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Dave Elder's Favorite Songs Playlist

What's my favorite song? That's a tough question, and this playlist is my answer. I don't know that I could ever pick just one song. These are the cuts that I listen to, and that mean something to me. I have lots of memories and stories tied up with them, and I share a portion of those tales on this list. Surely you will recognize some of the tracks here, but probably you'll find some that you don't, and hopefully I can help you discover some good music. You might notice that some numbers are missing, including number 1, and that's because the linked videos are no longer available, so those songs have been removed from the list.

This page only includes a few recent bits. If you'd like to read some older ones, the previous link below will take you to the post before the last one, on my Blogspot runway, which has links to earlier writings. The Master List page has links to all of the playlist Blogspot articles. However, my earliest playlist rambles, before Song 185, only live on this website, since I didn't start posting on Blogspot until February of 2014.

-Dave

Recent Songs

(Sunday, 3/17/24) Song 711: Little Deuce Coupe by The Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson and Roger Christian. You can find a YouTube video of it here. After the Beatles rocked my world 60 years ago in February, I mostly paid attention to the British Invaders, but a few hits from this side of the Atlantic Ocean also lit my ears, including a handful of chart toppers from a particular West Coast quintet of seashore fellows. This moving hot rod ride had arrived during the previous summer, before I got pulled into the RnR airwave current, and when I heard it soon after I started spending more time with the transistor radio, I probably didn't know it was a golden oldie, but I sure did know that I enjoyed the musical zone that it quickly covered. Hearing it felt like coming off the line when the light turns green, and it made me feel like maybe I had a set of wings so that, in a tuneful way, I could fly. On a sad side note, I decided to do a Beach Boys song this week after hearing the sad news that Brian Wilson lost his wife in January of this year. I feel sorry for his loss, and I wanted to send some good vibes his way.

(Sunday, 3/10/24) Song 710: Superman's Midlife Crisis by Joe Giacoio, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Seven weeks after my previous personal friend song post, this week's amusing lift comes from a buddy who I connected with in the 1990s. He joined my mailing list after attending a performance I did on a Bronx folk stage, and not long after, I heard him play at another place in the area and I liked what I heard from him. We soon developed a close friendship, and when he compiled the 1997 album CD that would have this ballad as its title track, I took pictures of him for the project and helped him put together the record's imagery, which I'd say personifies this tune's message. If you haven't heard the song, you might not know that Spiderman took a job with accounting, but you may very well understand that you can't turn back the clock for a quick trip home and you probably realize that you can't change clothes behind a cellular phone.

(Sunday, 3/3/24) Song 709: I Looked at You by The Doors, who also wrote the song. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Three years and a half after the Fab Four rocked my world, just as they started heading in a psychedelic direction, a fresh L.A. quartet rocked the charts and while I couldn't own a devil's music 33 at the time, I had plenty of friends who could, and did, open up The Doors LP and ride around its spins, so I soon got to know the entire album, even though I never listened to it at home, and it quickly became one of my favorite discs. Over the next two years, as I worked on the student newspaper with a handful of my fellow classmates, we would put together the periodical in a certain room at the HS after classes ended, leaving the school when we finished it a few hours after most of the other students had departed. As we put together each issue, we would also listen to records we liked, and I know we always had The Doors on the turntable for every edition we assembled in those years. When I remember the student newspaper work we did, I always associate it with The Doors, to the point that I don't recall any of the other records we listened to, even though I know we did spin other discs on the player as well. When we started getting an issue's articles together and editing the contents, once we were on our way, we could, and would, never turn back - we would get the job done, even when it meant that a few of us might get home from school too late.

(Sunday, 2/25/24) Song 708: Gimme All Your Lovin' by ZZ Top, written by Billy Gibbons. You can find an amusing YouTube video of it here. Last week's thought was Let's Work Together and the week before was the moment for All My Loving, so this week seems like the right time to Gimme All Your Lovin'. By the time such a rocking plea got a lot of listeners going along with that request in early 1983, I had resided for about a year and a half in a really pleasant home in Berkeley, CA, that sat near the pizza joint where the singer/songwriter circle that I had joined a few years earlier would regularly gather and share compositions. I had become a fan of the lurching Texas trio soon after they appeared near the beginning of the 1970s, and had actually attended a concert they did in Chicago in early 1977, so it didn't take long for them to get me singing along with their 1983 bluesy call. I soon understood that when someone has got to move it up that they should work it like a screwball would.

(Sunday, 2/18/24) Song 707: Let's Work Together by Canned Heat, written by Wilbert Harrison. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Shortly before my sophomore college year began in September of 1970, this bluesy anthem started getting everyone to sing along, and it conveyed a message that most of my classmates, and probably the majority of university scholars around the country, had come to understand quite clearly in the spring of that year. Soon after the 5/4/70 event, I joined demonstrations at N.U. which echoed gatherings across the nation that expressed our anger at the killing of four Kent State pupils, and while our voices speaking out didn't end the Vietnam War, as far as I know, no other student protesters in the U.S. got shot down during the following years as opposition to the Southeast Asia conflict continued to swell. Many of us would walk hand in hand when we had a good place to stand to voice our disapproval of that mass murder.

(Sunday, 2/11/24) Song 706: All My Loving by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Sixty years ago, fairly soon after I got to my junior high school on the morning of 2/10, I started hearing my classmates use a word that I thought referred to a group of insects, but I couldn't imagine why such conversations would happen in the middle of a cold upstate NY winter. Since I had no clue about the big story I had missed, I also didn't know what question to ask, but after a couple of days I finally did pose a question to my neighbor playmate. He chuckled to learn that his smart buddy didn't know the biggest news of the previous week. Finding out about what my family and I had missed on Sunday night, we all planned to watch the 2/16 Ed Sullivan Show, and when we did so, although the rest of our circle had no interest in what they heard and saw, my younger brother and I got roped in, and we insisted on viewing the entire program, contrary to other family members who wanted to shut off the TV. Watching them perform She Loves You, (Song 653), the Fab Four rocked my world. I thought their next tune sounded really cool, and then they got to this one, which felt even better. Witnessing that performance sparked a whole new view of the musical world for me, and gave me hope that my dreams will come true.

(Sunday, 2/4/24) Song 705: Ferry Cross the Mersey by Gerry and the Pacemakers, written by Gerry Marsden. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Not long after a certain Fab Four rocked my world six decades ago, I started paying a lot more attention to the radio than I ever had before, and particularly riding along with a whole bunch of British Invader musical rambles. This lift arrived about a year later, and became yet one more anthem from the English noisemakers that moved me in a very rocking way. I had probably not known much about the United Kingdom's geography previously, but by the time this ride came along the airwaves, I had learned about the stream that the ferry crossed and its proximity to an urban area that had achieved a lot more public recognition, thanks to the quartet who I plan to feature next week. While Life goes on day after day and People they rush everywhere, I personally have not taken a Ferry Cross the Mersey, and I don't expect to do so any time soon, but maybe it could happen someday.

(Sunday, 1/28/24) Song 704: Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin, written by Harry Chapin and Sandra Chapin. You can find a YouTube video of it here. Around the time that a lot of listeners got purrty impressed by this furry ballad, I managed to luckily find an affordable room in an apartment on the south end of Evanston. My wife and I had returned to the area in July as our romance came to an unfortunate climax, mainly due to a misunderstanding on my side that would haunt me for many years to come. Although I don't remember the moment when I first caught HC's meow melody, during that stretch I very soon had the chorus lines completely in hand and on my mind. Growing up, I had often heard my folks say, "There aren't enough hours in the day." Even back then, most working class types understood that message, which resonates much stronger in the present day. While we can have numerous differences, the one thing so many of us have in common is that we have got a lot to do. All too often, we can't seem to find the time to get together and have a good time then.

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