I Do Not Like Mondays

Man, I do not like Mondays. So to refocus, here’s something I do like — from waaay back in the day.

This is “Ecstasy” by Rusted Root. You may not recognize them, but there’s a good chance you’ve heard another of their songs, “Send Me on My Way,” which is widely known.

Comparatively, “Ecstasy” is fast and technically complex, while also building strong melodies and including some unique but contained soloing. It’s somewhat darker and possibly political, with references such as “the world gone by” and “the military machine.” You won’t make out some of what lead singer/guitarist Michael Glabicki is saying, but leave that aside for now. You’ll hear what you need to.

Both songs were from the same album, “When I Woke,” released in August 1994. Rusted Root is from Pittsburgh, but around the same time the album was released they played the Grassroots Festival of Music & Dance in Ithaca, New York, which is something like a mini Woodstock ’69 (at least back then; not sure how it is now, but it still goes on). It’s about 45 minutes to an hour’s drive from my hometown of Vestal, N.Y.

I was at Grassroots that year (another story altogether) and caught a little of Rusted Root’s performance, and liked it. I bought the album and picked my favorites from it. I used to like to let track 1, “Drum Trip” (also worth checking out) play into track 2, “Ecstasy,” and then tended to play numero dos over and over.

I used to get up to Ithaca pretty frequently in those days. It’s a vibrant town, driven in part by Cornell University and Ithaca College as well as Cayuga Lake and some beautiful natural surroundings — you can find T-shirts that read, “Ithaca is gorges.”

The place made such an impression on me that several years later while rambling through Europe, I stopped by and did some exploring of the original Ithaca: the Greek island of Ithaiki, which you’ll recognize if you’ve ever read “The Odyssey.”

…but that is another story altogether.

Content © Aaron G. Marsh