Judy Collins - Pretty Polly

From 1968. Call it a late piece of folk/rock, because it's an old folk song done as rock music. Note the musicians listed at the beginning of the video: some stars, some master musicians. And Ms. Collins shows the strength of her voice as she rarely did.

Sebastien De La Cruz - The Star-Spangled Banner

The things people are saying about this performance leave me speechless.

Webb Pierce - There Stands the Glass

Classic country music. This song is old enough that the steel guitar is not a pedal steel guitar.

Krugman on the Changing Labor Market

So the question is: is the era when a college education taught you valuable skills so you could get a good job coming to an end? There's evidence that it's so. And has such a situation, in which painstakingly earned skills became less valuable, happened before? Krugman explains.

The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon

Always one of my favorite Kinks' songs since it came out. I've never seen this video before, but apparently it was released with the song in 1966. The video itself is a fascinating artifact: the irony of the lyrics mentioning "a sunny afternoon in the summertime" while they're standing in snow and Ray's breath is visible in the cold; the instruments (a Fender acoustic, Gibson Flying V, and Gibson bass) that would make a vintage-instrument fancier drool; the simple fact that it exists, since such promos were rare at the time, and the glory days of music videos were a decade and a half in the future. In the end, however, what matters is the song, and it's a good un.

The Spiders - Bells In My Heart

I've posted this song before, but not the original version, so here it is. A doo-wop classic from 1955.

RIP Joey Covington

Joey Covington became the drummer for Jefferson Airplane after Spencer Dryden left the band in early 1970, so he wasn't part of their glory years, but he contributed a lot during his tenure. I've already posted what I think is his sole songwriting credit with the band, a bit of psychedelic weirdness called "Thunk." Here's a clip of him with the band in 1970 doing their biggest hit from three years earlier. H/t USA Today (of all people).