Season 369: My Old School Daze .. PLUS

Back in 1976, this song was included in the self-titled major label debut by singer/songwriter Warren Zevon.
It was covered by Linda Ronstadt, Willy de Ville, Counting Crows and Dwight Yoakam among others.
Carmelita
 
Here's a David Allan Coe song from 1976 I've always liked but never tried. It was a challenge trying to put some of the fills in.

 
zip it up (Mr Rahman remix)

For me the 70's was all about punks and their fatal fascination
for zips. Zips that had no function, never went anywhere and were
often mere decoration. A found sound of Mr Rahman advert. No uke
but some beats and a blast from the past, because it is an anomaly
and to my mind amusing.
 
Ahoy
I have long been a fan of Dylan's 1975 album Blood on the Tracks
The album is recorded, for the most part, in open D tuning so I tuned my uke in open... something (G, B, D, G) and recorded Tangled up in Blue
 
Ahoy again
I also played around with Buckets of Rain. This song is also from Blood on the Tracks (1975) and is also in open something (G,B,D,G)
 
Here's one that I was going to do for Pa's "No" week, but I just didn't get the time to sit down and record it. But it fits perfectly into Rick's time slot, written in the 60s by Tom Rush, but a hit here for The Walker Brothers in Jan '76. And some time after that, an incident which means that this song always takes me right back to a time and a place...

There was a girl at our school called Scarlett. How she ended up there I will never know - there were vague stories of her father being a European aristocrat, and she definitely had an air about her which said she was slightly above the rest of us. But she also had a very good voice - tuneful, soulful, and sometimes almost too powerful - and looks that had boys falling over as she passed by. And she knew it. And in turn, we all knew she was well out of our league. I got to know her slightly, working as the sound mixer on school musicals, but it never went much further than handing a microphone to her and then turning the volume down a bit when her voice went into overdrive.

At a school disco c.1976, she suddenly appeared at my side. "Steve - help me...there's a creep over there that keeps pestering me. Pretend you're my boyfriend". And with that she led me on to the dance floor. Now, acting has never been a strength of mine, but this was a role I did my best to excel at. I can't recall which record was playing to start with, but I remember only too well when the DJ suddenly slowed things down, and this song started. What was I to do, but go along with her request? When the music ended, she thanked me, and wandered off. The End.

But several years later....

One evening I turned on the radio to hear the DJ thank the band that had been in that night to do a live session - The Scarlett Wollenmann Band. That was her. But in the days before the internet and on-demand radio, I never did get to hear that session. More years later, when researching stuff became easier, I found out that she went on to become a bit of a star on the Italian music scene, singing on a few dance hits, and doing some power-ballad-ish things.
Sadly, in 1993, all of that pretty well came to an end when she was in a car accident which left her wheelchair-bound. There are a few clips of her on YouTube - here she is winding her voice up the way she always did https://youtu.be/ZRD_Y7Go-44

Anyway, Scarlett, if you ever Google your own name and end up here, thanks for that dance.

 
This one was out in the UK in 1979 so creeps in under the wire. The choir I belong to are including it in our Easter Concert in April in an arrangement by the choir master so a good excuse to do a solo uke version singing the melody for a change rather than the tenor part.
 
First UK #1 single for the Police back in September 1979.
 
Can't have a Rick Season without any Kinks. Even though they were arguably past their peak during 1975-1979, they did have a handful of pretty good songs. Here's one from Soap Opera, released in 1975. I think Nine to Five -> When Work Is Over -> Have Another Drink is the best run on the album, this song seems a better fit for this season (or maybe the Seasons more generally).

 
Dottsy (last name Dwyer) is from Seguin, Texas, which is about a 25-30 minute drive from where I live. I worked there for several years and was very familiar with the town since I delivered pizza there. Anyway, she was kind of discovered by Johnny Rodriguez and she went to Nashville to be a country star. She did fairly well. She made two albums in 1976 and 1979. This song was released as a single in '77 and then was on the '79 album, and it was her biggest hit in the U.S. She also made it onto the Canadian country charts, and her biggest hit there was a cover of "Storms Never Last" which I think was originally by Jessie Colter. She also had decent hits with "I'll Be Your San Antone Rose" and "The Sweetest Thing I've Ever Known," which was a huge hit for Juice Newton. Dottsy got a lot of radio play around here, since she was a "home town girl," that kind of thing. After her stint in Nashville, she came back to Seguin and has been active in this area ever since. She made one more album in 2010, recorded at a studio somewhere in this area, I'm not sure where.

"Sweet Memories" is a song by Mickey Newbury. It was recorded by several people, but Willie Nelson had the biggest hit with it. "Born To Lose" was written by Ted Daffan, who I have never heard of otherwise, and was recorded by numerous country singers. By the way, Ray Charles recorded both.

 
The theme this week was perfect for me to upload an early song of mine, one of the last ones I hadn't recorded from the songs I wish to preserve from that period.

Strangely enough, my late mother was partly responsible for this one. I always think my mum was somehow aware that she would not be around for long, because she packed in a hell of a lot of amazing advice to me at an age I was probably not ready for it (she died in a car accident when I was 15). One of the things she told me was that as a man I would be "an instrument for a woman's pleasure". I tried my best to live up to that for years. It led me down some wonderful paths and down some weird dead ends too. This song commemorates one of the latter. It was written as the truth was slowly dawning on me that I had merely been used by the person I thought I loved. She would dump me very soon after this realisation and go on to the next guy. So it goes.

 
My third song, and another memory. A few days before I set off to university, I went for a drink with a friend in my home town. I think we were the only people in the pub, and there was a juke box. This song was on there, and I think we spent more money on hearing it over and over than we did on beer. A hit in '78 for The Rezillos, written by Jo Callis, who went on to co-write some of the big Human League songs.

 
This is off 1976’s A Day At The Races. This is such a Freddie song, and has always been one of my favourite Queen tracks. It’s also, you’ll be glad to know...a real pig to sing :)
 
Three days in, pushing 40 entries! Great job, everyone, and thanks for all the love!
 
A French song from 1975, by Joe Dassin (son of Jules Dassin, the film director). The protagonist speculates on his existence if he did not have his love beside him, and, in the process, uses all sorts of complicated verb conjugations. There is a translation under the video. For some reason best known to myself, I have chosen to illustrate the vid with photos of deserted Parisian bars ... well, I suppose it's no fun to drink alone!

 
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One Love

Gonna try a reggae strum today, on Bob Marley's "One Love" from his 1977 Exodus album. I always feel happy whenever I hear this song come on. Uke is a concert Flea.

 
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