#404: Ian & Sylvia, "House of Cards" (1968)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riM0OdxBCT8

Given my over-complicated grown-up tastes, there wasn't much in my near-term upcoming queue that followed smoothly from the hippie sing-along "Free to Be You and Me", so my next selection is another from my mom's old collection that predates my birth. Ian & Sylvia represented well mom's taste in folk music, heavy on vocal harmonies, the kind of songs you get out the autoharp and sing together while snuggling cats -- Bob Dylan songs appeared in our house only when rendered by proper singers, Simon & Garfunkel or the Chad Mitchell Trio or the Byrds or, on-topic, Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricke. (Dylan-loving friends I respect have tried repeatedly to sell me on his artful vocal expressiveness, and have failed.)

That said, Bob's "the Mighty Quinn" and "This Wheel's on Fire" are among the least interesting tracks on Ian & Sylvia's best album Nashville, most of which they wrote themselves.

#410: James McMurtry, "How'm I Gonna Find You Now?" (2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bE3DVMwjfw

Sometimes picking the searchable musical tags for these countdown posts is easy. "Indie pop" ropes in Los Campesinos! and Dowling Poole and Gentleman Auction House; "alternative rock" has both recognizable sonic characteristics and MTV certification for the Pixies and Mary Timony; "heavy metal" clearly fits Queensryche and Savatage. Joni Mitchell's "the Jungle Line" was tricky, but once I thought of "experimental pop" I immediately recognized several occasions I'll have to re-use it later in the countdown. James McMurtry ought to be straightforward: he's a country music songwriter, albeit a culturally rebellious one, so certainly here's the first use of the "folk/ country" tag I'd intended all along. But ideally you've clicked the link to play the song, in which case you can also sense the incompleteness of that label.