Last weekend, I caught a performance by Men at Work frontman and solo artist Colin Hay at The Guild in Menlo Park, CA. He delivered a wonderful set that blended highlights from his Men at Work days with standout songs from his solo catalog — and even surprised the crowd with a cover of Del Amitri’s “Driving With the Brakes On.”
Hay is a terrific raconteur, spinning stories between songs with a wit and warmth that had the audience laughing throughout the night. Each tune came with a personal anecdote — part reflection, part comedy routine.
One of his longer stories concerned the time he met Paul McCartney, a tale he’s clearly refined over the years. (A quick YouTube search shows he’s shared it in many performances before.)
I secretly hoped that this story might lead into the song McCartney once named among his “14 favorite songs of all time” — “Going Somewhere”, as revealed in Uncut magazine back in 2004. But unfortunately, it wasn’t on the setlist that night.
So, I’ll share it here instead:
“Going Somewhere” by Colin Hay — one of Paul McCartney’s favorite songs of all time.
Every great music scene has its creation myth. For Athens, Georgia — a sleepy Southern college town that improbably became one of America’s most creative hotbeds — it began in 1978 with the explosion of the B-52s. Their gleefully eccentric mix of sci-fi kitsch and mutant dance rhythms caught fire locally, then nationally, signaling that something extraordinary was happening below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Grace Elizabeth Hale’s Cool Town traces that moment and the bohemian swirl that followed. Part memoir, part cultural study, the book maps the intertwined worlds of art, poetry, and music that transformed Athens from a college town into a creative hub. Hale was there herself, an active participant in the scene, and her perspective feels both intimate and sharply observed. The prose is accessible, though laced with academic rigor — footnotes abound, giving it the air of a rock ’n’ roll dissertation that’s anything but dry.
Reading Cool Town sent me back to Athens, GA: Inside/Out, the 1986 documentary that captured the scene’s ragged charm (and whose soundtrack I still own). Watching it again is like stepping into a faded Polaroid — full of eccentric artists, thrift-store fashions, and jangling guitars.
After the B-52s came Pylon, a band born from the University of Georgia’s art department. Guitarist Randall Bewley, bassist Michael Lachowski, drummer Curtis Crowe, and vocalist Vanessa Briscoe Hay fused post-punk angularity with a minimalist, rhythmic drive that made them instant cult heroes.
Their first single, “Cool” backed with “Dub,” was pure Athens energy — raw, danceable, and defiantly independent. In fact, Village Voice critic Robert Christgau crowned it the “best independent single of the year” in 1980.
Another group of UGA students (Mark Cline, Mike Richmond, and Armistead Wellford) originally eschewed vocals altogether, crafting shimmering, melodic instrumentals that invited both introspection and movement.
Their tune “Spin Your Partner” remains a highlight of the Athens canon — sunny, hypnotic, and instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever stumbled into a late-night art-school party.
What Cool Town captures so beautifully is the sense of possibility that hung in the air. This was a scene without music industry oversight or commercial ambition, driven instead by play, experimentation, and friendship. Before “indie” was a marketing term, it was a way of life — and Athens was its playground.
For anyone drawn to the jangly, offbeat spirit of early alternative rock — or the kind of art-meets-music cross-pollination that gave birth to so many American subcultures — Grace Elizabeth Hale’s Cool Town is essential reading.
Little Walter (Marion Walter Jacobs) was a blues musician best known for “inventing” the amplified harmonica sound that has since become a cornerstone of modern blues.
Born and raised in the South, Walter sharpened his harp skills early before moving to Chicago in 1946 during the Great Migration. There, he quickly immersed himself in the city’s thriving blues scene, which leaned heavily on electric instruments — quite different from the acoustic traditions of the rural South.
Frustrated that his harmonica was consistently drowned out by amplified guitars, Walter began experimenting. He cupped a small microphone with his harp and ran it through a guitar amp — or sometimes directly into the PA. While other players were dabbling with similar tricks, Walter’s approach was groundbreaking: he embraced distortion. By pushing his amps into the red, he crafted a raw, aggressive tone that became his unmistakable signature.
For years, Walter was a fixture on Chess Records sessions, adding fire to Muddy Waters’ recordings and countless others. But in 1952, he convinced Chess to let him record under his own name. His very first take yielded “Juke” – anelectrifying instrumental that shot straight to the top of the Billboard R&B chart, holding the No. 1 spot for eight weeks.
To this day, it remains the only harmonica instrumental ever to reach such heights.
Tragically, Walter’s life was cut short. He died in 1968 at just 37, following complications from minor injuries sustained in a bar fight. Yet his influence endures. The sound he forged became the template for generations of players. From Junior Wells to James Cotton. From Jerry Portnoy to Paul Butterfield. From Kim Wilson (the Fabulous Thunderbirds) to Rick Estrin (Little Charlie & the Nightcats). And many more.
For half a century, California has existed in pop music less as a state than as a state of mind. Its beaches and boulevards, its sunsets and smog, have been filtered through songs that promise escape, reinvention, and occasionally disappointment. Three of the most evocative entries in this canon — Joni Mitchell’s California (1971), Led Zeppelin’s Going to California (1971), and the Mamas & the Papas’ California Dreamin’ (1965) — illustrate just how elastic that golden state could be in the musical imagination.
Each song is rooted in longing, but the kind of longing changes with the artist. For John Phillips and Michelle Phillips, California was a sun-drenched fantasy when they were shivering in New York. For Led Zeppelin, it was a mystical quest across the Atlantic, a countercultural Eden that shimmered from afar. For Joni Mitchell, it was something more personal — a home she missed while wandering Europe. Together, these three songs sketch a shifting map of California in the late ’60s and early ’70s, tracing the arc from communal dream to personal refuge.
Released in 1965, “California Dreamin’” was born of cold Manhattan sidewalks. John Phillips, trudging through winter with Michelle, imagined the Pacific coast as the antidote to frozen streets and urban gloom. The song’s yearning is immediate: “
All the leaves are brown,
and the sky is grey
Within seconds, we’re transported into a daydream of warmth and liberation.
Musically, it carried the polish of LA’s burgeoning folk-pop scene, thanks in no small part to producer Lou Adler and the Wrecking Crew session musicians. The flute solo — played by Bud Shank, a jazz man drafted into the pop world — adds a wistful, almost cinematic shimmer. And those harmonies! The Mamas and the Papas were never tighter than on this record, with Denny Doherty’s tenor cutting through and Cass Elliot’s warmth anchoring the sound.
But listen closely and you hear something bittersweet. For all its imagery of sun and freedom, “California Dreamin’” isn’t sung from the beaches — it’s sung from exile. It’s about being somewhere you don’t want to be, imagining California as salvation. That tension — between the dull grind of reality and the bright fantasy of escape — gave the song its enduring pull.
By 1971, the dream had become myth. Led Zeppelin, already kings of electric thunder, downshifted into fragile acoustic textures for “Going to California,” a highlight of Led Zeppelin IV. With mandolin and acoustic guitar intertwining, the band spun a ballad of longing that felt out of step with their swaggering reputation.
Here, California is imagined as a mystical sanctuary, where “a woman out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair” waits. It’s no coincidence that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page wrote the song under the influence of Laurel Canyon’s folk goddess — Joni Mitchell herself. Plant would later admit that Mitchell was the inspiration, and the song can be heard as both pilgrimage and love letter.
The perspective is masculine, even quest-like: a British troubadour voyaging west in search of peace, romance, maybe even salvation. Plant’s vocal is fragile; a sense of wonder not found in Zeppelin’s heavier catalog. In this acoustic hush, California becomes mythic—less a place on the map than an imagined Shangri-La.
Joni Mitchell’s own “California”, also from 1971, provides the counterpoint. Written while she was abroad in Europe – “sitting in a park in Paris, France” — the song is a letter home, playful and intimate. Where Zeppelin dream of California as a destination, Mitchell sings of it as an anchor, a place she belongs.
The genius of Blue lies in its confessional immediacy, and “California” is no exception. Mitchell catalogues her travels — Spain, France, Greece — then punctuates them with a refrain of yearning:
Oh, it gets so lonely
When you’re walking
And the streets are full of strangers
The melody skips and dances, propelled by James Taylor’s guitar and Mitchell’s unmistakable phrasing.
California here isn’t fantasy or myth; it’s home. Not just the physical place, but the psychic ground zero of Mitchell’s creative self. While Zeppelin were mythologizing her from afar, Mitchell was reminding us that California could be just as flawed and human as the people who called it home.
Taken together, these three songs chart California’s evolution in the popular imagination. The Mamas & the Papas gave us the dream, all soft-focus harmonies and wide-eyed yearning. Zeppelin gave us the myth, a British fantasia of flower children and sunlit freedom. Mitchell grounded it in reality — a homecoming sung with both longing and clear-eyed intimacy.
What they share is the recognition that California was more than geography. It was promise, myth, and muse. For some, it was an escape; for others, a dream; for Mitchell, a home to miss.
In the end, these songs don’t describe the same California at all. They describe three different versions of it, refracted through different eyes at different cultural moments. But that’s the point: California has always been less about where you are than about what you long for.
A few weeks ago, I caught Everclear at The Guild Theater in Menlo Park, CA. I didn’t walk in as a die-hard fan, which made it all the more surprising when I found myself recognizing so many songs – “Heroin Girl,” “Santa Monica,” “Father of Mine,” and “Heartspark Dollarsign” among them.
One track I had secretly hoped for never made the setlist: “AM Radio.”
Written by frontman Art Alexakis — Everclear’s guitarist, vocalist, and chief songwriter –– “AM Radio” is a nostalgic love letter to the music of his ’70s childhood, long before CDs, iPods, and streaming reshaped the listening experience. In it, Alexakis tips his hat to the rock and soul of the era while taking a playful swipe at disco:
I like soul, I like rock, but I never liked disco (AM Radio) I like pop, (AM Radio) I like soul I like rock, but I never liked disco
A prominent feature of the track is its sample of Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff,” a funk-soul classic that adds instant groove. Interestingly, that same song is enjoying a second life today, thanks to Volkswagen, which has incorporated it into a series of catchy ads for the Tiguan.
It’s easy to hear why Alexakis chose it back then — and why Volkswagen is leaning on it now. “Mr. Big Stuff” is one of those tunes that gets under your skin in the best way. It oozes pure joy.
Back in the 70s, plenty of companies catered to (mostly) men who wanted to own high-fidelity stereo systems to enjoy their music. The goal was simple: BIG amps, BIG speakers, and BIG sound — played loud.
In Boston, we had Tech Hi-fi and Tweeter, Etc. These stores had listening rooms where you could sink into a comfortable chair, put on a record, and use a switch to toggle between different speakers for A/B comparisons. It was all about discovering your personal preference.
The sales staff would usually ask what genre of music you like, then choose an album known for its superior sound quality. For rock fans, Steely Dan albums were a go-to. Another that was often showcased for demos was Supertramp’s third disc, Crime of the Century (1974). It is widely recognized as one of Ken Scott’s finest recordings. The instrument separation, and the enhanced clarity and depth of the vocals made it a perfect showcase for a high-end system.
So today, in honor of Supertramp keyboardist and vocalist Rick Davies — who passed away last Saturday — the SotW is “Bloody Well Right.”
Written by Davies, “Bloody Well Right” was originally released as the B-side to the single, “Dreamer.” But in the U.S., it was the B-side that broke through, climbing to #35 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Lyrically, the song can be seen as a response to the band’s previous track, “School,” which called out the emptiness of the education system. With its mischievous, cynical delivery, the chorus — “You’re bloody well right” — acknowledges the truth of complaints about money and family privilege but shrugs them off with an air of indifference.
So you think your schooling’s phony I guess it’s hard not to agree You say it all depends on money And who is in your family tree
Right (right), you’re bloody well right You got a bloody right to say
So drag out those old Advent speakers and crank it up!
I’ve been listening to the 4th album by Hannah Cohen, called Earthstar Mountain. (The title Earthstar comes from a species of mushroom that Cohen came across while foraging on her farm.) Cohen is a singer/songwriter who was born in San Francisco, lived for 15 in New York City, but now calls the Catskills, just outside Woodstock, her home base.
Certain tracks on the album harken back to the Buckingham/Nicks era ‘70s albums with Fleetwood Mac. That is especially accurate for the track “Mountain.”
I’ll just play it on over and over again A love like that won’t ever end We could be like this or that instead I miss you bad I miss my friend
The song about losing a close friend gets some help from Sufjan Stevens on backing vocals. Cohen told Rolling Stone that writing the song “was an exorcism of grief.”
Fans of the smooth vocal style of Norah Jones on her Come Away with Me record. In fact, Cohen credits Jones with teaching her how to sing harmony.
Cohen’s move to the country from NYC has had a profound impact on her relationships, songwriting, and view of life. The natural beauty and seasonal changes have affected her in a profound way. Listen to her new album to immerse yourself in her Earthstar Mountain fantasy.
“Witchi Tai To” is one of those strange and beautiful songs that feels both timeless and slightly out of place — like it wandered into the pop landscape from another dimension. MOJO magazine recently described it as Jim Pepper’s “peyote chant,” a fitting shorthand for its hypnotic blend of jazz, Native American tradition, and sheer groove.
Pepper, a gifted jazz saxophonist of Kaw and Creek heritage, first recorded the song with his group Everything Is Everything in 1969. Two years later, he released what most consider the definitive version on his Pepper’s Pow Wow album.
That session was no small affair — Pepper was joined by jazz fusion royalty Larry Coryell on guitar and Billy Cobham on drums, lending the track a subtle electricity beneath its serene surface.
On paper, “Witchi Tai To” shouldn’t work as a popular tune. Its central hook is a Native American chant, repeated in a meditative cycle, with the verses offering only the gentlest variations. And yet, it has lived a rich second life in the hands of others, covered by acts as far-flung as Harpers Bizarre, the Paul Winter Consort, the Bonzo Dog Band, and even the Supremes!
My personal favorite, though, is Brewer & Shipley’s take from their album Weeds (1969).
Although Weed’s liner notes don’t provide credits by song, the session musicians who may have played on this track include Mike Bloomfield (guitar), John Kahn (bass), Richard Greene (fiddle), and Mark Naftalin and Nicky Hopkins (pianos).
They slyly weave in the rhythm of Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane,” giving the track a rock pulse without breaking its trance-like spell. It’s a small shift, but it strips away some of the “world music” museum-glass feel and makes it breathe in the language of FM rock radio circa 1970.
Interestingly, while Pepper was a jazz artist, his own version doesn’t lean too heavily into jazz harmony or improvisation. Oregon’s rendition, however, taps more deeply into that side of the composition — stretching the melody, exploring space, and drawing out the modal undercurrents.
Fast forward to the present day, and “Witchi Tai To” pops up again, this time in the indie rock world. Pavement recently recorded a version for the 2024 documentary Pavements, which charts the career of Stephen Malkmus and his merry band of slanted-and-enchanted misfits.
The survival of “Witchi Tai To” over more than half a century says something about its quiet power. It’s not a song you expect to stick in the collective memory — there’s no verse-chorus hook, no big crescendo — but it does! It hums along in the background of pop history, waiting for each new generation to stumble upon it, fall under its spell, and pass it along again.
In January 1975, I landed my very first FM radio spot on WZBC — as a freshman. This was a big deal, because Boston College’s station had only just received its FM license less than a year earlier. Back then, there were strict requirements: you had to spend at least one semester on the AM station, which only reached the dorms via carrier current. And in ’75, you also needed a Radio Telephone Third Class Operator Permit. That meant hunting down an FCC office and passing an actual test.
That first semester on air, I received a caller request to play “Rosalita” by Bruce Springsteen. Bruce who? I hadn’t yet caught up to Springsteen but was game to satisfy a listener request. I found the album — The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle – in our record library and tried to cue up “Rosalita”. But as you may know, there’s no clean break between “Rosalita” and the track before it, “Incident on 57th Street”. I had to take my best shot a figuring out where “Incident…” ended and “Rosalita” began. By some miracle, I nailed it!
Five minutes later, I was hopping up and down in the studio –
And my tires were slashed and I almost crashed, but the Lord had mercy And my machine, she’s a dud, out stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey Well, hold on tight, stay up all night, ’cause Rosie, I’m comin’ on strong By the time we meet the morning light, I will hold you in my arms
… and just like that, I was a Springsteen fan for life.
By the end of that summer, I was counting the days until his next album would be released. Born to Run dropped exactly 50 years ago this Monday — August 25, 1975. My hometown of Newburgh, NY, didn’t have a record store that stocked new releases on day one, so I drove down to the Nanuet Mall to grab my copy.
Born to Run still stands as one of the greatest rock albums of all time. You know all the songs by heart. So how do I provide an entertaining twist to celebrate the album’s golden anniversary?
Let’s start with an early, bootleg version of “Jungleland”?
This version (V4) has a different intro, and some different lyrics. Instead of “the midnight gang’s assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night”, we hear “there’s a crazy kind of light tonight, brighter than the one that sparked the prophets”. And where the final lyrics read “the street’s alive as secret debts are paid, contacts made, they vanished unseen, kids flash guitars just like switchblades hustling for the record machine”, we get “the street’s alive with tough-kid Jets in Nova-light machines, boys flash guitars like bayonets and rip holes in their jeans”. The final lyrics are tighter, but it’s fascinating to hear the evolution.
Another outtake from the Born to Run sessions is a song called “Lonely Night in the Park.”
“Lonely…” was considered for inclusion in early track listings of the album but was ultimately dropped. Coincidentally, it received its first official release yesterday, though bootleg copies have been circulating among collectors for years. I often thought this track was probably an early rehearsal, not the final track. It feels less polished, a little sloppy, and there’s a lyrical clash: the imagery puts you at the beach, yet the title plants you in a park. Bruce probably preferred the way “park” sounded when sung, but apparently, he never reconciled that conflict.
Thank you, Bruce, for working so hard to give us Born to Run. You’ve earned a huge fan base with the release of this outstanding album, whose lyrics and music touch so many people – even 50 years after its release.
One of the contemporary groups I’ve been listening to lately is the British indie rock band English Teacher. Their debut full-length album, This Could Be Texas, was released this past April.
Today’s SotW is one of the singles released from the album – “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab.”
This is a sharp, emotionally layered track that balances jangle-pop textures with post-punk grit. It stands out for its blend of wiry, math-rock-inspired guitar work, rhythmically propulsive bass, and frontwoman Lily Fontaine’s emotionally nuanced vocal delivery.
I am the world’s biggest paving slab But no one can walk over me I am the Pendle Witches, John Simm And I am Lee Ingleby I am the Bank of Dave, Golden Postbox And the festival of R&B And I’m not the terrorist of Talbot Street But I have apocalyptic dreams
You should see my armoury
So, what are all those namechecks — Pendle Witches, John Simm, Lee Ingleby, the Bank of Dave, the golden postbox — threaded through Lily Fontaine’s lyrics?
They may seem cryptic at first but, after some research, they appear to form a tightly woven map of Northern England identity. These aren’t random cultural ephemera; they’re landmarks in a specific psychic landscape: Burnley, Lancashire, and the wider, often-overlooked North of England. The Pendle Witches evoke a legacy of persecution and outsider status, while actors Simm and Ingleby represent local talent that’s slipped quietly into the national consciousness. Dave Fishwick’s grassroots financial rebellion and the Olympic postbox gilded for civic pride round out a portrait of a region that celebrates both the mythic and the modest in equal measure.
Fontaine isn’t just listing trivialities — she’s capturing the strange folklore of her own upbringing, where the surreal and the everyday coexist on the same street. These references become signposts in a song about stasis and disconnection, grounding its themes in real places and faces that feel half-remembered, half-legend. The metaphor of the “world’s biggest paving slab” suggests feeling pinneddown — as if a literal weight is holding the narrator in place. It’s a powerful image of emotional inertia: being crushed not by drama or trauma, but by the slow, suffocating weight of the ordinary.
If you dig indie rock, I urge you to give This Could Be Texas a full listen – more than once. It is one of those rare albums that reveals more with every listening.
