music *ping*
Very sweet time for me, long ago. How I miss those days.
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I remember when Jesse Ventura was elected governor in Minnesota, America played that song at his inauguration.
OT
A time long since passed.
The one unforgettable lyric in the song refers to “Alligator lizards in the air... in the air...”. As kid with a powerful aversion to Alligator lizards, the visual was a bit unsettling. Blue-bellies, of course, would have been just fine. Why scampering is better than slithering, I cannot say. But I can say that my Labrador (with zero input from me) made the same distinction.
Dan Peek ventured off into Christian music after 1977. I had his album ‘Doer of the Word’. He wrote some good songs. He died in 2011 of a heart related issue.
If you want to have some fun read the lyrics of any song by the band America. It makes sense for a short while, then veers off to crazy town.
Wonderful group and one of my all time favorite songs.......thanks.
I was really trying hard back then to make big money by writing a pop song.
I tried to create a fusion of two of the biggest acts of that time: America and The Captain And Tennille.
My song was,
Muskrat Love On Ventura Highway
Here is some of it.
“Muskrat Susie and Muskrat Sam do the jitterbug on Ventura Highway
And they wriggle until the RV ran over them.”
Never a big hit. Got some play time in Oxnard, though.
Produced by Sir George Martin.
When you hear America’s music, you KNEW who it was......just like Steely Dan......what good memories. Almost brought me to tears when I heard that...good times.
In some ways, America pointed to the inanity of music at a time when Prog was reaching its height. They were written at about the same time but Ventura Highway was not at the level of Yes’s Fragile or ELP’s Trilogy or Moody Blue’s Seventh Soujorn or Jethro Tull’s Aqualung or Deep Purple’s Machine Head.
1970-1976 was a golden age but there was way too much chick music. Yeah, I said that.