Tuesday Afternoon on a Friday night

I never paid much attention to the Moody Blues in high school. Outside of the truncated single to "Tuesday Afternoon," which was part of the soundtrack of my Summer of 1968, I never really got into them. I liked the singles like "Question" and "The Story in Your Eyes," but otherwise, I didn't know a whole lot about them.

That changed in college in a rather curious way. I had a crush on a girl my freshman year, and after finally summoning up the nerve to ask her out, she rejected me. After that buildup, and that rejection, I was devastated. But life went on.

I had occasion to go to the Harvard Coop and while waiting in line to pay for a book, I heard the most exotic music coming over the bookstore's sound system. I was strange sounding, and it was hypnotic.

It was, as it turned out, the second side of "Days of Future Passed," the Moody Blues debut album (well, the debut album of the so-called "Core 7" albums that elevated them almost to cult status with their fans.

And after hearing that album in its entirety, I became one of those fans ... and part of that cult.

I remained a part of that cult for a long time until, somewhere around the early part of the last decade, I decided that they were starting to mail it in just a little too much. They'd tour every year, but the set list hardly ever changed. To me, they were going through the motions, and after having seen them at least once a year throughout the 80s and 90s, I'd decided I'd had enough.

I never stopped liking their music ... I just stopped paying money to see them.

I've always gone through phases with music, and through the last 10 or so years, I went through plenty of them. I rediscovered Brian Wilson in a big way, as well as Supertramp, Pink Floyd and even Fleetwood Mac.

All the while, I've been communicating since the 90s with a group of Moody Blues fans. And we've all bemoaned, at one time or another, the group's seeming lack of effort to give its fans anything beyond what it gave them last year ... or the year before that. Even the stage banter is the same.

I'm 58 years old, and I've had a feeling for a long time that my rock concert days are numbered. My ears ring from all the shows I've seen, and probably because of all the times I crank my music through my headphones while I exercise. The music I like best can be politely called "classic rock," and the last show I attended was a 2009 Brian Wilson concert where at least half the crowd was even older than I was.

But my son decided to give me two tickets to see the Moody Blues at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, and, well, I'll go anywhere for free. Oddly enough, the show was on Friday the 13th, and that's not exactly the greatest day for gambling (which is what Mohegan Sun is really all about). I blew through my gambling money in roughly the amount of time it takes to walk out of my house and into my car.

I'd never been to Mohegan Sun before. I've never been to Las Vegas, been to Atlantic City once, Paradise Island 35 years ago on our honeymoon, and on a cruise that had a casino. I had this vision of of being in some club-like atmosphere with the Moody Blues on same kind of stage that would accommodate Wayne Newton.

Not exactly. The venue is huge. It's a regular arena, not unlike the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. I guess I have to get out more!!

And I crossed another very important threshold at this concert. For the first time, I saw people -- my contemporaries -- patrolling the floor in Hover round scooters. That's a little disconcerting. Yeah, man, let's rock out in our scooters. It reminds me of a commercial I once saw where there was this group of scooter-riders square dancing. I kid you not. It was supposed to depict how you can live a "normal life" with the help of a scooter. I have to tell you, it was hysterical.

I wasn't sure what to expect out of the Moodies either. Graeme Edge, the only original 1964 Moody still with the band, is 71. Justin Hayward and John Lodge, the primary songwriters, are the only other Core 7 Moodies still performing, and they're both well into their 60s (though someone really needs to tell Lodge that leather pants on 60-somethings have the potential to be really hideous).

Ray Thomas, the flautist, has retired and though I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Norda Mullin, the new flautist, I'm one of those people who has to see for himself.

When I was young and full of angst and pretension, the Moody Blues answered all my questions. They actually reacted to this perception of them with their hit "I'm Just A Singer in a Rock 'n' Roll Band," but it's true. For me,and many others, their songs had an other-worldly quality about them that, if they didn't define life in black and white, certainly helped put restless emotion into some kind of perspective. I still think one of the most brilliant songs Hayward ever wrote is "The Actor," because that's exactly what I get out of it ... a man so pent up with restless emotions and feelings that he doesn't know what to do with himself.

But do the Moody Blues have the answers for middle age? For approaching senior citizen-hood (kind of makes the line in "Late Lament" that "senior citizens wish they were young" kind of ironic)? Perhaps. Once again, it was Hayward, writing "The Swallow," off the "Strange Times" album, wrestling with the notion of slowing down and simply enjoying the fruits of all he's accomplished.

"It's so strange/life in the really slow lane/take it easy/that's what we'll do/just me and you."

But can these "Kings of Classic Rock," well, rock? That was the question I asked myself all while driving down to Connecticut. Was I going to see a rock show? Or was I going to see a series of mid-tempos ballads as a concession to their advancing age?

The Moodies are like a lot of classic groups/acts. They have a coterie of lifers who follow them from venue to venue comparing notes on shows. I'm not one of these people. I've always been content to go to my shows and go home afterward. I'd be more inclined to hang around with John Irving than any rocker anyway.

So all I wanted out of the evening was a good show ... and some indication that these guys who go around the world almost annually aren't still practically stealing money.

Once good thing about being a supen fan: you know all the songs ... even the ones that never get any airplay. So when a group pulls out the chestnuts, you're actually happier than you'd be if it stuck to hits. And to me, this was the most pleasant part of the show. The Moodies performed one song -- "You and Me" -- that I don't think they've ever done, as a group, live (maybe Hayward did it during a solo tour, but I'm not even sure of that).

"You and Me" is off the "Seventh Sojourn" album that was the last of that "Core 7." He wrote it with Edge, and I don't want to say it has religious overtones, but one could take the line "the vision of our father, touched by his loving son" that way.

The reason I like it, and have always liked it, is that it reinforces their plea that fans not look to them as messiahs.

"You're an ocean full of faces/and you know that we believe/we're just a wave that drifts around you/singing all our hopes and dreams."

With all that deep philosophizing, the song rocks. It contains lengthy guitar solos in both the intro and the outro, and Hayward performed them both flawlessly. The Moody Blues always got, I think, more brickbats thrown at them than is necessary, and their reputation for pretension is probably why they're not in the rock 'n roll hall of fame. But Hayward's always been underrated as a guitarist. Maybe that's because he doesn't look tortured enough up there. Has has a casualness that belies his skills. But make no mistake, the man can play that thing!

Another wonderful chestnut was "Are You Sitting Comfortably," off "On The Threshold of a Dream," which may be -- out of the seven albums we've been discussing -- my least favorite. I always thought that album, along with "To Our Children's Children's Children," gave critics the "pretentious" ammunition.

But I like that song, because of the haunting flute that accompanies it. I never though Ray Thomas was a bad flautist, but compared to Norda, Ray's a beginner. Norda brought that song to life in a way I've never heard

Ditto "Isn't Life Strange," which is one of those songs that always sounds better live than it ever did on vinyl. No matter how clear the production is on record, there are some songs that just can't be captured the way they're intended, and that's one of them.

The Moodies always do a splendid job with it in concert, and it was even more splendid this time. The arrangement was just a little different, and Norda does things with the flute that enhance the song even more.

I wish, I wish, I wish they'd done "The Actor," because Norda could have made that special too. As it is, she got huge ovations from an extremely appreciative crowd.

I find with the Moody Blues that I had a tendency to drift off, and get lost in the sound, and the ambiance of their best songs, and miss the message of them completely. I don't care for "I Know You're Out There Somewhere," and tend to zone out whenever I hear it. But for some reason, I listened to the words this time. And they are plaintive. If you've ever been in a situation where you wonder whatever happened to an old lover, or even a girl/boy you once had a crush on, the song has some significance.

I've always thought the lyrics to "Isn't Life Strange" were somewhat ponderous, and for that reason, it was never a favorite of mine (though, as I said, I do like to hear it live). But usually, in any song, or any good piece of art, there are moments that kind of sum them up. Whatever the songs may mean to someone else, I zero in on parts that have relevance to me and that's what I take from them. Such as ... "to throw it away/to lose just one day/the quicksands of time/you know it makes me want to cry."

It may not have been what John Lodge thought he was writing, but as you get older, you realize how precious time is ... and how unresolved issues, and lingering anger, do nothing except waste precious time. For whatever reason, that's what I was thinking about when Lodge was singing that song.

Edge seems to be cut out of different cloth than Hayward and even Lodge. Edge has a bawdiness about him that kind of makes him a little less mystical (even if he's the guy who wrote all the hippy dippy poetry of the pretentious days). He stepped out from behind the drum kit to chew the scenery through a hellacious rendition of "Higher and Higher," the opener of TOCCC, and the one that introduced the album as a tribute to the 1969 moon landing.

And it kind of looked as if Edge has hit the gym lately. Even though Gordon Marshall has taken over the bulk of the difficult drumming, Edge did his share of it. He also looked very spry for a septuagenarian, jumping around the stage during "Higher and Higher."

He has a standard joke about his senior citizen hood, saying he recorded "Higher and Higher" when his teeth were white, his hair was brown, and the V sign meant "peace." Now, he says, his hair is white, his teeth are brown, and the V stands for viagra.

The Moodies always do "Tuesday Afternoon," and it's a song I never get tired of hearing. It's the first song I ever heard by the Core 7 group, and it sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before. I still love it today. Maybe even moreso these days.

"Nights in White Satin" is one of those songs I have to stop and really listen to whenever I heard it, even if it's for the 1,000th time. Hearing it at Harvard University back in 1972, after having been rejected by the girl of my dreams, added to my melancholia big-time. And I suppose there's a part of me that just gets transported back to those days in 1972 whenever I hear it. It's another one of Justin's "restless songs," I think ... where he totally nails the emotional passion of falling in love. There's a reason it's become a classic. It's hard to believe he was 19 when he wrote it.

If I have a criticism, it's that they continue to play some songs as breakneck speeds, such as "The Story in Your Eyes," the fast part of "Question," and "Ride My Seesaw." I'd just like to see them slow those songs down so they can be savored.

But on the othr hand, the audience sings the slower part of that song in much the same manner McCartney fans sang "na na na na-na-na-na" when he performed "Hey Jude." It's reverential. And you really understand, when you hear the multitude of people singing, how much those songs really mean to people ... and I include myself in that.

Seeing that show tonight was like reuniting with an old friend who I'd, shamefully, lost touch with over the years. I came away wondering why I'd ever been so rigidly unwilling to make them a part of my life for the previous 12 years. What made them special to me in the 1970s is still what makes them special to me today ... they have that ability to speak to the soul, which is a difficult thing to do. Anyone can provide logic. It takes a special person to bore through all the masks and all the pretensions and connect with the soul.

They Moody Blues still do that better than any group I've ever listened to. There's no age limit to connecting with a person's soul ... which means that my most plaintive question was answered. Yes, the Moody Blues have something to offer to people like me, who have to add the words "at heart" next to the word "young."

Oh, Danny Boy ...

First, to all, a Happy St. Patrick's Day. Even if you're not Irish, you can't help but get swept up in at least some of the spirit of the day. On March 17, we're all Irish, just as we're all Jewish the minute we step into a theater to see "Fiddler on the Roof."

Being half Irish (on my mother's side), I sometimes resent the overt implication that St. Patrick's Day is an excuse for a) local politicians to get together to lambaste each other with a smile on their faces before they go off to carve each other up for real; and b) people everywhere to get rip-roaring drunk. I don't drink as a general rule, but even before I reached the point in my life where alcohol ceased to be a part of it, there were two days on which I made SURE I didn't drink: New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's Day.

The first is a night for amateurs. The second was more a reaction to what I consider to be blatant ethnic stereotyping ... the drunken Irishman. And what's worse is that I know a lot of Irish people who absolutely -- and with great glee and vigor -- help perpetuate that stereotype. Think of any other ethnic group consciously aiding and abetting such uncomplimentary stereotypes. It just doesn't happen.

I don't know what that means. Either we're perpetually good sports about it (which is, I think the case), or we're too drunk to know the difference (which I'm sure is not the case!).

I won't say that I didn't do my share of Irish pubbing back in The Day. I've been to a few. And even if I was never the type to get falling-down drunk when I went out, I always enjoyed the music. And to me, being Irish is more about the music than anything else.

And I certainly have my list of Irish favorites. So, in recognition of the day, here are some of my favorite Irish tunes.

Whistling Gypsy Rover, whose best version is by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Where a lot of Irish folk songs are built around "the troubles," this one's not. It's' just a nice little song about a guy who loves -- and wins the heart of -- a woman. It speaks more of the strong streak of sentimentality that runs through a lot of Irish music than it does the perpetual "troubles."

The Wild Colonial Boy, this version also by the Clancy Brothers with Tommy, although that's not the only one. This one just has an introduction by the redoubtable Ed Sullivan. Again, if there's anything that Irish do well (other than drink), they tell a good story. And this is a great story.

One other thing: love those heavy sweaters that Clancy Brothers used to wear all the time. Now, if you know anything about being on TV, you know that the lights on those sound stages emit heat that makes you feel like you're about 10 feet from the sun. So those Clancys must have lost a ton of weight that night.

It's not technically Irish, but if you've ever heard Roger Daltry sing Behind Blue eyes with the Chieftains, it qualifies. Actually, just put the entire catalog of the Chieftains here.

When she's not ripping up pictures of the pope, Sinead O'Connor can sing some wonderfully moving songs. The Foggy Dew, accompanied here by the Chieftains, is one of them. And this would seem to be a more traditional type of "troubles" song, also recorded in 1966 by the Clancy Brothers, about the uprising of 1916. I just really like this version.


Black Velvet Band. This is the Irish Rovers' version. Now, is one of the great pub singalong songs of them all. I doubt there's any Irish person alive who doesn't know the chorus, and even if you don't have a drop of Irish in you, it's refrain is easy enough to memorize.

There are a lot of versions of this, but this is my favorite. The Irish Rovers get a couple of songs on this list, but curiously enough, "The Unicorn" is not one of them. I don't know why. It's never been a favorite of mine.

And it's No, Nay, Never, no, nay, never, no more ... I've played the Wild Rover ... no, never, no more. This one by the Dubliners.

Again, a very cool sing-along song, best managed after you've, ahem, had few pints. If there's any reason to lubricate yourself at the pub, by the way, it's only so you can be brave enough to belt out some of these songs. Because the best part of going to hear an traditional Irish folk band is the camaraderie of singing them.

And don't forget to clap four times between the first and second "no, nay, nevers."

I don't know if this can be considered a traditional Irish song, because it was a hit with none other than Michael McGear, a/k/a Michael McCartney, a/k/a Sir Paul's Brother. But when you hear the Irish Rovers do Lily The Pink it might as well be an Irish song, right? I guess any song adopted by an Irish band, and sung with the proper brogue, automatically becomes part of the repertoire.

Here's an oddity for you. The Chieftains are great in their own right, but they sometimes do their best stuff collaborating with other artists. The Star of the County Down, which they did with Van Morrison, is is a rousing song, not unlike many others, that probably sounds best in a pub, in a party (or at least a social) environment. Just like scores of other Irish folk songs.

But what makes this unique is that the song (or at least the tune) has been co-opted by Mother Church. Because unless I'm mistaken, the last time I heard it (before I went and found it to download here) was at Sunday Mass.

You can't have a list of favorite Irish songs without having at least one of them by U2. I've provided a live version of Sunday Bloody Sunday here.

As Bono says in the introduction, it is not a rebel song. There are actually two instances of "Bloody Sundays" in Irish history. The first happened in 1920, when British soldiers fired into the crowd at a football (soccer) match in retaliation for the killing of some undercover agents. The second (and the incident this song refers to) occurred in 1972, when British paratroopers killed 13 Irish citizens at a civil rights protest in Derry, Northern Ireland.

I've saved this one until last. It is the only one of the 10 that would be considered traditional to my mother -- as opposed to traditional in a folk or rock sense. But of all the Irish songs, this one probably best portrays the poignancy and the tragedy of a lifetime of struggles and troubles on the part of the Irish.

It is, of course, Danny Boy, sung here by "three Irish Tenors." That's what it said on YouTube, anyway. I have no idea who the three Irish tenors are.

It is probably impossible to determine for sure how many Irish boys were named Daniel after this song. Thousands ... maybe even hundreds of thousands.

But it has a curious history. For starters, the words were written not by an Irishman, but an Englishman, Frederic Weatherly, and the tune we hear today was not the original tune. What we commonly know as "Danny Boy" today was adapted from "Londonderry Air" in 1913. And while it would certainly speak to a father's advice to his son on the eve of him going off to war -- presumably in the never-ending "troubles" -- when you consider this history, it has a much more universal meaning, doesn't it?

Perhaps, in a general sense, it is a father's mournful hymn to his son as he prepares to go off to any war, and, thus, the song has a timeless quality to it that makes it almost unique. All I know is that whenever it's sung, and by whomever it's sung, you can hear a pin drop ... even in the noisiest pub otherwise. That's how much respect the song commands, and that's how powerful its message is.

May the road rise to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

And may you be in heaven a full half hour before the devil knows you're dead.

Davy Jones and the Prefab Four

There are a couple of things swirling around my head tonight. First, at the age of 58 (which is how old I am), you seem to be on an eternal death watch. Someone who helped define your youth seems to die every day.

And second, one of the best things about being a kid is that you think everything is real. You may find out different when you get older, and mature enough to absorb it, but unless someone punches a hole in your innocence when you're 11 or 12, you're spared the disillusionment of knowing what's really going on.

These two cultures clashed today when news came of the sudden death of Davy Jones, erstwhile singer/maracas player in The Monkees.

Here's the deal with the Monkees. It took two years from the time the Beatles and the rest of the Brits invaded America in 1964 for Hollywood to recreate them for a weekly sitcom. And by the time that happened, and the Monkees debuted, the actual Fabs themselves had gone well beyond being cute teen idols. John Lennon had already waxed philosophical about Jesus Christ and the apostles, and Revolver was in record stores and on turntables everywhere, with the weird sounds of "She Said, She Said," and "Tomorrow Never Knows" proving that these weren't your lovable moptops anymore.

So that's the first thing you have to know about the phenomenon that was The Monkees. They were, in 1966, what the Beatles had been two years prior. They also helped escort Gilligan's Island off the air, but that's another story for another day. I'd have preferred looking at Maryann over Davy Jones any day. But, alas, that wasn't my call.

The Monkees were sure a lot of fun. And when you've just turned 13, and you're about as unsophisticated and unknowledgable as you can be, all you see are four guys playing instruments and singing. You don't stop to ask yourself how, for example, there can be only one guitarist (Mike Nesmith) and such rich, layered sounds coming back at you from some of those impeccably produced songs. You think it's all on the level.

So it was, therefore, a shock to me when, over the summer of 1967, word got out that "the Monkees don't play their own instruments." It was like, "No. Of course they do. I see them on TV every week ..."

Now, it's 2012, and I've obviously done a lot of reading up on rock as it grew in the 1960s. And believe me, finding out the Monkees didn't play their own instruments pales in comparison to knowing, for example, that neither did the Beach Boys. With the exception of Carl Wilson (who did play some lead), the rest of the group didn't play a note on the recorded version of "Pet Sounds." All of that instrumental backing was done by a group of session musicians known as "The Wrecking Crew."

So let's get that elephant in the living room out of the equation now. The Monkees did not play their own instruments. The Monkees were, in fact, formed by Don Kirschner (among others) with an eye on acting ability first, and musicianship second. Two of the four were professional actors (Jones and Mickey Dolenz). The other two were musicians first (Nesmith and Peter Tork).

Peter Tork's best friend from his Laurel Canyon days was Stephen Stills, who'd auditioned for the gig, but whose less-than-perfect teeth disqualified him from consideration. Stills then went to Peter Tork and urged him to try out. Tork, obviously, got the gig.

There was nothing startlingly original about the shows. They were all pretty much based on the madcap exploits of the Beatles, as chronicled in both "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help." There was a plot that served more as a bridge connecting the songs that were featured than anything else.

It didn't go over well with the serious rock press, which, in 1966, was beginning to emerge (we're talking about something beyond "16 Magazine" and "Tiger Beat" here), and the Monkees were coined "The Prefab Four."

If there's something the producers and managers of the Monkees did right, however, it was connect them with some of the era's best songwriters. Neil Sedaka, Carole King and Neil Diamond penned some of their best songs (Diamond wrote maybe their most enduring hit, "I'm a Believer," while King, along with her then-husband Gerry Goffin, wrote "Pleasant Valley Sunday."

However, their most frequent collaborators were Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who wrote countless feel-good songs that helped put the group squarely in the middle of the ever-changing rock 'n' roll picture of the mid-1960s. Among them were "Last Train to Clarksville," "Stepping Stone" and the theme song, "Hey, Hey, We're The Monkees."

Despite my serious disillusionment over how "fake" they were, I have to say that the Monkees were an incredible amount of fun. They did, for a couple of years at least, harken back to the days when the Beatles were the lovable moptops as opposed to emerging "spokesmen for a generation." I've always believed that by the second half of 1966, pop music, which prior to that had seemed to be heading in the same direction, became fragmented to the point where there was no identifiable person, or group, that specialized in playing the type of accessible music that just made you feel good.

This isn't to say there wasn't great music produced at that time. I mean, come on. Some of the best music of the entire rock era was produced in 1966, including both Rubber Soul and Revolver; Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations," "Paint it Black," and so many others. But you had to be a little bit sophisticated to appreciate it, whereas 11-year-olds whose suns had risen and set on "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah," didn't have that anymore.

The Monkees, regardless of their origins and authenticity, provided that. And for that alone, they have a place in the Pantheon of music history.

But curiously enough, a funny thing began to happen to them, too. They decided they didn't particularly like being the "Prefab Four." Peter Tork was a serious musician, and he wasn't at all thrilled at being perceived as a phony. Neither was Mike Nesmith, who -- out of all of them -- was probably the most unhappy about the situation.

They, too, began to change. They went through a period where their songs started to sound more like social commentaries and less like the innocent pop songs they'd started out recording. If you want to know what I'm talking about, listen to "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones," which -- regardless of who recorded it -- is one damn fine album. A lot of those songs showed a maturity that belied their reputation as the "Prefab Four."

Davy Jones was picked for the show because he was British (not very hard to figure out) and because he had an extensive resume as a stage performer (he was The Artful Dodger in a London production of "Oliver."). He knew his way around the stage, and those talents came in handy for the weekly filming of the Monkees.

He won his role as the bonafide teen idol of the group rather by default. There was very little warm and fuzzy about either Nesmith or Tork (at least it didn't project that way from the TV screen) and Dolenz was too much of a gawky clown to be anyone's love interest, de facto or otherwise.

That left Davy Jones. And being the actor he was, he played the part very well. So, the producers would put Davy in the role of being almost the damsel in distress a lot of the time (well, as much of a damsel as anyone who's not a woman can be). He also got to sing all the slow ballads (I remember the show where he sang "I Wanna Be Free").

If you were at all cynical (and were the sixties not a very cynical era), it came across, I suppose, as cloying. You could almost hear the gears from the machinery that set all this in motion as they clanged and rattled. That's how cloying it could be.

What saved them, of course, is that it was all fun. And despite the many ways, and times, they could have taken themselves seriously, they really didn't. They, themselves, were under no illusion that they were anything but what they were. They rode the wave for as long as they could, and when one of the other of them got tired of it, they stopped (both Tork and Nesmith left the band for spells while the show was still in production).

In recent years, they became just one more nostalgia act .. .either with Jones and Dolenz, or -- once in a while -- with Tork. Nesmith, except for brief forays, did not take part.

They have a place. Whether they were fake, whether every session musician in the canyon played on those records, whether they were thrown together as part of a TV show and were not a real band, they connected. For a couple of years, they made life fun. And after all, isn't what entertainment's about? To make life fun?

Somewhere in this great land, Marcia Brady is in mourning. So are a lot of other middle-aged women and grandmothers ... and even a few crusty, cynical curmudgeons who can't let go of the fact that so much about the Monkees wasn't what it seemed.

Whenever anyone who played such a vital role in making your youth memorable dies, whether it's suddenly or after an illness, it is cause for great reflection. And when it happens, we don't differentiate between the great (the likes of John Lennon, George Harrison and Roy Orbison) and the ordinary (which is where I'd put Davy Jones and the Monkees).

But it doesn't matter either. Regardless of how great, or not great, they might have been, they made a contribution and need to be properly remembered and appreciated for it.

It's certainly a poorer world without Davy Jones. It seems as if the death of any baby boomer icon forces that generation closer to coming to terms with realities that it's spent much of its time trying to avoid ... that we all get older, we all suffer the indignities of aging whether we even want to admit that we've aged, and someday, we're all going to die.

Wednesday it was Davy Jones' turn. May he rest in peace.

Wherever you are, George, happy birthday!

A friend wrote the following on Facebook recently: "It is important to understand that we are all playing in one place ... where each role is very important. And if you change a single role, the entire performance will need to be changed."

That passage has a great deal of meaning to me for a variety of reasons. It is, of course, important in any group endeavor that people understand that they often belong to something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

It's also true in relationships. If the dynamics of a relationship change too radically -- one way or the other -- it can often require a lot of work to absorb those changes without causing, as Obi Wan Kanobi might say, major disturbances in The Force.

So what does any of this have to do with music? I'll tell you. Today, George Harrison, had cancer not claimed him, would have been 69 years old. George was always the most intriguing of the four Beatles to me. He wasn't the face (that was Paul), or the brains (John), or the spirit (Ringo) maybe, but he was -- I think -- the soul of the group. And more important (to me, at least), he, of the four, was the most visible barometer of the band's journey through its different phases, and the ultimate changes in the group dynamics that led to its dissolution.

I saw that passage on Facebook and I didn't immediately think of George Harrison. I thought of the many friendships I've been in, and how easily things have changed in them when the dynamic got thrown off kilter by even the smallest of wrinkles. And it made me realize that in the end, whether we want to be or not, we are often what people perceive us to be. And when that perception changes, so, often, do the dynamic of the relationship.

Some friendships survive these changes ... others don't. And it's often up to the people involved to determine whether these friendships are important enough to evolve, or whether they're merely transitory events (sort like the reason/season/lifetime gauge).

There's a lot of different ways to go on dissecting "The Quiet Beatle." But what comes to mind today is how he grew both as a person and a songwriter, during the comparatively brief period the Beatles were together, and how that growth mirrored the changes that brought about the end of the group.

To understand this, you must know about the group's early days, where George was basically John Lennon and Paul McCartney's de facto little brother. That was his role. He was the tag-along, invited by Paul to audition for John. Legend has it he played one of the popular guitar instrumentals of the day (Raunchy) and that Lennon, suitably impressed, let him in.

He was in, but he was by no means an equal partner. He was sort of like the junior executive who got locked out of all the important meetings. And there was, at the time, nothing all that remarkable about him, other than that he could play guitar. Most people in the late fifties and early sixties just remember him as this nice, quiet kid whose parents tolerated rock 'n' roll, and who let John, Paul and whomever else practice at their house.

But that was the dynamic. Even after George started writing his own songs (he said he wrote "Don't Bother Me" because he was convinced that if John could write one, he could too) he was never to be confused with the real creative element of the band.

But something changed all that. And it began with George.

The point here is to keep with the first paragraph. Nobody (least of all me) is suggesting that George's forays into eastern mysticism or his increased yearning to be seen as an equal, as opposed to an adjunct, are necessarily bad. In the beginning, these yearnings gave the Beatles another dimension and truly set them apart from whatever else was happening at the time.

But, as the saying goes, the song remains the same. As the sixties progressed, it became impossible -- for this fan, anyway -- to view George Harrison as the guy in the middle. He quickly emerged as an individual, and perhaps that's because he was so far behind the other three in that regard through the early years.

Don't forget. When the Beatles came to America and performed on Ed Sullivan for the first time, George Harrison was two weeks short of his 21st birthday. Lennon was 23 and McCartney was 21. They had all this power, and all this fame, and they were kids.

Regardless of what or who they were behind closed doors, the Beatles quickly established public images that put Harrison squarely in the background. If you've ever watched a football game, you'll notice the backup quarterback stands on the sidelines in a baseball cap. That was George Harrison -- at least in the beginning.

He'd get a brief guitar solo in the middle of a song, he got to sing one per album, and if he was really good, Lennon and McCartney would let him record one of his own.

The problem was that as Harrison progressed through his 20s, and the Beatles careened through the sixties, George grew up. In the dynamic of the group, that probably wasn't supposed to happen. There wasn't enough room for three equals. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing Ringo was such an easy-going, simple, uncomplicated person or maybe the Beatles might have crashed and burned even sooner.

So there was George, as early as, perhaps, 1966 (Listen to "Think For Yourself" off Rubber Soul ... it's a fairly significant song), already growing beyond the parameters of the very narrow dynamic. He found the sitar, and Indian music, while the group filmed "Help" in 1965. You can see that from almost the very beginning, George was the Beatle least satisfied with the status quo.

And really, who would be satisfied at being cast as the tag-along all his life?

Nobody's suggesting that George Harrison single-handedly broke up the Beatles. Yoko Ono is generally given credit for that. And why? Because she also altered a very basic dynamic that held the group -- as tenuous as that hold was by 1968 -- together.

In fact, Yoko's alleged role in bringing the group down is so ingrained in our consciousness by now that whenever a strong female figure enters a famous man's life, she's referred to as a "Yoko Ono."

Mia Hamm, when she married Nomar Garciaparra of the Red Sox, was referred to by my sister as "Yoko Hamm." And these days, Giselle Bundchen gets the nod for the way she supposedly has neutered Tom Brady (though I don't see this one personally; Brady's doing just fine as far as I can see).

But the seeds that broke up the Beatles were planted well before John Lennon met Yoko Ono. She may have helped move the process along, but it was well under way.

As he got more prolific with his songwriting, George chafed being held back by the other two. If you watched the two-part HBO documentary on him, you'll know that he asked Eric Clapton to play on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" because he was upset that the other Beatles were treating the song too cavalierly.

George Harrison didn't break up the Beatles. But he began the long process of altering the experiment, as it were, and he did that simply by suggesting that he be treated as an equal within the group. Not a lot to ask.

It's been 10 years since he died. And while Paul McCartney has been knighted, and John Lennon has been practically canonized for being the spokesman of a generation (and I don't say that critically) I believe George Harrison emerged from the Beatles with a truer sense of himself than any of the other three. His wasn't a stress-free life by any means, and he could be, at times, quite the contrarian. But it seems, from hearing and reading about his post-Beatles days, that he stayed connected with his world, and the world around him, better than the others did.

Perhaps George said it best in the best song I think he's ever written, "All Things Must Pass."

"All things must pass/None of life's strings can last/So, I must be on my way/And face another day."

I always thought that at least part of that song was about the Beatles, and how they were wonderful for as long as they lasted ... but that they were also never meant to last forever.

And as an aside, that song was rejected by the group for the "Get Back" sessions that later became the "Let It Be" soundtrack album.

Now, some fans might object to this thesis, and it is -- of course -- their right to do that. But I think George Harrison was right. The Beatles came along at precisely the right time in U.S. history -- three months after the Kennedy assassination, when the country desperately needed something to smile about.

"Daylight is good at arriving at the right time/Its not always going to be this grey."

But they weren't the Rolling Stones nor were they U2. They were a supernova, with a unique and very, very fragile dynamic that was bound to change once the four members grew out of post-adolescence and started becoming men. It's just that the first one of the four to really do that was George Harrison, and, in so doing, made it possible for the rest of them -- particularly John Lennon -- to follow suit.

And that's why I think he was the soul of the group. He may have started the journey as the tag-along. But in many ways, he ended up being the leader in their emergence as mature men.

As I said, he was always the most intriguing of the four.

"It is important to understand that we are all playing in one place ... where each role is very important. And if you change a single role, the entire performance will need to be changed."

George was the first one to change his role. For a long time afterward, the Beatles continually tried to change the performance until, finally, the performance was permanently canceled.

As a fan, I miss what he could have contributed to this world had cancer not claimed him 10 years ago.

So, wherever you are, George, happy birthday.

Amy ... Whitney ... sadly the list goes on

I was a senior in high school, meeting a bunch of my friends on September 18, 1970, to go into Boston to attend a Credence Clearwater Revival concert. When we all met, one of my friends turned to me and said, "you see what Hendrix did?"

I had not seen what Hendrix did. But what Jimi Hendrix had done was taken an overdose of sleeping pills and -- in the grand tradition of the movie "This is Spinal Tap" choked on his own regurgitation.

For a 17-year-old high school kid about to embark on one of life's great adventures -- a night in Boston without any kind of adult supervision, to see the hottest group in the USA at the time -- Jimi Hendrix's death was a glancing blow. He certainly wasn't the first rock star in my memory to die under somewhat nefarious circumstances. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones had him beaten by a year ... July 3, 1969, when he drowned in his swimming pool at the age of 27. Abuse of drugs and alcohol had enlarged both his heart and is liver.

But it was stunning nonetheless. Here was a guy on top of his world. He was one of the great guitarists and showmen of the rock era, and his rendition of the National Anthem at Woodstock -- something that I had just seen for the first time just months before when the movie came out -- was already the stuff of legends.

To see him struck down, and in such an undignified way to boot, made a profound impression on me. I may have, from time to time, done a little weed in my younger days, but visceral mental images of the likes of Hendrix, Jones, and two other iconic rockers -- Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison -- who also died within that same year's period of time were enough to scare me away from any serious, or chronic, drug or alcohol use.

Ironically all four of the aforementioned rockers died at the age of 27, which -- obviously became kind of a dangerous age for those who indulged in the three vices of our era (sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll).

Sadly, these were not the last four rockers to die from drugs, either directly or indirectly. The list is staggering. And beyond the simple tragedy of anyone that young dying due to his or her addictions, the loss to humanity of what these tremendous artists had to offer is equally tragic.

Whitney Houston is the latest. Last year, it was Amy Winehouse. I cannot say I was the biggest fan of either, though it was obvious both had tremendous talent, and the love their fans had for them was genuine. And besides, it hardly matters, at times like this, whether you like Whitney Houston or not. What matters is that she was only 48, and despite her enormous talent and fame, lived a tortured life because of her addictions.

I remember the 2002 Super Bowl, when U2 sang "MLK" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" with a scroll of all the 9/11 victims in the background. Very moving ... very meaningful.

I feel like doing that tonight. You could probably fill five blogs with the names of musicians who have died from drugs, again either directly or indirectly.

I'm of that generation that thought it was cool the way groups like the Beatles related their experiences with LSD through their songs. I loved songs like "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "She Said, She Said," that -- as I came to find out -- were directly related to acid trips that John Lennon took in the mid 1960s.

And I was certainly one of many of my era who thought "thank God for LSD." It didn't mean I had to take it, but it was certainly responsible for some great music.

But was it? Did the condition of the artists when these songs were germinating help or get in the way? That's the age-old argument, and I've had it with many people over the last 30 or so years.

But when you think of someone as beautiful, and as beautifully talented, as Whitney Houston, lying dead at the age of 48, you can't help but think that even if drugs don't end up being the official cause of death, you're inclined to do the math. And you're inclined to say to yourself, "there's your answer." If drugs keep robbing us of our musical and cultural icons, whether they're Billie Holliday, Judy Garland, Lenny Bruce, Kurt Cobain, John Belushi, Dennis Wilson, Keith Moon or John Entwistle, then how can anyone claim that the drugs these people took did anything other than rob them of live ... and us of their talent?

I no longer think what I thought back in the late 1960s.

But if anyone needs a reminder of just how destructive substance abuse, or addictions, can be, here's a list of some of my more noteworthy chemical casualties. These were people who meant something to me, for various reasons. They're not all musicians but that's OK for today. They're all connected.

And by all means, feel free to click onto the link I've provided for "Where The Streets Have No Name" and listen while you're reading.

Jack Kerouac was a beat-generation author whose book "On the Road" was required reading for millions of people who came of age at the same time I did. In fact, I had to read the book my senior year in high school, right around the same time both Hendrix and Janis died. He died in 1969 of cirrhosis of the liver due to a lifetime of heavy drinking.

Judy Garland. She was Dorothy ... the very definition of wide-eyed, heartland America innocence. If there's a more iconic children's movie lead in the history of motion pictures, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you who. But because of the grueling schedule that went with the filming of the "Wizard of Oz," she was given artificial stimulants to keep her awake; and artificial depressants to bring her down. She was 49 when she died, never having completely freed herself of her addictions.

Elvis Presley. Look up his cause of death sometime. He could have started his own pharmaceutical company with what was in his body when he died.

Sid Vicious. Put me down as a fan of the early punk stuff, because if it did nothing else, it gave disco a swift kick out the door, and injected some life into a genre that was close to collapsing under the weight of its own excesses. And the Sex Pistols were certainly huge contributors. Heroin, among other things did him in.

Len Bias. Oh, to be a Celtics fan in 1986. The C's had just won the NBA championship, and Red Auerbach had just bamboozled some poor team into trading him a draft pick that turned out to be Len Bias, the fabulously gifted forward from the University of Maryland. Bias was the guy who was going to be the link between Larry Bird and the next generation. Only the day after Bias was drafted, he died of a cocaine overdose.

Mike Bloomfield. This guy was a tremendous blues guitarist who died in 1981 of some unspecified drug overdose.

John Bonham. Led Zeppelin, according to book I read a while ago about Laurel Canyon, was the No. 1 party band to pass through the LA rock scene. Apparently, no woman was safe when Led Zep came to town. The boys -- all four of them -- had gargantuan appetites for sex and drugs and booze and whatever else came their way, and their off-stage exploits were just about as legendary as "Stairway to Heaven" and "Dazed and Confused." One night, though, Bonham became very dazed and confused, consuming 40 shots of vodka, and then doing the "Spinal Tap" in his sleep. He did not come down for breakfast the next morning.

Paul Butterfield. As in "Paul Butterfield Blues Band." As in "died of drug-related heart failure."

Jeanine Deckers. I know. You're saying who? Well, she was the Singing Nun, who came out with that song "Dominique" in the 1960s. She was only 52 she she killed herself via barbiturates and alcohol.

Brian Epstein. None of the fun we had in the 1960s would have ever happened had Epstein, who was gay and who worked in a record store, not fallen for John Lennon after seeing the Beatles perform in their head-to-toe leather outfits one day. He worked day and night on behalf of the Beatles after that, and he was responsible for a good deal of the early success that just snowballed and became Beatlemania. But his was a sad life, too, and it took its toll. He died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.

Chris Farley and John Belushi. What's more to say? Belushi may have been one of the most talented comedians/actors of our generation ... and Farley wasn't too far behind. They both had a penchant of creating characters that connected strongly with us. Belushi's Samurai Warrior ... Brilliant. Farley's Matt Foley, or his nervous talk show host who interviewed Paul McCartney? Inspired. Drugs claimed both their lives.

Lowell George. I count "Dixie Chicken" as one of the great sing-along songs whenever it comes on the radio. I don't care who's watching. I'll just blast it to the top of my lungs. And Little Feat ... great band. One night, George collapsed in his hotel room and died. They called it an unspecified drug overdose.

Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. God, how could you not love The Band? I'll tell you how much I love The Band. The day of my father's funeral, after we got back from the restaurant where the post-service meal was held, I found "The Last Waltz" on TV and watched it from beginning to end. That's how much love The Band. Manuel and Danko were such integral parts of that group. In fact, in between long stints of the group's inactivity, Danko and Manuel used to tour together. Manuel fought with alcohol and drugs all his life, but relapsed once too often and committed suicide. Danko died of drug-related heart failure, just like John Entwistle and so many others.

As I said before, I could go on and on. The list is endless. The carnage is staggering. And even if Whitney Houston's not really my No. 1 cup of tea, she has now joined this damned list of drug casualties, just as Amy Winehouse did a year earlier.

And I'm reminded of another line, from another song, sung so many years ago: "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn."

Songs to get revved up by ...

Go to Gillette Stadium on any given Sunday and it's a cacophony of Ozzie Osbourne, AC/DC, Rush, Aerosmith, and God knows how many more.

The Patriots loved to play music -- at ear-splitting decibels -- designed to get you, the fans, into the game. I suppose getting cranked up by good, old-fashioned, kick-ass rock 'n' roll is better, for everyone's safety, than Tom Brady's preferred method ... which is to say "get all lubed up and be loud." But if you've been to as many rock concerts as I have, and have a good case of tinnitus going on, it can all be a little harsh.

Still, there's a strong correlation between loud, raucous music and loud, raucous crowds. That only stands to reason.

It makes sense. Music creates ambiance. Music may be one of the biggest contributors to ambiance. Well that and, perhaps, some good wine.

You wouldn't, for example, play the second side of Led Zeppelin IV at some high-brow, wine and brie, PBS-style fund raiser. A string quartet might be more appropriate. You might, however, put on the second side to Led Zeppelin IV if you wanted to make out with some girl. At least, that's what Mike Damone thought when he was giving his friend, Rat, some idiotic advice in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."

I never got that, by the way. I could think of many, many songs or entire albums that created a better mood for seduction than the second side to Led Zeppelin IV.

Anyway, when it comes to ballparks, football games, the gym, working around the house, we all have our favorites. By now, thanks to iTunes and iPods, we can pretty much categorize every genre, and make our little lists of what we want to hear when we're in different moods. For example, gym songs are much different than clean-the-house songs. And cruising songs are different than both. Football music is in a class by itself.

I'll be in Indianapolis Sunday, and I'm sure I'll hear 'em all. "Crazy Train," "Welcome to the Jungle," "Rock & Roll Part 2," "For Those Who Are About to Rock," "We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions ..." They're all pretty much universal by now.

But here are a few more.

In no particular order they are: "Nighttime is the Right Time," J. Geils. This was the Geils band at its best. Driving rhythm, great Peter Wolf vocals ... This is what made J. Geils one of the best U.S. bands of the '70s and '80s. It kind of gets your blood boiling. If there's a runner up, it would be "House Party" another pot-boiler.

"Baba O'Reilly," the Who. Actually, you hear this a lot. They play it at the Patriots once in a while, but you hear it more at high school football games. Even though the song came out in 1971, when some of today's crop of high school kids' grandparents might have just been getting out of high school, it's still a staple.

"Sirius," by the Alan Parsons Projects. This is the one that is the instrumental prelude to "Eye in the Sky." I've heard this one pounding out of speakers in so many high school gyms that it's indelibly etched in my brain. I actually wish they'd keep going and finish up with "Eye in the Sky," because that's one damn good song!

The "Black Eyed Peas" may have stuck out the joint last year when the did the halftime show at the Super Bowl, but "I gotta Feeling" is pretty good song just same. And since Sunday's game starts at 6:30 p.m., I "Gotta Feeling" Sunday night's going to be a good night.

A few years ago, when the Red Sox were in the throes of the "Curse of the Bambino" they used to play the opening section of Michael Oldfeld's "Tubular Bells" during the player introductions. Lest anyone not remember the significance of that, "Tubular Bells" was the theme to "The Exorcist." So I'm sure it's easy enough to do the math there.

The Sox also used to play the part of album where the late Viv Stanshall, of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (yes, there was such a band) named off all the instruments Mike Oldfield used in his opus as the music crescendo-ed to a climax with loud tubular bells. Only every time another instrument was named, PA announcer Carl Beane would substitute the name of a player.

I'd say that's unique. It's certainly the most creative use of pre-game stadium music I've ever heard.

Anyway, back to the mundane ... somebody, somewhere, always plays "Eye of the Tiger," from Rocky III. It's an all-right song. Most interesting than the song, is the knowledge that the lead singer, a guy by the name of Jim Peterik, was the also the lead singer from a group out of the early '70s, "Ides of March," which did a Blood, Sweat & Tears sound-alike song called "I'm Your Vehicle."

Anyway, if you want to see something funny, click on this.

Another staple, of course, is Thin Lizzy's "The Boys are Back in Town," although personally, I like the title song to the album, "Jailbreak" a little more.

Here's one that I like, that nobody ever plays, probably because it was almost a throwaway cut on Van Halen's "1984" album. It's called "Panama," and it has all the ingredients of your basic mindless, high-powered, all-hat-no-cattle rock 'n' roll party song. In other words, a perfect song to work out to, party to, or just listen to if you're in a funk and need something totally undemanding of your time and energy.

Similarly, "Get This Party Started," by Pink kind of falls into that category too. To me, it would be one of those songs they played during time out, to get people out of their seats and moving around. And if you know anything about the Super Bowl, especially if you're there watching it live, that's all there are. Every commercial takes an eternity, the halftime show is a half-hour, and the whole thing kind of takes on the effect of filming a television show.

None of that time in the stadium is dead time. All of it is taken up by some ungodly noise or another. Pink's just as good as anything else.

There are about a thousand and one Stevie Ray Vaughn songs that would definitely qualify as "music to get revved up by." The best one, though, is "The House Is Rockin, Don't bother Knockin." Love it.

A lot of those 12-bar blues type songs are good exercise songs. They have a steady beat, they drive, there's very active drumming, and decent guitar work. One of my favorite '80s type 12-bar blue songs was "Keep Your Hands To Yourself," by the Georgia Satellites.

I discovered YMCA aerobics classes in the '80s, and this instructor, who had the body mass index of a pencil, used to get us all going by playing that song. By the time I was done, I was sucking wind like nobody's business. Despite that, it remains one of my favorite songs, and it's on heavy rotation when I go to the gym.

She also used to play John Fogarty's "Rock 'n' Roll Girls" off the "Centerfield" album too. Made me want to go right out and buy a saxophone. Funny. Fogarty's rebirth was the song "Centerfield," but I never really liked it all that much. It's made its way into the Hall of Fame of baseball songs, but it doesn't come close to "Talkin' Baseball" by Terry Cashman. But that's another song for another day.

And speaking of the ol' 12-bar, Aerosmith's "Big Ten Inch (Record of My Favorite Blues)" gets a lot of iPod time at the gym too.

You could probably pick four or five good Sly and the Family Stone songs to add to this list, but I'll confine it to one ... the obvious one ... "Dance to the Music." I'll bet if they ever played that at a football game, the place would really be rocking.

Once in a while, I'll watch those old Ed Sullivan nostalgia shows on PBS, and they'll show the clip of Sly and the Family singing that song ... and Sly and his sister going into the audience to coax a little participation out of the suit and tie crowd.

This was still the sixties, and most of the people in the audience probably had never heard of Sly and the Family Stone, and probably never wanted to. And they didn't know what to make of it all.

List isn't complete without at least one Rolling Stones song on it, and my choice would be "Honky Tonk Woman," even though they've done better songs (though certainly not many!). Again, it has the proper qualifications ... it's loud, a little bit raunchy (ya think!), and it drives.

The Beatles didn't do much in the way of stadium music, unless you take some of the earlier Chuck Berry/Carl Perkins covers ... and I don't count them. The Beach Boys have a few that could qualify, my favorite -- of this ilk, at least -- being "Surfin' USA," because, again, it's a Chuck Berry ripoff. And, of course, you do hear "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen every now and then.

I will conclude with one song I wish would STOP being a stadium classic, and that's "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond. Its only raison d'etre in the first place is a fluke. Someone in charge of playing music over the Fenway Park public address system heard it somewhere else and played it in between the top and the bottom of the eighth inning one night. It stuck. And now, I'm afraid, it's here to stay. Pity.

I'm sure many people have many other songs. These are but a few. Any suggestions are welcome.

Peace, love, and happiness

Well, last week we explored as many songs about heartache and heartbreak that we could fit into a readable column. The feedback was great. Seems that's a universal subject ... timeless to boot ... and that we've all had one, or perhaps more than one, of the experiences brought forth by some of these songs.

So in the interest of fairness, I thought I'd try to identify my favorite "songs that just make you feel good." They don't churn up any raw emotion ... they don't make you feel like your baby just left you or that your dog died. They just, you know, give you a nice, inner glow. You hear them and you just walk around with a smile on your face the whole rest of the day. And as longhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif as there's no emotional connection with the person you're trying to forget, you can seek them out when you're depressed and -- for that three or four minutes, at least -- escape that elephant of moroseness pressing down on your chest.

So here we go ...

"59th Street Bridge Song" by Paul Simon. I like the Harper's Bizarre's version of this better than the recorded original, so I provided a link to a live performance of it by S&G.

Doesn't matter. It's such an infectious song. It's a walking song, if you know what I mean. All I think of when I hear it is walking around New York, or Boston, on days when I have nothing to do ... no people I have to see. Perfect days to get lost in the city and become an observer. You can't help but feel absolutely uplifted after you've heard it.


"Life's A Long Song," Jethro Tull. Actually, this isn't necessarily written as an uplifting "feel-good" song. Ian Anderson has said it's about taking stock of your life and trying to make some good out of the things that happen to you. Remember, he says, "Life is a long song ... but the tune ends too soon for us all."

It's an important thing to remember. You're in that box a long, long time. The tune ends too soon for us all.

And I love, love, love this version of it. One of great things about Jethro Tull over the year was their ability to arrange songs that would make a chamber orchestra jealous ... and then turn around and do something totally, uncompromisingly, rocking like "Locomotive Breath." Anderson was never a darling of the critics, and -- thus -- I always thought he was/is unfairly underrated. To this day, Tull is one of my all-time favorite bands.


"It's A Beautiful Day," U2. OK. I have to admit before anything else, that I'll always think of the New England Patriots winning their first Super Bowl when I hear this song. It's one of the two that U2 played during the halftime show. And when the Patriots raised the banner the following September, that's the song they played. Not only that, it's the song they played to test the PA system out.

But beyond all that, this song's pretty simple to figure out. It's about feeling hopeless but being able to rejoice in what you have.

"What you don't have you don't need it now ... what you don't know you can feel it somehow ..."

Oh ... and one more thing. I was once asked, "if you could be anyone in the world, who would you be?" My answer: Bono. I've seen U2 a couple of times, and the sway he holds over his audience ... unbelievable. I'd love to have that much impact on people.

This is one of two U2 songs on this list (well, there could be more than two, but you have be as diversified as you can).

The other one is "Gloria.". This, of course, comes from the group's early days when they were very up front about their Christianity. And while I'm not always a big fan of "God Rock," this song is different, somehow. The final chorus ... "Gloria, in te domine/Gloria, Gloria ... sounds like it's coming right from the heavens.

The version of this song that U2 did at Red Rocks, way back in 1984, is still one of the best. I was once under the influence of a particular organic chemical (back when I did that sort of thing) while riding home from somewhere with that Red Rocks tape blasting at full decibels. I could have sworn that the final chorus was coming right out of the sky!


"The Swallow," The Moody Blues. This is probably not one of the better known Moody Blues songs. It's by Justin Hayward, he of plaintive, painful, heart-rending love ballads like "Nights in White Satin," where you just want to cry for anyone that tortured.

But this is the 60-something-year-old Justin. The song is off the band's "Strange Times" album ... a record that barely made a dent in the popular culture of 1999. In fact, if you haven't ever heard of the album, or the song, you're hardly alone. I'd say you were in the majority.

But I'm a fan ... or this band, and of this song. It has a peaceful vibe to it. He said he wrote it because every evening he and his wife would sit out side and watch the swallows from their home in Monaco. Just a peaceful, romantic thing to do, I'd imagine.

"It's so strange/life in the really slow lane/Take it easy/That's what we'll do."

Nothing says contentment like that, does it?

Enjoy "Nothing Changes," which was tacked on to the end of this clip.


"Peaceful, Easy Feeling," Eagles. If you're going to to write a blog post about "feel-good" you have to include this ... even though it's not one of my personal favorites. Truth? I always gravitated toward Don Henley when it came to the Eagles. Henley was grit. Henley was caustic, acerbic observations about the "beautiful people" he had to deal with in the music business. Henley was "Hotel California" and "Life in the Fast Lane."

Glenn Frey, even though he didn't write this particular song (nobody from the group did), took the lead on it. Which is fine. Frey was always more laid back. In fact, were it not for the fact that somebody had to play drums, you'd never know Henley had anything to do with this song. Frey sings it, Bernie Leadon provides the main harmony, and Randy Meisner comes in at the end ... for the third part.

It's a nice song, though. Kind of gives off a good vibe. Like a great majority of rock songs, it has to do with "man loves woman and isn't quite certain where it's all going to go." But in this particular case, "I have a peaceful easy feeling ... 'cause I'm already on the ground."


"Buy For Me The Rain," by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. This is just a gorgeous song. Just listen to it. It is beautiful. You can't help but feel 10 times better after hearing it than you did before.

It comes with a few caveats. "Buy for me the robin, darling, buy for me the wing/Buy for me a sparrow, almost any flying thing/And I’ll buy for you a tree, my love, where a robin’s nest may grow/Buy it for me now, babe, the years all hurry so."

I think that's the verse that kind of sums up the song. Life for the now. The years all hurry so. Or, as Ian Anderson would say, "the tune ends too soon for us all."

"Groovin," The Young Rascals. The Rascals were a favorite at my address growing up. This is another song that just kind of defies explanation. It just is. Me 'n' my sweetie, groovin on a Sunday afternoon, creating our own vibe. Sometimes, simple is better.

"Daydream," Lovin' Spoonful. Another song like "Groovin," that that doesn't need all that much of an analysis. It's out of the same era ... mid 1960s, when there were a lot of these "feel-good" songs that -- for all I know -- came out of the artists' habitual inhalations of organic chemical substances.

That sort of thing did produce its own unique vibe.

By the way, The Spoonful impressed Paul McCartney enough that he wrote a tribute to it of sorts ... "Good Day Sunshine" from the "Revolver" album.

"Lazy Day" by Spanky And Our Gang. This complete the trilogy of mid-sixties, hippy-dippy feel-good songs you'll see here.

I don't know ... I suppose it would be nice to have that much merriment in your life, but again, one can only imagine what substances were being smoked while a lot of these songs were conceived and even recorded.

What makes these songs to special to me is the era in which they were recorded. In many other aspects, it was horrible. We were in the middle of a horrendously unpopular war, there was civil unrest in many of our major cities, we were only three or four years removed from John F. Kennedy's assassination ... there were plenty of reasons to for us to be an unhappy, apprehensive and dour nation.

Yet these minstrels -- and that's what they were -- who walked around singing about love and peace, and "saying right out loud, I love you" in the middle of a crowded park ... they performed a service. They reminded people that they can find their own happiness in life's most mundane moments ... a walk in the park, or even a walk past a house with a freshly mowed lawn (one of the best aromas I know, by the way). They reminded us that life didn't need to be complicated, and a struggle all the time.

As the sixties progressed, of course, the horror took over. The negative overwhelmed the positive. We had Chicago, Altamont, Manson ... the decade careened to a tumultuous close. But for those few years in the mid-sixties, when there was still an element of optimism, those kinds of songs really illustrated it.

I will conclude this piece with a Beatles song off "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" that I've always loved. It's "Fixing a Hole" by Paul McCartney.

First of all, some idiot thought this was about drugs when Sgt. Pepper came out. Was that person serious? It was? Just like "Hey, Jude" was about heroin because of one line that could have only been interpreted that way by someone hopelessly paranoid and out of touch?

"Fixing A Hole" is not about drugs. In fact, it's probably one of the few songs on Sgt. Pepper that isn't, in some way, related to, or in response to, drugs.

By the time Pepper came out, everybody wanted to know more about this LSD. And when the Beatles admitted they'd used it -- which they had been doing since about 1965 -- that just left all their songs open to whatever meaning people wanted to give them.

It didn't help when songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" alluded to hallucinogenic experiences ... or when the bridges to "A Day in the Life" exploded in cacophony as soon as Lennon sang "I'd Love To Turn You On."

These days, that might mean something else. Back then, it meant "drop acid."

It may sound like a song about Sir Paul doing chores around the house ... fixing his roof, filling the cracks in his walls ... but while the song wasn't about drugs, it's also true that few Beatles songs from that era came metaphor-free.

So it is with this one. But I like the metaphors. I like the fact that McCartney was saying that after all the hurly-burly of Beatlemania, he was ready to take some time for Paul ... that the world couldn't own him forever ... that it was time for him to kick back a little and figure out what was important in his life.

For that was basically where the Beatles themselves were at after they stopped touring in 1966. I think Paul wrote about all their efforts, collectively, over that autumn and winter leading into "Sergeant Pepper" to step back from the maddening crowd and re-establish their connection with themselves.

The line that always stood out to me: "I'm taking the time for a number of things/that weren't important yesterday."

Love that line. Says it all to me.

Thanks for reading ... and, again, any input is welcome.

No more words need to be said ...

Just these ...

From U2 ...

... and Dion

Martin Luther King Jr.
January 15, 1929 -- April 4, 1968

Heartache and Heartbreak

As I often do when I sit down to write, I put my tunes on. And since this is a music column, naturally, I put the music on today to come up with a theme, because I didn't really have one.

And I'm thinking, "That's great. Two weeks into this, and I'm fresh out of ideas. Some blog."

Then, the Marshall Tucker Band's "Can't You See" came on. I'm not one for country rock ... usually. I won't say I hate it, but but it's not generally the music I listen to when I really need, as the Rolling Stones would say, an emotional rescue.

But there it was. I love the song anyway, and I'd love it even if I didn't know what it was about. First, I love flutes. I love Jethro Tull, and I love the Moody Blues, and Traffic, and MTB. And the flute is the first thing that got me with this song.

But I got to really listening to the words. They're not particularly profound. You don't need Cliff's Notes to figure out what they mean. Actually, they're pretty raw.

I like raw. Particularly this verse: "I'm gonna find me/a hole in the wall/I'm gonna crawl inside and die/Come a later now/a mean ol' woman, Lord/never told me goodbye."

It helps to know the author wrote the song about his former girlfriend, who shot herself and shot the couple's dog in a unique murder/suicide. Lovely.

But don't those lyrics just cry out "despair?"

Music ... all music ... probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for heartache and heartbreak. It's the soundtrack of all our emotions, really. There isn't a single episode on my life, especially a sad one, that doesn't spring to mind if I hear a certain song.

For example, I can't hear "Nights in White Satin" by the Moody Blues without thinking about my freshman year of college, when I was crushing madly on a girl from Connecticut named Melinda ... who, as you might have guessed, returned my affections with considerably less gusto and enthusiasm.

But Melinda did tell me she liked opera, and that one of the local companies was performing Puccini's "Tosca" (a little highbrow cultural reference to impress you all). I'd never heard of it. Outside of "Carmen," and that's only because of the "March of the Toreadors," I couldn't name one.

So I did what any totally infatuated 18-year-old would do. I went to the opera house and bought two tickets. Then, I went to Melinda's dorm and asked her if she'd like to go with me.

She turned me down.

I ended up giving the tickets away. But that's not why I remember "Nights."

I remember it because the next day, still enormously depressed over being summarily rejected, I went into the Northeastern University bookstore to find an economics book the professor had assigned us to read. But our bookstore didn't have it. Try the Harvard Coop, I was told.

That was OK with me. Road trips in and around Boston always cleared my head. They still do.

I found the book at the Coop, took my place in line, and noticed there was some very exotic music playing from what appeared to be an elaborate Sensurround speaker system. The music just came out of everywhere.

What I was hearing was the "Sunset/Twilight Time" cuts from the Moodies' "Days of Future Passed."

When "Nights" came on, I recognized it. And man, did it just fit my mood! It's not exactly an uplifting song anyway, with a very haunting flute and perhaps the most angst-ridden "I love you" ever recorded. Not to mention that the crescendo that leads to the "Late Lament" poem that closes the album is, at the same time, heartbreaking and breathtaking.

Usually, when I'm feeling emotional, songs like "Nights in White Satin" really bring it to the surface. In fact, as I mentioned in the initial post here, it's one of only three songs in recorded rock history that make me stop in my tracks and just listen.

Now, there's been considerable discussion about how and why Justin Hayward of the Moodies wrote this. He was 19 (and, as an aside, how must it feel to have hit your creative and commercial peak before you even hit 20?) and in between relationships.

He sat up one night, unable to sleep, and composed the song to reflect his state of mind about ending one relationship and perhaps beginning another one.

I'd also heard, somewhere, that the title was inspired by the song "In the Still of the Night" by the Five Satins, but I think the Moody-philes have settled on this: He was trying to sleep on a new set of white satin sheets he'd been given, and between his mental anguish and his difficulty adjusting to the sheets, he just couldn't.

Anyway, "Can't You See" and "Nights in White Satin" are two of my favorite (if that's a term you can use here) songs about heartache and heartbreak, which is the topic of today's discussion.

Here are some others songs that make my list of the most profoundly sad songs about heartache and heartbreak:


"Aimee," by the Pure Prairie League is a breezy, country-rock song by the group whose main contribution to music might have been that it gave us Vince Gill (though not on this record). But right off the bat, we get to the issue. Aimee and our singer just can't seem to connect. He keeps falling in and out of love with her, and he's reached the point where he wants to try to make it work. But, as he sings, "you're off with someone else and I'm alone."

And I have to tell you ... when you're crushing on someone, or if you sense something's about to end, the knowledge that the person you're crazy about is out having a good time with someone else while you're home stewing over it is just torture.

"If You Could Read My Mind," By Gordon Lightfoot is an awfully sad song. It just tears the heart right out of you.

There's a personal story behind this song too, because it came out my senior year of high school, all while I was trying to work up the nerve to ask my sister's best friend to the prom.

And, just like with "Nights," those memories are indelible. She went with me. Win. We never went out again. Fail. And when I hear the mellow acoustic guitar opening to the song, I always have to brace myself.

Gordon says he wrote this about his divorce, and that certainly sounds right. It speaks to a relationship that's suddenly grown cold and distant. "I don't know where we went wrong, but the feeling's gone, and I just can't get it back."

If anyone ever said that to me, or even if I ended up feeling that way toward someone else I've loved for a long time, I really don't know what I'd do either.

Another song that speaks to divorce is "Fortress Around Your Heart" by Sting. It's heavy on visuals and metaphors, but he's said that it's about the pain that surrounded the dissolution of his first marriage.

Sting said it was about the walls he set up to protect his ex-wife when he, and The Police, first started getting famous. The point is that now that the marriage had begun falling apart, he had to penetrate that fortress he'd elaborately constructed, and it had become impossible.

I think this about sums it up: "This prison has now become your home/A sentence you seem prepared to pay."

One of the sadder songs, to me, is "Silver, Blue and Gold" by Bad Company. This one's just full of lines that can absolutely crush your heart. But to me, the most painful one is this: "Oh the time that it takes for a love to grow cold/Is a wonder to me/I'm walking around with my head hanging down/Tell me where is she?"

Sometimes, the dynamic just changes. There's a different vibe. It might take a while for it to all come out in the wash, but it's there. And it can absolutely make you crazy..

And, of course, is there a more plaintive plea than "Don't forsake me 'cause I love you?" How many times have we all had people we've loved completely cut us out of their lives.

When George Harrison recorded the album "All Things Must Pass," it was filled mostly with songs that had been rejected by the Beatles. One of them was the title song.

The day after he died, CBS showed an old clip of Harrison on a talk show, and of all the songs he could have played, that's the one he chose.

I think it's his best song. It's all about how nothing ever stays the same ... including love.

You could read the song a couple of ways. One interpretation, of course, is that it was a veiled reference to his belief that all this "Beatles" stuff had to end eventually, because nothing lasts forever.

But, he also says that sometimes, love doesn't last forever either. I suppose it's little consolation to someone who's just been told "It's over." But there it is. All things must pass. He keeps saying "it's not always going to be this grey," but that's a tough concept to grasp while you're going through such a change. You get it, eventually. But not right away.

And on a personal note, if there's a song in the rock repertoire that can make me want to cry in a heartbeat, it's this one.

About 20 or so years ago, maybe more, Chris Isaak burst onto the scene with a song called "Wicked Game." I'm sure we all remember the video of him cavorting around the beach with this super-model chick. In 1991, videos didn't have the capacity to go viral the way they do today, but this one got a lot of notoriety just the same ... more for the images on the beach than what the song was actually about.

But listen to it (that's why I've provided links for all these songs). There's just a wealth of self-flagellation material in this one, starting with "strange what desire will make foolish people do."

"What a wicked game to play/to make me feel this way/what a wicked thing you do, to make me dream of you/what a wicked thing to say/you never felt this way/what a wicked thing you do/to make me dream of you."

Can that be any sadder? That whole song is about how he didn't want to fall in love with the woman, but couldn't help himself ... and once he was good and hooked, she turned around and walked away. Wow.

Then there's this one: "Junkie" by 100 Monkeys. Now, I don't want to take credit for being hip here. It was recommended to me by someone who's much hipper than I could ever be. It's an interesting song. It's along the lines of "Should I Stay or Should I go" by the Clash (not part of this list) in that the lyrics are extremely biting.

Ever since you left me/I won't pick up the phone/ Every single time I do/Someone asks me if you're home/And I have to say no/They have to ask where did you go."

It's bad enough that it's over. But having to explain to everyone why it's over, or when it ended, is 10 times worse. It's easy to see why you'd just want to curl up into the fetal position and shut the world out.

Before I get to the final three "heart of hearts" on the list of "heartache and heartbreak" songs here's a list of honorable mentions (you'll have to find your own links on these): "Heartbreak Hotel," Elvis Presley; "Don't They Know It's the End of the World" by Skeeter Davis; "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone, Bill Withers (with all the "I knows" in it); Roy Orbison (take your pick, but "Crying" and "It's Over" are the two that most readily come to mind); "Caroline, No!" by the Beach Boys; and "I'm So Lonesome I could Cry" by Hank Williams.

Now ... for the final three (to go along with the first two songs on this list):

"Tangled up in Blue" by Bob Dylan sure sounds as if it's a song about his old days in and around the New York folk scene. There's a Montague Street in New York (well, it's in Brooklyn, actually), and the folk movement blossomed in the cafes around Greenwich Village in the early sixties. Those were heady times, and, as we've already seen from the numerous stories and biographies about the man, Bob Dylan was no stranger to entangled relationships (See "Boots of Spanish Leather").

Regret runs through this song like a raging river. He paints vignettes of a relationship he had with a women ... one that ended badly. But the key line is this "And when, finally, the bottom fell out I became withdrawn/the only thing I could think to do was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew/tangled up in blue."

And that's it. You put one foot in front of the other, and keep going forward. There isn't much else you can do.

The Young Rascals came out with "How Can I Be Sure" in either 1966 or 1967 (I don't remember). It isn't about heartbreak as much as it is about heartache. Have you ever wondered, as you find yourself falling head over heals for someone, where you stand? You can think of little else, and you start wondering whether this person you're spending all your time thinking about feels the same way.

Here's a sampling: "How do I know?/Maybe you're trying to use me/Flying too high can confuse me/Touch me but don't take me down."

That's the wonderful thing about music. Someone like Eddie Brigati (who wrote the song) can just touch the emotions of so many. Wonderfully sad song!

I was the king of teenage crushes. As a result, I found myself thinking about that song a lot!

For perhaps the most universally famous song about heartache and heartbreak, we turn to Eric Clapton and "Layla." For this, I've provided the link to the original cut, as opposed to the slowed-down "Unplugged" version broadcast on VH-1.

I think we all know what it's about, but for those who don't: Eric Clapton was profoundly in love with George Harrison's ex-wife, Patti Boyd. He wrote the song about his unrequited love for her, and based it on an Arab tale about a princess, Layla, who was forced to marry someone other than the man who was passionately in love with her.

Every verse of this song is heartbreaking. But the one that jumps out at me is this: "I tried to give you consolation/When your old man had let you down./Like a fool, I fell in love with you,/Turned my whole world upside down."

This has all the elements ... damsel in distress, white knight, and that long, lurching road to hell that takes place when you ride to the rescue once too often and develop an infatuation.

And of course, "Layla, you've got me on my knees" pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

A couple of interesting music things about that song. First, the song was written and recorded in 1970 by Derek and the Dominos, with Duane Allman playing slide guitar. But it didn't achieve chart success until two years later, by which time Duane Allman had died.

Second, the long piano coda at the end was written not by Clapton, but by Jim Gordon. Clapton never performs it in concerts.

Anyway, these are my top heartache/heartbreak songs. Some of these feelings I actually experienced when, in high school and college, I seemed to fall in and out of love every five minutes. Others have dealt with friends and/or colleagues who have had their dreams and fantasies shattered by fractured relationships.

I hope you enjoyed this. And feel free to chime in with yours.

--------

I've added a few, based on some feedback I got, and a few others I'd forgotten about that really seem appropriate.

The Beatles did their share of angst-ridden breakup songs. But none of them as mature, and stark, as Paul McCartney's "For No One."

"The day breaks, your mind aches, there will be times when all the things she said will fill your head/you won't forget her."

And that's it, really. You play these tapes in your head over and over, wondering what you did wrong, and how, or why, it was wrong.

Just about the enire "Rumours" album by Fleetwood Mac is about breakups ... Stevie Nicks' and Lindsay Buckingham's and Christine and John McVie's. There's lots of good material to choose from. "Go Your Own Way" is certainly the most bitter of the three, basically an "eff-you" song to Nicks. And "Silver Spring," by was Nicks' song Buckingham ... and he fought, and succeeded, in keeping the song off the album.

But I'm going with these two: "Gold Dust Woman" and "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow."

Stevie Nicks says to this day, she has no idea what "Gold Dust Woman" is about, except that there was cocaine involved. I'd suggest, though, that like just about everything else involved in that album, there were residual feelings about Buckingham that cropped up. How else would you explain this: "Did she make you cry/make you break down/shatter your illusions of love/is it over now/do you know how/to pick up the pieces and go home?"

"Don't Stop" was written by Christine McVie and dealt with how heartbroken John McVie was at the breakup of their marriage. It was her plea that he cheer up, and look forward rather.

It's become an anthem of optimism, of course, helped immeasurably by Bill Clinton using it as his 1992 campaign song. But it deals with some pretty raw emotions. The fact that it has a barrel house boogie background probably hides the rawness of the song very well, but it's there.

In contrast, we have James Taylor's "Fire and Rain," which kind of connects two or three different episodes in his life, particularly the suicide of a friend (Suzanne). But its chorus unites all the elements: "I've seen fire and I've seen rain/I've seen lonely days that I thought would never end/I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend/But I always thought that I'd see you again.

Here's one you just have to listen to. It has the lyrics written into the video, but they really don't do the song justice. You have to really HEAR it to understand the aguish. It's "Sometime around Midnight" by the Airborne Toxic Event.

Like I said ... it doesn't need a description. It needs a listen

And finally, "Midnight Confessions" by the Grass Roots seems to be an unlikely song about heartache and heartbreak. But what do do when the object of your affections is married, or otherwise taken:

"There's a little gold ring that you wear on your hand/that makes me understand/there's another before me/you'll never be mine/I'm wasting my time."

Or, from another perspective (England Dan and John F. Coley's), "It's sad to belong to someone else when the right one comes along."

The initial post: Random musical observations

I was dispensing some advice to a very good friend recently (unsolicited, which is par for the course in my case) about how to forge a new career when your current situation just gets too unbearable.

“Here’s what you do,” I said. “Make a list of all the things you love to do … and then try to figure out a way you can make some kind of money by playing to your passions and your strengths. Because in the end, that’ll make you happiest … and it’ll make all the hard work you’re going to have to put into it a heck of a lot more palatable if you have a visceral passion for it.

Take me. I love to write. And I love music. More than any single thing in life, I love music. I wake up every day with a tune in my head, and I can honestly say I’m never without one for a minute. I hum to myself if I’m working … I have to have the ear buds with me if I’m exercising … and just about all my emotions can be very easily put to music (at least in my mind).

So what do I do? I write sports. I’m not complaining. It’s been a fabulous career. But it dawned on me -- while I was walking today on one of the most spectacularly unseasonable days in the history of January – that if I could have the dream job of dream jobs, I’d spend the entire day at the piano, or the guitar, and I’d be the entertainer I’ve always wanted to be.

Seriously. Although I’m not going to threaten Lennon & McCartney anytime soon, I’ve been known to pen a song or two. And one was called “The Star of My Own Show,” which is about a guy who fantasizes he’s putting on a concert while hacking around in his basement. Sort of like Guy Patterson banging on the drums while closing down his father’s appliance story in “That Thing You Do.”

Long ago, in another lifetime, I actually wrote a music column … called “Midnight Ramblings.” It was a once-a-week deal for the paper I still work for, and it was during the ‘80s, when I was trying to hang onto my 20s as I was careening toward 30. It was a lark, really. There was a lot going on in music, and it was a wide-open palate.

These days, there’s probably still a lot going on in music, but I’m not as inclined to keep current the way I was back then. At age 58, there’s no way I could ever pass myself as “young,” and I’m afraid I’ve gotten to the point where I say to myself, “well, what IS the point?” If I start rattling off lyrics and factoids about modern music, circa 2012, to the kid who sits at the next series of desks from me, who’s not even 30 (the only other person at my end of the room who would even know anything about those lyrics or factoids), he’s liable to think I’ve flipped my lid.

Besides, you don’t HAVE to branch out as long as you have XM Radio, or you link to Pandora. You can pretty much have it your way with regards to the type of music you listen to. And if you’re like me, and download music like a fiend, you can sit and listen for hours to stuff geared specifically to you, and never hear the same song twice. You can’t do that on XM, where a lot of songs – even the old ones – seem to be in heavy rotation. These days, you never have to branch out and experience the great unknown if you don’t want to.

But if I’m to take my own advice, I would say that it’s time for me to stop shoving my love of music in the background … and to find a way to make it a more dominant part of my life. So hence, I’ll be blogging under the title “Midnight Ramblings” at least once a week.

This is not a new title. It’s the name of the column I wrote. If you’re astute, you’ll know right away that it’s a reference to the Rolling Stones song “Midnight Rambler,” which is off their “Let it Bleed” album. It’s kind of a creepy song, inspired (or so the story goes) by Albert DiSalvo, a/k/a “The Boston Strangler.” I don’t have any special affinity for the song. It’s certainly not my favorite Stones song. I just liked the pun.

I have no idea what I’ll be bringing up in these blogs. Anything and everything, I suppose. A friend recently told me I’m “very eclectic,” which is actually a nice thing to say about someone. It means I’m not a one-trick pony … that my interests are varied.

That’s how I am about music too. I don’t like any particular genre to the exclusion of all others. Conversely, though, I never cared for disco (understatement); never fully understood rap; and have a low tolerance for country/western. However, put on some bluegrass and I’m there.

If I could accurately describe myself, I would say I cringe at any music that’s manipulative or maudlin. That would encompass anything by Barry Manilow, most of John Denver’s repertoire, and (most especially) McArthur Park.

And while I may not always appreciate or understand when bands take sharp turns away from what they do well, I most always respect it. Stagnation and art, to me, are mutually exclusive terms. I always considered it one of modern music’s great tragedies, for example, that the rest of the Beach Boys couldn’t jump out there on the edge and support Brian Wilson when he was trying to make the “Smile” album. Because of that, a tremendous piece of music stayed hidden for almost 40 years.

But they were too worried about breaking out of the surfer/automobile mode, and just couldn’t see where music was heading in the mid-1960s. Brian Wilson was a visionary. He could.

Anyway, while I was walking in the 55-degree January weather, I thought about all of the wonderful things about music … how it stirs you up, calms you down, comforts you, DIS-comforts you (at times), makes you laugh and/or cry; makes you stop in your tracks sometimes; and flat-out leaves you walking on air by its sheer power and/or beauty.

I could go on all day about this, but what I’ve decided to so is come up with 10 random observations based on the songs I heard as I was walking along the boulevard of my home town.

-- With apologies to Christopher Walken and the Blue Oyster Cult, the Stones still win the prize for the best use of the cowbell. It heralds the opening of “Honky Tonk Woman,” one of the best songs they ever recorded. And next time you hear it, really listen to it. Beneath the raunch guitar, that cowbell is always there. So, as the saying goes, “more cowbell.”

-- But when it comes to great Rolling Stones moments, for me it’s the extended guitar solo at the end of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” off “Sticky Fingers.” Every time I hear it, I lament the fact that Mick Taylor’s tenure with them was so brief.

-- Someone once wrote that an LSD experience was like “going from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz.” I don’t know about that. I’ve never dropped acid. But I would have to think the aural equivalent of such a profound shift in mood would be the crescendo that bridges the third and fourth movements of “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.” It is a brooding piece of music, in the key of C Minor, for three movements, with the “three dots and a dash” musical phrase dominant throughout. But after the third movement, the music builds and builds until it explodes into C Major. I don’t know how that registers as an LSD experience, but as a musical experience it’s one of the best ever.

-- There are three songs that I cannot hear and without stopping what I’m doing so that I can experience them totally. One is “Stairway to Heaven,” and I can’t explain that. We’ve all heard that song so much we can probably sing it in our sleep. But I still have to drop everything and listen. The second is “A Day in the Life (Beatles).” It doesn’t matter what else I’m doing. I have to stop dead in my tracks and drink it all in. The third is “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues. There’s something profoundly timeless about all three, even if the extended version of “Nights” has all that hippy-dippy Graeme Edge poetry in it.

-- There is a whole slew of songs I wish I’d written, and genres don’t matter. But of anything I heard today while I was walking, I’d have to say that the fourth movement to Dvorak’s New World Symphony makes me insanely jealous. It is just majestic.

-- Most people would consider “Jessica” by the Allman Brothers to be a neat little guitar song that Dickie Betts wrote for his daughter of the same name. And, of course, it is. Nobody can play it like Dickie Betts either. But there’s a piano bridge between the two main guitar parts that just absolutely knocks you out. I could die happy if I could play piano like that.

-- Has anyone ever stopped and wondered why we, in Boston, celebrate our nation’s independence by making a song that commemorates Napoleon’s defeat by the Russian Army the centerpiece of our civic celebration? Well, we do. Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” is a piece depicting the battle between the French and Russian Armies in 1812 as Napoleon sought to conquer Europe. You can even hear snippets of “Le Marseilles” in it. The ending, with all those bells and cannons, is counterpointed by, what was then, the Russian National Anthem (the Russians successfully defended their homeland against the French, and it’s been said that when all the bells of Moscow peeled at once, you couldn’t hear yourself think). True story: My wife and I, along with some of our friends, used to make the yearly trek onto the Charles River Esplanade to hear the Pops concert on July 4. One year, we got to sit up on the top floor of Emerson College, which was command central. But the year that really stood out for me was the year we walked across the footbridge that crosses Storrow Drive (now named for Arthur Fiedler) after the show ended and could still hear every church bell in Boston ringing like crazy. The church bills were part of the tubular chorus that helps bring the overture to its rousing conclusion.

-- A lot of very knowledgeable people consider Andrew Lloyd Webber a hack. For all his success in musical theater, he doesn’t seem to get the props afforded to, say, Stephen Sondheim. This is hard for me to understand. No disrespect intended to Sondheim, but if I never heard anything from “Sweeney Todd” ever again, I could live with that. But I bring up Webber because of one song in “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” and that’s “Everything’s All Right.” It’s in 5/4 time … a key signature made famous by Dave Brubeck in “Take Five.” For a guy just coming out of the chute and introducing himself to what can be a really snotty social set (I’m talking about theatre critics here), that’s pretty damn daring. J.C. Superstar has some pretty sophisticated stuff on it … and there was similar sophistication in “Evita.” Maybe, to some, he exhausted his creativity after he split with Tim Rice (after Evita). You couldn’t prove it by me. I always like his stuff.

-- How could so many people be so wrong about “Pet Sounds” by the Beach Boys? When it came out in 1966, it barely caused a ripple … and that’s with two bonafide classics on it (“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows”). I don’t count “Sloop John B,” because that was shoved down their throat by the record label so there could be a “hit” on the album. Brian Wilson says it’s the only song he ever recorded that he didn’t like. “Good Vibrations” is still, to me, the most wondrous rock ‘n’ roll song ever written. But “God Only Knows” is a masterpiece by any definition you want to use. How “Pet Sounds” could have been so poorly received by the music cognoscenti back then is simply beyond my comprehension. I guess it’ll be forever cursed with the label “ahead of its time.”

-- But if you want to talk about an entire GROUP being ahead of its time, how about the Buffalo Springfield? How could they have missed with a lineup that included, in its original incarnation, Stephen Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furey (with Jim Messina coming later) miss? Easy. Drugs. Jealousies. The times. And an eclectic musical palate that made them difficult to pigeon-hole. Today, on my iPod, however, I heard Neil Young’s “Mr. Soul.” And being the aficionado I am about these things, I remembered reading somewhere that the record company that recorded Springfield didn’t want Young to sing lead on any of his songs because his voice sounded “too weird.” Well duh! It still sounds weird. But “Mr. Soul” is one fine song, with Stills’ ferocious guitar solo in the middle adding much spice to it.

Well, that should about do it for now. Anything more and anyone reading this might eventually explode. Let’s see what this blog brings in the future.

Thanks for reading.