We are now at “exceptional drought” level here in north Georgia. I can hear Johnny Carson attempting to elicit a response from his Tonight Show audience. “It is so dry here in ____. How dry is it?” Feel free to create your own answer. But it’s not funny, is it? Pray for rain.

I sincerely hope I don’t have to end up doing a rain dance, but I will.

Which segues nicely into the old Guess Who song, Rain Dance.

I really love the Guess Who. They were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1987, and it is yet another stunning omission from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Not even nominated.

Play/download the long version of American Woman. That song rocks!

Undun, These Eyes, No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature, Share The Land, No Time, Laughing, Hand Me Down World… Come on!

And, trust me, you don’t want to get me started on Jethro Tull having yet to be nominated.

I’m very curious to see where Auburn lands in the initial 2016 College Football Playoff poll tonight. My guess is nine or ten. WDE! Lotta football left to be played, though, and all fans from the great state of Alabama have much to be proud of. (I checked the grammar. It’s okay to end a sentence in a preposition in a note to friends.)

How was Halloween for everybody? We had very few ‘trick or treaters’ here in our neighborhood. Maybe a dozen. I gave them Dum-Dums which is what I give the kids at our church when it’s my turn to do the children’s sermon.

Children. I was a member of the Pied Pipers children’s theater group when I attended Troy State University. (Now Troy University). We did such stories as The Three Little Pigs, The Tar Baby, and Jack and the Beanstalk, among others.

My favorite role was that of Brer’ Fox from The Tar Baby. Never failed though. Brer’ Rabbit always “out-foxed” me and Brer’ Bear and we wound up throwing him, or her, as Brer’ Rabbit was most often played by a female, in the briar patch. EVERY single time.

Brer’ Bear was stump dumb. I would hit him and chastise him severely. Over the years I’ve thought about that story a good bit and created PG13  and R versions of it in my mind. I think that would be pretty darn funny.

Vanilla Fudge’s eponymous first album, from 1966, is now pounding away on Apple Music. Dang that’s good stuff! These guys aren’t given enough credit for their impact on hard rock, heavy metal, and prog rock.

Ah yes, those psychedelic days of yore.

The groups that truly catapulted me headlong into that arena were Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf.

There was a band from Tallassee that would occasionally play the National Guard Armory in my hometown of Camden, AL. The fist time I heard the song Fire, by Hendrix, it was done by by that group, The Fantastic Playboys. After a couple of set breaks, which resulted in subsequent trips to the car, I was primed and ready to bust a few moves to Fire, Proud Mary, and my favorite of their covers, Devil With The Blue Dress>Good Golly Miss Molly. That was a song popularized by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.

Those were the days.

Please click below and try NOT to bust a move with me.

 

Love y’all! Peace out.

(Photo from December 1975. The last day of Pied Piper tour. Me in my Tutu.)