Harmonica Day

 

Over the past few days, I’ve had trouble connecting to the internet and posting the articles I’d prepared. The issues on the provider’s end seem to have been resolved, and there’s nothing standing in the way of further posts.

This way, I can continue the series I recently started, featuring songs that more or less include a harmonica, without committing to a specific day.

Let's start with a song by Tom Petty from his last great album Wildflower from 1994. One of my favorite songs on this album is You Don't Know How It Feels, in which he reflects on his work and his future in a slow, unsentimental way.

My old man was born to rock

He's still trying to beat the clock

Think of me what you will

Ive got a little space to fill

In 1982, I spent six weeks traveling through the western United States in a motorhome with some friends. At a gas station, I bought a few music cassettes because I didn’t care for what the radio stations were playing. Among them was Bruce Springsteen’s newly released LP at the time, which I listened to more than once. At the moment, I can’t imagine visiting that country again.

In the early 1990s, INXS was at the height of its popularity, with several songs climbing high in the charts. One of them was Suicide Blonde. The song’s title comes from the night Hutchence and his then-girlfriend Kylie Minogue attended the premiere of the 1989 romantic drama “The Delinquents,” in which Minogue plays the lead role. For the premiere, she wore a blonde wig, the color of which she described as “Suicide Blonde.” The fact that he committed suicide four years later is a tragic footnote, but it has no connection to the song.