The Smoke – "October Country" (1968)

You look so good to me

You look so far away

We at 2 or 3 lines just love getting e-mails from our loyal readers!  We read each and every one of them!  (By "we," 2 or 3 lines means "our unpaid intern.")

Here's an e-mail we received earlier this week:

Dear 2 or 3 lines:

Do you ever feel like you are somehow missing out on your own life?  October is my very favorite month of the year.  I wait for it all year.  And now it is almost over and I have barely seen it.

Sincerely,

A loyal reader

October leaves

2 or 3 lines knows exactly how you feel, loyal reader.  But here's the difference between you and 2 or 3 lines.  

When you feel that way, you just go to your deadend job and feel sorry for yourself all day.

October woods

But when 2 or 3 lines feels that way, 2 or 3 lines takes a mental health day, goes for a long walk in the woods, and then heads to a nearby winery, where he spends the rest of the afternoon basking in the sun while noshing on cheese, bread, salami, and olives.

And drinking wine, of course – I almost forgot to mention the wine.  Not just one glass of wine . . . and not just two glasses.  I'm talking the whole damn bottle.  

That's the problem with going to a winery all by yourself – you end up drinking the whole damn bottle.  After that, you stagger back to your car, start the engine, and promptly "fall asleep."  If you're lucky, someone will rap smartly on your window before the winery closes.  If you're not lucky, you'll wake up in the wee hours of the morning, wondering how you ended up in an empty parking lot in the middle of nowhere with an empty gas tank.

October sky

October can be a lovely month.  But I have a problem with October that keeps it from being my favorite month: it's followed by November and December, which is followed by January and February, which really suck – unless you live in Australia.

I have the same problem with Sunday, which is a wonderful day but which is followed by Monday.  That fact begins to weigh on my mind about noon on Sunday and pretty much spoils the whole rest of the day.

In the next 2 or 3 lines, you'll read about my long walk in the woods before the visit to the winery.  (I don't remember much about that walk, but I took a lot of pictures, so I was able to reconstruct it ex post facto.)

Michael Lloyd

Before Michael Lloyd was the highly successful producer of pop stars like the Osmonds, Shaun Cassidy, and Leif Garrett in the 1970s, he was a teenage psychedelic-music wunderkind who was one of the original members of the legendary West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.  (2 or 3 lines will have more to say about Lloyd and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band in the very near future.)  

Lloyd was 18 when he produced October Country's eponymous album, which included the song "October Country."  Over the next few months, he produced a one-off album for a studio group called The Smoke, which consisted mostly of himself.  The Smoke's equally eponymous album also included the "October Country" song.

I like The Smoke's version of "October Country" much better than October Country's version, so that's why 2 or 3 lines is featuring it today:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: