Earth, Wind & Fire performs at BottleRock Napa Valley at the Napa Valley Expo on May 25, 2018. Alessio Neri/STAFF.

This week was, technically, the beginning of fall. I say “technically” because I don’t trust weather anymore, so I keep expecting it to spike back up to 115 degrees at any second, without warning, just to mess with me. I didn’t even get to enjoy the Bay Area rain as I was in L.A. at the time. It just goes to prove nature is messing with me, specifically.

Anyway, fall. At the risk of jinxing it, I’m going to pretend the recent pleasant-to-cool weather in the Bay Area—I feel for the people of Puerto Rico—is the start of a trend rather than a massive tease and write a column about the season changing. So if everything goes sideways, it’s my fault.

And I swear to God: If any of you say “sweater weather,” I’m throwing you out a second story window.

Earth, Wind and Fire — “September”

While Demi Adejuyigbe made his last Sept. 21 video in 2021, the song is still great and Sept. 21 remains Earth, Wind and Fire day—if not as a federal holiday, then definitely in my heart.

Yes, I listened to this song about a dozen times on Wednesday. Yes, I wore my “SEPT 21” shirt from one of Adejuyigbe’s fundraising campaigns. Yes, I posted the video in my company’s Slack despite nobody asking for it. Until we as a society come to our senses and codify some formal traditions, I just need to try everything.

Neil Young — “Harvest Moon”

I put the catchy, happy, upbeat song up top because every other song about autumn is dreary and slow. The goal is to catch your attention and make you want to stay, after all, and Neil Young probably doesn’t do that. But once you make it to the second entry? Then you’re committed and will probably at least make it to the third. That’s just science.

Anyway, this is a Neil Young song and there’s not a lot to say other than that, so let me talk about the SNES game “Harvest Moon” from 1997. In it, you inherit an old farm from your grandfather, and the game is cleaning it up, getting it running and making friends with the townsfolk. It may sound boring, but I loved it very much and, fortunately for me, it turned into an entire genre. I’ve played “Stardew Valley,” its spiritual successor from 2016, for a combined 23 days. I’m not proud, but I’m honest.

The Kinks — “Autumn Almanac”

Earth, Wind and Fire would keep you hooked until the third entry, so here’s the point I need to bring the tempo back up to keep you here. And this is, somehow, the second-peppiest fall song. So… yeah, enjoy this dance hall banger.

I’ve said it before, but The Kinks don’t get enough respect. They got overshadowed by their British Invasion compatriots The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but this is the band behind “You Really Got Me,” “A Well Respected Man,” “All Day and All of the Night,” “Lola,” “Sunny Afternoon”… you know all these, right? Right? OK, fine, go listen to them all and come back. Learn something for once.

Yo La Tengo — “Autumn Sweater”

And we’ve slowed it back down. Sorry about that.

Yo La Tengo’s name comes from a baseball story, believe it or not. The shortstop of the 1962 Mets, Elio Chacón, did not speak English, so when the outfielders would yell “I’ve got it!” he didn’t understand and there were collisions. The team had a meeting and decided that instead, players would yell “¡Yo la tengo!” (Why it was easier for eight guys to learn a Spanish phrase rather than one guy to learn an English phrase was not part of the story, but we can only assume it involved internalized racism.) Shortly thereafter, centerfielder Richie Ashburn yelled “¡Yo la tengo!” to call off Chacón only to be leveled by left fielder Frank Thomas—not that one, an older and whiter one—who missed the meeting and asked, “What the hell is a yellow tango?”

Green Day — “Wake Me Up When September Ends”

We made it! Have a depressing Green Day song to make up for all the slow songs.

American Idiot, the album this song is from, is a rock opera. That’s a term that means “a rock band got famous enough that it wanted to tell a grand story but nobody noticed.” Green Day didn’t completely do it, though, since this song has absolutely nothing to do with the album’s story. That’s ironic since the video (the one up there that you didn’t click on, jerk) is more story than song.

So what’s the song actually about? To cap off a list of slow, solemn songs, it’s an autobiographical song about Billy Joe Armstrong’s dad dying of cancer when he was 10. Happy fall everyone!

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.