DB's Song of the Day (day 148): "LODI" (1969) Creedence Clearwater Revival

Today’s birthday boy, John Fogerty, was the leading light of Creedence Clearwater Revival back in the period 1968-72. The real heyday was the three LPs of 1969, Bayou Country, Green River, and Willy and the Poorboys, and the two LPs of 1970, Cosmo’s Factory and Pendulum. That should be enough for anyone.

Today’s song is the B-side of the first single from Green River; the A-side is “Bad Moon Rising,” perhaps one of the best-known of CCR songs. We had the 45 back in 1969 and, somewhere around 1971 when I got interested in 45s and Top Forty, I played all the B-sides of the 45s we owned. It wasn’t considered a double A side like “Up Around the Bend” / “Run Through the Jungle” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” / “Long as I Can See the Light,” but it struck me that it should be. “Lodi” became one of my favorite CCR songs, a song that it’s almost impossible not to sing along with. And, unlike some Fogerty vocals, it’s easy to parse the lyrics the first time through.

The song’s singer is a down-and-out musician who had dreamed of something better than playing in the town of Lodi, CA. He implies that the place is Hicksville, and yet it’s there his fortunes have run aground. It’s not a particularly scathing or clever lyric, which is what makes it feel authentic. As though we are hearing a song someone stuck might sing to pass the time, not to make a hit. The conceit of much of CCR’s music, which is to say John Fogerty’s songs, is that the singer is a Cajun, a Bayou man, that he’s a Southern or Midwest yokel struggling to find his way in a world of sharpers and cityfolk—represented here as “the man from the magazine”—who pretty much run the world while po’ boys get along with patches on their britches as best they can. It’s a good pose.

The main thing that sells this conceit is Fogerty’s vocals, which are schooled in the way of slurring as an act of uncouthness, so that it tends to mask any actual regional diction. He could be from down South, or he could be from just about anywhere but the Northeast. Even so, something in his manner felt right at home in the environs of New Castle, Delaware, given that my dad’s folks came from further south in the state, below the canal where it becomes farmland. And then you’re prit-near in Merlin (or Mare-a-lindd, as fussy up-staters would insist). You see what I mean about the slurring?

The song speaks to me, I suppose, because being stuck in such environs never sat well with me. The idea that the singer “was on my way” and “seeking my fame and fortune” seems sensible enough, but “things got bad and things got worse / I guess you know the tune.”  Another likeable thing here is that the singer isn’t as “woe is me, I’m special” as he might be. In fact, his song is likely to be popular with people who do, indeed, know the tune. It’s about misfortune and things not panning out. “Somewhere I lost connection / I ran out of songs to play.” Fatal for a singer/songwriter. That part used to remind me of a song I already knew when I first heard this one: Paul Simon’s “Homeward Bound.” Both songs make the life on the road of the singing entertainer sound pretty lonely and sad. “Ran out of time and money”—and what else is there?—“Looks like they took my friends.” When the money’s gone, popularity is liable to drop, I s’pect.

Then there’s the little bouncy guitar part and the verse after which he shifts up a bit and sounds more gutsy: “If I only had a dollar / For every song I’ve sung / Every time I’ve had to play / Where people sat there drunk / You know I’d catch the next train / Back to where I live.”  Well, at least there’s people sitting there, drunk or not. Come for the booze, stay for the tunes, folks. But, seriously, isn’t it better than playing to an empty place so that no one’s having fun? Still, I love the almost Elvis-style inflection Fogerty gives to “train ba-a-ck to where I live” riding a little downward note after the high, clear, almost hawg-calling yodel of “Every time I’ve had to play”—a voice raised against the indecency and injustice of it all.

And that town name. Lodi.” Low-die. A low number on the die of life? Sorry, son, you’ve crapped out.

I was just passin’ through . . .

DB's Song of the Day (day 78):"LOOKIN' OUT MY BACK DOOR" (1970), Creedence Clearwater Revival

Just back from DE, where I’m from, for the annual visit that always puts me in mind of “where I once belonged.” Since there was lots of family time, today’s song is one that takes me back to childhood and a band we all knew and liked: Creedence Clearwater Revival. I could’ve picked the first song I knew by them, “Bad Moon Rising,” or its B-side, which is one of my favorites and which I may get to another time; or I could’ve picked the song that really impressed itself on me, “Up Around the Bend,” or what is probably my favorite song of theirs, the other A side of today’s song. But, because this is Spring Break, I feel that “Lookin' Out My Back Door” captures the mood best.

It’s the most countrified song by CCR up to that point, even dropping a reference to “On a dinosaur Vic’trola / Listening to Buck Owens,” who at that time was one of the hosts of Hee-Haw. Country music notwithstanding, some in the listening public found ever-present drug references in the song: “take a ride on a flying spoon,” well, what else need we say, to say nothing of “Giants doing cartwheels / Statues wearing high heels.” Just what is this boy on? Then there’s those “tambourines and elephants”—tambourines, as Pynchon’s Richard M. Schlubb well knows, being instruments of subversion. And don’t get me started on that big hookah-like trunk of the elephant, symbol of India and who knows what mind-altering substances.

Stu Cook, Doug Clifford, John Fogerty, Tom Fogerty

While that’s all as may be, the song is still completely disarming. “Just got home from Illinois / Locked the front door, oh boy!”—sure, someone of a certain frame of mind might wonder why he has locked the front door and why he’s so obsessed with his “backdoor,” but, y’know, when this song came out I was 11 and I’m just not going to go there. This song always put me in mind of the spring and summer days with the backdoor open (and the front too for that matter), so that a breeze could go right through the house. Looking out the backdoor was looking into the back yard, a place set-off from the rest of the neighborhood and a space for all kinds of “happy creatures” to disport themselves as they like.

CCR was one of the great radio bands of my childhood, and my older sister had the hots for singer and songwriter extraordinaire John Fogerty there for a while. He wore a big mop of hair that most of us kids aspired to, and managed, so long as we could avoid the barber, aka “Pops Chopper.” It wasn’t about letting the freak flag fly so much as it was about looking like all the cute musicians the girls liked and we admired.

Musically, this song seems designed as a sing-along, something everyone can join in on, especially those pleasure-spreading “doo doo doo”s, and that chugging rhythm and strummed gee-tar helps sell it too. One of the best feel-good songs around, capturing the bliss (look at how happy everyone in the video is) of setting down all the shit and simply, truly, finally, relaxing. “Bother me tomorrow, today I’ll buy no sorrow.”

We had the 45, and eventually we had the album Cosmo’s Factory, which I recently picked up as a reissue on vinyl. Have to say it was one of my favorite records, in 1970 or 1971, and it sounds just as good to my ears now. And it was the record I put on this morning to welcome me “back to where I once belonged,” in a different way (i.e., where was I?). CCR is the Americana of my day; indeed, a “wondrous apparition” this far down the road.