RIP John Stewart

Now, now... let's not start making them up... lol

 

That's sad. Monkees changed one word of "Daydream Believer" and changed the whole meaning of the song. He wrote, "Now you know how funky I can be" and they sang, "Now you know how happy I can be."

He continued to perform the real version in clubs for 50 people while their version was all over radio for millions to hear.

Sleepy Jean is sad tonight.

 

I guess those dreams are no longer flying in the midnight wind.

RIP John.

 

The Kingston Trio used to visit Japan. They always stayed at the Yoyokaku Inn, where a guy named Den Okochi (pronounced Den O'Coach) was the innkeeper. Good guys all.

"Where Have All the Flowers Gone" brought a message to millions of people who hadn't listened to it before. Might be suitable to listen to it now.

RIP

 

Fen's neverending quest to dis Dan Fogleberg warms the cockles of my heart and the diodes of my Fogelberg-less iPod.

As for John Stewart, I'm sure he was a great guy, great writer and all. And I'm not hip to the Kingston Trio aside from Where Have All The Flowers Gone?, nor I do I ever want to be, but the aforementioned Gold is unspeakably horrid. Perhaps one of the worst singles of all-time.

I react to it as I would if someone deliberately farted at me. It goes beyond annoyance to mild disgust. I don't give a fuck about when the light's go down in a California town, especially when its sung like Hugh Downs after he just got racked in the nuts.

And Stevie Nicks as a background singer is no distinction. I think she sang back-up vocals for every artist who recorded in Southern California from 1977-1982. My theory is that she had access to a Shangri-La-like stash of uncut blow. Tom Petty and Don Henley, come running!

For crissakes, she sang backup for Kenny Loggins on the insipid Whenever I Call You Friend, another song that repulses me to no end.

Everytime I hear that piece of shit, the image in my mind is of two 50-something, ex-hippie wannabes burnouts who've gone five Red, White & Blue's over the line in their single-wide trailer with a tattered US Festival '83 banner covering their shattered back window underneath some Dutch Elm diseased tree on the edge of town.

After a romantic night lit by a bonfire stoked by Weekly Word News back copies and Soap Opera Digest, they start the l'amour off right with Easy Cheez body shots on their morbidly obese bodies, then proceed to bone their brains out like there's no tomorrow. Gray, Easy Cheese-stained beard hair and ass cellulite fly around with abandon. After the love is gone, they bathe serenely to the strains of Molly Hatchet's Flirtin' With Disaster.

That's what Whenever I Call You Friend reminds me of.

Sorry I got off topic. With respect to John Stewart's fans, RIP.

 

To me, Gold was forgettable late 70s Cali rock. Don't know his version of Daydream Believer, but the song was perfectly suited to Davy Jones' voice. "Funky"? Why that word? I don't even know what that would mean in context with the rest of the song.

 

What, no mention of the Anne Murray version from our northern cousins et cousines?

 

That's exactly the way I feel about the Doobies' "Black Water."

 

Now THAT'S a Behind The Music segment right there.

 

"You once thought of me as a white knight on a steed/Now you know how funky I can be."

She was smitten by him and thought he could do no wrong. Then they're together, she sees his flaws and still digs him just as much. That's the point. Faults and all, he's still worth being with.

Substitute "happy" for "funky" and it makes no sense.

 

I am proud to have prompted this outburst.

 

Out-fucking-standing. But thanks for putting the heinous strains of "Whenever I Call You Friend" in my head for the rest of the day.

I like "Flirtin' With Disaster" by the by.