Transitions Friday Random Ten

I'm actually writing this on Saturday morning; after running my random ten on my Itunes last night, my old friend Jamie called me. His job is probably going to go away, and he wants to be ready for it. He had an idea for the future, and wanted to run the idea by me. My experience in the front-of-the-house in restaurants, including management, would allow me to consult on his project. That's all I can say for now. His idea is, like all great ideas, brilliant and simple.

In the meantime, I've got the place to myself this morning; my son is busy taking the PSAT (I'm running to pick him up at his school in a while) and my daughter is with my wife at a high school open house. Next year at this time, I'll have two kids in high school, one a freshman, the other a senior, I'll hopefully be a nurse-- and I'll be 50 years old. Lots of transitions.


1. The Rain, The Park and Other Things- The Cowsills
2. Traces- Classics IV
3. Walking Slow- Jackson Browne
4. Hey Mr. Tamborine Man- Bob Dylan
5. I'm In A Phone Booth, Baby- Robert Cray
6. Cry Like A Baby- The Boxtops
7. Hey Lord, Don't Ask Me Questions- Graham Parker and Rumor
8. She Is Beyond Good and Evil- The Pop Group
9. Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman, David Blue and Me- John Wesley Harding
10. Here Comes the Parade- Phil Ochs



Notes:

1. I always thought the Cowsills was an invented name; there really was a Cowsill family.
2. These soft-rock guys had a bunch of hits. The singer died just a couple of years ago.
3. From Browne's great, introspective "Late For the Sky" album.
4. The late, great Hunter S. Thompson dedicated his classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in part to Dylan for having written this song.
5. Next time you watch Animal House, see if you can spot Robert Cray; he's the bass player in "Otis Day and the Knights."
6. The singer for the Boxtops was Alex Chilton, who we lost earlier this year.
7. Graham Parker at his best-- and angriest.
8. From the great "No Thanks" collection of '70's punk and new wave.
9. Gotta love a song that mentions two of my favorite singer-songwriters: Steve Goodman and John Prine.
10. IMHO the best anti-war song ever written-- and there have been many good ones. I've thought about this one a lot recently-- it has the line "A few years ago, their guns were only toys..." There are 18 and 19 year olds dying in Afghanistan who were 9 and 10 when that war began.