Bobbie Gentry, "Ode to Billie Joe"

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day when Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Bobbie Gentry never explained why the title character committed suicide in "Ode to Billie Joe" - unless an explanation was buried in one of the six or so verses she was said to have excised from the song for Top 40 radio consumption.

Which gave author/screenwriter Herman Raucher free rein nine years later to come up with his own reasons why the kid might have jumped off the bridge and his gal pal lobbed inanimate things off it. In the slightly renamed film Ode to Billy Joe, Raucher and director Max Baer (yup, Jethro) presented Robbie Benson as a BJ upset about a BJ. Billie Joe's developing relationship with a too-young girl appropriately named Bobbie takes a weird turn when he comes of age in an unpleasant way: a jamboree with equal parts food, fighting and fucking gives way to a makeshift bordello where people have their way with holes for hire. It's too much for the unsure lad, who in his drunken state finds he prefers a man's company. This being set in 1953 - not to mention filmed in 1976, eons ago in terms of gay visibility - there was no way Billy Joe could be OK with that ... so he kills himself. A thoughtful YouTube poster has made the entire movie available in pieces for viewing; it's not terribly well acted, but it's interesting.

I'm glad the young generation is so, so better aware of their options where their budding sexualities are concerned. Gawd - if every essentially straight guy who had a dalliance with another guy offed himself, the human race would shrink noticeably.

The Easybeats, "Friday on My Mind"

If on Monday you have Friday on your mind, you need this. Never has a singer look so elated to be on stage - or maybe simply elated to be alive - as the Easybeats' lead singer Steven Wright does here on "Friday on My Mind." The jangling rocker (with a class-conscious line railing against the rich man!) was the Australian band's only hit, and is the only song I've ever heard from them. I don't want to correct that - I could only be disappointed, as this power-pop precursor is one of the more perfect songs of its ilk, hardly capable of being improved upon. It certainly got my Monday off to a nice start.

PS: Favorite unexpected line: "Even my old man looks ... good."

Procol Harum, "Repent Walpurgis"

A guy I knew in college recently resurfaced on Facebook - writing from Iceland, of all places - offering as a status update his celebration of Walpurgis and Volbriöö. I'd never heard of either holiday and was grateful for the impromptu lesson. Volbriöö is an Estonian springtime-arrival fete, while the celebration of Walpurgisnacht takes place every year on April 30 or May 1 and involves setting bonfires to cast off dead spirits.

I'm taken with that notion of "off with the old, in with the new," with a ritual to mark the division. Moreso, I'm taken with a song that the day spawned: Procol Harum, best known to '60s pop fans as the creators of "A Whiter Shade of Pale," recorded the instrumental "Repent Walpurgis" in 1967. (The live performance I've linked to is from '71.) I have no idea what Procol Harum are asking repentance for with the title; but then, after the vestal virgins of "Pale" and the ill-fitting clothes of "Homburg," I'm not about to start expecting the rational and literal now. "Repent Walpurgis" is a powerful bit of prog-rock - a more morbid "Funeral for a Friend," in a way - and stands right up there with "Pale," "Conquistador," and the other minor-key, depressing entries in the Procol Harum catalog.

The Beatles, "Strawberry Fields Forever"

For me, it's an article of faith that 1967 was the greatest year of the rock era, and the Beatles (yay!) are a primary reason for that - and I'm not referring to Sgt. Pepper. "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever" is, I declare, the greatest double-sided single in rock history. But while the Pet Sounds-ish "Penny Lane" is at the end of the day my favorite Beatles song (not to mention my favorite #1 hit), it's "Strawberry Fields Forever" that's on my mind this week.

A recent bout with love (kind of like a bout with dysentery, but without the helpful weight loss) has reminded me in deep ways of SFF's sense of alienation. John Lennon didn't always match his most poetic lyrics up with his most memorable melodies, but here he remarkably synthesizes those two sides of himself, in a tune about someone who, in today's operative language, just isn't on the same page with those around him. He's defiant in his unwillingness to fake it: it's hard to be alone, but even harder to be someone else. So for him, "it's not too bad" ... nevertheless, it's a rare person who can say, "No one, I think, is in my tree," and not be mournful of that fact. John pulls it off here, which makes me admire him all the more as I observe from my own solitary branch.

Which, I've been thinking, almost makes "Strawberry Fields Forever" a response record to "Eleanor Rigby": this, John tells Paul, is where the lonely people come from. If not perhaps where they belong.

The Flower Pot Men, "Let's Go to San Francisco"

No big cultural observation here, just sharing a 1967 U.K. hit about my favorite city that was very much of its time. (And very similar to the glorious Beach Boys knockoff "My World Fell Down" from Sagittarius.) Great how the Flower Pot Men have continued to trot this out in identical oldies-package-tour rehashings in 1994 and 2008.

PS: Two of the Flower Pot Men, Nick Simper and Jon Lord, went on to join Deep Purple, while singer Tony Burrows had hits a few years later fronting the studio groups Brotherhood of Man ("United We Stand"), the Pipkins ("Gimme Dat Ding"), Edison Lighthouse ("Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes"), and a few years after that, First Class ("Beach Baby"). Quite a c.v.!