Offering a two-theme ASN this eve, which should nicely expand both the songs pot and the fun. If stumped for examples in one, hopefully not the other. I suspect most or all will have plenty of gems for both.
Welcome to another Saturday night of music, memories, and conversations!
Gentle reminder: Please continue putting the name of your artist selection in your comment along with your song. Those of us on our phones? We really appreciate it. And people using screen readers need this in order to identify the video.
You know how it works — Put your quarter in the slot and your song in the comments. This is your Saturday night jukebox and the party starts NOW!
And welcome any, all ASN newcomers. Please add whatever inspires you more or less fitting the themes, and enjoy the larger collective playlist as we all do each Saturday. Sunday too, with free coffee and analgesics as needed. Even beyond Sunday — these are essentially historic documents, assuming an internet still around ;}
20 April.
One of my favorite rituals during Nancy’s Nazi Just Say No terror regime was playing it concert-loud while on the best I could find/afford, that being, er, seedless from California, Hawaii, Jamaica and on one occasion Thai. Not stick, just bud and it was the best of all [its own diary-good].
Gave such up since they got too expensive or completely disappeared and as a Cassandra watching the creeping fascism eventually couldn’t enjoy them anyway. Not just hippie paranoia.
We now know a legal cannabis landscape rather different than we imagined, not least vaping. Old fashioned Xmas tree smoking remains an electrocution crime in many locales though, so 4/20 must still be observed.
The theme then clear enough: pot songs! Like astronomy, baseball, etc. anything with even the most indirect reference qualifies.
Ziggy Marley — “Legalize It” cover
On first hearing him way back when I suggested Ziggy was progressive Reggae to many a confused stare. Happily vindicated since but wish I’d been wrong about the fascism. Any and all other versions of this song welcome.
Amy Winehouse — Addicted
Not a song but as a former science educator can’t resist throwing this in. Really good stuff for anyone who loves general deep past, archeology and paleontology topics with a good smoke [or vape]:
PBS — “The Hazy Evolution of Cannabis”
An evolutionary ecology major specifically, I’d love it if any still living ancestral strains discovered [up to 20 million years] but like nearly inedible ancestral maize they wouldn’t make a very good smoke. That’s where genetic research and the last 2,500+ years of pot cultivation archeology come in.
I know the pot song field deep, so leave it to you.
Rivers, Lakes, and Seacoasts Pristine
Revisiting the ASN themes of place, geography etc. but with a more specific scope and another thing I couldn’t get enough of whilst fully toked, along with all the vibrant ecosystems around them.
True in any unspoiled natural system obviously including our desert Southwest, in my experience even better with a river running through it like the Colorado or Rio Grande. Favorite music always went along and completed the buzz, a story told in ASNs past.
Here we celebrate musicians whose songs celebrated these water bodies and the kinds of places their interaction produces, like estuaries and deltas, ravaged as most are now by human greed and stupidity.
The ones I know and love best of course along the U.S. Southeast Atlantic coast, but all over the planet they and their biology utterly breathtaking and each completely unique. That any and all would inspire some great songs no surprise, even if the songwriter focused on romance and not fully aware of everything going on in them.
River songs the easiest finds. Two repeats here but they’re among the best direct river celebrations:
Tina Turner — River Deep, Mountain High
Doobie Brothers — “Black Water”, Mississippi-specific
Billy Joel — River of Dreams
Majozi — “The River”
Jon Anderson [with mix of other Yes and Toto] — “Top of the World”
Directly inspired by long stays on the Cape Fear, Savannah and St. John’s [Florida] Rivers in spring 1973 during Yes’ U.S. tour that year. Three of my own favorites so I know exactly how they felt. Most of the Tales from Topographic Oceans album was also written during these stopovers near the Atlantic.
A few on the more marine-related. Leaving the best of Beach Boys and others to everyone else:
Midnight Oil — “Lost At Sea”
Dual theme, Aussie Native love of their coasts and seas/white destruction of both.
Sherman — “Nile Delta Blues”
Inspired by one of the lushest deltas anywhere, where the Nile meets the Mediterranean. Distinctly Egyptian sounding instrumental.
Midnight Oil — “Dreamworld”. No getting around yet another posting of it since it’s directly about “real estate” speculators destroying fragile marine coastal beauty and biodiversity in Australia and everywhere else.
Gullah Geechee Nation — “Songs of the Gullah”, short compilation
A distinct Black culture whose lives deeply tied with and inspired by estuaries and tidal creek/marsh environments from North Carolina to northeast Florida. Among the most beautiful on Earth, the music beautiful and dates back centuries. Again I know the area well, and these evoke it better than most other local traditions.
Kitty Whately — “The Estuary”. British estuaries great too.
Near the salt marshes and estuaries of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida are longleaf pine forests like these, unlike any other pine forest on earth and smell just like the best Jamaican ;}
Happy 4-20 everyone!