Best and worst lines ever, in one song

I liked Neil Diamond before he was Neil Diamond. I was a big fan from his very first single, "Solitary Man," on Bang Records in 1966. Always thought he got a little full of himself when he moved to Uni Records and especially after he landed at Columbia. Instead of nifty little pop-rock songs like "Cherry Cherry" and "I'm A Believer," he started writing bombastic epics. Some of them worked out, some of them didn't, and once he managed both in the same song.

It's "I Am I Said," which has some of his best lyrics and the very worst ever, within seconds of each other.

Free album: Purring Like A Lamb (1975)

Today's free album finds a twentysomething w.p. bluhm working his first day job in Waupaca, Wis., and spending weekends playing in the radio station's recording studio, tracking back and forth between the two big monoraul reel-to-reel machines.

It was also my first experience outside the realm of nylon six-strong guitar plucking, as the newly earned money in my pocket allowed me to buy the 12-string guitar that I still favor today. These tunes were my first experiments with the new, fuller sounding instrument.

Free album: 'Watershed' by w.p. bluhm (1985)

The fall of 1984 through early 1986 was the most prolific period of my life as an amateur songwriter so far. In the summer of '85, enamored of Springsteen's Nebraska, I recorded Watershed with just my voice on solo guitar. The results were so-so. After recording a multitracked album, Folks Songs, that December, I had second thoughts about the Springsteenesque approach and, in a blaze of work Dec. 21-22, 1985, I recorded this "official," multitracked version of Watershed.

To me, these 14 songs fit together as well as any group of songs I've ever assembled among the 20 albums I've inflicted on friends and family. I handed out C-45 cassette copies to anyone willing to listen.

If you want to sing out, sing out

I got nothing to add to these sentiments.

Nostalgia for the revolution, and the new revolution

Scott Alexander posted this video on Facebook on Wednesday with the comment, "Why does this song still sound great after 47 years? I never get tired of it!"

It's true. This song exploded out of the radio lo, these 46 years ago.  My response to his question was, "Like the Beatles' stuff, it sounded like nothing we ever heard before. It was just the Beatles Invasion before this song; after that it was called the British Invasion."

Shrinking the aural stash

I've been putting some of my vinyl collection up on eBay, motivated by a couple of things - mostly that sometime in the next year we'll be moving a second time (sold the old house, planning to build new, and currently living in an interim place) and moving 30 boxes of LPs was not fun. But it's also to pay down my personal debt a bit - no album sounds as beautiful as the sound of "Goodbye, MasterCard!"

This week I'm parting with my more recent Bruce Springsteen albums, and I'm using this blog to direct your attention there - and sharing some of the product descriptions, because I had a little fun writing 'em ...

Woo-hoo

Like Major Bowes' Amateur Hour and Star Search before it, American Idol appeals to the idea that there's a lot of talent out there just waiting for the opportunity, and every year some people seize the opportunity more than others.

I had never heard "Black Horse and a Cherry Tree" before Katharine McPhee sang it in a memorable Season 5 finale against Taylor Hicks – you know, the year Chris Daughtry really won. I had been rooting for Hicks all along and believed he was a shoo-in with Daughtry out, but this performance by Ms. McPhee rattled my smug cage.

I heard the "real" version in a store the other day and thought, "Hey, that's the Katharine McPhee song." Still one of the show's most memorable moments.

Artie Shaw's pocket symphony

Brian Wilson has famously used the phrase "pocket symphony" to describe the Beach Boys classic recording "Good Vibrations." If what he means is that a lot of interesting themes are colliding in the space of three minutes as opposed to the more luxurious time span of a symphony, then here's a pocket symphony that was a big hit in 1940: "Frenesi" by Artie Shaw and his orchestra.

One of the premier band leaders and jazz clarinetists of the swing era, Shaw packed a little ballroom dancing, some classical elements and international flair and of course big band jazz into three perfect and infectious minutes. Like "Good Vibrations," when you dissect the song in your mind it's hard to believe so many music delights can occur in such a short time span. Shaw was an innovative musician and this, to me, is his masterpiece.

Made for these times

"I keep looking for a place to fit where I can speak my mind..."

The mark of a great artist is that she puts words or images to a thought or feeling that is inside many people but hasn't been expressed in a way that most of us will understand. Brian Wilson is a great artist.

In the song "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times," Wilson puts words and music to the awkward feeling that each and every one of us feels when we recognize there is no one else in the world quite like "me."

"I've been trying hard to find the people That I won't leave behind ..."

The search for friendship, the search for meaning, the search for "fitting in." Ultimately we won't find complete fulfillment from other people. John Maxwell writes about being in the audience when someone asked his wife if "John makes you happy" and getting surprised when she responded, "No." Then she explained that true happiness is something you find inside yourself and not the responsibility of other people - and he realized she was right.

"They say I got brains, but they ain't doing me no good; I wish they would ..."

As a result of that realization, Wilson sings, "Sometimes I feel very sad," and he gets frustrated when his hopes and expectations don't quite come true ...

"Each time things start to happen again, I think I got something good goin' for myself, but what goes wrong ..."

The sadness makes Wilson wonder if "I guess I just wasn't made for these times," but in giving voice to the sadness, he touches something in every heart, the sense of uniqueness that is both the joy and curse of our existence. He sings about the loneliness of being unlike any other living soul on Earth.

"Every time I get the inspiration to go change things around, no one wants to help me look for places where new things might be found - Where can I turn when my fair weather friends cop out? What's it all about?"

But there is also the joy in realization - If Brian Wilson can give voice to my loneliness, I'm not alone.

And if each of us is a unique being, how precious that is: How important it is that we treat each other with the respect and care that something precious and unique deserves.

None of us will ever quite fit in precisely, because we were designed to be different. That can make us sad and lonely, but it can also give us strength and inspiration, voiced in such motivational clichés as "If it's going to be, it's up to me."

Looking for a place to fit where you can speak your mind? So is everyone else - so gain power from that fact and speak your mind anyway.

Do the thing you fear, and you will find, like Brian Wilson did, that you have something to say that people need to hear.

Sing Sing Sing/Christopher Columbus

Long before Iron Butterfly, there was Gene Krupa. Long before "McArthur Park" and "Hey Jude," there was this nine-minute top 40 hit. Oh, you had to flip the record halfway through to hear the whole thing, but there it was.

And the live version from Carnegie Hall, from the live album that is still in print decades later, is still one of the greatest performances ever recorded in person.

This is the original record from the mid 1930s, still packing all the punch it had from the start. I can imagine folks hearing it for the first time and wondering "What is THAT?!" And buying it and playing it over and over again, like my dad when he was a teenager, and his son who wore it out the rest of the way ...

Still crazee for Slade after all theeze yeerz

I have always loved sharing music, and time has been kind to many of the obscure artists I foisted on friends many years ago. I remember telling people they had to listen to this album by Judee Sill, John Kongos, Linda Perhacs, Emmitt Rhodes, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Tufano & Giammarese. In many cases it took years, but my faith in those artists was rewarded, often with a remastered re-release replete with essays about overlooked genius and the like.

But I'm still waiting on Slade. Oh, Slade is a legendary band in most of the world, but in the U.S. of A. they're kind of an afterthought. They're the band that made the original version of Quiet Riot's big hit "Cum On Feel the Noize" and had a couple minor hits in the 1980s - "Run Run Away" and that other one ...

I remember listening to Slade in my college radio station and reading about how they had seven or eight No. 1 songs in a row in their home country of Britain. I remember telling my friends they really should check these guys out, because they're the next big British invasion. Every song they performed had so much energy it would be another band's big concert finale: "Mama Weer All Crazee Now," "Gudbuy T'Jane," "Coz I Love You," "Skweeze Me Pleeze Me" and, of course, "Cum On Feel the Noize." Which, I guess, is what Quiet Riot finally figured out.

But they never really caught on in America the way I figured they would. Don't know why. I remember playing Slade's version of "Noize" for the teenager in my life at the time, and she said it's OK but not as good as the note-for-note copy that was Quiet Riot's rendition. It drove me, um, crazee. I listen to their album "Sladest," the greatest-hits collection, and wonder how none of those songs sparked America's imagination. I listen to "How Does It Feel," one of the loveliest and most melodic rock anthems ever recorded, and am frustrated not to hear it mentioned in the same breath as many less worthy songs.

It's fun to have a little band that only you appreciate suddenly find its way to mainstream acceptance.  That's never really happened with Slade, and that amazes me. This is one incredibly great band.

In the cool of the evening light

When the temperatures start to rise every year, and the girls start wearing their summer clothes again, the world just seems a more pleasant place, even though I've reached the age where they just pass me by. The best song Bruce Springsteen has released in the last 20 years.