Put your big toe in the milk of human kindess

Four and a half hour ride to New York today. Seven hours total car time.


This is what I listened to (with captions where warranted, or a select lyric, or a remembrance or whatever mood strikes me)

• 7:00 AM - Say my good byes..a little to early for the "good stuff" so I listen to local radio while I nurse my coffee...sports talk radio, oldies, mostly channel surfing...skipping all commercials and any horrifically scripted "banter" from any of those morning shows. The names are always a sure sign of future lameness to be heard...Dr. Johnny Fever, Venus Fly Trap, Bailey Quarters, oh, wait..nevermind

• 7:45..coffee's done, entering New Hampshire. You thought the Maine dj's were bad...now we're picking on all the "crazy" Boston morning shows. Time to hook up the ipod

This is what ensued....
(most of you will know some of these...some of you will know most of these..a few of you won't have a clue, but that's clearly your probem, not mine). If you don't know a song, please, please, search it out. Consider this my gift of music to you

Oh, and this is verified by my going through the playlists on my ipod that I selected while I'm typing this from room 5** in the Hampton Inn on Wolf Road in Albany NY

Here we go....I'll keep this up until I tire out

• Home At Last - Steely Dan (smart song by a smart band)
• Stitched Up - John Mayer (the only John Mayer song I have on my ipod...unless my youngest somehow slipped in the Curious George theme song)
• Take Five - Dave Brubeck (my kind of cool jazz..almost hypnotic)
• That's The Way I've Always Heard it Should Be - Carly Simon (dysfunctional family song at it's best.. "The children hate them for the things they're not...they hate themselves for what they are"...) strong stuff
• More Than This - Roxy Music (not my favorite Roxy music song on not my favorite Roxy music album, hey)
• The Way - Fastball (great "Alternative Pop" song from the late 90's - love the chorus...a great chorus makes for a great song...chorus kicks in at 1:11 if you don't want to wait for it)

Give it a listen...

• Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan ("You've got a lot of nerve, to say you are my friend...")
• I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning - David Bromberg (Nice hangover song)
• Boom Boom - John Lee Hooker (boom boom boom boom)

         

• Temptation Eyes - The Grass Roots (looking through my my my my eyes)..the repeat is always a nice touch as well
• Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves - Cher (I'm a sucker for 70's pop..as this list will surely proove out)
• For You Blue - Beatles ("...because you're sweet an lovely girl, I love you") Don't you love a good George song?

          

• Little Martha - Allman Brothers (nice southern instrumental that makes me smile)
• Let Your Love Flow - Bellamy Brothers (not really brothers (I don't think), but do you need to be brothers to write a catchy song?)
• Rock The Boat - Hues Corporation ("Well I'd like to know where you got the notion"...) reference my comment four songs back

            

• Wishing You Were Here - Chicago w/ the Beach Boys singing harmony (During a recent walk I realized how much I like songs with horns in it...that's where the idea for this blog originated. I was going to call it "Horny Music"...bet that would have got a lot of hits)
• Tennesee Jed - Levon Helm (Love this. If I was in a band this is the kind of band I'd want to be in. If I wrote music, this is the kind of music I'd like to write. If I wasn't such a schmuck I would have travelled to Woodstock to see Levon Helm preform this at one of his legendary Midnight Rambles before he passed away. This is actually a Grateful Dead song, but Levon's version is the one for me. I couldn't have been in the Grateful Dead...I could have been in Levon's band. Did I mention I love this?

Here it is

I've listened to this three times while writing the blog

• Uneasy Rider - Charlie Daniels Band (clever as hell.."Well you may not know it but this man's a spy. He's an undercover agent for the FBI and he's been sent down here to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan"...)
• (Thursday) Here's Why I Did Not Go to Work Today - Harry Nilsson (This is great.."Thursday's surreptitiously unique" Who the hell uses the word "surreptitiously"...Harry Nillson, that's who. Genius.)

         

• Santeria - Sublime (Love the feel of this song, but God's honest truth, after hearing it a few hundred times, I can still not get the words right when I sing along to it...oh, and I do.)
• Treat Her Like Lady - Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose (you read that right...great pop song from the 70's) 
• Love is Like a Rock - Donnie Iris (You can't beat a nice guitar lick)

          

• Waterloo - Abba (I don't know how that one got in there)
• Badge - Cream (doing a George Harrison song. Classic)
• Take Five - Dave Brubeck ( repeat, but I listened to it again just the same)
• Israelites - Desmond Dekker (maybe the first reggae song that ever got radio airplay...if you like Bob Marley, try this on for size)
• Hocus Pocus - Focus (I'm sure I've referenced this before..as a matter of fact I know I have with a video link...cool freak out whistling song)

• The Wheel - Jerry Garcia ("...if the thunder don't get you then the lightning will"...)
• Midnight at the Oasis - Maria Muldaur (this one might make it on every playlist I create...could possibly be the most played song on my ipod)
• New England - Modern Lovers - ("I've seen old Israel's arid plains...it's magnificent, but so's Maine"...)
• Put Your Big Toe in the Milk Of Human Kindness - Elvis Costello ("but always so capricious, in the face of wonder we're suspicious, and though we came from frogs and fishes"...don't you love Elvis?)

           

• I Got a Line on You - Spirit (One of the great opening riffs in popular music)
• New Coat of Paint - Tom Waits ("Let's put a new coat of paint on this lonesome old town"...doesn't get much better)
• Keep Me in Your Heart - Warren Zevon ("Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath. Keep me in your heart for awhile". Not the last time I'll say this to anyone that will listen...play this at my funeral...please.)

I think those got me across the Mass pike into NY. Those plus a wheel gripping pit stop when the (Holy shit there is the biggest, fastest spider crawling up my hotel room wall...oh, he just disappeared behind a mirror...I'll be safe until I fall asleep and he crawls into my bed) morning sky turned midnight black, the rains opened up so much that cars either pulled over (which didn't seem safe) or slowed down to about 25mph (which also didn't feel safe). I was halfway between rest stops when the downpour came, so I pushed through about ten miles and then pulled into a rest stop and waited it out for a half hour. When I got back on the road there was a surreal feel for the next few miles...signs that all sorts of madness had occurred during the storm. I came across a dead cow in the passing lane of the turnpike...how it got there I haven't a clue...my guess is was peacefully chewing some cud out in a field when it got picked up by a funnel and was deposited a few miles away. Just up the road was a fifty foot pine tree split clean down the middle blazing in a fire to beat the band. Mayhem in Massachusetts.

Well, I got you to New York with me, now that's enough. If this list (christ, he wrote another list, didn't he?) gets you to listen to at least one of these songs that you didn't know or hadn't heard in ages, then I'll consider this a success. If you did, let me know which one...I'd love to know. 

Peace and love.

I hope the good guys win.