Summer Nights

According to what I've gleaned while teaching Homer, the phrase "dog days" refers to the appearance of the Dog Star, Sirius, during the month of August--something which many people know. But why is Sirius baleful? Its dominance of the heavens signified the most dangerous period of time for the plague: the rats get frisky and the fleas are jumpin' and the cotton is...oh, that's another allusion. At any rate, when Achilles races after Hector near the climax to the Iliad, his newly forged armor shining in the rays of the sun, he is compared, in a somewhat brief epic simile, to the fateful and dangerous Sirius.

I'm sure that was on Eddie Cochrane's mind when he penned his most famous song, "Summertime Blues." Here's a video from YouTube of Eddie, at the height of Fifties cool, doing that song. (The volume is extremely low on the recording.)



(I love the way he breaks up more and more when the backup singer delivers the punch lines.)

One more summer allusion--a song I very vaguely remember from the Sixties was titled "Summer Nights." All I could remember that it was sung by a British female singer and had a prominent harpsichord--as well as a few words from the bridge's lyrics: "there's a little cafe..." I thought the singer might be Linda Hopkins, but it was, as Google told me, the much throatier Marianne Faithfull. And thanks to iTunes, I found it was much better than I remembered, which, unfortunately, is not always the case. That vibrato contralto...