Time for a Friday entry.
Some of you read the title to this post and already have the song running through your heads. If you hate the song, my bad.
Others have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s hardly surprising; it was a long time ago, and this particular song wasn’t a big hit.
Over time (if this weblog exists “over time”) expect lots of posts with tiny pieces of song lyrics as titles. When you listen to limited sets of music over a long time, lots of the songs become part of you, lyrics and all. One question that’s been raised about modern music services is whether individual songs become less meaningful when people are stuffing iPods (and competitors) with thousands and thousands of songs. I don’t have an answer. I don’t know if there is one.
Another angle to this: The song celebrates profuse guitar picking–“they can play more notes than the number of ants on a Tennessee anthill.” While I love that style when it’s acoustic and suits the music, I’m also fond of the other end–“not that many notes, but the right ones.” But of course, the pickers referred to in this song did play the right notes…
The “libraries” category? There is a connection. I invite a comment from someone who knows the connection. If you have to research it, include the research path you followed; if it’s personal knowledge, that’s even better. (I’ll add a comment or a new post on Monday or Tuesday if nobody’s responded.) For that matter, there’s another category that could be checked…
Meanwhile, I sure am glad I got a chance to say a word about the music and the mothers from Nashville…
Don’t know about the library connection, but I DID just pick up a “slightly blemished” Martin Backpacker travel guitar at the local Musician’s Friend clearance center…. for a song… and I’m a librarian…
🙂
Memory is such an odd “murky bucket” (Lorcan Dempsey’s term for WorldCat). The minute I read the title, the dang song was playing in my head even though I didn’t live in North America until 1967, and I spent my early years with Cilla Black, Kathy Kirby, Jimmy Saville and PJ Proby on “Top of the Pops.”But I can’t figure out the library connection….
The album on which the song appeared was released in 1966, so it’s reasonable that it would still have been popular in 1967.
If nobody comes up with the library connection, I’ll post on Monday.
I quoted the title of that song in an article I wrote last year for Sci-Tech News, the newsletter of the Sci-Tech Division of SLA. Is that your library connection? 😉
Hey, I’m a big fan of that song…tell me who sang it and the name of the album it was recorded on. Thx, jimm
Jim, I already provided that info, in the very next “Music” entry in the blog, here. John B. Sebastian, leader of the Lovin’ Spoonful, on “Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful.”