I never understood “Summertime Blues” as a child; how could I? How could anyone be blue in the summer? School was out! You could sleep in every morning! You could play in the water! You could watch TV all day! You could camp in the backyard! It was basically a three-month long recess! What was there not to love?

I of course don’t wonder anymore. By late-August especially I am sick and tired of Summer. I’m tired of being hot, I’m tired of sweating, I’m tired of the A/C bill, I’m tired of endlessly trying to find things for the kids to do, I’m tired of the crowds everywhere I go, I’m tired of the smell of sunscreen, I’m tired of sunburns, I’m tired of not having one solitary holiday to break up the monotony for two months straight, I’m tired of the wildfire smoke, I’m tired of the endless reminders of global warming, I’m tired of feeling too lethargic to fight against the ever-increasing viciousness and cruelty of the world, I’m tired of feeling like I’ve wasted over half the year already and accomplished nothing with my life, that the Summer is past and our souls are not saved.

Yes, by late-August, the heat has lost its novelty indeed, and in this I know I’m far from alone. Hence the persistent popularity of “Summertime Blues”: the rare Pop song written by and for teenagers that only resonates more the older you get. No wonder there are so many cover versions.

My personal favorite is the one by Blue Cheer: a late-’60s Psychedelic power-trio from San Francisco, who are often credited with helping pioneer the sound of Heavy Metal–not to mention Punk, stoner-rock, acid-rock, even early-’90s Grunge (heck, The Black Keys were claiming them as an influence as late as the 2010s)–and all that via their irreverent cover of “Summertime Blues” specifically.

When Blue Cheer’s version of “Summertime Blues” gets discussed at all (it was a Top 40 hit in 1968, for whatever that’s worth), the focus tends to be upon the wild guitar work, which filters this innocent little ’50s rockabilly song through heavy distortion, feedback, and thunderous Blues-Rock in a manner that, again, purportedly presaged the rise of Heavy Metal. I write “purportedly” here because most Heavy Metal bands, in my observation, tend to take themselves deathly serious, regarding themselves as very serious members of a very serious genre saying very serious things in a very serious manner; whereas if there’s one distinguishing feature of Blue Cheer, it’s their cheeky refusal to take anything seriously, least of all themselves (I mean, they’re named after a slang term for LSD–which was also a brand of laundry detergent). That cheekiness, naturally, was part of their appeal; record buyers in 1968 weren’t sending this track to the top of the charts because it was some important and innovative harbinger for the future of Rock ‘n Roll, but simply because it was fun.

Part of the fun, too, was in how they were playing around with a song that most everyone basically had memorized at that point. Eddie Cochran‘s 1958 original was only 10 years old when Blue Cheer covered it (even if those two decades felt like a million years apart), and was still getting regularly covered by The Who at that point, so the band was not exactly reviving a long-lost oldie that had disappeared into the mists of time. On the contrary: so sure was Blue Cheer that the broader public already knew the lyrics that they didn’t even bother to sing half of them. Remember that the original version (and almost every other version besides) famously features a call and response between a beleaguered teenager and an authority figure putting him down, e.g. “Every time I call my baby, try to get a date” is answered with “My boss says, No dice son, you gotta work late,” or “I called my congressman, and he said, quote/’I’d like to help you son, but you’re too young to vote’,” and so forth.

Blue Cheer, however, simply sings “I called my congressman and he said quote, take this boy!” and then fire off another quick, feedback-heavy guitar solo. They know you don’t need to hear the rest because you already know the rest; the lyrics were just part of the pop-cultural air we breathed back then, and scarcely even needed to be said anymore.

But then, the words were never the most important thing in the first place: as this site had discussed innumerable times before (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and I’m sure some other times we’ve forgotten), the words are always the least important part–not towards conversion, not towards argumentation, not towards music, not towards anything. Even the scriptures themselves are of secondary importance compared to the ineffable thing they point towards; in the King Follet Discourse, Joseph Smith said that he had the most accurate Bible of all, written on his heart–we all do.

That is, we all already know the words of Life as well—even better than we already know the words to “Summertime Blues”—even if we’ve never read them. They are already inscribed upon the fleshy tablets of our hearts. We do not need anyone to tell us any such thing, for flesh and blood hath not revealed them, but our Father which is in Heaven. Eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him–for the simple reason that these things cannot be expressed in words, no, not even in the simplest words, because (as Derrida might remind us) the things themselves are not the words.

If you have ever felt to sing the Song of Redeeming Love, it was always because the music that was more important than the words in the first place–it really was something you felt, not described–something to keep in mind and follow every prompting of the same, lest the Summer really does become past and our souls are not saved.