I don't know the work of many of the names you mention; I'll be looking into them, thanks. I do have a good John Prine-related story though.

Circa December 1973 (yeah, I'm ancient) I was cramming for finals at Warsh U outside St. Louis at about one in the morning. It was my habit, while I was studying, to play music at earsplitting levels. Somehow, I had the ability to block out the noise unless and until something really, really good came on. This night, I had my cool Nikko receiver tuned to the local "underground" "album oriented rock" FM station (call letters lost in the mists of time and memory).

Well, there I was, studying away, when on came a song that was so stunningly beautiful that I focused on it immediately. Now, because this FM station was very underground (and because nobody apparently wanted to advertise on it), it tended to play sets of ten or a dozen or more songs, following which the djs would mumble the list of songs played in cool pseudo-Roscoe voices. In this case, the set was particularly interminable, and I waited for what seemed like eons for the set to end so I could hear the name of the song. At last the set ended . . . and the dj went right to a commercial . . . and the commercial ended . . . and the dj went right to the next set. No play list!

I called the station and, surprisingly, got the dj (who was probably the only one there, now that I think of it), who provided the answer to my question: "Sam Stone" (duh!, since the name's mentioned half a dozen times in the song), by one John Prine, P-R-I-N-E, previously unknown to me.

Later that morning, I went down to the local sorry excuse for a record store, actually found the album and had it playing on my cool Technics "servo drive" (or something like that) direct drive turntable by noon. Every song proved a gem. I still have that album and listen to it regularly (although not, you will be relieved to hear, on said Technics turntable). What a great album!

BTW, can you (or anyone else) tell me what on Earth is going on in "Six O'Clock News"? I think I get the drift, the diary, "C'mon baby, spend the night with me", etc., but hey, it wasn't so bad that he had to toss himself out the window, was it?

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• John Prine, "John Prine"