Wednesday Reading And Keeping It Simple

Genesis 36.


For some reason, the above sounds like a secret 1960s government project.

Or an album.

Speaking of albums, they are often done by rock bands.

Which reminds me that this week is the 50th anniversary of the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan.

Nice segueing, huh?  I tell you, it's an art in and of itself.

It's always been a Beatles vs. Led Zeppelin thing with me regarding my favorite band.  At various period of my life, I've liked each one a little more than the other, depending on my mood at that time and overall outlook on the world.

I remember the Beatles a little bit when I was a child.  Some of my earliest music memories are of their later years.

But I really started liking them just before my senior year of high school, when I bought my first Beatles album.  The Blue Album.  I still have that one.  Awesome.

So I was just starting the scratch the surface of that music.  It was during that year that Double Fantasy was released, followed shortly by John Lennon's murder.  I still remember sitting on a hard wooden chair watching Johnny Carson on a black and white TV that night when NBC news interrupted with that bombshell.  Hard night to sleep, that one.

The radio was filled for some time after that with the Beatles, and Lennon's songs in particular.

I've always liked the singles that were released from Double Fantasy.  There is a simplicity and contentment that is being communicated in these songs that I appreciate even more as I have gotten older.

Songs that could complement the thoughts written in Proverbs or Ecclesiastes.  Basically the reflections of a man who rose to the top of the mountain, who had it all, all the money and pleasure he could want, only to realize that there were better things in his life. 

Someone who discovered that the best things in his life, that truly made him rich, were the simple pleasures he had.  And most everyone else's inability to get that.

They're just songs that make you want to smile.

Lynyrd Synyrd's "Simple Man" has that effect as well.  A song I love more and more as the years pass.



Watching The Wheels.

Starting Over.

Woman.