The Sun is shining on the ALCS Playlist

On October 10 it appeared that ALCS Game 1 might be delayed or cancelled by rain. Embracing the old idea of the mixtape, which I guess the young’uns call a playlist, I suggested a dozen or so rain-themed tunes with which to pass the time. That game was played, but on Monday, ALCS Game 3 was wiped away by water. Today the sun is shining again in Kansas City, and so, for the few hours between now and game time, a Here Comes the Sun (for Baseball) playlist.

It has been almost 15 years since Karl Wallinger released an album by his Beatlesque one-man band, World Party. In the 1980 and 1990s he had hits with “Ship of Fools“ and ”Way Down Now.” The track below is a quieter affair off of “Bang!” Inspirational lyric: “You’re down in the basement when we’re up here on the roof/You’re looking for evidence when you’re living proof/But we hope you’re gonna make it up here.”

“Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton,” the Replacements sang. “I never travel far without a little Big Star.” If only it were true of more, but the ironically-titled “#1 Record” died despite being one of the great albums of the rock era. Chilton and cowriter Chris Bell loved their Beatles, and it’s a short leap from here backwards from here to 1969 and the most obvious inclusion on this list.

Possibly the best song George Harrison ever wrote; he was always better when he wasn’t straining for effect. “Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting” gets at something universal... Well, it’s universal for now. Global warming may mean our grandchildren have only a limited conception of what ice is, or that the ice is in places it isn’t now, or both. At that point, one of George’s spiritual heirs can write, “Here Comes the Frost” and we’ll all rejoice that we’ve reached the time of year when you don’t feel like you’re living in a microwave oven. John Lennon couldn’t make it in to the studio to sing on this track; he was laid up after a near-disastrous car accident. Somehow that subtracts something, but of course, there are several Beatles tracks that don’t utilize all four of the lads, so we should probably get over it.

Long before they sidelined in children’s records, TMBG took this 1959 children’s song and turned it up to 11. The song isn’t accurate, but then in 1959 they also taught kids they could survive an atomic bomb by crouching under their school desks.

“Like ice in the sun, I melt away.” Your school desk can’t protect you from her or the guys who sang “Pictures of Matchstick Men.” Yeah, this playlist is my celebration of the sunny day after a rainstorm. I have been told I’m a very negative person.

There’s something about being a Britpop artist that apparently makes one appreciate the big lemon in the sky. Possibly it’s how much rain they get over there: They’re either writing about umbrellas or sunlight. This one is catchy as hell. “Everything changes and blows out the night.” You don’t say. “I am a doctor, I’ll be your doctor.” I think it’s important we fully disclose things like this before we even get started.

We’ll get back to the inevitable Britpop in a second, but we pause here for a song that could have been written by Sly Stone... If Sly Stone still wrote songs. But you know, given the arc of the 1960s and 1970s it was pretty much inevitable that an artist with any sensitivity to current events would get derailed from uplifting pop like “I Want to Take You Higher.” You could keep pumping that out like a robot, or you could go where Sly went -- a lot of drugs and “There’s a Riot Going On” -- because the high had to be increasingly hard to get, whether by musical, political, or pharmaceutical means. This is a fine tribute to a moment that’s dead. It’s also a kind of denial. Very negative person, see?

It was tempting to go with the better-known “This Will Be Our Year” from the 1968 classic “Odessey and Oracle” [sic], with its bouncy, “The warm of your love’s like the warmth from the sun” opening, but let’s shine a little light on this outtake instead. It’s a simple piece with the slightly off-kilter cross of the Kinks, the Beatles, and Phil Spector that epitomized the Zombies.

Hey, let’s take the first and last number from “Hair” and smash them together into a #1 pop hit, even if they have totally opposing vibes when heard in context. “Aquarius” is the naïve anthem of the hippies, “Let the Sun Shine In,” subtitled “The Flesh Failures” their desperate plea for a change of national direction that wasn’t coming:

We starve-look
At one another
Short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation
Of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new told lies
With supreme visions of lonely tunes
...The rest is silence... Let the sun shine in.

Nope, sorry. We’ll just amputate that part and give you the catchy chorus. Now be good boys and girls and hide under your desks, negative people. There’s already somebody down there. Let the sun shine in! It’s dark under here.

Let’s start over as we finish, eschewing the sulky/humorous “Sunny Afternoon” by the Kinks (“My girlfriend’s... gone back to her ma and pa, telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty”) and the just-plain-sulky “Warmth of the Sun” by the Beach Boys (“I cried when she said, ‘I don’t feel the same way.’”). Up! Up! You can’t ever be sad with Louis. Bypassing Sheryl Crow telling “everyone to lighten up” (hey, we all have legit troubles that aren’t just solved with a Xanax) and even the ubiquitous Katrina and the Waves bit (“I used to think maybe you loved me, now, baby, I’m sure” -- our capacity for self-deception is endless, though bonus points for one of the great pure pop hits being written by one of the Soft Boys), as with “Singin’ in the Rain” last time ‘round, we’ll conclude with a classic bit of pop. Dorothy Fields was the lyricist for this baby, and it’s worth remembering that whereas so many of the great American standards were written by men (Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, the Gershwins, and so on), Fields was one of the best, contributing not only this classic, but the sly innuendo of “I Won’t Dance“ and the perfect romanticism of ”The Way You Look Tonight.” There are dozens of versions of this song, several by Satchmo, but here we’ll go with his first studio recording, which features him near the peak of his trumpeting power. Enjoy the ballgame, everyone!