Saturday Single No. 19

Originally posted June 30, 2007

We’re halfway through the year today, and I wish I had something profound or at least interesting to say. But I don’t think I do. And I don’t have much time to figure it out, as the Texas Gal and I are joining some friends for a trek to an Antiquarian Book Fair in St. Paul. I imagine we’ll spend a few hours wandering the fair, looking at lovely old books and wishing we could buy them. It should be fun.

Even though I’m short of things to say right now, I can’t let a Saturday pass un-noticed, especially the one that marks the half-way point of the year, as we turn for the long slide to the end of December.

So I tried to find something distinctive for this week’s single: I ran a search for the word “hot” through the RealPlayer. One of the results I found was an album track from a late-Sixties group that, as I think back, listeners either loved or hated. It’s A Beautiful Day was a progressive-psychedelic band from San Francisco that was anchored by leader David LaFlamme’s violin and the vocals of Pattie Santos. The group’s sound was distinctive, immediately recognizable and frequently a little bit eerie. It was, to use affectionately a term often used derisively, hippie music.

The title of the track seemed appropriate for the mid-point of the year, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere. (Those in the Southern Hemisphere can close their eyes and dream of December.) So here’s “Hot Summer Day,” the second track from It’s A Beautiful Day’s self-titled debut, today’s Saturday Single.

It’s A Beautiful Day –“ Hot Summer Day” [1970]

Tags: It's A Beautiful Day