With Labor Day weekend upon us, and as the sun starts to set on another summer, did you have a song of the summer?
Identifying THE song of the summer has become increasingly difficult because communal listening — that shared experience of discovering music — no longer exists. Seemingly everyone digs their own stream.
Top 40 radio is largely gone, splintered into top hits in a wide range of genres. “Shindig!” “Hullabaloo,” “American Bandstand,” “The Midnight Special” and “Soul Train” are long gone from TV. MTV is gone, at least as a music influencer.
This summer, any new music I heard was streamed from WXPN radio out of Philadelphia. I listen often.
My song of the summer is “Sunshine Getaway” by J.D. McPherson, a cut from “Nite Owls,” an album that’ll be released next month. This slinky groove chugs right along.
McPherson backed Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on their summer tour. I’d hoped to see them in Madison, Wisconsin, at an outdoor venue in my old neighborhood. But as the show neared, my recovery from Achilles tendon surgery just wasn’t at the point at which walking through a crowd and possibly having to stand during the show was realistic. So this will have to do. From that June show, “Oh, let’s go, J.D.,” Plant says as McPherson takes over for a guitar solo. It’s another slinky groove.
Other songs I dug this summer:
“Rock On (Over and Over)” by the Lemon Twigs, a delightful slice of power pop that’s the last cut on their most recent album “A Dream is All We Know,” which came out in May.
(Fun fact: I’ve always read their Twitter handle @thelemontwigs as The Lemont Wigs, as if they were from the Chicago suburb of Lemont.)
“The Girls Are Back in Town” by Dennis Schocket and Cliff Hillis. More power pop! I heard this one just once on XPN and immediately had to go digging around the web to learn more.
New to me, Schocket and Hillis are singer-songwriters from Philadelphia and Baltimore. This is from their new EP “Pop, Girls, Etc.”
Finally, one more good one from a summer that’s leading to a presidential election in which everything is at stake. We’re not suckers. We’re not losers. We are voting, and we are …
“Worthy” by Mavis Staples, a single released in June. Mavis Staples is a national treasure, a living legend, one of the greatest soul, R&B and gospel singers of our time.
This afternoon, I was urging my son to go see her next month when she performs on the same University of Maryland stage that he’s performed on. (Wish I could get $10 student tickets to see Mavis Staples.)
Oh, that picture at the top? The sun sets on Union Pacific 4014, the Big Boy, the world’s largest operating steam locomotive, in Ogden, Utah, in July. We traveled west to see it. Wow.