Sunday, June 07, 2020

Tomorrow Never Knows

"Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream,
It is not dying, it is not dying?

Lay down all thought, surrender to the void,
Is it shining? Is it shining?"


Tomorrow Never Knows. It was the last song on the Beatles' "Revolver" album. Two years earlier, the Beatles released the album "A Hard Day's Night," which contained such finely crafted pop standards as "And I Love Her" and "Can't Buy Me Love." The Beatles hinted at an evolution from poppy love songs to something else with their previous album "Rubber Soul," but for many, the first playing of "Tomorrow Never Knows" must have been a bit of a WTF moment.

Saturday, June 06, 2020

Mustang Sally

One of the first record albums I encountered as a kid was an album by the Young Rascals. One of the hit singles from the album was the song "Mustang Sally". I didn't find out until much later that the song was a cover of the Wilson Picket hit from a couple years earlier. And MUCH later, in 1991, Chicago's own Buddy Guy did a blistering cover of the tune on his album "Damn Right I Got the Blues". It showed me that sometimes musical history lessons arrive in a sort of circular fashion.

Tuesday, June 02, 2020

The Right to Live Your Best Life

"When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw." -- Nelson Mandela