Song of the Day - August 4, 2009

Two years ago, or so, I heard St. Vincent for the first time. And when her new album, Actor, came out earlier this year, I was quite excited and delighted to reconnect with her and her quirky, whimsical pop. There's a dark undercurrent to what she does that I find agreeable. So I give over today's Song of the Day honors to Her and the first single from the album, Actor Out of Work:

Song of the Day - July 28, 2009

Joe Jackson - the angry, angular white musician from Britain, not Michael Jackson's father - came to public prominence with several other angry, melodic and witty young Brits in era of New Wave, specifically Graham Parker and Elvis Costello. He was probably the most successful of the lot in terms of sales, at least for a spell, though his critical rep has never quite been their equal. Like Parker, he has a tendency to sound hectoring, particularly given his rather brusque, sneering vocals. Like Costello, he has a fatal tendency to dabble that dilutes his best material and his song craft.

I'm particularly partial to Body and Soul, but the first album is the one that, in many ways, is his best. Not just because it was free of exceedingly lofty ideals or ham-fisted lecturing or any other reason you care to cite. It was the clarity of his vision, the energy of his attack, and the hooks. Sure, he was a little rough and a little belligerent, but those songs...

I could have opted for Is She Really Going Out With Him, but I thought I'd select Got The Time, a very punky number that pogos with vigor through a hectic lyric about trying to get by in a busy, chock-a-block day. Here's Joe's version, albeit a more recent live one:



Anthrax did a version as well. Note how the inherent aggression of the song suits the band well. I had to use the Lego version because the Universal version wouldn't let me embed it.

Song of the Day - July 21, 2009

I first became aware of Peter Gabriel in 1982, when Shock the Monkey became a somewhat surprise top 40 US hit and was all over the radio here. Based on that song and an interview/videos I caught on a show called The New Music (JD Roberts' old stomping ground before being a US news anchor), I pegged him for a new waver. I'd no idea he'd started out an art rocker in Genesis.

In 1983, Gabriel released Plays Live and it provided a good opportunity to do some catching up with the man. Two songs from that album were in heavy rotation on the radio/local video countdown show that summer: I Go Swimming (whose repetition of that line drove my mom batshit crazy with derision) and I Don't Remember, which is our Song of the Day.

I Don't Remember originally appeared on Gabriel's third self-titled album in 1980 (it's also known as Melt because of its cover, pictured above). It was the album that ended his tenure with Atlantic Records in North America as it was deemed noncommercial. Not only was that album the biggest yet of Gabriel's solo career, it is regarded as the debut by some of the 'gated drum' a sound that he or Phil Collins or both of them created and became the hallmark of Phil's style.

What I like about I Don't Remember is how diseased it sounds, from the thick anxious bass lines of Tony Levin to Gabriel's primal yelps. I always thought it was meant to be a song about an amnesiac, but there's a certain bristling defiance in the lyric - no ID, no papers, and no giving a damn - that made me interpret it as a song by a conscientious objector resisting an interrogation. But enough talk from me. Get infected:

Song of the Day - July 20, 2009

It's a fact: eventually, your favorite artists let you down. Like Mos Def, for instance. Back when he was in Black Star, and when he dropped Black on Both Sides, I had him pegged as a major new voice in hip hop. A very long ten years followed in which he did a lot of acting and a couple of albums that, to my ears, betrayed the promise in those first two missives.

So when I heard initial rumblings that The Ecstatic was reason to be ecstatic, I was rather cautious. Diminished expectations, I theorized, might be the determining factor in the favorable notices. After all those triumphs were a few years ago and the weaker material no doubt primed the critics to be kinder this time around, right?

Well, The Ecstatic has made a believer out of me once more. 'Magnetic, the flows are athletic,' is how he starts the song of the day, Casa Bey, and he's right on both counts. It has a busy yet spacy jazzy 70s vibe. I want to say like Andy Bey, but I don't know his material well enough to be confident in such an assessment. Kinda like Lonnie Liston Smith, at least from this listener's perspective. That he placed it at the end of the album suggests, perhaps, that he's looking forward. That he won't stop the rock. That he's got gas in his tank and he's going the distance. Enjoy.

Song of the Day - July 17, 2009

So, I decided that, from now on, Fridays will be FunkyFridays for funk songs. And I decided that I'd inaugurate it with the funkateer who is mounting a one-man campaign to make the Twitterverse funky, Mr. Bootsy Collins.

Bootsy is many things. A peerless bassist and out-of-this-world funk practitioner known for creating very liquid, squiggly, elastic grooves. A central member of the Parliafunkadelicment movement. A member of the James Brown band that recorded seminal funk classics such as Super Bad, Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine & Talkin' Loud and Saying Nothing.

In 1975, George Clinton, the ringmaster of the Parliament-Funkadelic circus, got Bootsy a deal with Warner Bros. Records, which, despite having acts like The Meters (on Reprise) and Graham Central Station, was not exactly known as a leading force in recording R&B. But Bootsy gave them enormous cred with his first album, Stretchin' Out in Bootsy's Rubber Band, which featured today's Song of the Day - Stretchin' Out (In A Rubber Band).

The song was the last addition to the album, recorded when it was realized that the impending platter lacked a commercial hit. Bootsy, listening to the work in progress, said the band was stretching out on that one. Not one to miss an opportunity, George told him, "That's it! Stretchin' Out-in a Rubber Band.' The album, song and band had a name.

It's a very deep, hard hitting and percolating groove. It just kind of bounces around for about seven minutes or so in your hips, your backbone, making you want to move. It's full of absurd non-sequitirs and party chants that will pack any dance floor, any night, guaranteed. The version below is not the original one, but it does prove how indestructible and undeniable the groove is. Get funky:

Song of the Day - July 16, 2009

I first became aware of Dirty Projectors with Rise Above, the clever reimagining/recollection/homage to the Black Flag album of the same name. Founded/led by Dave Longstreth, the collective had released a couple of albums prior to that, but Rise Against's conceit was inspired enough that it managed to garner significant media coverage. Given that I own the Black Flag LP, I was intrigued, purchased it and consider the band one to keep tabs on.

Earlier this year, following a lineup change, Longstreth and co. released Bitte Ocra, a dazzling collection of dizzy, disjointed pop music. One of the highlights, strangely enough, was the only track that Longstreth did not write solo, Stillness is the Move. His co-writer, Amber Coffman pairs her voice with new member Angel Deradoorian and Longstreth underpins it their charming, childlike harmonies with a hypnotic riff over a stuttery, funky bedrock.

The result is an ode to resilience, to possibility, to hope. "There is nothing we can't do," Amber and Angel coo. And as the hook burrows its way deep into your mind, you believe every word they say.

Song of the Day - July 15, 2009

In the mid-1990s, a kind of renaissance began in R&B music. It started in 1995 AD, only the AD stands for After D'angelo, one of the earliest and most talented groovers of a movement known as neo-soul.

It was a kind of pejorative term, as it suggested that R&B had been languishing for a long time. In many ways, it hadn't. It had migrated and mutated, relying heavily on samples, synths and slushy drum machines. There was still good music being made, but it did, on occasion, sound kind of canned, processed, with the vocal serving as the focal point for any claim it made to being soul.

What artists like D'angelo did wasn't so much a throwback as a recast. They favored real musicians over bleeps and boops. They explored groove and melodicism in ways that struck a balance between art and commerce. They sounded classic and contemporary in the same breath. It wasn't so much that they were looking backward, they were trying to find a new way forward with all of the musical influences they had accumulated.

Unfortunately, some of the most exciting artists to come out of this renaissance - Joi, D'angelo, Lauryn Hill, Bilal, Remy Shand - disappeared into the ether or retreated to small labels on the margins of the industry. Industry pressures, indifference and artistic crises swallowed up some of the most appealing and visionary R&B artists to come onto the scene in a long time.

Which brings me to today's Song of the Day, Pretty Wings by Maxwell, who deserves points for perseverance. Of all the lauded neo-soul artists, he had, in some ways, the most auspicious debut - Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite. It's a sultry scorcher filled with make-out music of a caliber and insistence that few had attempted since, well, Marvin Gaye. In fact, Leon Ware, who collaborated with Gaye, conferred considerable cred on Maxwell's position as the new Gaye by lending his writing skills to the album.

That album, held up for a couple of years by an anxious label, Columbia, went gold on the charts, and in 1998, Maxwell returned with Embrya, an even more ambitious artistic endeavour that couldn't have made the label very happy. Not to mention the fact that there had been squabbles over Maxwell's Unplugged cd that made the release an EP. Three years later, he released Now, which featured a Kate Bush cover (part of his Unplugged repertoire, apparently) and...

...and that was it for the better part of eight years, in which there were rumors of albums rejected by Columbia, but little else. But this year, Maxwell returned with BLACKsummers'night, and the single, Pretty Wings. It's a real slow groove grower, with a mellow vibe that hearkens back to Urban Hang Suite. It's the kind of ballad Prince used to put on his albums, like like Adore, only a bit more modest and spartan. It doesn't reach out to you; it just hangs out in the corner, building mystique and intriguing you until you come over to it. And you will. You will.

The better times and days he alludes to? I hope they presage more delicious R&B. It's been too long, Maxwell. Too damn long. Welcome back, friend.

Song of the Day - July 14, 2009

In 1982, I discovered Rush.

Okay, that statement is about as accurate as saying Columbus discovered America (right, like no one actually lived there), but this is my blog and my experience is what counts. Right?

Even that is a bit of a lie. It was more like 1981 that I first became aware of Canada's most intellectual hard-rock triumvirate. (You can't call Triumph intellectual, can you?) It happened through two very disparate channels. First, Rush had released a live album called Exit Stage Left, and local radio was playing Closer to the Heart a lot. Probably partially to fill Cancon regulations. Second, Geddy Lee, Rush's stalwart bass player and Donald-Duck-on-helium lead vocalist, was on the radio every few minutes yelping the chorus of Bob & Doug McKenzie's phenomenally popular single, Take Off.

Being a rather bookish and introverted lad, I was intrigued by the group's deft instrumental prowess, complicated tempos and brainiac aspirations, so I cobbled together my paper route earnings and purchased a copy of Exit Stage Left. For the next month or so, it was all I listened to. Thick, dull, muddy sound couldn't mask the group's technical genius and keening intelligence. I knew there and then I had found The Greatest Band The World Had Ever Heard, or TGBTWHEH. Not very catchy.

Over the next year or so, I began buying the band's healthy back catalog. I think I started with Moving Pictures, which I declared to be 'awesome.' Fly By Night followed, again with more awesomeness and a few shadings I hadn't expected. (A rather gentle ballad called Rivendell? Gotta-be-movin'-on-rock-band missives?) And then came Caress of Steel.

Caress of Steel very nearly nipped my infatuation in the bud. I'd heard it was supposed to be the 'difficult' album. I didn't know it would be that difficult. Maybe it was just the extended gray weather we were experiencing the week I bought it. I don't know. But. That. Was. The. Week. The. Music. Died.

Knowing it's reputation, I probably shouldn't have bought it so soon in the game. But it was a catalog album, and thus valued priced. Besides, I knew Rush didn't exactly have a lot of friends in the music press. How bad could it be? As it turned out, very bad. For a long time, at least until the 'rap' on Roll the Bones, it was the Achilles Heel in my arguments that Rush was TGBTWHEH.

I mention all of this because today is Bastille Day. And Bastille Day was the first track on Caress of Steel. I actually quite liked that song, and the song that opened the side-long suite that was side two of the LP. Geddy, with lyrical help from the professor, Neil Peart, javascript:void(0)puts himself in the persona of a peon who watches as those who, um, peed on him - France's King Louis XVI. There are vague allusions to the notion that it is the people who have the power, and woe be unto anyone who doesn't respect the populace. Even more vague is the phrase: power isn't all that money buys. Truth in that. It can also buy a lot of gum.

It's not one of the band's finest moments, but it gets over by sheer force of Rush's desire to rock out. The version here is a live one from 1976, with Geddy - once named by a Canadian music magazine as one of Canada's sexiest rockers - in full air-raid siren effect.

Fortunately, after this album, I discovered 2112, the debut and the newly released Signals, and my love affair was renewed until about 1991 or so. Shifting more toward hip-hop, alternative and classic R&B/funk, I dumped all of my Rush music. In the years since, I've reacquired a few titles and frequently take them out, not entirely out of nostalgia. But I still haven't learned to embrace Caress of Steel. It still leaves me cold to this day.

Song of the Day - July 13, 2009

There is a lot of music in this big ol' world. Some of it you know intimately. Some of it you've probably read about. Some of it, you stumble on.

Many years ago at a flea market, I stumbled on Mandrill. I knew it was a funk band, but didn't really know much about them. They'd had a few hits, enough to merit an anthology, but I didn't ever really hear them on my radio growing up. The only R&B we got were the big, big hits. Mandrill never cross over to pop, so Mandrill never made the grade with music programmers here.

Truth be told, that Mandrill album I purchased didn't do it for me. The band, formed in the late 60s by three New York based brothers who were born in Panama, had clearly soaked up all of the major musical vibes going on in the big apple at the time, and I think that's why I underrated them. They brought too much to the table, so it sounded rather diluted to me. Also, they seemed to rely a little too heavily on the groove instead of melody. And I just didn't make a love connection.

That is until a few years ago when I was looking for funk to put on my iPod. I somehow heard Fencewalk from the Composite Truth album, and I was smitten. Well, with that song. I like how liquid and serpentine the funk is at the outset of the song, and how, when the vocals give way to the jam, the band gets down and dirty, pushing the funk very, very, very hard. It's a rather erotic bump and grind that resolves itself too, too soon for my liking, and rocks as hard as Black Sabbath or Zep in its own way. The link above is a live version from 2008, but it still smokes. No monkey business.

Song of the Day - July 10, 2009

In 1974, my family took its first extended camping vacation in Maine. We stayed at a campground in a wooded area where old rusted out cars haunted the nights along with the sounds of bug zappers - the first time I had ever encountered those items. Even to this day, I awake in a cold sweat hearing that sound of death. There were signs around the campground warning people that streaking was verboten during certain hours of the day. I remember mom picked up a copy of Helter Skelter, because she had nothing to read, and being seriously freaked out by the imagery within the book. And I remember finally getting to eat a whole bunch of snack foods I had only seen in comic books - Hostess Fruit Pies, Twinkies and, um, Slim Jims.

I could tell you all kinds of camping stories, how we'd set up and take down that old camper, and how it always seemed to be raining either way. Most of them are not fond memories, and a big reason why I don't travel much, or insist on creature comforts when I do. Anyway, what I do remember mainly from that first trip, besides the Hostess pies and Hood ice cream, was hearing two songs on the radio that, unbeknownst to me, were principal harbingers of a major movement about to go mainstream: disco. They were Rock the Boat by The Hues Corporation Rock Your Baby by George McCrae.

McCrae's recording was particularly significant in that it essentially ushered in the Miami sound, whose main proponents were K.C. & the Sunshine Band. In fact, KC stalwarts/songwriters Richard Finch and Harry Wayne Casey wrote and recorded Rock Your Baby in a demo form while creating material for the band. George undid his shirt - search YouTube and you'll see him in his unbuttoned glory - wrapped his heavenly falsetto around it and drove it to #1 on the pop charts.

To this day, when I hear Rock Your Baby and Rock Your Boat, no matter where, when or under what conditions, it's instant summer. And I look for a Hostess pie, or a pack of Slim Jims, and not finding them in my neck of the woods, I just dance, dance, dance.

Song of the Day - July 9, 2009

How ironic that an ode to perseverance and success would be written and recorded by a vocal group that disappeared shortly thereafter into the mists of obscurity.

The Festivals were a soul quartet that originated in Texas, though you'd never suspect that when you listen to You're Gonna Make It. This paean to the power of positive thinking has a Windy City sound/Impressions sound, no doubt due to the fact that Johnny Pate, who worked with that renowned group for years, did the arrangements on this.

Driven by a bassline too legit to quit and sparkling chimes, this sprightly stepper wants you to know that, whatever your trials or tribulations, however destitute or money or hope you may be, you can be successful so long as you cling to your dreams and don't stop believin'.

Impossibly, this short & sweet charmer stalled at #28 on the R&B charts in 1970, and appears to have been The Festivals only top 40 R&B hit, though any soul fan will also make a solid case for an earlier single, You've Got the Makings of a Lover. If I accomplish nothing else in this world, I would at least like for Woody Price, Vaughan Price, Earl Moss and Leon Thomas to know how much this song means to me. I return to it frequently when I find myself in difficult times, which given my profession occur more often than I'd like.

So, to The Festivals, thank you for writing and recording an anthem that gives me courage to keep on pushing, keep on driving, and never give up. Sure hope this message finds you somewhere and lets you know your song made a difference in someone's life...

Song of the Day - July 8, 2009

Back in 1993, when North America was infatuated by grunge, John Hiatt decided to turn the volume up and get a little grittier. The result, at least on the first single and title cut of Perfectly Good Guitar , was a good approximation of... Neil Young, not teen spirit. Not entirely inappropriate, given that Neil was, at the time, being called the godfather of grunge for his lumbering, blistering workouts with Crazy Horse.

Yet the song is, in some ways, not very charitable to its inspiration - Nirvana's Krist Novoselic. Hiatt, watching TV one day, saw the trio's bassist get hit in the head with a bass guitar he was trying to shatter. "I don't know who they think they are," he says with a fogey's derision, "smashing a perfectly good guitar." And yet, musically, it's very muscular and appealing. Hiatt and his cohorts give the song a good working-over, like they're using a side of beef as a punching bag. It may be his best rock song, even if he seems at odd with the whole nihilistic, showy aspects of rock music.

The real reason I picked it is a nod to my blog about how United Airlines smashed a perfectly good guitar belonging to Sons of Maxwell member David Carroll...

Song of the Day - July 7, 2009

It was the summer of 1966, and a recording session had been arranged at a New York studio with ol' blue eyes himself, Mr. Frank Sinatra. But at the last minute, a Warner Brothers Records rep calls famed songwriter and producer Jerry Ragovoy to say that the session has to be cancelled. Given the short notice, and the fact that the musicians have to be paid, the exec asks Ragovoy if he has anyone to record. Ragovoy did. Lorraine Ellison.

Ellison had done some performing and recording previously with a gospel group, the Ellisons, and under her own name on Mercury. She'd also co-written an R&B track or two that had been placed with other artists, including Jerry Butler. But she hadn't had a major break as a performer when her manager suggested Ragovoy give her a shot.

Amazed by her audition, Ragovoy signed her with his production company, and got her on Warner Brothers. He had been preparing to record her with a 20-piece orchestra when he received the call from the Warner exec, and decided the potentially idel 46-piece ensemble would be the perfect setting for Lorraine.

The orchestra, unaware of Sinatra's cancellation, must have been surprised to see Lorraine, but I can't even imagine how the musicians must have reacted when she began to sing. Knowing that the finished song was done, with the exception of the first eight bars, on the first take seems impossible. I can't imagine any musician keeping his or her thing together upon hearing Lorraine. But somehow, they not only held it together, they kept pace with her. And Stay With Me , a stone-cold soul classic, was forged.

Legend has it that copies of the record traded hands in Harlem for $50 in the day, and you can hear why. No one had quite approach singing like this before. Every vocalist you hear today from Mariah to Whitney follows her template. The uncharitable ears will call it histrionics; I call it a maelstrom. Atop a deep, gospel soul bedrock, her voice swoops and soars when it hits the chorus, ranging somewhere between a howl and a shriek, rocking you to your very core. You either run in fear or stand statue-still overwhelmed by awe. There is no in between.

Though it hit just outside the R&B top ten, it took several years before Stay With Me was recognized as a masterpiece of melisma in the US. It has long been a fave of soul fans in England, however, helped in part by a cover version done by Terry Reid , the man who might have been the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, had he not pointed Jimmy Page in another direction. It's more bluesy, but no less melodramatic. Either way you choose, you're a winner; the shivers they induce stay with you long after the last notes fade... no

Song of the Day - July 6, 2009

Natasha Khan has a mystical sound that reminds me of Kate Bush. Yet where Kate's work was distinctly British, Khan, under the nom de plume Bat For Lashes, embraces the world. The video for the Song of the Day, Prescilla is a kind of fairy tale that takes you down the rabbit hole and back again, yoked to a song with lyrics that straddles a line between domesticity and escapism; dream and reality. It never quite resolves itself, but it haunts you for days...

Song of the Day - July 3, 2009

With so many celebrities having passed away over the past few days, many of whom I haven't talked of here, it occurred to me to offer this as Song of the Day: People Who Died by the Jim Carroll Band. A punk poet, portrayed by Leonard DiCaprio in Basketball Diaries, says farewell to some people he knew who died of various causes. The punk approach may seem offhanded to you, but has always struck me as appropriate if you think about the whole 'rage against the light' thing. In that way, it becomes a very fitting tribute because it is so full of life. It was probably the first punk song I ever heard, and one of the few that many of my tragically unhip friends knew. Great to pogo to, or just contemplate, it remains one of my favorites to this day.

Song of the Day - July 1, 2009

Being that it is Canada Day, today's Song of the Day is the best Canadian song ever and should be our National Anthem. Wayne McGhie & The Sounds of Joy's Dirty Funk. Select #5 when you go through the link to hear a snippet!

This is what I blogged about the album on my now-dead previous blog:

Okay, so I'm late to the party on this, but I'm not the only one. Even Wayne McGhie's original record label barely bothered to RSVP, to judge by the liner notes that accompany Light in the Attic's loving reissue of McGhie's one and only self/untitled album with The Sounds of Joy. I have to be honest, the notion of a rediscovered funk and R&B and Rock Steady platter from my Soviet Canuckistan stomping grounds, featuring covers of songs like Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye and Take a Letter Maria didn't exactly inspire confidence when I first heard about it. So a friend set me straight, and I'm glad he did. This one is a real charmer, and as addictive as as a Crackberry. The band is tight, but the feel is open and relaxed, like a casual session where a bunch of friends got together to run through a few songs, old and new. That casual aspect is reflected in the production - songs seem to end or fade at odd junctures; it's as if the band had to keep pumping the studio with government funded quarters to keep cranking out its tunes.

Speaking of which, the surprise here is that the four covers are actually quite good. I love how he turns Take a Letter Maria into a ragged but right stuttering West Indies groove, and how McGhie sometimes elides the 'f' sound on 'wife' so it sounds like he's singing 'address it to my wi-ah' or 'wire.' He wrings Blood, Sweat and Tears out of the Friends of Distinction's Going in Circles, fortunately taking his lead from Al Kooper's version of the band, not blowhard David Clayton Thomas. And Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Good Bye recasts it as a funky pop classic you didn't know was a classic. And if his By the Time I Get to Phoenix is a briefer journey than Isaac Hayes, it's no less pleasurable. But the best songs are two originals that sound as familiar as his covers. Dirty Funk could easily have been a Meters 45, opening with a solid break beat by Everton Paul strong enough to win the hearts of loop diggers everywhere. And I'm pretty certain that Fire (She Need Water) hails from the same neighborhood as, maybe, James Brown's Bring it Up (Hipster's Avenue). But whatever neighborhood it's from, The Ohio Players must found inspiration in the fire truck siren that opens the cut, and it may be the location of the confounded bridge that Led Zeppelin were looking for when they did The Crunge. That it fell between the cracks suggests that, when it comes to rhythm, the Canadian music industry, and many music fans here, often have two left feet. They get Bruce Cockburn, Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, but they don't often get music like this. But you should. As Mel Mounds used to sorta say, it's righteous and outta sight-eous.

Song of the Day - June 30, 2009

Your Song of the Day is a stone cold funky classic from the Windy City that will, as they say, put a dip in your hip and a glide in your stride. It's impossible not to strut when you hear Willie Henderson's Funky Chicken, but you'll need Real Player to hear why this one is the cock of the walk. Enjoy.

Song of the Day - June 29, 2009

My Song of the Day selection is from the lean, mean pop machine Phoenix's new album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. These guys are the best exports from France since... Daft Punk? Justice? Camille? Carla Bruni? France has had a great run of pop and dance music of late, and these guys are about as good as it gets. So, let's all party like it's 1901 with Phoenix!

Song of the Day - June 26, 2009

I wasn't going to do a Song of the Day today, but I decided to go with the obvious. Everything I could say about this is contained in a blog I wrote earlier today. Except to say that 1 million YouTube viewers can't be wrong. Enjoy .

Song of the Day - June 25, 2009

I only ever went fishing once in my life. I was about three years old. My dad took me up the lake behind our house to initiate me in what he thought was one of the many rites of passage a young lad like me should go through.

Being a bookish sort - okay a comic-book-reading-music-loving tyke - I really wasn't down much with his ideas of what young boys should be interested in: the outdoors, hunting, athletics, cars etc. And that included fishing.

There's a picture of me looking at the fish I 'caught' that reminds me of how crestfallen Charlie Brown was when he thought he killed his little Christmas Tree. I had taken a life that day, and I vowed I would live a peaceful life, never raising my hand in anger ever again. Okay, so I got in a scrap in junior high, and I once killed a mole, but I have been a hippy peacenik ever since.

Which brings me to the Song of the Day, which did win my heart the first time I heard it Fishing Blues by Taj Mahal. I purchased a live album of his from an antique store without knowing anything about his music and found that song so charming, I played it over and over again, taking several days to actually listen to the rest of the album. I thought it would just be bitter disappointment from there on in. I've heard many other artists do it, but any version I've heard from Taj cuts those. To use a bad pun, he always reels me in...