"Your Bright Baby Blues" Jackson Browne-Solo Acoustic Vol. 1

I just booked a ticked out to San Francisco for the end of April, while what spurned the trip is a dear friend's wedding I've been feeling the need lately to head out west to the sea and to a point in my life when I was as happy as I ever have or will be. Granted, back then I couldn't have afforded to schedule a T time at Pebble as I just did or have the time to do another drive down the PCH but back then things were (as they always appear to be) much more simple. So in a Blake-ian Songs of Innocence and Experience way I plan on returning with my eyes opened a little wider, a little more crow's feet, trammeled and will expect to view it slightly different than I had before when I was a young Chimney Sweeper.

When I was that brighter-eyed sweeper I drove up the PCH for the first time in an old battered Range Rover and was formally introduced to Jackson Browne. I had known him before and from various works with The Eagles, Roy Orbison, and his eponymous first album which contains another perfect JB song, "Jamaica Say You Will". But for the most part I never delved into his work and wrote him off as part of that whiny, liberal-activist genre of musicians.

That is until I past Hearst Castle peering out through the fog, looked out west across the vast Pacific landscape and heard the first bars of slide from this song. I have never heard it before, never knew it even existed; hearing it with new ears while viewing new scenes through new eyes frozen with beauty. I was in the zone for the first time outside of the athletic field and realized this is what the shamans see in their pursuit for a piece of Brahman, it clicked. The words permeated through the three speakers of out twenty four that worked, Jackson was taking what I was feeling and putting it into words at the exact second I was thinking them, I had no idea how it could be possible but it was unfolding before my eyes and vibrating in the canals of my ears with dreamlike surreal accuracy.

I adore the conversations contained in the lyrics of his songs and in this first verse particularly:

I'm sitting down by the highway
Down by that highway side
Everybody's going somewhere
Riding just as fast as they can ride
I guess they've got a lot to do
Before they can rest assured
Their lives are justified

And then while pondering those thoughts looking out over the Pacific he calls to a separate person of whom the above thoughts were dictated to and asks for a little help:

Pray to God for me baby
He can let me slide

It is frank, outside the character of the first seven lines and the format is repeated for the remainder of the song until the climax in the last line where instead of seeking for redemption and aide from God he asks for her hand. The song's progression, from a random rambling man lost out on the fringe, close to the attainment of happiness that remains just out of his grasp fades into the criticism of his affection until he stumbles into the abyss; then finally comes back in begging nature for her.

Those are just my thoughts which could be 180 out from your own, take what you will from it. But the stripped down acoustic guitar and the neck of a beer bottle slide give the track a haunting feel, the performer just like the narrator is alone sans artifice. This song humbles me, it clears my mind and brings me back to a place where I can feel the blood coursing through my veins. I relax and the world becomes clear, blissful in just sitting there staring out the window be it at Big Sur or the street below my apartment window.

I remember putting it on on Spring day in Manhattan laying in bed with someone I was madly in love with after a long afternoon of wearing ourselves out; sitting up in bed smoking a cigarette those first few bars came through again and while I couldn't be happier she was 180 out with Jackson. Many times over she would break my heart and I could never figure out why I kept falling into the honey trap over and over again, I still don't. But I do know that much like that drive up on the PCH Jackson was telling me something in real time.