back later with the usual crap.

A Bid For Greatness By a Jethro Tull Exile

     Guitarist Mick Abrahams played on Jethro Tull’s first album, This Was. I have no idea why he left the group, but he went thence to form Blodwyn Pig, a more blues-oriented combo. Their first album, Ahead Rings Out, has some good stuff on it, but the following track is their bid for true greatness:

     The blues don’t get any bluer – or any better – than that.

One Great Song

     Now and then, a rising musical artist will “catch a break,” be noted by the producer or director of a film in progress, and one of his songs will be employed in that film. There are fewer such instances of good fortune than there are “rising musical artists,” of course – and some of those artists favored by fortune never rise very far. But their one song might just “rise without them,” becoming enduringly memorable.

     Here’s one such, from British composer / performer Alan Price. It became the opening-credits song for O Lucky Man!

If you have a friend on whom you think you can rely –
You are a lucky man!
If you've found a reason to live on and not to die –
You are a lucky man!
Preachers and poets and scholars don't know it,
Temples and statues and steeples won't show it,
If you've got the secret, just try not to blow it –
Stay a lucky man!

If you've found the meaning of the truth in this old world -
You are a lucky man!
If knowledge hangs around your neck like pearls instead of chains –
You are a lucky man!
Takers and fakers and talkers won't tell you.
Teachers and preachers will just buy and sell you.
When no one can tempt you with heaven or hell -
You'll be a lucky man!

You'll be better by far to be just what you are
You can be what you want if you are what you are
And that's a lucky man!
Oh yeah, a lucky man!
And that's a lucky a lucky a lucky man.

     A nice approach to what it means to be a lucky man.

One Great Song

     There are musicians who rise to greatness exactly once...perhaps for a few minutes only, and never again. Most know of some of them. The “one-hit wonders” so often discussed in amused tones are usually well known, as is their hit. But there are others whose moment of glory isn’t generally recognized, They remain permanently obscure. Even their one shining moment is known only to a lucky few.

     I think this will become a series, if galloping senility will graciously permit. For today’s offering in this vein, I present Luka Bloom’s “Dreams in America:”

     Please pardon me a moment of maudlin reminiscence. And to Mikal Trimm, wherever you may be: Thank you for this. I hope you’re well and happy.