Words Are Flowing Out Like Weasles Screeching From a Paper Cut

Today I was listening to the last CD in the Beatles boxed set I got for my birthday.

The single version of "Across the Universe" came on just as I was about to enter the highway. Suddenly something went horribly wrong with my car's engine. There was the unmistakable sound of metal scraping on metal. I'd clearly thrown a rod or lost my bearings or mangled my flux capacitor.

I was wondering if I could make it to the next exit when i realized it wasn't the engine; the sound was coming from my speakers. This was not a serious a problem but still upsetting. The sound system in my Honda Element is excellent and I would have to get it fixed immediately. I wondered how much it would cost to get rid of that ear-piercing whine that was now ruining John Lennon's solo.


I figured out that it was someone else singing with John - either Yoko Ono or an actual beetle whose testicles were being squashed in a vice. Since the "voice" matched the one you can hear on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" (from the white album) I decided it was Yoko.

I hadn't known there was a single version of "Across the Universe" and I understand why. They would not have released it in the US without a warning about "offensive lyrics", in that the lyrics were sung in the most offensive way imaginable.

I don't know why Paul didn't learn from this. Have you ever heard this live rendition of "Hey Jude" which Linda McCartney sang the way I do it in my car?

What made Paul and John think adding their wives to the team was a good idea? Would Peyton Manning bring Mrs. Manning on the field to throw short wobbly passes? Would Tiger Woods bring his wife to a tournament to swing a few clubs and drive off his girlfriends? Would I bring my wife to work to miscount the beans or bring her on stage to blow the punch line to a bit? I think not.

Of course Linda ruined only a Wings concert. Yoko ruined Beatles songs, precipitating the breakup of the group. Instant bad karma.

Oh Darling, Ask Me Why I'm a Loser

I have to tell you these facts in the proper sequence.

When we moved on from collected nursery rhyme record albums, my mother bought us these records that had like one contemporary novelty song (“Itsy-Bitsy, Teeny-Weenie, Yellow, Polka Dot Bikini”, “Alley Oop” or “Purple People Eater”) and a bunch of children's’ songs. We bought them at Ralph’s or Vons or some local grocery store.

My first contemporary pop record album was “The Beatles’ Second Album”. I wish I could remember what the next album I got was. I used to keep all my record albums in the order I acquired them – it was very important to me for some reason – and when I’m feeling stressed I have the urge to pull them all out and put them back in that arrangement.

We began getting Beatles albums 1963 or 4, which was when Susan and I started taking over the car radio. As pre-teen rebels we no longer consented to spend every car ride singing together from the Mitch Miller songbook. My parents had taught us drinking songs like “There’s a Tavern in the Town” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”, so they was no concern over us being corrupted any further by godless rock and roll, and Mom caved. Besides, the Beatles were the gods of rock and roll then (“more popular than Jesus Christ”). We saw “Hard Days Night” three times in 2 days.

I have no idea what Mom would have chosen on the radio, if she had any power in the family dynamic, but we got to listen to The Beatles and Chuck Berry and whatever else was on 93 KHJ and KRLA. I also had a transistor radio that I hung on the handlebars of my bike while I delivered papers, so I could listen to the 93 KHJ Boss 30 hits, of which 20 were Beatles songs on any given week.

Through gifts or baby-sitting money I eventually acquired every Beatles album. And it was very important to me to have them in order – when I stopped keeping them by acquisition date, all my various LPs went alphabetically by group and within the group, by release date. I’m not sure if that’s OCD or anal-retentive but, either way, don’t touch my records, EVER! The fact that the U.S. Beatles album releases were totally screwed up, in that they didn't follow the progression of the original British products, was maddening. I had 6 years of therapy dealing with where “Something New” should be filed, because it wasn’t anything new; it was old singles and other songs Capitol had left off earlier albums.

Forty years later the technology of mp3 players resolved my psychosis: the songs are stored digitally and no one can put their grubby hands on them and erroneously file “Sgt Pepper” in front of “Help!”. My albums are stored in the cabinet where I don’t look at them, but I know they remain arranged appropriately.

Then, a couple weeks ago, for my birthday, my in-laws gave me the complete boxed set of remastered Beatles albums (on CD) – every one of The British releases – and all packaged in the order of release. This is awesome because, even though I have all the songs on my iPod, I now have the comfort of having these albums lined up properly. Neatly inside a box. In my house. Of course “Let it Be” is there, after “Abbey Road”, where it was released, instead of before, where it was produced, and that makes me slightly edgy. The thing that triggers the real angst, though, it the CD they put at the end of the set: rarities and singles that weren’t on albums.

I am going through the box listening to each CD in order, even listening to the songs I never really liked that much, like “Within You and Without You.” I’m serious; I even listened to the entire “Yellow Submarine” album which has two decent songs, 4 crappy ones (“Only a Northern Song” has lyrics that say “you may think this song is f-ed up, but it’s okay, it’s only a Northern song.” WTF? – and BTW the movie sucked too) If I were to skip the Yellow Submarine sound track music orchestrated by George Martin (not actual Beatles songs) no one would know but me. Yet I have to do it correctly.

I listen to the CDs in my car on the way home from work. So what should I do with that last CD? I feel like I should keep it handy and listen to each song off of it, in between the others, at the point where the single was released. Switching the CDs while driving could lead to an accident, but at least I’d obtain the serenity of having listened in an orderly fashion.

Maybe I should just put all the CDs in my car and drive direct to the hospital. They could put me in a nice room where I could listen to the CDs in every possible order so I would know that at least one time through I had it right.

LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!

A friend of mine told me a story about her daughter and the son of a neighbor playing together when they were 3 or 4 years old. The two mothers went to check on the kids and found them both naked, with the little boy trying to insert a toy car into the little girl in, um, a place he would not have found on another little boy.

My comment to my friend was “whenever you put together a boy, a girl, and a car, you’re going to have trouble.”

That was the theme of movies and songs in the early rock and roll era when I was growing up. Boys and girls have been a dangerous mix throughout music history but the tragic third element that sparks death varies based on genre. In folk and old-time country music, if your sweetheart wants to take you down by the river, don’t go; I’m just sayin’. In blues and jazz music, there’s no escape; your lover will hunt you down with a gun (see “Frankie and Johnny”).

But in rock and roll, scientific studies prove that death comes by motor vehicle 95% of the time. I recently read someone else’s blog entry about sad songs. One commenter said that the saddest song was “Last Kiss” by Pearl Jam. The really sad part was that this person was so young she did not know that was a cover version of the original from the early 60s, the heyday of the teen death rock and roll song.

“Last Kiss” falls into the category of “boy and girl together in the car”. In that scenario, the girl is a passenger and she always dies. “Teen Angel” is the earliest “hit” I could find in this sub-phylum. In that song the boy doesn’t kill the girl through reckless driving; instead, the girl, stupefied by love (as teen girls always are) runs back to the stalled car to get the boy’s class ring and is hit by a train. (Note: The class ring was symbolic of true love, "going steady", in 1960). But we are left to wonder: Why had she taken the ring off? Had they been fighting? Did he kill her, park on the tracks and then make up the story about her running back to the car? Was his last name Peterson?

The ring element makes a nice link between “Teen Angel” and “Tell Laura I love Her”. The difference is that “Tell Laura…” belongs to the sub-phylum “Love-sick boy alone in vehicle ends up dead.” Tommy wants to buy Laura “everything” which is comprised of “flowers, presents (and) a wedding ring.” If only he had had the good sense to get a job. Instead he enters a stock car race to win a prize, but crashes and dies. I know the lyrics sound hokey when you read them, but if you have ever seen Sha Na Na do this song live… for the last verse they form the chapel where Laura prays and the music swells … “alone in the chapel she can hear him cry….” … it still brings chills, just thinking about it. This is my favorite teen death song.

A few years later the Shangri-las recorded a love-sick boy death song, which again involves both a ring and a vehicle, but in this case it’s death on a motorcycle. "Leader of the Pack" is wholly unbelievable in its premise: the girl’s parents tell her has to break up with the boy and she just complies. In real life she would have snuck out to hook up with him and gotten pregnant – possibly later throwing the baby off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Anyway, in this song, he drives off, crashes and dies.

There is much debate among students of teen death music about "Leader.." It states that Jimmy was "from the wrong side of town". Is this a code for inter-racial coupling? (Worse than teen pregnancy in the 1960s). The question stems from the girl's friends asking "whatcha mean when ya say that he came from the wrong side of town?" Some scholars postulate that the friends were just "total ditzes" because they just don't seem to comprehend simple declarative statements, such as, "My dad said, "Find somebody new", to which they respond "whatcha mean when ya say that ya better go find somebody new?" Further support for the ditz theory comes at the beginning of the song when the friends ask each other, "is she really going out with him" when everybody at school knows about the relationship and Jimmy's death.

The "accident" is also controversial; was his vision just clouded by tears or did he deliberately crash? The same question can be asked about Laura’s Tommy. “No one knows what happened that day, how his car overturned in flames.” Numerous literary studies have postulated about this. Was Tommy losing the race and so saddened that he could never afford the flowers or presents, let alone the ring, that he wrecked his car on purpose? Was there an insurance policy naming Laura as his beneficiary? (Evidence: “it was just for Laura he lived and died”) Was he just driving a crappy car that burst into flames and overturned spontaneously? (Evidence: he couldn’t afford flowers so he couldn’t afford a good car). My theory is that he was killed by God for having pre-marital sex with Laura (Evidence: “Laura and Tommy were lovers”). Undoubtedly they had sex in the back seat of that very same car he died in, which is why it burst into flames. She went to the chapel to ask forgiveness for her sin, which is what Tommy should have done instead of giving in to greed (another deadly sin!) There may be a clue about the lyrics in this reenactment.

By the mid-sixties the boy/girl/car death songs were dying out. In the late 60s and 70s drugs became a bigger part of the music and overdose the more favored means of death. Now would be the time for a return of the car death genre, only now it would go something like this:

Laura and Tommy were lovers
That’s what everybody read
“Laura is in a relationship”
That’s what her Facebook status said.

Tommy also declared his love
While driving his car around the street
He had a cell phone and a Twitter account
So here’s what Tommy tried to tweet:

@Laura: I <3 u
@Laura: I need u
@Laura: do not cry, my <3 4 u will never di….

And, of course you would be able to download a “ring” tone of the song.

John and Les and Eunice

I called the E! Entertainment celebrity death desk today and talked to my friend, Giddy Golightly.

ME: You busy today?

GIDDY: No, just the usual. You know, waiting for people to die. They have to go in a packet of three or I have no "Celebrity Death Roundup" show.

ME: Well, we've had three in August already.

GIDDY: Wait. What? Who?

ME: Well, John Hughes.

GIDDY: Oh my god. I know. (SNIFF) Oh my god, I learned about real life from his movies. "Sixteen Candles", "The Breakfast Club", "Pretty in Pink" - I learned how to be a teenager from those movies. Oh my god. I can't believe he's gone.

ME: Well, maybe it was time.

GIDDY: I know. Right. Wait. What?

ME: Well, he died before he could make "Beethoven's 6th" or "Home Alone 5". I think he peaked in the early nineties. I'm just saying.

GIDDY: Sacrilege. Who else died?

ME: Les Paul died today.

GIDDY: Les Paul Who?

ME: Just Les Paul. He created a classic electric guitar and invented a lot of recording techniques. He's very well known in the music biz. Plus he had a recording career way back, solo and with his wife.

GIDDY: If you say so. Who is the third?

ME: Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She created the Special Olympics and built it into a worldwide organization.

GIDDY: Oh, of course. She was the best Kennedy, wasn't she?

ME: The very best.

GIDDY: But, oh my god. These are three totally different people. Films, music, sports. There's no connection.

ME: They all created very special things. All of them meant something to your generation and others: rock and rollers, teenagers who just wanted to fit in and feel special and special people who just wanted to fit in. You can build your show around that.

GIDDY: It'll be a nice tribute to all three.

Great Moments in Accounting - A to ZZZZZZZZZZ...

During dbrief periods of wakefulness the other day, as I was writing about Deloitte, I was trying to remember the Big Eight accounting firms. You know, trying to recall how many there were, what were their names and who merged with whom to form the Big Four.

I had a head start because I had interviewed with at least six of them when I moved to Cincinnati and I worked for Ernst & Whinney when they hooked up with Arthur Young. But I am embarrassed to say that I failed to come up with all eight.

I forgot Price Waterhouse, probably the only one that normal people would think of because PW always audited the results of the Academy Awards. That was the dream job of every young accounting student, CPA wannabe: to appear at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with the host, Johnny Carson or whoever, and receive worldwide recognition in not just Accounting for, but Publicly Certifying the Oscar votes. It’s an awesome responsibility.

Turns out I did not have the right stuff for PW; maybe that’s why I blocked their name. Best not to dwell on such things too much. Trying to recall the orgy of mergers that changed the face of Big Accounting made me think about the folk and rock group evolutions in the 60s/70s. Even though there were only 8 firms in the Big 8 (I looked it up) I can more easily remember the members of Buffalo Springfield and how they became Poco, Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young), Loggins and Messina and Souther, Hillman Furray or how Cream split and you had Traffic, Blind Faith etc.

While researching the Big 8::4 auditors, I wondered if there is any repository of accounting history and artifacts. Turns out, the Accounting Museum opened in 1989 in New Jersey. New Jersey: home of mobsters, corrupt politicians and felonious rabbis. Nice place for an accounting museum. They can spotlight great moments in embezzling and have a special exhibit on Arthur Anderson (Enron’s auditors – now defunct).

The actual museum is (was?) located in some accountant’s office. I’m sure it boosted their client list as the public flocked to see the star attraction, “an accounting ledger dating back to 1873” or the turn-of-the-century adding machines. I would hope they also had something documenting the first known double entendre joke about “double entry accounting”.

(The picture at the top is Luca Pacioli, the Father of Double Entry Accounting. I don't know if the person behind him is Mrs. Double Entry saying, "Luca, your multi-tasking with the ledger and the pie chart has got me so hot. Come to bed, sir, and show me the big 8".)

PS - please vote in the poll at the top right.

I Feel Just Like a Cog in Something Turning

Maybe it's the time of year, or maybe it's the time of man...

Up until a few years ago I was a young man. At least, in my head, I was still that guy I was in college. I was able to exert myself physically or consume excessive food and drink and still get up in the morning with minimal resistance from my muscles and internal organs.

Now, those problems don’t just follow the nights of excess, I get the same complaints when I get up in the morning every day, and each and every time I get up in the night to go to the bathroom. “No, honey, no one’s breaking in, that’s just my (choose one or more: hip, knee, back, kidneys, colon, excess phlegm) creating that racket.”

Up until recently, I could travel back from Ohio to my old SoCal beach home and feel like I still belonged. Now, even though I don’t sport the plaid shorts, dress shoes and black socks that marked them, I have become the pale, flabby, aged Midwesterner we used to make fun of. I still get in and body surf, but I tend to look more like I stumbled helplessly into the wave than like I know how to ride it. The young women approaching me are not attracted by my style, they are lifeguards checking to see if I am hurt or lost. Since when have they allowed such little girls to be lifeguards?

Somewhere over the past very few years, I got old – I mean, I started feeling old and I don’t like it. And THIS is not helping:

WOODSTOCK: A FLASHBACK
Steven Reineke conductor
Jeans ‘n Classics, guests
featuring guitarist Rik Emmett from Triumph

Cincinnati. Pops. Orchestra. Doing the music of Woodstock. God, take me now.
I get melancholy enough, seeing the original artists from Woodstock (those that are still upright and breathing) doing their own hits.

My god, that picture just makes you think of a PBS tribute to the Big Band Era, does it not?

“We’ll get back to our Prehistoric Rock Revival right after this pledge break. Buzz your assisted living attendant and ask them call our number and make a pledge for you. WE SAID, BUZZ YOUR ATTENDANT AND … Oh, nevermind, you probably dozed off anyway.”

So, I don't need to see the Pops turn them soft and bland.

A pops orchestra tribute to Woodstock. SIGH. But, by golly, they made it hip, what with it being called “Woodstock: A Flashback”. Flashback … like in LSD flashback. See, because, if you remember the 70s, you weren’t really there. Well, um, yeah, when I was young, some people used drugs … but only for the purpose of ending the war. The Viet Nam War. Yes, the one you just studied in history class. SIGH.

I don’t want to see sad old men performing their hits badly. I sure don’t want to see the Pops playing those songs with orchestra instruments. I would much rather go home and listen to the original songs on my vinyl albums. Vinyl albums – the big round flat discs – look like licorice pizza and you put them on a turntable. Part of a stereo. SIGH

Endlessly Infinite Coincidence

Last Summer, while on vacation, I experienced the musical/literary coincidence of hearing the title line in the song “I Was Looking For a Job When I Found This One” at the exact moment that I read that sentence in an unrelated book.

My recent Spring vacation now has its own musicliterary coincidence, though this is more of a stretch.

While we were in Carmel, we stumbled upon a quaint little restaurant (they really need to repair the sidewalk outside their front door). We went in to check it out and I was surprised to see, on the hostess stand of Carmel’s “most romantic restaurant”, CDs of the soundtrack from “The Endless Summer” for sale.

Now, the name “The Endless Summer” may sound romantic but, if so, you are confusing it with “A Summer Place”, a sappy soap opera of a film that teen girls watched while their boyfriends were fantasizing about riding waves around the world instead of their girlfriends.

I was pretty young when both of those came out – still learning about love and sex from New Yorker cartoons - but while my older sister mooned over Troy Donahue in “A Summer Place”, I developed a crush on global beaches. For a major milestone birthday I had a couple years ago, I put my “Endless Summer” DVD on repeat during the entire party.

I am not sure when we saw "A Summer Place". Our mother would not allow us to go to "Gidget" or the "Beach Blanket" films or any movies involving co-ed teens in bathing suits because Parents Magazine did not approve of them. I have digressed, but I added this in the interest of full disclosure, which is what I think Parents and my mother were afraid was happening in those bikini movies but was not.

Back to the coincidence: The Casanova restaurant was opened by Belgian, Walter Georis, who wrote the music for “The Endless Summer” along with his brother Gaston. (The surf music tradition is now carried on by Nico and Max).

Okay, we get the serendipitous music discovery, JohnnyB, where does the book part of this musicliterary coincidence referred to in your Endless Blog Post come in?

Hold on!

Upon returning from our trip, my sister put up a post about “Infinite Summer”, which challenges people to read some book called “Infinite Jest" over the Summer. Get it? “Infinite Summer” = “Endless Summer”, right? What? I told you it was a stretch.

Genius at Your Fingertips

If you watched the Grammy awards, you had to be thinking, "If Stevie Wonder could see them, he would totally tell those little brats to get the hell out of his face." Who decided that the Jonas Brothers deserved to share a stage with a performer like Stevie Wonder? When you hear them side-by-side with Stevie. it is clear that only one of those Jonas boys can sing and none can approach the talent of Mr. Wonder. Their shouts of "Come on, Stevie" seemed disrespectful in my mind. Stevie Wonder is so much bigger than the Jonas Brothers - I mean, seriously, he's now bigger than all three of them put together, but that's irrelevant.

Here is a real young phenom:



And if you would like to see him perform it click here.

The strangest thing at the Grammys was seeing Cold Play win best song for a tune they ripped off from Joe Satriani. There were videos on line that compared the two songs and the similarity was impossible to miss. Not coincidentally, those videos were taken down for copyright issues. What genius at the Grammys decided they deserved an award for that?

You Don't Know Dick...and Dee Dee?

My sister and I are members of a google group that is theoretically about politics. The topics occasionally stray from Bush bashing and Barack beatification as when one of the members posted a "Dead or Alive quiz:

Donovan
Lulu
Lyndsey Buckingham
Marianne Faithful
Tom Jones
Dick and Dee Dee (either one)
Everly Brothers
Sam and Dave (either one)
Connie Francis
Martha Reeves (Martha and the Vandellas)

I was not surprised that a younger member of the group did not know who all these pop singers were. I was shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that my sister did not remember Sam and Dave or Dick and Dee Dee.

My sister is older than I am and got into pop music earlier. She introduced me to the classics of the early sixties:
-The folk singers with deed, socially important lyrics such as "Walk right in, sit right down, Daddy let your mind roll on."
-The teen idols such as Bobby Rydell and Fabian, manufactured pop singers whose only real talent was making teenage girls squeal - the David Archuletas of their time.
-Dick and Dee Dee who were, like Paul and Paula, presented as a couple for reasons I don't really understand. Were they romantically involved? Dick 'n' Dee Dee? The answer is no.

How bad were Dick and Dee Dee? I tried to google them for more information but every web site on the results page warned: "this site may harm your computer." Don't even think about listening to any of their songs.

Yes, this is why Don McLean calls the death of Buddy Holly "The Day the Music Died". Pre-Beatles, all we had was Elvis and these doofuses (doofi?). And their songs are still stuck in my head, so I wonder how Susan could forget them.


Of course one among them was not just a marketer's fan-mag product: The Great Shelly Fabares ("fab" is part of her name), a truly beautiful artist who I am sure returned my love and desire, but sadly could not marry a 6-year-old. I wish I could link to a video of her singing "Johnny Angel" (which she dedicated to me) but it has been removed from the internet due to her sorrow over losing me to Karen. Still she and I will never forget each other.

Please Stay Home For Christmas

Note to the Eagles, Harry Connick, Jr. or anyone else thinking of doing a cover of the classic "Please Come Home for Christmas" by the immortal Charles Brown: Please don't. If you feel the need to play this song at a concert, just play a recording of the original and sit back.

The Devil You Know

RECENTLY EDITED
(This has nothing to do with the "Profit From the Rapture" book contest in the previous entry* - but read this anyway, then scroll down and enter the contest)

I don’t listen to the radio much anymore so finding new music artists that I like has to be somewhat serendipitous. My best talent scout has gone off to college and I no longer get to suffer through her music in the car or in my house in order to find the few gems in “contemporary” music (I’m usually late to the party. By the time I asked to copy Allie’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” CD, she told me no one listens to that anymore).
I do listen to Bob and Tom in the morning to provide a little comedy stimulus and that’s where I first heard Todd Snider (who has been around a while).

They found a store with a sign that said their beer was coldest.
So they sent in Brad 'cause he looked the oldest.
He got a case of beer and a candy bar, walked over to where all the registers are
laid his fake I.D. on the counter top.
The clerk looked, and turned to look back up and stopped.
He said "Son, I ain't gonna call the cops, but I'm gonna have to keep this card"
the guys both took it pretty hard.

Not that I ever tried to buy beer when I was underage, but I, um, had a, uh, friend who did. Todd even had a song that connected to the accountant/mathematician side of my brain.

They say 92 percent of everything you learned in school was just bullshit you'll never need
84 percent of everything you got you bought to satisfy your greed
Because 90 percent of the world's population links possessions to success
Even though 80 percent of the wealthiest 1 percent of the population
Drinks to an alarming excess

Though there is somewhat of a kinship between Todd and my inner flower child,

Tree huggin’, love makin’, pro choicin', gay weddin’, widespread diggin’ hippies like me.
Skin color-blinded, conspiracy-minded, protesters of corporate greed,
We who have nothing and most likely will ‘till we all wind up locked up in jails
By conservative Christian, right wing Republican, straight, white, American males

I am a child of the 60s and Todd is much younger

My old man says the Woodstock generation
Found a way to make this nation
Open up its eyes and take a look around
And he says my generation
Ain't good for nothing

and has had quite a different lifestyle from mine.

I came in off a dead end street
Walked in slow and took a back row seat
I knew I had nothing new to say
So many people looking so burned out
I couldn't help feeling bad about just having to be there anyway

A friend of a friend from work came in
I never have known what to make of him
He'd always seemed to be so insincere to me
You know I've always been afraid of a 12 step crowd
They laugh too much and talk too loud
Like they all know where everyone should be

So when we went to his concert last night at a small theater in Covington, KY, we wondered what kind of crowd to expect. I told Karen it would probably be young, unemployed, recovering alcoholic, drug addicted, lazyass hippies.
We walked in off a Covington street, anticipating unwashed losers we’d meet, I knew we would feel so out of place. But so many people looked just like us, recovering hippies who were fifty-plus, with gray in their hair, age on their face.
Then when a friend of my in-laws came in, it made me laugh, made my head spin, this just would not seem to be where such old folks would be. I’d really picture them in the symphony crowd, where the music’s instrumental and not too loud, where blue-hairs go, not young dudes like me.
Seriously, friends of my wife's parents? at a Todd Snider concert? That was just wrong. More young people came in later. It ended up being a broad range of ages and, on the surface, not what I expected. I really wanted to ask some people if they were unemployed, recovering alcoholic drug addicts but Karen stopped me. Probably they were just former tree huggin’, peace lovin’, pot smokin’, barefootin’ folk-singin’ hippies like me.

*Mr. Snider does have a song for the Rapture

Daddy, Let Your Mind Roll On

I didn't know the name Erik Darling, so I didn't know why I cared that he died (via), until I read that he wrote the classic lyrics of "Walk Right In".
The coffee shops of the early 60s had jukeboxes with those pay boxes on the tables so you could select songs (10 cents each or 3 for a quarter) at your seat and then hang out for a couple days until they played.
I still vividly remember hearing that song during lunch at one of those coffee shop with my mother and sister (my sister will probably write a comment finding fault with my memory once again, as in, "it wasn't lunch, it was dinner" or "you weren't actually born yet"). We liked edgy lyrics like "Walk Right In", radical lyrics as in "Bread and Butter" by the Newbeats and rebellious lyrics like "Green Back Dollar", where they said "D*MN"!
Later in the 60's, when the Viet Nam war became serious and my contemporaries battled it with shock and awe doses of sex and drugs, the old "beat" folk songs seemed tame. But in in pre-war 1960, I was only about 6 years old and I didn't know a coffee house was not a coffee shop. But when I heard "Walk Right In", I knew wanted to be a beatnik and "lose my mind" daddy-o. I wanted to listen to driving folk guitar and bongo sounds. I wanted to be Maynard G. Krebs.
So, to Erik Darling, now that I know who he is, I say, let your hair hang down, daddy, and rest in peace.

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