Mid-Life Crisis Songs #55: Please Let Me Go Round Again

 

Back to work today, and I don't even want to think about that as I type this on Friday evening... though it has blackened my thoughts for the past few days. If you feel the same, here's the Nicholas Cage coaster I got for Christmas. Don't have nightmares.

As the New Year begins, it's customarily the time that I begin sharing with you the songs that would have been included in my countdown of the previous year... if I'd discovered them in time. More of those will be coming up later in the week, under the heading 2020 Latecomers (there's one party we'd all happily have arrived late to... or missed altogether), but the first one deserves the Mid-Life Crisis heading even more.

I discovered the latest album from Jerry "Swamp Dogg" Williams Jr. a month or so ago because it features two of the last vocal recordings from the late great John Prine. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the album as a whole. At 78, Swamp Dogg has had a pretty amazing career, working with Patti Labelle, Gary US Bonds, Gene Pitney, Irma Thomas, Dr. Dre and Kid Rock, among others. He's been a songwriter, producer, A&R man and performer, though his record releases have tended towards the esoteric and satirical... but this is his country blues album, drafting in John Prine, Bon Iver and Jenny Lewis to help. The more I listen to it, the more I want to dig deeper into Swamp Dogg's back catalogue, though I have been warned not to expect anything else that sounds like this.

The song below, however - one of the very last John Prine would ever lend his vocals to - is in a league of its own. Especially for those of us hip-deep in what Sam has started to call "The Middle Ages" ("you and mummy are in the Middle Ages, you won't be old for a few years yet")...

Everything I put my hands on, I blew it

Women, jobs, money, friends, and I knew it

Actin' crazy, talkin' dumb all the time

I woke up yesterday, I was forty years old, life had passed me by

Please let me go 'round again

Oh, life, can't you afford me another chance?

If you'll let me go 'round again

I'll build a better mousetrap from a far more better plan

As I head back to work today, I wish I had the opportunity to go round again and build a far better mousetrap from a far better plan...