Expensive listeners,

For six of the previous seven summers, I’ve spent an extended weekend visiting faculty pals in northern Ohio — part of the nation with which I used to be beforehand unfamiliar however has now come to really feel like a house away from residence. A spotlight of those journeys is at all times, climate allowing, after we get to tube lazily down the Cuyahoga River. We have a tendency to start out the drive with this tour’s unofficial theme track: “Burn On,” Randy Newman’s wry however warmly sung ode to that point in 1969 that the infamously polluted Cuyahoga caught hearth.

Greater than 50 years later, the truth that we will comfortably float within the Cuyahoga speaks to the success of the high-profile cleanup campaigns which have restored the river to its previous glory — a lot in order that in 2019, the conservation affiliation American Rivers named it “River of the 12 months.” I didn’t even know that was a factor. Congrats, Cuyahoga!

Newman isn’t the one musician to be fascinated by the plight of this explicit river. A track referred to as “Cuyahoga” seems on R.E.M.’s nice fourth album, “Life’s Wealthy Pageant”; Michael Stipe makes use of the phrase as a metaphor not only for environmental degradation however for the seizing of land — and even language — initially belonging to native individuals. “That is the place they walked, that is the place they swam,” Stipe sings, then provides with bitter irony, “Take an image right here, take a memento.”

Maybe due to the sing-songy, vowel-heavy composition of its identify, the state of Ohio itself has impressed fairly just a few notable tunes. I collected just a few for immediately’s playlist — from the likes of Harry Nilsson, King Princess and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Younger — to spherical out these musical odes to the 2019 River of the 12 months.

Will this be the primary in an extended sequence of fifty Amplifier installments, every dedicated to songs a couple of particular state? Effectively, even Sufjan Stevens couldn’t end his 50 States Undertaking, so I’d say don’t maintain your breath.

Hear alongside on Spotify as you learn.

1. Randy Newman: “Burn On”

“There’s a pink moon rising on the Cuyahoga River,” Newman begins in that inimitable voice, accompanied by his personal plinking piano, “rolling into Cleveland from the lake.” Launched on his 1972 album “Sail Away,” “Burn On” is featured within the opening montage of the traditional 1989 baseball flick “Main League,” as a result of — in accordance to a Wikipedia assertion with no quotation that I’ll select to consider anyway — the director David S. Ward mentioned the track was “the one one he knew of that was about Cleveland, Ohio.” (Had he by no means heard “Cleveland Rocks”?) (Hear on YouTube)

2. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Younger: “Ohio”

Recorded simply two weeks after the deadly 1970 incident at Kent State College, when the Ohio Nationwide Guard killed 4 college students and wounded 9 extra, the searing “Ohio,” that includes lyrics by Neil Younger, was rush-released the next month and successfully tapped into the countercultural consciousness. (Hear on YouTube, as a result of this one isn’t on Spotify for presumably Younger-related causes)

3. R.E.M.: “Cuyahoga”

On “Life’s Wealthy Pageant,” “Cuyahoga” is preceded by the jangling single “Fall on Me,” a track concerning the results of acid rain. Taken collectively, these tracks point out the band’s rising social conscience and its explicit give attention to environmentalism. (Hear on YouTube)

4. King Princess: “Ohio”

This rollicking stay staple continuously closed out King Princess’s early reveals. A few of her followers had been so vocally upset that this track didn’t seem on her debut album that, in a 2019 Instagram story, the artist born Mikaela Straus cheekily wrote, “I recorded a model of Ohio that’s nearly accomplished so everybody simply settle down.” She stored her phrase: The sultry studio model of the track — addressed to a former flame who’s gone residence to the Buckeye state — appeared on the deluxe version of the album “Low cost Queen.” (Hear on YouTube)

5. Damien Jurado: “Ohio”

Ohio can also be depicted as a legendary elsewhere — a love curiosity’s faraway residence — on this heart-wrenching acoustic ballad by the Seattle singer-songwriter Damien Jurado. It seems on his 1999 album “Rehearsals for Departure” and likewise on many, many combine CDs I burned in faculty. (Hear on YouTube)

6. Harry Nilsson: “Dayton Ohio 1903”

What’s it with Randy Newman and Ohio? He wrote this sweetly nostalgic ditty and recorded his personal model for “Sail Away,” although within the spirit of blending factor up, I selected Harry Nilsson’s model from the sooner, 1970 album “Nilsson Sings Newman.” The track remembers an easier time, when individuals dropped by for tea and, maybe, the Cuyahoga ran clear and blissfully inflammable. (Hear on YouTube)

Burn on, huge river,

Lindsay

The Amplifier Playlist

Hear on Spotify. We replace this playlist with every new e-newsletter.

“Odes to Ohio” observe record
Observe 1: Randy Newman, “Burn On”
Observe 2: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Younger, “Ohio”
Observe 3: REM, “Cuyahoga”
Observe 4: King Princess, “Ohio”
Observe 5: Damien Jurado, “Ohio”
Observe 6: Harry Nilsson, “Dayton Ohio 1903”

Bonus tracks

This 2009 New York Occasions report, pegged to the fortieth anniversary of the Cuyahoga catching hearth, has a lede so vivid it’s price quoting in full: “The primary time Gene Roberts fell into the Cuyahoga River, he frightened he may die. The 12 months was 1963, and the river was nonetheless an open sewer for industrial waste. Strolling residence, Mr. Roberts smelled so unhealthy that his pals ran to remain upwind of him.”

Additionally, it feels nearly sacrilegious to speak concerning the music of Ohio and never point out Guided by Voices, so cue up “Glad Ladies” — or one other of the roughly 71 billion rippers the Dayton band has recorded over its profession — and crank the amount up.