1967: The Year I Became Me

Wikipedia won't tell you what was important to me about 1967. To be sure, like the rest of the country, I was waking up to a world saturated by the Vietnam war, racial conflict and cultural foment.  The landscape of my actual life may have been Enfield Junior High School -- where I was an eighth grader -- but was really happening to me was this music.   It shaped my values, aspirations, politics and taste for the next 45 years.

As a 20 year old, I was baffled by why Big Band songs from three decades earlier still cast a spell for my Dad.  Now I know: the songs that usher you into adolescence stay with you forever.

The Rascals, Groovin' - Perfectly captured the feeling of the world that I so wanted to grow up and become a part of.

The Temptations, I'm Losing You - No more the sweet soul music of "My Girl," this was the Temps on the road to psychedelic soul. The intro is mad.

Donovan, Sunshine Superman - What was going on here?  At 13, I was just beginning to get it.

James & Bobby Purify, I'm Your Puppet - A gem from Muscle Shoals, this one was for the sensitive soul man.

The Hollies, Bus Stop - I sang made-up lyrics to this song for years.

The Left Bank, Walk Away Renee - The musical essence of eighth grade melancholy.

The Supremes, Love Is Like an Itchin' in My Heart  - The ladies, the Funk Brothers and Holland Dozier Holland never sounded so good.

Buffalo Springfield, For What It's Worth - The sound of things falling apart, worrying and enticing at the same time.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, More Love - Played rarely on the radio, but I wore it out on a boardwalk jukebox in Avalon.

The Standells, Dirty Water - A regional rock hit with a dangerous, bad boy hook as memorable as "Satisfaction."

Corner of Heartbreak and Vine: The Delines

The Delines, Colfax

I'm a sucker for a sad song with a pedal steel guitar.  That's what got me hooked on Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris back in the day, or more recently on Neko Case and Shelby Lynn.  I know that songs about being dirt poor, broken-hearted or on the run don't offer much uplift.  But when they are delivered as sharply and authentically as on The Delines's Colfax, with melodies that recall Jimmy Webb's "Witchita Lineman," you know you're witnessing alt-country art being fashioned from unhappiness.

The power of Colfax comes from the collaboration of novelist Willy Vlautin (whose other band Richmond Fontaine backs here) and vocalist Amy Boone, who inhabits his lyrics about strong women in desperate straits.  "The Oil Rigs at Night," which opens as the singer prepares to leave her husband, makes you stop dead in your tracks:

Golden light from the oil rigs at night

I can see them off the coast

Twenty three more days he'll be away

it'll be a week before he even knows

We've been friends since we were little kids

But any spark blew out if it ever did exist. 

And then there's the title track, about a woman who goes searching up and down "Colfax Avenue" for her younger brother, a PTSD-shattered veteran:

I know, I know: "Thanks, Jack, for this complete, total downer."  But recall the irresistible tug of Jackson Brown's The Pretender, written in the aftermath of his first wife's suicide and take a chance on Colfax.  Like Browne's best, it has a beauty that heals.

BTW, take a minute to remember Glen Campbell and his career-making performance of the aforementioned "Witchita Lineman," as he now struggles with Alzheimer's.  Godspeed, Glen.