What's wrong with that?

I'm reading Macca's 2016 biography right now, pushing to finish it (not too hard a task) before a long trip, so, of course, I'm kind of tipping on the edge of a rabbit hole with this video. The audio in the song must be the single cut, and it must have been speeded up, because he sound positively squeaky compared to the Wings at the Speed of Sound remaster from 2013 (or 14?) version that I keep coming back to.

But the sweet pleading in the Wings video is as familiar as the sun--streaming through a backseat window, angling lower as the highway rolls by. Oh, indeed, this is one of those as indelible as the vinyl seat seemed to be on your bare legs below your shorts in the car back then, summer of 76, watching the world go by and thinking that it must hold as many good things as the tinny melodies wafting back suggested. Now, what I am pondering as I need to seek the early evening summer sun, is how Linda became a musician through fortune and sheer force of will. And how, exactly, do you keep becoming something when it's all on you, and fortune seems far?

 

I've been feelin' down some too

God, these days it's like having to drag myself to ... anything I have had to drag myself to to get here and get posting. Instead of fretting over the shift from shimmering efficiency and inspiration to slug, I'll instead list things I used to drag myself to:

the shower

the dentist

work meetings

work

bed if I fell asleep on the couch ca. 2006-09 (I blame the 11:00 pm Oprah show, going out, and Second City)

memories of what this song used to mean

the litterbox (to change it)

I guess the last one is the only one I still drag to. And work, even though "dragging oneself" is plugging in some shit and cracking open a computer. Duh.

I'm not going to the second-to-last one. When the you that once was you isn't you any more, why?

Unless it is still you. Not going to fret about that one, either.

Folks get 'round in the sunshine

Everybody does, even when it only goes up as high as your eyes like it does here in November.

I drift back in time and I find my feet down on mainstreet

I know this is a creepy song about a dude obsessed or worse with an exotic dancer, but I was listening to it while reading and seeing a few photos about the old days and it's really just about nostalgia when you transpose the relationships in the scenario. In my case, it's me and the neighborhood. It's where I belonged, even if it was hard. All things were still possible.

Pointless Radio Reviews: You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine

I decided to review what’s playing on retro pop radio. Because somebody had to.

“You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine,” Lou Rawls. 1976.

Spoiler alert in the title. Superlative crescendo (“But there's no ifs and buts or MAY-bes!”). You need to be sitting pensively, then gesture with a Scotch-on-the-rocks from your leather seat in bar with a smoke mirror walls and dim lighting while this plays. Tell it.

You have done what no one thought could be

Stevie always happens just when you need him. Always. This wasn't even a shuffle event. This was my finger blindly opening Songs in the Key of Life as I clickwheeled my ipod in the blinding, second-day-of-summer sun.

Open the door.

As a child, I thought that Paul was referring to "Phil and Dawn," some of the pairs of neighbors that he was asking to be allowed to come into the house. For some lemonade or something. I saw them all lined up in my mind's eye, as this bleated out of the car radio.

Horses, horses, horses, horses

*snap snap snap snap*

Less than one minute old

Going back to Saturn

Contusion

A love like ours is love that's hard to find

A ballad that resonates today because, well, because.

There's a time in life when you form a relationship with a dining establishment, and the sudden demise of that relationship can be unexpectedly devastating.

I know it's food--but it's more.  Friends, family, loves--memories. The biggest part of me.

Revved up like a deuce

Finishing the first coffee I've had in a week...

You must be feeling what I'm feeling, too

Praise to satellite radio, which has been turning up some gems, particularly from the Studio 54 Radio and The Groove channels. There are definitely humans behind the programming, or at least I'd like to think so. Oh, no, they're not content with throwing some EWF and "Bad Mama Jama" and Thelma Houston with you. These cats dig deep. For instance:



Who are Brother To Brother? The Interwebs coughs up barely anything; they plied their trade mainly on dancefloors, and in the funky year of our flares 1976, they released an album (their second) that fit into but didn't spring out of the landscape. That year alone gave us this, and this, and, all bow down now, this.

BTB now reside with the other out-of-print  undead, lovingly preserved in (some) record store bins. And in drips and drops on Youtube. Mildly appreciated and now forgotten by all except the crate diggers and the platter spinners and those who research and celebrate.