love this tune

I hate to sound like I'm obsessed with music, songs, and lyrics, but I am. For example, I just found out, "The First Cut Is the Deepest" was written by Cat Stevens. I have no idea how I missed that.

This song is more like the quote, "Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid." I'm still not sure who said that but it wasn't the person cited in "Almost Famous."

Anyway, the line I get stuck on here is, "Challenge what the future holds". The future holds the future, right? Except on the island in "Lost". If you're really challenging the future, you'd have to veer off from the time space continuum and I don't think a simple pop song should try that.

Darn, I've got to take this stuff less seriously, but I can't. Music is the best.
PS You know who really loves this song? David Letterman based on his introduction of this singer.

This song is one big hook.

"Challenge what the future holds"

Maybe the point is to challenge what people expect your future to be. Make a different one for yourself.

Yeah, it's definitely about achieving things that aren't necessarily there for you based on your circumstances in life, but whatever happens is what the future held. The future can't hold anything else. If Barack had challenged what the future held for him, he wouldn't be President.
(I'm not questioning the line as much as using it to illustrate how much time I spend on this stuff because I love it.)

Bob Dylan's, "Tomorrow is a long time"? That was 2 weeks for me.

Sometimes you just have to go with what they probably meant. But if you want to puzzle over some dense lyrics for way too long, try Stevie Wonder.

At the Schnitz last year, Smokey Robinson was discussing how we got the song, "Tears of a Clown" from Stevie Wonder. He said he was at a Motown Christmas party and Stevie came over. (I'm paraphrasing)
Smokey: "So Stevie came over and said may the inner light of enlightenment fulfill the harmony of the universe, and that was just Stevie saying hello."

That was why it was so weird when Stevie came through town last time and had a burst of hatred about the Bush administration.

By the way, do you know Lee Garrett, one of the composers of "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" who I believe teaches at Lewis and Clark?

Lee Garrett's retired, I think. I never caught up with him, but if I did, that's the first thing I would have asked him about. That's one of my Top 100 tracks of all time -- maybe Top 10.

I think there was also a legal dispute of some kind between Stevie and Lee over "I Just Called to Say I Love You." They have since patched things up.

Garrett and Wonder together wrote "It's a Shame," recorded by the Spinners -- in their Motown days, IIRC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHXFOUQBRHE

Interesting but not entirely relevant fact: Garrett is blind.

Bill, perhaps you and I ought to track him down for an interview.

He's still gigging, apparently:

http://www.boomerband.com/leebio.htm

One of the salesmen at Showcase plays music with him or did. You know that song has just gotten a lot more historic after this campaign and it really worked. It had the perfect first line for after any political speech: "Like a fool I went and stayed too long."

This goes to my theory that we should have more plaques around Portland where something cool happened. I was told John Philip Sousa played here. Isn't that amazing?

Why not emphasize things that happened rather than...I don't know...name streets for people who never even came here. Where's the plaque on 92nd at Woody Guthrie's old address? Actually, the building he lived in is now two buildings but you get the point.

Of course this plan suffered a big setback when the "Louie, Louie" plaque was stolen.

Nothing beats England on this where they point over at some tired old building and say something like, "That's where Shakespeare went to the Prom."

In my hitchhiking days, I remember driving through one intersection and the driver said, "That's the intersection where Timothy Leary got busted." It adds to the experience.

We ought to drive around Portland and stop at places where important stuff happened -- important in the grand scheme of things, important in our lives, or where we brushed up against somebody famous.

And I thought Mike Nesmith was good! Deep stuff!