Music of the Day, 18 July 2025
hail the traveler: Dave Cousins
This morning’s news informed me that Strawbs founder Dave Cousins had died earlier in the week. As I’d recently featured the band here and explored my collection of their music a bit, a few possibilities came to mind to mark his passing.
Let me say first: I don’t view death as always a negative thing. It’s part of life, and it’s necessary for life to continue.1 For many it comes as a welcome relief—for the dying as well as grieving family and friends, etc. We grieve and mourn because we love, but that can be hard to keep in mind, especially when our loss is fresh.
Because of some friends’ recent griefs and a few of my own, I was feeling melancholy even before getting out of bed. That helps explain my choice:
“I Turned My Face into the Wind” is from the Strawbs’ second studio album, Dragonfly, which was released in 1970. The addition to the band of Claire Deniz on cello gives the song lovely depth. Cousins wrote and sang it, as well as played piano.
Being a big fan of gothic fiction, the imagery his lyrics create immediately appealed to me. Listening to it today, it’s hitting me harder, as they’re feeling metaphorical for life itself. I’m looking forward to being able to more thoroughly explore Dave Cousins’ rich musical legacy.
I reframed many students’ thinking on this in my developmental psych courses by pointing out that death is the OG recycling (and then I invariably had to explain what “OG” means)