Somethin’ Bout the Song—“Somethin’ Bout a Truck” by Kip Moore

Photo: P D Tillman

It’s a catchy song. It’s on Freegal.

There is something about a truck.

I started driving the hay truck when I was nine—when I could reach the pedals. It was bigger than a pickup truck, but not as big as a semi.

I’d steer the thing between two rows of hay bales while my parent walked along, picked up the bales, and threw them on the truck.

It was old, and the color that a truck gets when all the finish has worn off the paint.

Moore almost couldn’t believe it when this single went gold. He told Billboard  "I can't hardly wrap my head around it. You get so used to things not going your way that when they finally do, you think someone is playing a joke on you."

“These Days of Dust”—“I Will Wait for You” by Mumford & Sons

Photo: NOAA George E. Marsh Album

Some people are into periods of history like Tudor England or WWI.

I’m into the Dust Bowl.

Maybe because I know what it’s like to be in a dust storm so bad you can’t see across the road. Maybe because I used to travel with my family across the belly of the dust bowl, through Clayton, New Mexico and Dalhart, Texas.

Maybe because I read a remarkable book called The Worst Hard Times. I found out that the static electricity in a duster would knock out the electronics in cars. People tried not to touch each other during a dust storm; the shock was so painful. They also tried canning thistles to eat. No food growing anywhere.

So when I hear a banjo and a line like “These days of dust,” well I just have to get the song.
It’s available, along with the rest of Mumford & Sons’ album Babel, from Freegal.

Harry Connick Jr. on Freegal

This is a post just for you, Lisa.

Mr. Cool, Harry Connik Jr. is on Freegal.

Pages and pages of him.

You can start downloading now.

Pour a Little Sugar on It—The One-Hit Wonder “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies

Photo: Martial Bacquet

It's one-hit wonder day!

It makes me wonder--are the bands only good once? Or do they just get lucky once? Maybe it helps to be a fictional band. (Don Kirschner is credited with assembling the studio musicians, and Ron Dante was featured on vocals.)

“Sugar, Sugar,” available for a free download on Freegal, is a catchy tune, and THE definition of bubbelgum pop.

It was the number one pop song of 1969. Even though the “band”-per se- didn’t exist, their spot on the pop charts did.

Which leaves us with the question: if you like the song, is your enjoyment fictional or real?

A Song for One-Hit Wonder Day--Oooh Child by The Five Stairsteps



Photo: D. Sharon Pruitt



“Oooh, Child” is on the one-hit wonder list and available on Freegal.

I’ve always liked the song with its juxtaposition of hope and longing.

When I was first married, I lived on the south side of Chicago and had occasion to meet some of the children who were relegated to eating cereal in front of the kitchen TV after school, because the outdoors was too dangerous. This song reminds me of them.

The Five Stairsteps were so named because they were all siblings, and their parents thought they looked like stairsteps when they were all lined up.

I Think To Myself: What a Wonderful World—The Songs of Louis Armstrong

This past weekend our family took a trip up to the Rocky Mountains to see the colors on the Aspen trees.

It’s just beautiful, the way the sun lights up the leaves until the trees look like sparkling gold torches.

And every now and then, you’ll see a touch of red.

When I saw that Freegal had Louis Armstrong, I knew that “What a Wonderful World” was the song to go with this photo.

The single was released in 1968—a bad year in America which saw race riots in over 100 cities.
The Jewish-American creators of the song were hoping Armstrong could use the song to calm the populace and bring people together.

It didn’t get such a great reception here at first, but now it’s entered a realm called the “sacred-secular,” a meditative and joyful piece.

Freegal has lots of Louis Armstrong music, including a “Greatest Hits” compilation.

Got a Wife and Kids in Baltimore Jack—Hungry Heart by Bruce Springsteen



Photo: Goldwyn Pictures

 The Boss is on Freegal!

How come no one told me before? Actually, that’s the thing I like about Freegal: I’m constantly finding new things.  I knew about Elvis and Michael Jackson, but can’t believe I missed Springsteen.

 “Hungry Heart” was on The River, his first album to hit the number one spot on Billboard’s charts.

The title is taken from the line in Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses “For always roaming with a hungry heart.”
The photo is from a 1922 movie called Hungry Hearts, which is about the hopes and hardships of an immigrant Jewish family.

I wonder if the title also alludes to Springsteen’s early life. He had always wanted to be a musician, but his father was dead set against it. On the other hand, his mother bought him a $60 electric guitar, an enormous sum for the family in those days.

Fortunately for mom, this rock and roll gig turned out all right for Bruce.

Beer and a Song—and White House and the World

Photo: KFP

Beer has been in the news lately.

Apparently, President Obama was inspired by home brewers and bought a kit for the White House Kitchen. The fellas hadn’t ever brewed beer before, but they got a few tips from brewers in the house, and they say their beer turned out pretty good.

Here are the recipes for White House Honey Ale and White House Honey Porter. You can see a video, too.

A quick search of Freegal shows that musicians the world over have written songs about beer.

There’s plenty of German music, of couse, with “Beer Barrel Polka” and the Bavarian Biersingers with “Gimme a Beer.”

Jazz singer Bessie Smith wants a little more in the song “Gimme a Pig’s Foot and a Bottle of Beer.”

The Irish singers The Clancy Brothers and The Dubliners go with a song that’s simply “Beer, Beer, Beer.”

The Aussie Frankie Davidson has a whole album of pub songs including “Beer, Beer, Beautiful Beer.”

Country music is well-represented, as you might imagine, with titles like “Beer Money” by John Carter, and “Dip Me in Beer” by Jeff Griffith.

Blues man Rik van den Bosch fits as many vices as he can in “Coffee, Cigarettes, and Beer.”

If you’re a Gleek, Freegal has the Glee cast’s version of “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.”

And, the Indigo Girls get into the act with “Cold Beer and Remote Control.”

We Don’t Need No Education—Tony Danza, Pink Floyd and “Another Brick in the Wall”



Photo: Wikimedia

 So, how do you get from Tony Danza to Pink Floyd?

Simple. Tony Danza spent a year teaching in an urban Philadelphia school and wrote a book about his experience called I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had.
His experience was also featured in an A&E reality show. I caught a few episodes of it. People may have liked him in Taxi and Who’s the Boss? but his students were mostly unimpressed.
Isn’t that just the way? You can have awesome hair in the eighties, but 30 years later the teens just yawn in your face.

So I started thinking about song about education, and of course the first one that came to mind was Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” You can download the live version on Freegal.
I remember it caused a bit of a stir because of the lyrics, and my Sunday School teacher didn’t like it one bit. You could try to explain, “It’s actually a song that protests against the dehumanizing effects of rigid boarding schools,”  but all they could hear was that first line, and it was the devil’s song.

Get All the Star Trek Themes from Freegal



Photo: NASA

 Did you see Google's little tribute to Star Trek today?

So, I typed "Star Trek" into the search box on Freegal, and 6 pages of songs later, I'm thinking they pretty much have it covered. You've got the original theme, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, soundtracks from the movies.

My parents liked the show, and I remember feeling so grown up when I got to stay up late and watch Star Trek re-runs.

I was a fan of the Next Generation in the 80's. (That Picard voice.)

And I've grown fond of Voyager, too. We watch it with my teenage daughter, who is a fan. I like the idea that she thinks it's pretty normal to have a woman as a starship captain.

One more thing I can't resist. Isn't that just the coolest thing? A  starship pizza cutter.

A Song for Peyton Manning: Eye of the Tiger



Photo:  Giku


Here in Denver, we're anticipating Peyton Manning's return. The "thinking man's quarterback" had his head on straight. The question is, "What about his neck?" Crossing our fingers for him.

Freegal has the ultimate comeback song, "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor.

Rumor has it that Stallone wanted to use "Another One Bites the Dust," in his movie, but it wasn't available, so he commissioned Survivor to pen him a theme.

My husband is such a football fan that when his 50th birthday came along, I hired Miles the mascot to come. We needed some football tunes, so I downloaded a bunch, and then put up this site to make it easy to download them all. If I had known about Freegal then, I could have saved myself about five bucks.

Twisted Sister Not Gonna Take It --Weirdness All Around



Photo: Guyon Moree

 Weird: VP hopeful Paul Ryan plays 80’s heavy metal/glam group’s anti-establishment anthem to energize his base.  Isn’t there something against twisted sisters in the Republican platform?  These guys were hauled before a senate committee back in the day for their lyrics.

Not Weird: Dee Snider asked them to…uh... not play that song at their get-togethers, saying "There is almost nothing on which I agree with Paul Ryan, except perhaps the use of the P90X.

Weird: I looked up "We're Not Gonna Take It" on Freegal.  It turned up on their Christmas album A Twisted Christmas.  Bet you don't have the heavy metal version of "White Christmas."

Weird: When I entered the word "angry" in Wikimedia to find a picture to go along with this post, I found a picture of a cat.  O, wait a minute, that's not weird.  The Internet is all about cats.  When the learned scientists hooked up their supercomputers to the Internet to see what they could learn, they used their combined calculating power to determine what a cat was.

So perhaps when the robots come to take over the world, they will get distracted by cats on YouTube.

Train: It’s the Ukelele



Photo: Drew Jacksisch


 Train has six songs on the Freegal top 100:  50 Ways to Say Goodbye, Drive By, Drops of Jupiter, Hey Soul Sister, Sing Together, and This’ll Be My Year.

The band had done well with its previous albums, especially Drops of Jupiter, when it took a hiatus from 2006-2009.

But, things weren’t going well for their comeback until “Hey, Soul Sister” started climbing the charts, seeming to come out of nowhere.

Credit the ukulele. They had originally written it for guitar, but switched it to the uke, which they say just made the song make more sense.

Back in my day (and that was a long, long time ago), the ukulele had been relegated to a joke instrument. Tiny Tim and his prancing rendition of  “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” set the uke back a generation.

By the way, you can get several versions of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” from Freegal, including one labeled “Explicit.” Just what were they doing in the tulips, anyway?

But Israel Kamakawiwo’ole with his stunning “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and now Train are bringing this instrument back.

I think I’m going to go to Freegal and look for an album of ukulele covers.

Oh, and if you want to hear an awesome “Tiptoe” version give a listen to the one by John and Hannah Kane. Seriously. They redeem the song.