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The Garden of the Octopus

    Hey again, everyone. Just being a little lazy today. I sat on the deck and drank coffee. Not much going on with the animal kingdom today. Then I came inside and sat down at the keyboard and played a few songs.
    I have a pretty nice Yamaha keyboard and I was playing out of an old "fake book" this morning. The first song I played was San Francisco, a beautiful song from the sixties which is commonly associated with the hippie movement of that time. I was actually in that area at that time, visiting a town called Freemont, some 25 miles away, on one of my hitch-hiking trips. I was, at that time, a long-haired freaky person myself.
     Next, I played another song from that era, Unchained Melody. It's also very lovely and I do it quite well, most days. I can't sing the high parts like the dude from the Righteous Brothers, of course. But who can? If you don't have these two songs on your Ipod you should check them out.
    I finished with Don't Know Much, another favorite. It suffered a bit because Linda Ronstadt wasn't here to sing with me. Bummer.
    I was thinking about Paul McCartney the other day. I had read his celebrity playlist on Itunes. {his favorite songs} Anyway, he mentioned a song by the Beach Boys called God Only Knows. I started to play it on the keyboard and it's really nice. Anyway, back to Sir Paul. Does anyone know how significant this guy is? When he passes we will have lost one of the most talented people in the history of the world. As far as the arts go, he has few peers. How is it possible that those four guys stumbled into the same group? Lennon and McCartney, their body of work, is incredible. Hey, the other day I saw Ringo being interviewed and he told the story of how he came to write Octopus' Garden. I love that song. He wrote it on board a yacht in the Mediterranean. The yacht belonged to Peter Sellers of the Pink Panther movies. The Captain of the yacht told Ringo about the habit of octopi collecting shiny things to arrange in a little garden about their lair. So Ringo wrote this charming song.  I also like to play Something by these guys.
    It was not my intent to talk music this morning but that's okay. I'll come back after while to discuss women, one of my favorite subjects.
    From the musical place, CE Wills.

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