Rock-tober 30, 2014

We used to live in Columbia, MD. It's a nice enough place with several man made ponds, lots of green space, and tree lined trails. But that prettiness came with a price. Columbia was a planned community with every physical aspect of its appearance spelled out in great detail in some monstrous tome. As a result, the town was chock full of covenants, restrictions, and HOA's some would classify as militant. We were once dinged because our window trim was the wrong shade of "off white".

Another annoyance that reared its head from time to time was big restrictions on road signage. If you were looking for a place of business, you'd better know exactly how to get there, because you wouldn't see any signs from the road. We were there for almost 3 years before we realized there was a great kabob place less than a mile away from us.

Les Emmerson, lead singer for Five Man Electrical Band, had a different point of view when he was cruising Route 66 in California. On his road trip he saw the opposite extreme of gaudy billboards hawking the next roadside attraction. The beautiful landscape obscured by the unnatural advertising sprawl affected him greatly.

This gave rise to the single, "Signs", that was released off the group's second album, Good-byes and Butterflies. It turned out to be the band's biggest hit, eventually climbing to #4 in the group's native Canada and to #3 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Like a lot of other songs of this era, it was a song of protest that gave voice to the disenfranchised. The song narrated the actions of a lone champion who won encounter after encounter with rule makers and symbols of authority. It also has what I think is the simplest, most profound prayer of thankfulness in all of classic rockdom, "Thank you, Lord, for thinking about me; I'm alive and doing fine."