Posts Tagged ‘Gordon Lightfoot’

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‘North’

Friday, March 11th, 2016

When we sort the 88,000 or so mp3s on the digital shelves for the direction “north” – beginning, as we do so, our “Follow the Directions” journey promised a few weeks ago – we run into several obstacles.

First of all, numerous mp3s have been tagged by their rippers over the years as “Northern Soul,” a designation that, as I’ve noted before, tends to baffle me because it’s more reliant on the reaction of the listener than it is to anything intrinsic to the music. But never mind. We’ll have to ignore those.

We also lose tunes by those performers and groups that have “north” as part of their names, like Charlie Poole & The North Carolina Ramblers, a 1920s string band; the North Mississippi Allstars, a current blues ’n’ boogie band; Northern Light, the band that released “Minnesota” in 1975; Canadian singer-songwriter Tom Northcott (without intending to, I’ve gathered eleven of his recordings); and a current folky group called True North.

Then we have to cross off our list a live 1982 performance by Jesse Winchester in Northampton, Massachusetts; and almost every track from many albums, including the Freddy Jones Band’s 1995 album North Avenue Wake Up Call, the Michael Stanley Band’s North Coast (1981), Dawes’ North Hills (2014), Sandy Denny’s The North Star Grassman & The Raven (1971), The Band’s Northern Lights/Southern Cross (1975) and Ian & Sylvia’s Northern Journey (1964). But we still have enough to choose from to find four worthy tunes pointing us to the “N” on the compass.

Regular readers know my regard for the late Jesse Winchester, and I think I know his catalog fairly well, but every now and then, his whimsy surprises me all over again, as happened with his tune “North Star” this morning. It starts like a serene, folky meditation:

Heaven’s got this one star that don’t move none
And that’s the place you want to aim your soul
Set you on a spot that knows no season
And be satisfied just to watch old Jordan roll

And then Winchester leaps:

Now, does the world have a belly button?
I can’t get this out of my head
’Cause if it turns up in my yard
I’ll tickle it so hard
’Til the whole world will laugh to wake the dead

Surprises me every time. It’s on Winchester’s 1972 album Third Down, 110 To Go.

If the North had ever had a poet/musician laureate, for years that place would have been filled by Gordon Lightfoot, and just three of his songs would have cemented him there: “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” and “Alberta Bound.” And it seems to me that Lightfoot summed up all of his Canadian lore in one last good Northern song: “Whispers of the North” from his 1983 album Salute:

Whispers of the north
Soon I will go forth
To that wild and barren land
Where nature takes its course
Whispers of the wind
Soon I will be there again
Bound with a wild and restless drive
That pulls me from within
And we can ride away
We can glide all day
And we can fly away

Back in the late 1980s, a ladyfriend and I included Lightfoot on our list of essential musicians; even so, I’ve never been driven to pull together a complete Lightfoot collection, as I’ve done with Bob Dylan (with the exception of his Christmas album). The urgency wasn’t there, I guess, although the shelves – both wooden and digital – hold plenty of Lightfoot. And “Whispers of the North,” though it might not rank with the other three Canadian anthems I mentioned above, is pretty high on my list. The loon call at the start doesn’t hurt, of course.

The song that shows up most frequently – twenty-two times – in my sorting of “north” is Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country.” Beyond five versions by Dylan himself and four by Leon Russell (one of those with Joe Cocker and one with the Tedeschi Trucks Band), I have versions by the Country Gentlemen, Hamilton Camp, Howard Tate, Margo Timmins, Rosanne Cash, Mylon Lefevre, Jimmy LaFave, Leo Kottke and several other folks, including the previously mentioned Tom Northcott. A Vancouver native, Northcott had several charting singles in Canada in the late 1960s and early 1970s and got into the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. once, when his cover of Harry Nilsson’s “1941” went to No. 88 in early 1968. (A cover of Donovan’s “Sunny Goodge Street” had bubbled under at No. 123 during the summer of 1967.) His pleasant take on “Girl From the North Country” went to No. 65 on the Canadian charts in 1968.

And we end today with “Lady Of The North” by Gene Clark, the closer to his 1974 album No Other. According to the tales told at Wikipedia, Clark – after some years of indulgence – was sober when wrote the bulk of the album’s songs at his home in Mendocino, California. After heading to Los Angeles to record, though, he more than dabbled in cocaine, and his wife, Carlie, took the couple’s children back to Northern California. Whether it was a direct response, I’m not certain, but Clark, with help from Doug Dillard, wrote “Lady Of The North” for Carlie and used it as the album’s closer. Wikipedia notes that the album was a “critical and commercial failure,” that the time and resources used to record were “seen as excessive and indulgent,” and that Asylum did little to promote the album. Two CD releases of the album in recent years have been met with better critical and commercial response.

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Posted in 1968, 1972, 1974, 1983, Follow The Directions, Video | No Comments »

‘Coffee’s In The Kitchen . . .’

Wednesday, November 11th, 2015

I pulled a muscle in my back yesterday lifting an old copying machine.

About eight weeks ago, the copying machine at our Unitarian Universalist Fellowship across town wheezed and died. Long-time members told me that its demise wasn’t a surprise. That’s pretty much what the service tech told me when he and I met at the fellowship a couple days later.

The copier, he said, needed a circuit board that hasn’t been in production for at least five years. “I’ve been telling you folks that the day would come when the machine can’t be saved,” he told me.

Okay, I said, and over the next few weeks, our Communications Committee – I’m the chairman – and our Technology Subcommittee looked at some options and made a recommendation to the Fellowship Board, and we got a new, and much smaller, copier/printer. That left the question of what to do with the old copier, now shoved aside in the office.

Well, I met yesterday morning with a rep from the firm that maintained the old copier. We discussed some business regarding the (now unnecessary) service contract, and he pushed the old dinosaur out of the office and the building and down the sidewalk to his van. There, he stopped, and without much thought, I took hold of the grips on one side of the machine and helped him lift it into the van.

As I did, something gave way in my back about halfway between my left hip and my ribcage. He apologized as I arched my back and winced. I said I was okay, and he took off. I closed up the building and then limped through a few other morning errands and went home and took some aspirin.

By the time the Texas Gal got home about at half past five, I was in pretty sad shape, staying put on the couch as much as possible and lurching unevenly when I had to move. She offered me some stronger medication and encouraged me to call in my regrets for an evening meeting at church. So I stayed on the couch, ate pizza and watched television.

My back is better this morning, but moving too quickly in the wrong direction gives me a twinge, so I’m going to take it easy today and then get through a scheduled task at church this evening.

So it’s a lazy morning. And here’s “Lazy Morning” by Gordon Lightfoot. It’s from his 1972 release, Old Dan’s Records.

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Posted in 1972, Life As She Is, Video | 1 Comment »

‘Come On In My Kitchen . . .’

Thursday, April 16th, 2015

Come on into the kitchen here at the studios. You need an invitation? Okay, here’s one by a British blues musician named Paul Williams, from his 1973 album In Memory Of Robert Johnson:

Looking at the record jacket shown in the video, a blues fan sees a couple of errors. Robert Johnson did not die in a hotel room but rather in a house in Greenwood, Mississippi (at 109 Young Street, if the late Honeyboy Edwards’ commentary in the 1991 documentary The Search For Robert Johnson is accurate). And Johnson was twenty-seven when he died, not twenty. But the mistakes on that jacket simply illustrate how little was known about the man forty years ago when his music had already inspired a generation of blues artists through whatever 78s had survived nearly forty years and through two LPs released by Columbia.

Anyway, you’re in the kitchen. Over there, on the right, is the stove. In a 1929 recording, Blind Willie McTell warns Bethenea Harris that “This Is Not The Stove To Brown Your Bread” (with Alfoncy Harris adding guitar in the background). But the oven’s been in use, according to Spencer Wiggins, who wants to know “Who’s Been Warming My Oven” in a track recorded for Goldwax sometime around 1967 but not released at the time:

And over there, on the left, is the refrigerator. Alice Cooper sang in 1970’s “Refrigerator Heaven” about being frozen until a cure for cancer was found, but that’s happening in some lab, not in my kitchen. So we’ll turn a little bit and head for the counter, and that’s where we find Dolly Parton’s “Old Black Kettle” waiting for soup or stew or whatever we’ll have for dinner this evening, as it has been since she sang about it in 1973. And next to it we find breakfast: The “Second Cup Of Coffee” that Gordon Lightfoot’s been sipping since 1972 and some “Shortnin’ Bread” courtesy of Mississippi John Hurt, probably from 1966.

And then we’re out the door for the day.

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Posted in 1929, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1972, 1973, Video | No Comments »

Saturday Single No. 439

Saturday, March 21st, 2015

Without really meaning to, we’ve turned this week into a “days of the week” kind of thing, featuring a Monday song on Monday and a Wednesday song two days later. So it’s only right, I guess, that our Saturday Single this morning should be a Saturday song.

They’re easy enough to find, tunes about Saturday, as I know we’ve found out a couple of times before. When prompted, the RealPlayer finds eighty-three tunes in the current collection that have some connection to this day of the week. We have to eliminate most of Mick Sterling’s 2005 album Between Saturday Night and Sunday Morning as well as tracks from the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever and from Norman Connors’ 1975 album Saturday Night Special. And we also have to pass by a sweet 1967 single by a group called Saturday’s Children.

But there are plenty of tunes left to choose from. I’m tempted for a moment by a 1967 single titles “Saturday Morning Repentance” by a group called the Waterproof Candle, especially after the website that catalogs the huge Lost Jukebox collection tells me that Jimmy Webb both wrote the song and produced the record. But all that is more interesting than the record itself, so we move on.

Lee Hazlewood also put together a record about Saturday morning regrets titled “Hello Saturday Morning.” It was on his 1977 album Movin’ On, but it’s actually pretty ordinary and not nearly as weird as classic Hazlewood, so we will, in fact, be moving on.

We’ll pass as well on the pallid “Hootenany Saturday Night” by the Brothers Four from their 1965 album The Honey Wind Blows. The Brothers sing, “If you think we’ll be rowdy, you’re right,” but for some reason, I don’t buy it.

And then there’s Reparata of Reparata & The Delrons, who sang “Saturday Night Didn’t Happen” after her guy broke up with her. It’s decent, slightly spooky girl group pop, enlivened by one strange verse:

The ceiling is leaking, the chair I sit in is creaking
And so is the parrot, I feed him a carrot
And then he’ll be quiet again.

I do wonder sometimes how I wound up with an entire CD’s worth of music by Reparata & The Delrons, but these things just happen. And the parrot weirds me out, so on we go.

There are, of course, many Saturday night records: It’s a night that’s all right for fighting (Elton John, 1973), or spending at the duck pond (Cougars, 1963), or hanging out in Oak Grove, Louisiana (Tony Joe White, 1973), or having a fish fry (Louis Jordan, 1949). Or else, as Frank Sinatra told us at least twice (1944 and 1959), it’s the loneliest night of the week.

But if we’re going to think about Saturday night, as far as I’m concerned, we’re heading right into Gordon Lightfoot territory after the party winds down:

I feel a little blue ’cause I can’t sew
There’s still a lot of things that I should know
Anyone can guess
I don’t know how to press
My Saturday clothes
And everyone’s goin’ home

I feel a little sad to watch them leave
But I’ll be cool because I don’t believe
The happy times are gone
I can still put on
My Saturday clothes
Every warm body knows

I’ve got to tell you that was a swell time
Now I’ll take the butts away
And put the glasses on the tray
I’ll see you all next Saturday

I feel a little off because they’re gone
And if my gal were here, I’d still be on
But in a week or two
There’s lots of things to do
In my Saturday clothes
And everyone’s gone home

I’ve got to tell you that was a swell time
So now I’ll take the butts away
And put the glasses on the tray
I’ll see you all next Saturday

There are some odd corners in there, to be sure, but “Saturday Clothes” has been a favorite of mine from the first time I heard Lightfoot’s 1970 album If You Could Read My Mind, and it’s today’s Saturday Single.

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Posted in 1970, Saturday Single, Video | 1 Comment »

Out From The Sun, Part 1

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014

It’s time for a trip, starting right at the center of the Solar System. Along the way, we’ll check in at the eight planets, a couple of moons and maybe a comet. Why? Well, maybe I’m in a space/science mood from watching Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reboot of Carl Sagan’s 1980 TV series Cosmos. Whatever the reason, it seemed like a good idea this morning.

We’ll start at the center, with the Sun. There were lots of titles to choose from on the digital shelves, even after I weeded out all the mp3s originally released on the Sun label. I dithered a while, and then remembered something I read long ago written about solar exploration either by a second-grader or a slow learner: If the surface of the sun is too hot for humans to survive, then we can go at night. Well, we’ll go at sundown and listen to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” as we travel. Pulled from his 1974 album of the same name, “Sundown” went to No. 1 on the Billboard pop and adult contemporary charts and to No. 13 on the country chart.

Heading outward from Sol, our first stop is Mercury. After we eliminate the records on the Mercury label, we’re left with a few tracks about the element and a few tracks about the car but none about the planet itself. That’s okay. We’ll settle for the car, which might as well be our mode of transport on this journey. So here is “Mercury Blues” from Fly Like An Eagle, the 1976 album by the Steve Miller Band that went to No. 3 in the Billboard 200. The band had recorded a much more up-tempo version of the tune for the soundtrack to the 1968 movie Revolution, but I like the slower version. After all, we may as well take our time and see the sights.

Next stop as we head out from the Sun is Venus, and there are a few tunes to choose from about the goddess, if not the planet. Considered for an instant and discarded just as quickly was Frankie Avalon’s “Venus,” a No.1 hit from 1959, although I considered for a moment a 1962 version of the same tune by the Ventures. But if we’re going to land on Venus, then we’re going to land on “Venus” by the Shocking Blue. The record was a No. 1 hit for the Dutch group in February 1970, jumping out of millions of radios around the world – including my old RCA upstairs on Kilian Boulevard – with its ringing introductory riff. (I passed a little regretfully on a 1972 cover of the same tune by organist Zygmunt Jankowski. Maybe another time.)

Leaving Venus and its clouds and ringing riff behind, we head to our home planet. And we dig deep into Motown’s huge catalog for the 1970 cautionary tune “You Make Your Own Heaven And Hell Right Here On Earth” by the Temptations. I’ve noted in the past my general preference for the Four Tops over the Temptations, but I do love the freaky, funky and atmospheric production that Norman Whitfield brought to this tune and the others that he and Barrett Strong wrote for the Psychedelic Shack album. The album went to No. 9.

Leaving Earth, we’ll make a brief stop at the Moon before heading further out into the Solar System again. I was very tempted to go into my Al Hirt collection for his 1963 rendition of “Fly Me To The Moon,” but having dropped Big Al in here the other week when I looked at “I’m Movin’ On,” I passed on the horn. Instead, I opted for a track by the Doors that I first heard in 1971 when I picked up 13, the band’s greatest hits album. The slightly spooky “Moonlight Drive” comes from the 1967 album Strange Days and showed up as the B-side to “Love Me Two Times” late that year.

Our last stop today, as we cross the Asteroid Belt and finish the first half of our trek out into the Solar System, is Mars. A search for “Mars” in the RealPlayer’s files brings up a lot of stuff we can’t use, including lots of music from Marsha Hunt, the Marshall Tucker Band and Wynton Marsalis. But one single stands out among the unusable: “Venus and Mars/Rock Show” by Wings. Pulled from the Venus and Mars album, the record went to No. 12 in December 1975, and it provides a very hummable tune as we pause here on Mars before continuing our journey and heading to the giant planets.

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“Cold’

Tuesday, December 31st, 2013

As I write, the WeatherBug program tells me that it’s -20 Fahrenheit out at the St. Cloud Municipal Airport just a mile or two away. Factor in the 3 mph wind, and it feels like it’s -30. (Those temperatures are -29 and -34 for those keeping score in Celsius.)

I’m just back from dropping the Texas Gal at her workplace downtown so she wouldn’t have to walk either two blocks from the parking lot or four blocks from the downtown bus terminal. And although I have one errand to run later today – and of course have to go pick up the Texas Gal at the end of the workday – I will be content to spend the bulk of the day inside where it’s warm. To mark the chill, however, here’s a three-song sampler of “cold.”

Bobby Sherman was a regular chart presence on the Metromedia label between 1969 and 1971 – “Little Woman,” “La La La (If I Had You),” “Easy Come, Easy Go” and “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” all hit the Top Ten and a few others made the Top 40 – but before that, he scuffled around on at least two other labels. His “It Hurts Me” on Decca bubbled under the chart at No. 116 in 1965, and in 1967, his Epic single “Cold Girl” made no dent in the chart at all. I came across the record in the massive Lost Jukebox files I’ve mentioned several times before. Much of the stuff in those files is easily ignored, but “Cold Girl” is pretty good.

I’m not at all certain what Gordon Lightfoot is singing about in “Cold On The Shoulder.”

All you need is time
All you need is time, time, time to make me bend
Give it a try, don’t be rude
Put it to the test and I’ll give it right back to you

It’s cold on the shoulder
And you know that we get a little older every day

But it really doesn’t matter. Like most Lightfoot tunes, especially those from the mid-1970s, the title tune to his 1975 album Cold On The Shoulder is atmospheric, tuneful and catchy, all of which helped the album go to No. 10 on the Billboard chart. Many of Lightfoot’s lyrics became a little elliptical during those years (and continued to be so for a few years to come). That indirection, as I understand from various interviews, was because he was writing about things in his life that were difficult to come at from the front, so that’s understandable. And metaphor is generally easier to listen to than straight-on blood-letting anyway.

Speaking of metaphor, “Cold Bologna” by the Isley Brothers is both metaphor and tale, as the narrator notes that he’s five years old and “Mama’s out cookin’ steak for someone else,” with that someone else being the rich folks Mama works for. The track, written by Bill Withers, is from the brothers’ 1971 album Givin’ It Back, which went to No. 71 on the Billboard Hot 200 and to No. 13 on the R&B albums chart. Three singles from the album reached the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B singles chart. “Cold Bologna” was not one of them.

As 2013 winds down today and midnight leads us into 2014, the Texas Gal and I would like to pass on our hopes that the New Year will be one of those years that shines while you’re living it and shines even more brightly as it recedes in the past. See you on the other side of the calendar!

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‘Green’

Thursday, September 12th, 2013

So today, in the fourth installment of Floyd’s Prism, we come to “Green,” the “G.” in the famous mnemonic for recalling the colors of the spectrum: “Roy G. Biv.”

The RealPlayer provides a total of 576 mp3s to sort. The first tracks to be trimmed are the sixteen covers of 1960s folk from the fine 1999 collection Bleecker Street: Greenwich Village in the ’60s and the thirteen covers from a similar 2009 album, The Village: A Celebration Of The Music Of Greenwich Village.

We also lose many, if not all, tracks from other albums: The Stone Poneys’ Evergreen, Vol. 2, Dana Wells’ The Evergreen, Steel Mill’s Green Eyed God, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Green River, Dar Williams’ The Green World, Leo Kottke’s Greenhouse, the Pete Best Band’s Hayman’s Green (yes, that Pete Best; it’s a pretty decent album from 2008), the bluesy Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, the Jayhawks’ Tomorrow the Green Grass and a few others, including Sibylle Baier’s Colour Green, an album featured here not long ago that was made up mostly of home recordings from the early 1970s and released in 2006.

We set aside multiple albums by Al Green and country singer Pat Green, and single albums from songwriter Ellie Greenwich, the 1960s groups Green and Evergreen Blue Shoes, and a 2010 album by a European electropop duo called the Green Children.

We also lose tracks by performers Barbara Greene, Cal Green, Eli Green (with Mississippi Fred McDowell), Grant Green, the Greenwoods, Jackie Green, Johnny Green & The Greenmen, Judy Green, the little known R. Green (of R. Green & Turner, who recorded two blues sides for the J&M Fulbright label in Los Angeles in 1948), Rudy Greene, Rudy Green & His Orchestra, Lorne Green, the marvelously named Slim Green & The Cats From Fresno and, of course, Norman Greenbaum.

And a few songs fall by the wayside because of their titles: Jackie DeShannon’s “The Greener Side,” five mp3s titled “Evergreen” (some with numbers attached and none of them the 1976 Barbra Streisand record), Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Greenland Whale Fisheries,” Tony Rice’s “Greenlight on the Southern,” a couple versions of “Greensleeves,” three of “Greenback Dollar,” and six tracks with “Greenwood” in their titles, including the wonderful 1970 single “Greenwood, Mississippi” by Little Richard.

But that leaves us many titles yet to work with. We’ll start with a country favorite of mine from 1993.

I didn’t know about the tune in 1993, of course, as I rarely listened to country music then. (A work friend of mine in those days suggested I give a Brooks & Dunn album a listen; I returned it to him regretfully, not yet ready for boot-scootin’.) But come the year 2000, with the Texas Gal on the scene, I began to catch up at least a little on what I’d been missing. And one evening, as we were passing time watching country music videos on CMT, there came Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green.” The story of Billy Bob and Charlene and the tall green letters on the water tower amused me, and it touched memories of both summer weeks on my grandpa’s farm and of Gramps’ allegiance to John Deere farm equipment. I don’t follow country closely, but it’s on the radio and the CD player occasionally; it’s not nearly as foreign as it was, thanks mostly to the Texas Gal and at least in part to Diffie’s single (which went to No. 5 on the country chart and to No. 60 on the Billboard Hot 100).

There are five versions of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Bitter Green” in the digital stacks: covers by Ronnie Hawkins, Tony Rice and fellow Canadian folk singer Valdy and studio and live versions by Lightfoot. I like them all but decided to go with Lightfoot’s version from his 1968 album, Back Here On Earth. At the time, Lightfoot was known mostly in the U.S. as a songwriter; his performing career was much stronger in Canada (and that imbalance remained until 1970 or so). “Bitter Green” and the story it tells are vintage Lightfoot: an easily embraced melody backed only by guitar and literate and clear lyrics. He’d go on to great critical and popular success in the 1970s and beyond, but many of his early recordings are still worth close listening. This is one of them.

Gods and Generals, a 2003 film based on a 1996 novel by Jeffrey Schaara, was focused, says Wikipedia, on “the life of Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson,” the God-fearing and militarily brilliant yet eccentric Confederate general.” I’ve not seen the film, and perhaps I should, but my interest in Gods and General this morning is the soundtrack, itself notable to me because Bob Dylan’s haunting “’Cross the Green Mountain” is its closing track. In her review of the soundtrack at All Music Guide, Heather Phares notes that Dylan’s contribution “sounds more contemporary than most of the rest of the album, but still has enough rustic warmth to complement it gracefully.” The video to which I’ve linked has a shorter version of the tune than does the soundtrack; the original version, which runs eight-plus minutes, is available on the soundtrack CD and on Dylan’s 2008 release, Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8.

Although I try to dig up relatively rare and different tracks when I do sets like this – for Floyd’s Prism or the earlier March Of The Integers – there are times when familiar tracks simply demand to be included. Such is the case with “Green Onions” by Booker T. & The MG’s. The record – familiar and forever fresh – went to No. 3 on the pop chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1962. In his 1989 book, The Heart of Rock & Soul, Dave Marsh wrote that “Green Onions” is “what happens when the best backup band in the universe decides it’s time to get noticed.”

In early 2007, a Houston, Texas, music producer named Kevin Ryan went into his home studio and, as Dan Brekke of Salon wrote that April, “engineered a sort of retro mash-up of two of his favorite artists, Bob Dylan and Dr. Seuss. . . . Ryan took the text from seven Seuss classics, including ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’ and set them to original tunes that sounded like they were right off Dylan’s mid-’60s releases. He played all the instruments and sang all the songs in Dylan’s breathy, nasal twang. He registered a domain name, dylanhearsawho.com, and in February posted his seven tracks online, accompanied by suitably Photoshopped album artwork, under the title Dylan Hears A Who.” The Salon piece tells the tale of the copyright claims that followed from the folks who own the Dr. Seuss material, examines the copyright issues at hand and notes that the material is still widely available on the ’Net. That’s true, of course, at YouTube, where Ryan’s version of “Green Eggs & Ham” remains a delight.

When Joni Mitchell released Blue in 1971, the lyrics to “Little Green” must have seemed like typically elliptical Joni Mitchell lyrics, telling a story by circling around it with vague hints and references:

Born with the moon in Cancer
Choose her a name she will answer to
Call her green and the winters cannot fade her
Call her green for the children who’ve made her
Little green, be a gypsy dancer

He went to California
Hearing that everything’s warmer there
So you write him a letter and say, “Her eyes are blue”
He sends you a poem and she’s lost to you
Little green, he’s a non-conformer

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the nights when the Northern lights perform
There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there’ll be sorrow

Child with a child pretending
Weary of lies you are sending home
So you sign all the papers in the family name
You’re sad and you’re sorry, but you’re not ashamed
Little green, have a happy ending

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the nights when the Northern lights perform
There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there’ll be sorrow

When one reads those lyrics now, in the light of Mitchell’s having given birth to a daughter in 1965 and giving her up for adoption – a tale that became public in 1993 – “Little Green” becomes a heart-breaking piece of work.

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Posted in 1962, 1968, 1971, 1993, 2003, 2007, Floyd's Prism, Six-Pack, Video | 1 Comment »

Another Real-World Meeting

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

I’m a little tired on this Tuesday morning, recovering from a very busy Sunday evening and Monday. But it was the best kind of busyness.

Once more, I’ve been lucky enough to see one of my friendships in blogworld become a friendship in the real world, as Jeff Ash of AM, Then FM (and Green Bay, Wisconsin) made a stop in St. Cloud a part of his summer crate-digging and baseball vacation. We spent a couple of hours talking over some beers Sunday evening, and then spent yesterday wandering around St. Cloud.

As we drove, I gave Jeff what my dad used to call “the nickel tour,” pointing out places of major and minor interest: the St. Cloud State campus, Wilson Park down on the Mississippi River, Kilian Boulevard with its expansive rose garden and its less renowned former home of whiteray, and so on.

We lunched at the legendary Ace Bar & Grill, dug through a few crates of records at the Electric Fetus, took a respite from the ninety-degree heat in our living room and then had some Mexican food at the Bravo Burritos Mexicatessen on the West End. That left one thing on the agenda: A Northwoods League baseball game between the St. Cloud Rox and the Duluth Huskies, teams made up of college players brought to the Upper Midwest from all across the country.

Given the heat wave that had settled in Sunday evening, we were a bit leery of spending a lot of time sitting outside; as we ate dinner, Jeff’s Android told us that the temperature was a humid 96 degrees. But we headed to the ballpark, where we happily confirmed that our seats were in the shade, and a cooling breeze eventually wafted across the stands from out near right field. What eventually got to me was not the heat, but the hard metal benches; I have a fair amount of padding, but evidently not enough, so we left with the Rox trailing 10-2 in the first game of a doubleheader.

As we parted, I told him that the Texas Gal and I hope to someday soon get to his turf, seeing a few things in Green Bay and then heading around the bay to Door County on a Lake Michigan peninsula. He seemed to think that was a good idea.

As to music, I have nothing that suffices to illustrate the beginnings of a real-world friendship, so I’m instead going to provide a teaser for that look into the Billboard chart from the summer of 1971 that I’ve been promising. Here’s Gordon Lightfoot’s “Talking In Your Sleep” (and no, it’s not the same as the song Crystal Gayle took into the Top Twenty in 1978). Lightfoot’s original, from his album Summer Side of Life, was sitting at No.72 on this date in 1971. It would peak at No. 64.

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Posted in 1971, Chart Digging, Video | 4 Comments »

Going Random Through The Eighties

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

Last week, I took a six-tune random walk through the Seventies. Today, with my creativity evidently in a waning rather than a waxing phase, it seems like a good idea to do the same with a decade I tend to ignore: the Eighties. There are about 4,500 tunes from that decade in the RealPlayer, so let’s see where we end up.

Our first stop is a track from Showdown!, an album released in 1985 by blues veterans Johnny Copeland and Albert Collins and the newcomer (at the time) Robert Cray. Trading guitar solos and vocal takes throughout the album, the three bluesmen put together a set that All-Music Guide calls “scorching.” This morning’s track – “The Dream” – finds Cray taking care of the vocal and Collins adding the solo guitar work.

Then it’s onto a Duke Ellington/Bob Russell tune as interpreted by a Sixties icon for an album that originally wasn’t available in much of the world: “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” was recorded by Paul McCartney for his album Снова в СССP, which was issued in 1988 only in the Soviet Union. According to Wikipedia, McCartney “intended Снова в СССР as present for Soviet fans who were generally unable to obtain his legitimate recordings, often having to make do with copies; they would, for a change, have an album that people in other countries would be unable to obtain.” The Soviet release contained eleven songs at first, with two tracks added for later pressings. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the album was released world-wide in 1991 with one more additional track.

One of the mainstays of my music collection – and this will likely be no surprise – is Gordon Lightfoot. While he didn’t issue albums in the 1980s with the frequency that he did in the previous two decades, his Eighties work includes some of my favorites, especially the1986  album East of Midnight. While the track “Anything For Love” doesn’t top the list of my favorites from that effort – the title track does – it’s still a good effort worth a listen, and it’s our third stop this morning.

Hailing from near Liverpool, China Crisis started as a duo, according to AMG. But when Virgin Records picked up the single “African and White” in 1982, Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon put together a full band. The group never made much headway in the U.S., with only two of their eight albums even making it into the lower half of the Billboard 200 and one single – “Working With Fire and Steel” – reaching No. 27on the Dance Music/Club Play list. But somehow, I came up with a copy of the group’s 1985 album, Flaunt the Imperfection, and “Bigger the Punch I’m Feeling” from that album is where today’s journey finds its fourth stop.

It’s Hard, the 1982 album by the Who, contains one tune that truly grabs me: “Eminence Front.” Other than that, the album – billed as the last by the group at the time and released in conjunction with what was called a final tour – is kind of blah. That album’s “Why Did I Fall for That” is the RealPlayer’s fifth stop this morning. It’s a tune that has always come off to me as an inferior remake of the brilliant “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from the similarly brilliant Who’s Next.

And we come at last to a track from one of the albums I had long included on what I call my hopeless list: Albums I wanted to hear but that I thought were lost for one reason or another. In early 2007, during the first incarnation of this blog, I wrote a bit about the late Tom Jans, mentioning his final album Champion, which was released only in Japan in 1982. Having cobbled together a collection of the rest of Jans’ brief oeuvre, I dug a bit for the album without result and then gave up the quest. But during 2009, fellow blogger Chun Tao at Rare MP3 came up with a copy of Champion, which was as good as I’d hoped it would be. Here’s the magnificently sorrowful “Mother’s Eyes,” the final track on the album.

A Note:
A little more than a year ago, after I landed here at my own place, I began to set up an archive of the posts from Echoes In The Wind during its Blogger and WordPress days. That effort flagged for several reasons, and when I returned to it over the weekend, I decided to start over again. So at Echoes In The Wind Archives, I’m working on reposting material – without any active music links – from early 2007 through January 2010. As I said once before, I’m not sure how much interest there might be in my archives, but the site will eventually allow me to see what I might previously have written (as it did today in the case of Tom Jans).

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Posted in 1982, 1985, 1986, 1988, Random, Six-Pack, Video | 1 Comment »

Saturday Single No. 199

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

We are busy today. The Texas Gal and I are in the midst of planning an end-of-summer gathering tomorrow here on the outskirts of town. Folks from our book club, my family, her workplace, my childhood and at least one regular commenter at this blog will gather here to eat barbeque, drink cool beverages, and watch the end of summer approach.

We’ll no doubt share tales of this summer now ripe on its vine and of summers long since bottled in memory’s vineyard. There will be a treasure of experience among us: The ages and circumstances of some of our guests will range from a few couples not that long married through several couples whose children are college-aged or older to at least one guest – my mother – whose children are long grown into middle age. Our youngest guest will be six, the son of one of the Texas Gal’s co-workers. While he may not contribute significantly to the conversation, the rest of us will have many summers to talk about.

As I ponder summertimes gone and the approach of this summer’s ending, I will to some degree remain surprised that I once more live in the same city where I grew up. I went for a bicycle ride last Sunday, riding past my childhood home on Kilian Boulevard, where another young family now lives. I see the house often enough that any changes – externally, anyway; I have been inside the house only once since Mom sold it – are glacial. But from there I rode on up Fifth Avenue toward Lincoln Elementary School and its playground.

The play equipment is different: No longer do kids play on hard metal jungle gyms and swing sets (many of which in the 1960s came from the manufacturing firm owned by Rick and Rob’s father). Playground equipment is made of plastic now, with no sharp edges. Still, the physical configuration of the playground remains the same, and I saw the place where a seven-year-old whiteray was accidently hit in the head with a baseball bat. (The adult whiteray is tempted to thrust tongue firmly in cheek and note that all the trouble stems from that moment.) And I saw where that lump-headed whiteray waited in line to re-enter the school after lunchtime recess.

And, to be more in tune with the summertime tales theme of this piece, I noted, too, the place on the way toward home where at the end of every school year –- the beginning of every summer – the growing whiteray and his classmates would peek inside the envelopes that held their report cards, anxiously making certain that they had succeeded at another year of school and had been promoted to the next grade. With that worry eased – and we did worry, even though I do not remember anyone from any of my elementary classes who was held back a year – the important business of summer could begin.

That business, filling the summer with activity, from the planned busyness of summer school enrichment classes and swimming lessons to the unplanned times of playing baseball in the street or lazing away an afternoon in Rick’s tree house, seemed so vital then, as if we had to cram twenty-six hours of living into the twenty-four hours available for us. When we went somewhere, we wasted no time, heading down the street as fast as our bicycles could take us, with last summers of our youths finding Rick on his purple ten-speed and me on my black Schwinn Typhoon, the same bicycle that carried me back to Lincoln School last weekend.

We did sometimes slow down, taking time to read, to listen to music, to sometimes just lay back and watch the clouds or the empty sky. But we knew that during all those times – during the frantic and quiet moments alike – the summer was passing. Labor Day and the beginning of school waited implacably, and August would wind its way to an ending.

I imagine some of those moments will come to mind tomorrow as we and our guests chat over barbeque and beverages. Rick and Rob will be here, just blocks from the street corners that were the center of our universe during those years. And of course, those folks whose friendships we’ve collected in the years since will have their own tales of summertimes to tell, and that’s good, whether those tales come from summers long gone or from this one that we’ll be celebrating tomorrow. We all have summertime tales. And to go along with them, here’s Gordon Lightfoot’s “Summertime Dream,” today’s Saturday Single:

Gordon Lightfoot – “Summertime Dream” [1976]

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