Dead In My Tracks

Shuffle mode on my magical iPod machine is going to burn out my mind and my emotions.

Had the thing playing yesterday as I segued from writing to washing dishes to exercising to showering. Heard an Elvis Christmas song, Bruce doing Santa Claus is coming to town, Tom Jones doing My Way, The Stones, Hank Williams (Sr., not jr. the a**hole), Woody Guthrie, The Allman Brothers, Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker. By the way if you love the blues and want to hear some primal, guttural blues, dial up Howlin' Wolf. If you want to hear menacing blues dial up John Lee Hooker.

Last year I created a Christmas play list but forgot to delete the Christmas songs from the general body of songs I have accumulated so when I hit shuffle, a Christmas song will occasionally pop up. In July this annoyed me. Right now it is a treat.

After all this variety both of emotion and music to which I alternately sang along with, danced to, or both, Warren Zevon pops up singing Knocking On Heaven's Door.

I was walking across the living room and literally stopped dead in my tracks. When he recorded this song he WAS dying and he knew it. The lyrics might have been more of a prayer for him or a release or an understanding or a warning to Jesus. Whatever he had in mind, the lyrics had to mean more to him than anybody else who has ever recorded the song.

On the surface he had a great attitude about his impending death. Dave Letterman and he were close friends, which gave Dave the courage to ask Zevon's advice to those of us lucky enough to be alive and healthy. Warren said: "Enjoy every sandwich."

I have always loved those words. They break life down to the basics and  highlight his wicked sense of humor.

Internally I'm guessing Warren was struggling with fear and astonishment and anger and disbelief. I don't know how many takes it took to get that song down, but it had to be as gut wrenching for the musicians playing along with him as it probably was for him.

EMOTIONAL LANE CHANGE: I have been using The Kinks "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" to fire myself up almost every day. Listening in rapture on my new Bose speakers as I sit in front of the keyboard. I was looking around YouTube as I listened and there was a Sopranos video off to the side with this song listed.

At the end of every Sopranos episode a great song accompanied the rolling credits. It was different every week and it was an amazingly eclectic mix. I looked forward to the credits almost as much as I did to the show.

I have a feeling that Steven Van Zandt had a hand in the choosing of the songs. He is Bruce Springsteen's guitar player and he played Silvio on The Sopranos. Beautifully, I might add. He is deeply knowledgeable and respectful of music and DJ's his own eclectic radio program.

Anyway I dialed it up and it was a bunch of great clips from the show flying across the screen as The Kinks kicked ass.

I listen to that song and picture myself breaking free. Free from my own self imposed bonds, free from the bonds imposed upon me by society and my job and responsibility.

Suddenly I'm listening to the song in relation to clips of violence and death and insanity, sensitivity and family and happiness within the weirdness of a fully committed criminal existence. A lifestyle that could not be farther from the norm. You can't get more free than that. And it made perfect sense.

Music, man. I will write about it forever because it continues to surprise me and inspire me and move me.

It stops me dead in my tracks.