#262) "Rainbow Ride" by The Charlie Daniels Band - Charlie Daniels has never been shy about voicing his opinion, and those opinions have changed over time. A "long-haired country boy" long ago, he has turned staunchly conservative in recent decades, his views driven by a strong Christian faith.
That's fine, but "Rainbow Ride" might be the best evidence that before they've been anything else, Charlie Daniels and his band have been consummate musicians, a fairly funky jam band, able to whip their music into a frenzy with precision-timed riffs and interesting harmonies, leading the audience (or the listener) to a certain emotional place where politics should not be allowed to go, or can't survive.
Like the man says, "cowboys, hippies, rebels and yanks", you just gotta sit back and listen...and groove. Or you should, anyway...
"See the nighttime rainbow colors flying by / Close your eyes and let it happen / Rising, falling, gently calling you / Let the evening fly away, while you're dreamin' / Come on take that rainbow ride with me..."
#263) "American Pie" by Don McLean - Over the decades, I think there have actually been more than a few days on which it might be said "the music died": Jim, Jimi, Janis and Ronnie, Lennon, Presley and Kurt Cobain...for some the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were points of no return...for me, for personal reasons, Layne Staley's inglorious demise was the end of something more than just his life.
But the original "day the music died", immortalized in "American Pie", was February 3, 1959, when Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper Richardson and Buddy Holly perished in a plane crash in an Iowa cornfield. I've always thought the whole "day the music died" concept was an elegantly astute observation on McLean's part. The imagery he weaves through the lyrics of the eight-and-a-half minute song clarify the sentiment, placing a punctuation mark not only at the end of his childhood, but the end of the "innocent" 50s.
When I was a young man listening to this song, and fantasizing that I was singing it (er, like everyone, right...?), I would make up my own lyrics to kind of tailor-fit it to my life, my experiences, my own loss of innocence, etc. Now, almost three decades since then, the strangest thing happens when I listen to "American Pie" - I find that I don't have to change the lyrics at all. McLean's allegorical words strangely fit my experience, my memories, without any alteration necessary.
A testament to his artistry, I would say.
"I met a girl who sang the blues, and I asked her for some happy news / But she just smiled and turned away..."
