New Jersey’s largest wildfire in 20 years has consumed more than 13,000 acres in Ocean County, not far from Bruce Springsteen’s old stomping grounds. That’s not the kind of fire he wrote this song about, though.

After he saw Elvis Presley perform at the Spectrum in May 1977, Springsteen wrote this slow-burner and sent a demo to the King, who died before it arrived. Springsteen instead offered it to Robert Gordon, a neo-rockabilly singer he met through E Street Band bassist Garry Tallent, after seeing Gordon in concert with Link Wray. Springsteen played piano on the version Gordon released in 1978, which gives some idea of how Elvis might have covered it.

Gordon’s single didn’t reach the Hot 100, but the other version released that year hit No. 2, the first record by the Pointer Sisters to reach the Top 10 and their first gold single. Anita Pointer, who sang lead, credited it with breaking the group internationally. Like “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” the song worked better by flipping the script to the woman’s point of view.

Though Springsteen left the song off his “Darkness on the Edge of Town” album, he played it frequently on the corresponding tour but only occasionally since. He didn’t release his own version until 1986.

Robin Williams couldn’t resist having some fun with the tune. He sang it as Elmer Fudd.

MAGAts like to project a tough, scary image, but their frequent fuck-ups undercut the bluster. For instance, Homeland Security chief Kristie Noem, known as ICE Barbie for posing in combat gear whenever possible, got her purse snatched the other day in a D.C. restaurant, Capital Burger. Her Secret Service detail never noticed though, to be fair, it’s really dark in there, and security footage showed the thief was white and therefore not suspicious.

Smokey Robinson and fellow Miracle Bobby Rogers wrote this song with the Temptations in mind, but Berry Gordy gave it to second-line Motown group the Contours, who had scored their one big hit back in 1962 with “Do You Love Me.” By 1965 lead singer Billy Gordon was the only remaining original member, and after “First I Look at the Purse” stalled at No. 12 on the R&B chart and No. 57 on the Hot 100, he left, too.

The song got more traction when the J. Geils Band, which leaned heavily on R&B covers in its early days, made it the debut single from their eponymous first album in 1970. It didn’t chart, but the version that opened the band’s 1972 live album got a good bit of FM airplay.

This seems like an appropriate song for Earth Day in the age of Trump. Nearly every affliction Loudon Wainwright listed back in 1986 is still a problem today. He knows it, too. “I wrote it in the mid-80s when it seemed like everything was going to end. And so, it’s kind of a perennial, I suppose,” Wainwright joked in 2016.

Recorded in England, where he was living at the time, and produced by guitarist Richard Thompson, the tune was included on Wainwright’s album “More Love Songs.” The prominent bass part is by Thompson’s frequent collaborator in those days, Danny Thompson (no relation), formerly of Pentangle.

Pope Francis has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible, apparently after a surprisingly active Easter considering he was at death’s door last month. Also, it seems that JD Vance has shown himself a worthy successor to Trump, at least on the “everything he touches dies” front.

We’ll probably hear lots of lugubrious church music at Francis’ funeral; whatever else the Reformation did, it certainly improved liturgical music by bringing in popular song forms. I’d rather listen to gospel songs any day, especially my last one. When I’m on my deathbed I want to hear “Angel Band.”

The poem “My Latest Sun Is Sinking Fast,” published in 1860 by Methodist minister Jefferson Hascall, was set to a melody by prolific hymnist William Batchelder Bradbury in 1862. It was quickly added to hymnals of various denominations, and it’s been recorded by dozens of bluegrass artists since the 1920s. T Bone Burnett used this version by the Stanley Brothers for the soundtrack of the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

It wasn’t until 1997 that Paul McCartney revealed that this song wasn’t written about someone but rather something. “It’s actually an ode to pot,” he acknowledged, “like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret.”

When it debuted on in 1965 on “Revolver,” the Motown-inspired tune, the first Beatles song to use horns, was overshadowed by the the rest of the album’s sonic experiments. The Beatles had no intention of releasing it as a single, so McCartney helped produce a cover of the song by a Brian Epstein-managed British R&B band, Cliff Bennett and the Rabble Rousers. Their single, released within days of “Revolver,” reached No. 6 in the UK.

The song got its greatest exposure in 1978, when Earth, Wind & Fire funked it up for the doomed Sgt. Pepper movie. Their version reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Soul chart and No. 9 on the Hot 100.

The horns, charted on the original by George Martin, gave the song a distinct R&B flavor, but McCartney’s first arrangement for it had more of the psychedelic feel that suffuses the rest of “Revolver.” A demo of it was released as part of the band’s Anthology series in 1996.

Welcome to the resistance…what? Who? David Brooks? Seriously? Milquetoast center-right New York Times columnist David Brooks is calling for widespread resistance to the Trump regime? You better believe it, baby.

In a piece headlined “What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal,” the usually somnolent Brooks wrote:

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

Brooks has always been slow on the uptake, but I’m surprised he would ever reach the point of invoking the power of the people.

John Lennon invoked it quite a lot in the years after he left the Beatles, never more so than on this 1971 single. Recorded during the “Imagine” sessions and written after an interview with anti-war activists, Lennon later said, “I wrote ‘Power to the People’ the same way I wrote ‘Give Peace a Chance,’ as something for the people to sing. I make singles like broadsheets. It was another quickie.”

The single made the top 10 in both Britain and America, but didn’t appear on an LP until the “Shaved Fish” compilation in 1975. By the late ’70s the sentiment seemed naive, and Lennon expressed embarrassment about getting caught up in the moment. But the song lives on, partly thanks to Bernie Sanders, who used it in his presidential campaigns.

The notion that the devil has all the best tunes didn’t start with rock and roll. It goes all the way back to the 18th century, when Anglican cleric George Whitefield responded to criticism of the Methodists using popular melodies for their hymns by asking, “Why should the devil have all the best tunes?”

Though rock and roll was condemned as the devil’s music from the first, it wasn’t until later that bands began to openly embrace satanic imagery. One of the first was The Gun, a late-’60s British trio that featured brothers Paul and Adrian Gurvitz on bass and guitar. They recorded two albums for CBS in the days when British blues-rock was getting louder and heavier, but on the devil-invoking front they were ahead of their time.

“Race With the Devil” surrounds a killer guitar riff with every goth-metal cliche about the devil. It almost sounds like a Spinal Tap song, but they weren’t yet cliches when the Gun did it in 1968. At that point Black Sabbath was still going by the name Earth.

The lead track on the band’s eponymous first album, it made the top ten on the UK singles charts, but that would be the band’s high-water mark. Neither that album nor its successor sold well and the Gun disbanded, though Adrian Gurvitz went on to a long career as a songwriter and producer. Fun fact: The album cover was the first designed by Roger Dean, who went on to a long career creating fantasy-scapes for other bands, most notably Yes.

In 1977 Black Oak Arkansas, whose glory days were already behind them, made “Race With the Devil” the title track of their 10th studio LP. Believe it or not, Jim Dandy Mangrum still tours with another lineup of BOA.

It’s too bad Johnny Paycheck didn’t live long enough to see what Trump and Musk have done to the Internal Revenue Service: A projected $500 billion will go uncollected because they gutted the agency. Audits? You have a better chance of hitting the lottery.

Ol’ Johnny had his problems with the taxman, declaring bankruptcy when he was hit with a $300,000 bill for unpaid back taxes, so Nashville tunesmith Phil Thomas didn’t have to look far for inspiration. Originally released on Paycheck’s highest-charting album, 1978’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” it also appeared as a B-side that made the country charts.

Unpaid bills were the least of Paycheck’s legal problems. He spent a couple of years in prison after shooting a man in what he claimed was self-defense, and he was hit with a statutory rape charge that was later dropped. He was said to have cleaned up after prison, but hard living caught up with him in 2003 at the age of 64.

You probably didn’t notice this last week, what with the destruction of the world economy and all, but Donald Trump renewed his war on water efficiency standards. He took time out of his busy schedule of making shit up as he goes along to issue an executive order on the important issue of “Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads.”

He’s been on about this for years, and as he made clear last week, it’s personal. “In my case, I like to take a nice shower, take care of my beautiful hair,” he said as he signed. “I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous.” That probably has less to do with water pressure than whatever shellac cements his elaborate combover in place, but as usual the absurdity disguises more sinister moves against all kinds of regulations.

Unlike Trump, most people enjoy taking a leisurely shower, though Chicago’s Terry Kath might have taken it to an extreme with this suite from their third album, creatively titled “Chicago III.” Released in early 1971, the album was the group’s third double LP in 21 months, and you could tell they were running out of things to write about.

OK, from now on the tariff on Chinese goods is … eleventy jillion percent! Oh, wait, hold on a sec … um, except for smartphones and computers and stuff like that. We didn’t mean computers! That’s so crazy that you thought we meant computers! We love computers!

So does Kraftwerk. If that wasn’t clear from their electronic approach on their first seven albums, they spelled it out for listeners with 1981’s “Computer World,” a concept album about the machines’ takeover of daily life. For context, the hot item on the fledgling personal computer market was IBM’s Commodore 64, which loosed MS-DOS upon the world. The album even has a song about pocket calculators, which were a few years old but cheaper than ever.

Despite Kraftwerk’s vast influence on all the electronic music that followed, the group sold few records in the U.S. They were more popular in their native Germany and especially in the UK, where “Computer Love” was a No. 1 single.

Master negotiator Donald Trump claims he lured China into this trade war, which I suppose makes him a master baiter, and I’m not above pointing it out. He thinks he’s got America’s biggest trading partner right where he wants them. He also bankrupted multiple casinos and called it “winning,” so don’t bet your 401k on that – he’s doing that for you.

T’Pau, named for a Vulcan matriach from the original Star Trek, is basically singer Carol Decker and songwriting partner/guitarist Ronnie Rogers with a rhythm section. They had a pre-Britpop burst of fame in the UK in the late ’80s, broke up in the early ’90s and have reformed since. This song from their 1987 debut album spent five weeks atop the UK singles chart. The title phrase, Decker once explained, referred to the translucence of fine china when held up to a strong light.

Credit where it’s due: Turns out that all sorts of scandals pale to insignificance when you threaten to destroy the global economy, and if you time everything right there’s money in it, too. If you know anybody who works in the financial services industry – this being Delaware you likely do – have pity on them, and keep them away from the caffeine. They’re already as jumpy as the markets.

10cc’s lead single from “Sheet Music” shows its age with references to Howard Hughes and the Rothschilds, but the idea is the same. The song is by Graham Gouldman and lead vocalist Eric Stewart, but the title came from a wisecrack Lol Creme made as the band crossed Wall Street in a limousine. It reached No. 10 in the UK but just missed the Hot 100 in America, dying at No. 103.

Guest Post By Minister Of Culture Gary Mullinax:

Where’s Kid Rock? Or Lee Greenwood. Or Toby Keith. Maybe they’re hanging out at the YMCA with the Village People.

One thing’s for sure. These Trump favorites aren’t on the newly announced list of 25 songs added to the National Recording Registry. Must be a liberal highbrow kind of thing.

The registry showcases “the range and diversity of American recorded sound heritage.” It has honored 675 recordings since it started in 2002, including the 25 this year. Recordings must be at least 10 years old. The first class included ragtime by Scott Joplin, Carole King’s “Tapestry” and Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First.”

I saw the word “diversity” in the statement above. Could be trouble. The registry is part of the Library of Congress, the kind of place Trump has been going after.

Are Tracy Chapman, Mary J. Blige and Miles Davis just DEI selections?

What about Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman”? Just another scary feminist diatribe.

“Before the Next Teardrop Falls” by the Tejano Freddie Fender? Nope. Mexican. (OK, south Texas, but he sings in that accent!.)

”Hamilton” will stay on the registry list but avoided MAGA cancellation from the Kennedy Center by canceling itself.

I think Trump’s OK with Elton John, so I guess “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” can stay.

And “Happy Trails” is a cowboy song he might go for. But you don’t have to be MAGA to fondly remember Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing it as a goodbye at the end of their TV show.

Political implications aside, I just can’t see Trump grooving to “Chicago Transit Authority” or nodding along to Keith Jarrett’s jazzy “Koln Concert.” I don’t know what he does when he listens to Kid Rock. (Editor’s Query: Wasn’t that Kid Rock playing in the background on the Russian Pee Tapes?)

The non-music selections include Chuck Thompson’s 1960 call of Bill Mazeroski’s World Series-winning home run and a Don Rickles comedy routine, Hello Dummy. The Microsoft Windows Reboot Chime doesn’t exactly feel like music, but it was written by the very good musician Brian Eno.

I don’t think he’s on Trump’s playlist either.