While taking care of some business over the phone, yesterday, Angel, the customer service rep and I briefly chatted as she tapped away at her computer keyboard. Since it was the start of our homeland’s Independence Day, holiday weekend, she asked me if I had made any big plans to celebrate? My reply…
“Nope, I’ll be staying home and staying safe. There’ll be plenty more July 4ths in the future and, once this pandemic is over, there’ll be even more reason to celebrate them.”
Of course, seeing how there’s been this sudden, stateside resurgence of COVID-19, who the hell knows if that’ll be July 4, 2021… 22… 23…
Well let’s keep a good thought that it won’t drag out beyond 21.
Anyway, after hanging up the phone, I got to thinking about where I would’ve gone to celebrate. Seeing how I’m easy to please, I probably would’ve wound up visiting my favorite local park.
However, from what I’ve been hearing, there’s been this dramatic increase in foot traffic on my favorite nature trails, so, even though the odds of COVID-19 transmission are lower in the great outdoors… well… let’s just say I’ll be content to zone out on my blog ending clip’s content. Perhaps. it’ll prove therapeutic to you, too? Check it out…
As for our main clip, which tops off this post, we’ll be giving a listen to keyboardist Robert William Lamm’s composition, Saturday in the Park, which was originally recorded by his band, Chicago. His lyrical narrative will draw upon our communal, pleasant reveries of how, in better days, it was oh so easy to let the good times roll within sunshiny, fresh air, natural environs.
While I could’ve readily tracked down a Chicago studio or live performance, instead, I’ve opted, to showcase Street Level’s “Virtually Quarantined”, split screen, (figuratively and quite literally) out of this world, cover rendition.
To quote their YouTube set up blurb…
“Since we couldn’t play for you collectively during the quarantine, we got together individually to record this one for you. We thought it would be appropriate since, in 2020, Saturday actually does fall on the 4th of July! Also, it might be the first day we can actually perform again!”
Setting my sights way down the temporal road, I’m banking on Saturday, July 4, 2026, which will be our very next opportunity to live out this track’s lyrical sentiments.
Obviously, Lamm had not anticipated a global pandemic when he penned this song back in 1971. Nonetheless, the last lyric to his song’s bridge doth offer up… to us all… his most apropos, one liner, pep talk…
“Listen children all is not lost, all is not lost, oh no, no…”
Stay Safe… Stay Home… Stay Healthy…