There used to be records called “45’s,” young people, that you popped onto what was called a “turntable” inside the listening booth at Brown’s Music in San Luis Obispo. Since my big brother, Bruce, had four years and a driver’s license on me, he would bring 45’s home and play them in the back bedroom–the back back back bedroom—of our house in rural Arroyo Grande.

I was into, even then, in sixth or seventh grade at Branch School, the Beach Boys and then the Beatles. Not Bruce. He didn’t have time for that kind of nonsense. Bruce was into The Rolling Stones. If I could think of a classic film comparison, the Stones would be Humphrey Bogart, with his .45, as Duke Mantee in The Painted Desert, dropping into the middle of jubilant singing Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

The Stones, you must understand, were hard-edged,, a bit scruffy—they’d rejected the matching Edwardian suits that the Beatles and all their imitators favored—and they were, in 1965 terms, salacious: “Let’s Spend the Night Together” did NOT imply reading the Book of Proverbs aloud with your girlfriend with a plate of ginger snaps and some steaming hot chocolate.

Nossirreebob.

So imagine our Extremely Beautiful Dear Sainted Irish Catholic Auburn-Haired mother finding this 45 record cover sleeve (not “album” sleeve. With a 45, you got a song. With the bonus “B” side, you got one more song. That was it). in Bruce’s bedroom. This was for the song “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows?”

We would get used to this kind of thing with Monty Python, but we weren’t there yet, not on Huasna Road. (I am pleased that two of the lads are in uniform, one, Bill Wyman, as a World War II U.S. Army WAC, a top sergeant, and Brian Jones, very blonde, as a female RAF member.) That wouldn’t have impressed Mom.

I can almost hear a little shriek from the back back back bedroom punctuating the bucolic quiet of our three acres near the Harris Bridge.

Oh, here’s the song, reflective, as the Stones often were, of the way postwar middle-class life could suffocate young people. This is, quote, “The Official Music Video.”

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Another shriek must’ve escaped my mother when she found this full-length poster on Bruce’s bedroom door.

Yes, that’s Janis Joplin. And her left nipple. It took me a few more years, thanks to my friend David Cherry, to discover Janis and this album, which remains one of my all-time favorites.

It would be many more years after that when I first saw her perform Big Mama Thornton’s “Ball and Chain,” filmed at Monterey Pops. This video still flattens me, in the best way. The performance amazed Mama Cass, too—you can see her in the audience.

Luckily for our Mom, this was the next poster Bruce put up. Considerably more wholesome, I think.

By then, I was beginning to catch up to Bruce. Maybe his hard edges were softening. Maybe my tastes were maturing. By my early teens, I loved any music—the Byrds, the Doors, Joni Mitchell, Buffalo Springfield, Judy Collins—that came from Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. The other half of my palette was British Blues, thanks to my friend Paul Hibbard—Cream, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, the Yardbirds. And, thanks to my Dad’s 1965 Chrysler car radio, which picked up Wolfman Jack and XERB, all things Motown.

But that poster—and that young woman, another drifter in Laurel Canyon—is where Bruce and I found rich common ground. I’ve written a lot about LInda Ronstadt—along with Aretha Franklin, the greatest voice of our generation, Bruce’s and mine. But this seemingly innocuous little pop song, written by the Monkees’ MIchael Nesmith, made my big brother and I fall in love with the same woman.

Sadly, there is not one damned decent video I can find of Ronstadt performing the song, “Different Drum,” from 1967. But I did find this touching cover:

And I wouldn’t want you La Ronstadt fans out there to go away mad, so I do have this performance. Her range was amazing, and the last note might just be as close to Heaven as the Good Lord will ever permit me.

But that’s not the big news. Nope. And I know I will lose some of you here, but you can go listen to your Tony Orlando and Dawn.

Bruce texted Elizabeth, my wife, yesterday morning: “Have you heard Taylor Swift’s new album yet?”

She had not. Neither have I.

Maybe I should’ve read the tea leaves. Ronstadt indicates that, even by 1967, my Stonesy big brother was already edging into what we would eventually call “country rock.” And now, at 75, he’s gone plumb over the edge.

My big brother is a Swiftie.

Damn!

I am not in the league of one of my all-time favorite AGHS students, Robert Kobara, who is a confirmed, devoted, memorize-the-lyrics kind of Taylor Swift fan, but I am pretty darned close, and I’d love Robert even if he were a devotee of polka music.

Bu there are, in great part hanks to Robert, are at least forty Swift songs on my mp3 player (along with Of Monsters and Men, The Chicks, Imagine Dragons, Bikini Kill, Lykke Lei and oldies like The Velvet Underground and Quicksilver Messenger Serice and The Supremes).

Swift wins, on sheer volume and disk space.

The girl writes a mean hook, her arrangements are stunning, her backup musicians are sublime. Yeah, I could probably do without the Stadium Exploding Special Effects

Stadium Exploding Special Effects are okay for this song, my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs, and that’s a mighty tasty Keith Urban guitar solo. His wife, Nicole Kidman—sigh!—is in the audience.

Also rocking out, for a brief instant, is bigolly Taylor Swift, about 35 seconds into the video posted below.

She had another moment, a little longer, when she was captured on video in the audience at the Grammy Awards. She was swaying along to Tracey Chapman and Luke Combs in their incandescent performance of “Fast Car.” Swift was singing along, standing, eyes closed, enraptured. It was a touching moment of respect. She had recorded this song, and it was fine. It was not in Tracey Chapman’s league, and I think Swift understood that.

But. by the way, here’s Urban, being mighty fine but with far too many explosives, a development that bothers me about Swift.

Urban’s guitar solo is terrific, but you wonder how much dry ice had to die for this performance and whether the lighting bursts provoked seizures in the audience that lasted for months afterward.

I need to check with Bruce, but I don’t need the stadium explosives to love Swift. Maybe he yearns, as I do, for more intimate days, like this performance on The Letterman Show. This is one of earliest songs, and it’s still simple. That’s what attracts me about it.

I’d guess you could say she’s “working” the audience in this video. Then she kisses the little girl, so I don’t think that’s the case, not at all. I am not saying I’d want to be one of her ex-boyfriends, but you get the sense that she loves touching people. Then this morning I found one of those fluffy news articles about “Celebrities Who Are Either a Dream or Nightmare to Meet.”

She was a “Dream.” Despite the possibility that she’s gotten far too big for us—the music equivalent of WalMart, the biggest conglomerate on this here planet Earth—she is genuinely kind.

I don’t get it, either, Maybe my big bro and I can figure this girl out together. Maybe we’ll find out we were right about her all along.

Just one more. Red remains my favorite album, and this is one of my favorite songs, and not at all like the version on my mp3 player. From the BBC, without pyrotechnics. Delicious.