So the blog is in desperate need of regular updates with meaningful (to me, anyway) content. I realize this. I’m going to start regularly posting pieces that are directed toward both influential writers and musical artists, and in no particular order.
THE BYRDS
I’m not 100% positive, but I’m pretty certain that I first heard their rich harmonies and ringing guitars in my dad’s elementary school classroom. I was 3 or so, and for several years after, whenever I went to my dad’s classroom to “help” him (cleaning chalkboards I’m sure, among other tasks), I regularly asked to hear The Byrds on his record player.
“Turn, Turn, Turn” is, of course, my favorite song of theirs. On that same album was my other favorite song, “He Was a Friend of Mine,” a reference to JFK. My dad would also play the Mr. Tambourine Man album, with its title song probably my third-favorite Byrds’ song.
I haven’t listened to The Byrds much since that early time in my life, but their arrangements, their vocals, their sense of melody has stayed with me. And whenever I happen to hear them randomly on the radio, I’m taken back to that classroom that smells of chalk, of wood floors, of dust, of memory.
Plainswriter 