Songs For Your Day

Whenever I sing “My Way” to myself–which happens more often than I can account for–I always sing Elvis’ version from his 1973 Aloha From Hawaii via Satellite album, and not Frank Sinatra’s more famous version.  Not that their versions are all that different; I just put a little more of that Tupelo accent and ’70s glitz into my voice than most of Sinatra’s fans would.  It works, I suppose.  The other night at dinner with my parents, my mother’s friend Libby knew right away just whom I was honoring.

I’ve listened to Elvis for as long as I’ve listened to Willie Nelson.  But while my enthusiasm for Willie is an extension of my mother’s love for him, my passion for Elvis comes from my Uncle Pete.

My favorite childhood memories are from summers at my uncle’s cottage on a small lake in Michigan; we’d hang around the pit in the driveway where Uncle Pete cooked the corn roast over a wood fire, Budweiser in hand, the radio tuned to the local Oldies station.  Often times, depending on the nearest holidays (or the days around August 16th), the station’s weekend theme would be an All-Elvis Tribute.  Uncle Pete would sing along, or tell us fun Elvis facts, or make us run and grab the Billboard Top 40 book we had to see how many weeks this song or that had spent on the charts.

My first year in the gift exchange I drew my Uncle Pete.  Mom said he was always the hardest to buy for, but I knew just what to get: a box set that had just come out called Today, Tomorrow, and Forever, a set of demos, outtakes, and live recordings released on the 25th anniversary of Elvis’ death.  The recordings are the result of Elvis’ perfectionism: he never dubbed a sound on his songs, believing that, since he and his band would eventually perform them live, they must be recorded live and without error in the studio.

One of my uncle’s favorite Elvis moments is from a 1969 concert in Las Vegas.  He finally got the recording for Christmas this past year; it’s rare, and only available by import.  It’s a version of “Are You Lonesome Tonight” in which Elvis substitutes some humorous lines in the song, and then, after singing them, takes notice of the outrageous background vocals from one of his backup singers.  He starts laughing, and can barely get the rest of the lyrics out.

If I could go back and do it all over again, I’d marry Sheryl Crow.

At the Friends of the Library book sale last Saturday, I found a quality copy of her third album, The Globe Sessions, which I immediately bought for nothing more than her cover of Dylan’s “Mississippi.”  I figured the rest of the album would be decent, though, because the woman is hot, and hot women generally make good music.

The “Mississippi” cover is good, but what’s even better is that Sheryl Crow decided it would be a good idea to write an even better song and put it just one track later, a song called “Members Only,” like the jacket, a song which is so good my eardrums turned into flowers.

And so then I decided to listen to Sheryl Crow’s eponymous second album, which we’ve had for quite some time, but which I’d never listened to, probably because of my defiance of radio hits, with which this album is filled with.  “Every Day is a Winding Road,” “A Change Would Do You Good,” “If It Makes You Happy.”  But then, but Yay! I found out that that album has “Redemption Day,” which I’d first heard round abouts February when it showed up on the late J. Cash’s American VI: Ain’t No Grave.  It’s an Apocalyptic song serving up both hope AND despair, and it fits right in with the rest of The Man in Black’s ouevre.  Imagine my shock while scanning Ain’t No Grave’s liner notes that it turned out to have been penned fourteen years ago by the world’s hottest MILF (Musician with whom I’d Love to Frolic with).  This time my eardrums turned into hummingbirds.

You spend the first couple of months of college forcing friendships. Projecting things onto people, creating qualities in yourself that probably aren’t supposed to be there. Trying to blaze girls or trying to talk about blazing girls or at least catching your roommate jacking off once or twice. This one kid, Drew – and with any friendship no matter how insignificant you really can’t find the beginning – lived in the honors dorm. I think he had a guitar or he smoked dope, or maybe he just had a Radiohead t-shirt. We talked about our love of cross-country and beer. He had an older sister, and us being freshly eighteen, there were still advantages to having older sisters. She had left a trail of friends and ex-boyfriends scattered around Muncie, and Drew and I met up with two of such guys one night at a local bar. We got there early because the door didn’t card before a certain hour. I had my first public beer there. It wasn’t noteworthy. These two guys. One was tall, not just tall, but thick. I think he dug hockey or maybe he was from Nebraska. The other was average, very 90s Indie. Now, it seems it was one of those short friendships where both parties got what they needed. We desperately wanted those cool, older boys from movies about college to find us and shape us. They desperately wanted those naïve, younger boys to give meaning to their drunken evening ramblings. We, Drew and I with the two older boys, first bonded on the band Interpol. That’s not the band I’m looking to talk about. It was one of those, “you dig that one song right? Here man let me put on some Guided by Voices.” Now, having some understanding of what it means to have a little self-awareness, I can understand that first epoch of college to be truly well, college. It’s not a negative reflection, nor a longing one. Just a reflection. And really the only song that has stuck with me is “Gonna Never Have to Die”. That’s what this is about, that one song.

-peter