Buck 'Em

 

Excerpted from Buck 'Em: The Autobiography of Buck Owens with Randy Poe, ©2013:

Back in February of '64, while "Love's Gonna Live Here" was still sitting at the top of the country charts, the Beatles were having their first number one pop hit in America with "I want to hold your hand." Oh man, I can't tell you how angry some country artists got when the Beatles started having so much success. There were plenty of older country stars going all the way back to the '50s that thought rock & roll was the worst thing that ever happened. They said it was the Devil's music. They didn't just think that it was turning kids into juvenile delinquents-- they thought was turning kids away from country music. Which it was. And when the Beatles came along, you can bet that teenagers wanted to hear the Beatles a lot more than they wanted to hear Eddy Arnold or Ernest Tubb.

If you were a country singer, you weren't supposed to like rock & roll. But I never was one to follow other people's rules, and I never believed that you had to like one kind of music to the exclusion of all other kinds. I like Bill Monroe and Bob Wills and Lefty Frizzell and George Jones, but I like Little Richard and Elvis and Chuck Berry and the Beatles, too.

I like pretty much every genre of music. The key thing for me is that I want an emotional element-- I want to feel the love or the happiness, or the loss or frustration. I want to really connect with the song.

I remember watching American Bandstand all those years ago and the dancers would rate a song they had just danced to: "It has a really good beat, I give it a nine!" Without exception, I hated those songs.

(An aside: it is never terribly difficult to figure out what book I'm reading.)

Heroism

 

And that reminded me of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Five years ago my mother was dying in a nursing home.  I visited her every day.

It was hard.  I felt like my role was to cheer her up and give her a happy break from the tedium, but all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball.

I would blast "Heroes" to give me energy, to remind myself that I didn't have to be heroic forever-- just for today.  Then I did what I needed to do.

Inspiration doesn't always come from wise old men sitting serenely on mats under trees.  Sometimes it comes from tall gravelly-voiced men covered with tattoos.

And They Said

By Becky Hemsley @beckyhemsleypoetry (via):

She sat at the back and they said she was shy,
She led from the front and they hated her pride,
They asked her advice and then questioned her guidance,
They branded her loud, then were shocked by her silence,
When she shared no ambition they said it was sad,
So she told them her dreams and they said she was mad,
They told her they’d listen, then covered their ears,
And gave her a hug while they laughed at her fears,
And she listened to all of it thinking she should,
Be the girl they told her to be best as she could,
But one day she asked what was best for herself,
Instead of trying to please everyone else,
So she walked to the forest and stood with the trees,
She heard the wind whisper and dance with the leaves,
She spoke to the willow, the elm and the pine,
And she told them what she’d been told time after time,
She told them she felt she was never enough,
She was either too little or far far too much,
Too loud or too quiet, too fierce or too weak,
Too wise or too foolish, too bold or too meek,
Then she found a small clearing surrounded by firs,
And she stopped…and she heard what the trees said to her,
And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave,
For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe.

And that reminded me of this; similar words, totally different tone:

Full lyrics HERE.

 

Hate your next door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace…

Full lyrics HERE.

We've been perched on this precipice a long time. 

Barry McGuire has his own web page HERE.

Some came to keep the dark away

Full lyrics HERE.

It's hard to imagine such a powerful voice silenced.  Rolling Stone has a nice obituary, HERE.

 

S.L.U.G.

 

"Slug" by Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754–1799)(clicking Imbiggens)

And that made me think of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Radio Radio / Elvis Costello

And that reminded me of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Dancing

 

(Click to imbiggen)
The artist, sacrée frangine, can be found on the web HERE.

And that, of course, reminded me of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Wham Bam

 

This song always makes me nostalgic for where I was when this was on the charts, but the lyrics are actually pretty awful.

You can read them HERE.

For What It's Worth

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong…

Full lyrics HERE.

Any Day Now

 

Full lyrics available at BobDylan.com.

Home

 

And that reminded me of this:

 

Full lyrics HERE.

I saw the future just shatter like glass…

 

Full lyrics HERE.

Animal Rights

Moby has often said that Animal Rights is his favorite album.

The first time I played it I hated it, but his liner notes ask us to listen twice before making up our minds, so I played it again.

And I hated it again.

I set it aside and forgot about, but months later I came across it, popped it in the CD player-- and loved it.

I think now that I was led astray by my preconceived notions. I had an idea in my head of what a Moby album should sound like, and this wasn't that.

It's something different.

Full lyrics HERE.

 

This is not how I am

 

The first part of the song is so spot-on like the original that I wondered what the point was. Then came the quitar solo… 

Full lyrics HERE.

You Don't Need a Weatherman

 

(clicking imbiggens)

I've lived all over the country, and I've never seen any place work themselves into a panic over the weather the way East Texas does.

Every time it sprinkles the weatherman interrupt programming.  It's annoying and it's dangerous; like the little boy who cried wolf, the day will come when there really is a danger but nobody will believe them.

Zippy by Bill Griffith is on the web at ZippyThePinhead.com.

And that reminded me of this:

 Full lyrics at BobDylan.com.

Who are you?

 

 

And that reminded me of this:

 

Full lyrics HERE.

I Don't Give a Hoot

 

And that led to this:

Full lyrics HERE.

You May Ask Yourself

 

And that led to (of course!) this:

Full lyrics HERE.

To Understand

 

And that goofy little image reminded me of this, one of the saddest songs I've ever heard:

Full lyrics HERE.