Today's Shuffle: The door always must be left unlocked

God, just when I was about to replace my old iPod with the new one that's been in its packaging for over a year, it gives me a good commute shuffle, good thoughts under blue skies.

Improbably, it's worked its ish out and cranked on for most of this year. 

So I should document this one, though brief, wide as the November sky.


David Bowie, The Stars (Are Out Tonight) The Next Day
Wilco, Muzzle of Bees A Ghost Is Born
Pixies, All Over the World Bossanova
Howard Jones, What Is Love Human's Lib
Beastie Boys, Finger Lickin' Good Check Your Head
Rufus & Chaka Khan, Once You Get Started
Nirvana, Scentless Apprentice In Utero
Common, Track 9  Electric Circus
Jimmy Cliff, My Lucky Day This Is Crucial Reggae
Mandy Patinkin, Finishing the Hat Sunday in the Park with George Original Cast Recording

We'll fight it out to see it through

I could eat this song--every delicious piano chord and that weird synth bridge, too, and then chew it all in time with those congas.

I used to go to Stephanie's off-campus apartment specifically to listen to this song on her copy of this record, on her turntable. Why I didn't just borrow it is beyond me. Finding and re-loving a song is so easy now, we take it for granted. Then, we had to sledge our way through snow on a February night to someone else's residence to hear what we wanted to hear, and hope that they had a working turntable-to-tape set-up and might offer to dub the record, that is, if they had any blank TDKs laying around. A song had to be worth all of that.

Now it can play after taking twenty seconds to locate it in a vast, faceless digital universe, and can play while while the first star of the night when it's still light outside is visible, so faint that your effort involves distinguishing star from sky. But it's there, and worth that less strenuous trek.

Gasping at glimpses of gentle true spirit

This was a post that's been sitting in draft form since November 2011. 

I'm sad that the reason that I found it today is that Richie Havens has passed.

This folk singer, purveyor of peace and possibly the best-known drawer-outer of a stand-in performance after his legendary three-hour set at Woodstock was an  inimitable interpreter of the most wonderful songs of the true rock era--some of them peerless treasures that probably shouldn't be touched by anybody save an older version of its creators.

And I dig that, a lot. Here is my first and foremost favorite:



Tremendous gifts, energy, passion. Tremendous.

Listen to the song--originally precise and clarion--tell me if Richie's diaphanous interpretation doesn't make you ache and want to see some open sky to wonder into.

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I flit, I float, I fleetly flee. I fly. This is like when clouds scud (is that word ever used in any other context?) across the daytime sky at a good clip, you look out and see that, like a mechanically-moved backdrop on a scroll.



I'm going to make an effort to see Richie someday.