And we can be glad to learn that, somewhat atypically, the speaker’s love lasts even when summer doesn’t.

MTV connected with kids because it was on when kids wanted it.  Every afternoon after school, on weekends, all summer, MTV was there with videos, and almost everyone I know watched it every day.

MTV doesn’t exist anymore.  Sure, I understand that there is a channel called “MTV”, but it isn’t “Music Television”.  There may even be “MTV2″ or “MTV [Whatever]“, but videos don’t seem to matter to anybody anymore – at least not like they used to.  MTV cannot be blamed for that, I suppose, since cable television in those days consisted of maybe thirty channels, and, as the only station of its kind, it had a captive audience it cannot take for granted today.

Still, if you were a kid in the 1980s, and you had MTV, you almost certainly remember the video for The Cars’ “Magic”.  This is the MTV I miss.

Unfortunately, a production problem limited the initial pressing to a couple thousand copies.  A near simultaneous postal strike combined to make the record virtually unavailable.  They continued to play shows, and recorded a second LP, but their window had closed, and by the end of the summer of 1972 they were finished.

The band’s name was Heron, and I had not heard of them until last November when my friend Steve, who seems to know exactly what I like in pop music, brought to my attention a song called “Big A”:

That song is everything I like and nothing I don’t.   Other samples I heard were quite different, but similarly good.  So, after an inexcusable delay, I finally bought a two-CD anthology set called Upon Reflection: the Dawn Anthology, which includes all Heron’s surviving recordings for that label.  It is full of treasures.

In addition to the contents of their first maxi-single, disc one includes their self-titled debut album.  Heron is a folky record, with acoustic arrangements and few drums.  The gimmick was that it was recorded live in an open field.  Indeed, chirping birds and nature sounds are evident.  But the genuine attraction is the good songs.  “Yellow Roses” is a favorite (in spite of a far-too-prominent acoustic guitar).  I particularly like the way the last line of each verse is sung in unison.

“Smiling Ladies” has a brilliantly subtle lyric.  Listen to the ABCA rhyme scheme in this verse:

The second disc of Upon Reflection contains Heron’s complete twenty-one-song second album.  It is more folk-rock than folk (to wit: “Big A”), and several of the songs are overtly pop in construction if not arrangement.  Take “Your Love and Mine”, for example:

With a different arrangement, that song could have been a Motown hit.  And that brings me to this album’s biggest surprise – a cover of a song I have always recognized as a finely-wrought tune, but which is best known in a performance that undermines the genuine tragedy and pathos in its lyrics.  Heron correctly judge the song’s true character:

“The Devil” would be the perfect musical reply to Michael Nesmith’s “Different Drum”:

Upon Reflection is, as I say, full of wonderful songs (“Car Crash”, “Take Me Back Home”, and “Minstrel and a King” are favorites), and it leaves one wondering why Heron didn’t make it.  There are several answers, and bad luck is only one of them.

First, to put it nicely, precision of ensemble was not Heron’s strong suit.  Their performance style is certainly casual, and sometimes sloppy.  In vocal lines with two singers, one will invariably be slightly out-of-sync with the rhythm of the other.  In a band with several singers, none had an especially fine voice.

Several of Heron’s most readily suitable hit songs are sadly tardy.  “My Turn to Cry”, for instance, would have been a hit for any band in 1965, but in 1972 it was too late:

Finally, Heron simply didn’t recognize and promote their strongest, most commercial material.  Hindsight is a luxury, and the band no doubt had its own aesthetic agenda at the time, but how could they suppress “Some Kinda Big Thing”?

And how could any band not know that “If It’s Love” was a smash hit?

Motown would have sold a million records with that song.  Even Pilot or Queen would have taken that record to the top.  No other band would have let it go.  It’s almost impossible to believe, but “Some Kinda Big Thing” and “If It’s Love” were not released until Upon Reflection appeared in 2006.

So, sadly, Heron missed their chance, but I am happy I didn’t miss out on hearing them.

Heron: Upon Reflection: The Dawn Anthology – Castle Music 1432

One day in early summer 1998, Jeff came home from being out all day and told us about a song he had heard that day.  “I always immediately turn off a song when I hear ridiculous harmony guitars, but today I decided to listen”.  “What was it”, Steve asked.  “The Boys Are Back in Town”.

“The Boys Are Back in Town” is, strictly speaking, a spring song, since the speaker declares that “it won’t be long till summer comes, now that the boys are here again”.  But whenever I hear it now, because of Jeff, I think back on that early summer of 1998, and the ridiculous harmony guitars make me smile.

The best songs are summer songs.  I can hardly count the number of great songs that are directly or indirectly about summer.  Many more, certainly, than are about any other season.  Obviously, Christmas has more than its fair share of great songs, and German Lieder are frequently about spring.  But summer has the best songs, the most nostalgic songs, the most evocative songs.  Today is the first day of summer, and beginning today, and proceeding through the summer, I will highlight some of my favorite examples of summer songs.

My first selection, as you might expect, is by Bruce Springsteen, whose catalog of summer-inspired songs is surpassed only by the Beach Boys.  The entire The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, and Born to Run albums, for instance, depict incidents that could occur on one summer day.  “Racing in the Street”, from Darkness on the Edge of Town, is a sad summer song about a woman who has given up on living, and man desperately trying to hold on.  In summer, a man has a chance.

The clip above is from a recording of the complete concert that I attended last September with my wife and father.  It’s a wonderful, if somewhat distant-sounding memento of an unforgettable day.

A live full-band version exists, too, and it is just as good.

Actually, I never really possessed this record until I was much older.  It was always at my grandparents’ house, where I could listen to it on visits.  And since I visited so often, and since I loved Sesame Street so much, I have heard this album more times than I could ever count.  Of course, I got older, and though I never forgot that this record existed, I only thought of it occasionally.  Then, a couple years ago, my grandmother gave it to me as a Christmas present.

As you can see from the cover, the Sesame Street Book and Record “contains [a] 24 page illustrated book”, and a “full color poster [is] included”.  Most of that stuff is long gone from my copy.  I have three or four pages from the book inside the gatefold jacket, and the vinyl album itself isn’t even in a sleeve.  Naturally, the disc is in fairly bad shape, with plenty of pops, and a couple skips on side two.

But, aside from the magical nostalgic quality, what I can appreciate about this record even as an adult are the songs.  They’re clever, sweet, and performed in a surprisingly unadorned style when compared to what is popular today.  The little kids sound like little kids, and not children mimicking Aretha Franklin.  Susan’s a little bit soulful on “I’ve Got Two” and “Nearly Missed”, and the backing band gets pretty funky in “Up and Down”, but you never forget that it’s a record for children.  “What Are Kids Called”, “Somebody Come and Play”, and “J-Jump” are especially sweet.  “Number 5″, “I Love Trash”, and “Rubber Duckie” are lots of fun, and “Green” is a quality song.  I seem to recall “People in Your Neighborhood” being a favorite.

I don’t know if I would have admitted it at the time, but the Sesame Street Book and Record was my favorite album until I was a teenager.

So, as I sat with my father on a blanket under the open sky last Saturday night, watching Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play “Racing in the Street”, I felt like things couldn’t get better.

Sure, it looked like the sky might open up any time and unleash a raging storm.   But aside from a few sprinkles here and there, the weather held out.  And, sure, I was a little worried about how bad our view would be way back on the lawn, but that actually turned out great, too.  And, if $56 per ticket seems expensive, we did get three solid hours–twenty-seven songs–of rock.

Miriam and I met my dad at my Uncle Tom’s apartment in Tampa.  It could not have been more conveniently located.  We ate an early dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse, which was enjoyable and new to me.  We made it to the Florida State Fairgrounds before six o’clock, but they didn’t open the gate for a little while after that.  We weren’t too far back in the line at the gate, but there were still enough people that I was slightly nervous about getting a decent spot on the lawn.  Plus, while were were standing there, the sky, which had spent the earlier part of the day raining, then the afternoon threatening more, began doing just that.  It didn’t last, though, and by the time we reached the grass we were hopeful.  Though there was a mad dash for the closest seats on the lawn, we managed to find a great spot.

As I expected, “Badlands” opened the show, but for the next two songs I was nervous.  Springsteen’s voice was shot.  It wasn’t that he couldn’t sing in tune; he couldn’t sing.  I honestly expected him to call the show off.  But he drank some sort of hot beverage, saying, “I’ll be better in a few songs”. Sure enough, he was.  By the time he got to “Seeds” his voice was strong.  In the request portion of the show, which has become a fixture of the last couple tours, Bruce grabbed just about every sign from the pit.  I saw some fools asking for “Ramrod” and “I’m a Rocker”.  Fools.  I did see someone after my own heart requesting “Drive All Night”, though, of course, we didn’t get it.  What we did get was “Growing Up”, requested by a child in the front row, “All or Nothing at All” which has only been played six times ever, and “Jole Blon” which hasn’t been played since 1981.  So, we did okay, especially considering that a few nights later he played “Ramrod”.

I was hoping to hear some classic songs I had not yet heard live, and I got them, including, in the encore, “Rosalita”.  After “American Land”, I figured the show was over.  But the crowd was so frantic that he busted out “Bobby Jean” and “Dancing in the Dark”, then, finally, “Hungry Heart”.  The place was out of control, and I didn’t think he would try and top it, so we grabbed our blanket and were making our way out when the noise got even louder.  Something was happening on stage that we couldn’t see.  Then we heard Bruce grab the mic and say, “I guess we forgot one”, before the opening strains of “Thunder Road”.  It was incredible.

Still, in a show which included so many highlights (including an enthusiastic version of–of all things–Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More”, which, as you know, is my personal anthem), perhaps the best single performance of the night was an astonishing version of “Johnny 99″.  It turned into a rollicking railroad reel with dueling guitar solos and showboating.  It was thrilling.

Nevertheless, ages and ages hence, when I think back on that night, I’ll most fondly remember hearing “Racing in the Street” while seated on a blanket with my father under the open sky.

One one hand, Rock Band strikes me as the height of poserdom – another example of the artificial replacing the real in our society.  We don’t play tennis or go bowling anymore; we play Wii Fit.  We don’t play guitar; we play Guitar Hero.  John Lennon and Paul McCartney were introduced to one another on the afternoon of July 6, 1957.  Had the two merely played guitar-shaped pieces of plastic in their bedrooms instead of real guitars, popular music would be quite different today.  When the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show seven years later, an army of American boys were inspired to pick up their own guitars, start rock bands, and write the rock songs that defined an era.  What if today’s kids are picking up game controllers instead of real instruments?  Wither music?

On the other hand, a segment I heard on the radio last night raised a point I might have otherwise never considered.  A caller to On Point said that he treasures the quality time he has spent playing Rock Band with his children, and that it has helped him feel more connected with them.  They get to know his music, and he gets to know their music.  This got me thinking: what if the millions of parents who felt so upset by rock music in 1964 had instead been able to share the experience with their children?  After all, shaggy hair and suggestive hand-holding talk wasn’t really what bothered parents about the Beatles.  The Beatles were the physical embodiment of the growing divide separating the World War II generation from their kids.

The Beatles are popular enough, and certainly not at risk of being forgotten, even by kids today.  So I don’t think all this hoopla is about introducing a new generation to Lennon-McCartney.  I think, rather, that it might actually be about bonding.  Video games have divided parents and children for more than twenty years.  If Beatles Rock Band can bring them together, things really will have come full circle.