One blog I quite enjoy is Jeff Shalit's. He filled in a 25 random items post recently and one item leapt out at me.
One of my favorite songwriters is someone few people have ever heard of: Michael Peter Smith. He wrote The Dutchman, among other songs. (He is not to be confused with the insipid Christian songwriter Michael W. Smith.)
I have long thought this is the best song ever written! (OK a bit of rhetoric there.) You can break into tears here:
For me the saddest and most beautiful line is Margaret's seeing the unborn children in his eyes. Michael Smith was part of a stunning Chicago contribution to music which also includes Steve Goodman and John Prine. I know of The Dutchman and of a lot of other great music from the stunning Max Ferguson, back in the days when the CBC could have flaky hosts who were interesting. And here is Michael Smith performing it. So gentle.
Or, maybe even lovelier, though a cover, from the irreplaceable Steve Goodman:
I had heard one Fred Eaglesmith song, "He's a Good Dog", when I discovered he was performing in London, Ontario last weekend, where I had planned for other very good reasons to be! I love the dog song, so I thought it worth a shot. So Silly Wife and I headed down to the London Music Club (she has lived in London nearly twenty years and neither of us knew this venue existed! - more fool we - it has a lovely intimate main hall) Saturday evening to see him live, in a show starting nominally at 7pm, which is a starting time I approve of mightily. I had a vague idea what was coming, SillyWife none at all. One great thing - the show started around 7:20, finished so we were home by a little after 9:30. That I love. I got far more than I had hoped, and would go again, and will watch his touring schedule. Part of the delight is that he comes from rural Southwestern Ontario, and writes songs about those experiences; I come from rural Eastern Ontario, not from a farm background myself, though we lived in the midst of a largely farming community, and shared recreation with that community, so a lot of what he writes makes a lot of sense, and I also know and enjoy rural Southwestern Ontario. The songs lean to trucks, cars, tractors, rural life disintegrating, but they are populated by wonderfully smart and witty lyrics, and music I cannot really categorize, some of it basic country, some of it gospel, some of it bluegrass. The musicality of the group (The Flying Squirrels) was wonderful, with really tight arrangements (great versatility on bass, some very interesting banjo work, and the drummer Kori, who is just a lot of fun for an old guy to watch), and Eaglesmith's own wonderful guitar work. He did not sing the only song I originally knew, though he did sing "Wilder than Her", which I had learned from YouTube. For me the most moving song was "30 years of farming", as it sure sounded as if he has experienced something like it, and yet the contrast between the music and the lyrics was one of those things I really love in art - more or less happy music with terribly heartbreaking lyrics. But I enjoyed the show - and he did have a good dog song, though its theme was "I Shot Your Dog". (Understandable from a kid who grew up on a chicken firm and must love making his urban audience cringe at times). I also recommend his patter highly - he is a delightfully funny ball of contradictions, and can go off in directions that caught me off guard - who knew there was a genre of 'snail jokes' (and pretty funny)? Moreover he has a great hunter/deer joke. He says they all relate to Zen. But he would. Go hear him. Silly Wife liked the show, and also his guitar playing. She did comment that the audience was a cross-section of London she had not really seen, though she did have a (retired) colleague in the audience. You can find his performance schedule here. If I still have any Texan readers - he will be done there in April for the BlueBonnets, which this year I will sadly miss. Go see him. He is one of many Canadian treasures. Wonder how much arts funding he has got? For a treat here is Eaglesmith's 30 Years of Farming.
(Kori features nicely in that video.) And a great cover that seems more Google-famous than Eaglesmith's by James King.
One measure of how great a songwriter is how nicely some other group can mold the original song in to something new. (As with Dar Williams' "Wilder than Her".)
A witty Dylan-based comment on Justin Wolfers' happiness analyses has triggered this excellent contest. The more the merrier, in my view.
Some broader context: research shows that Dylan is the most highly cited songwriter in law journal and judicial opinions, including this one. And a fun fact: Matt Rabin is the only economist whose CV lists his favorite Dylan song.
One of the great privileges of my job was the ability to visit many parts of Canada I would never have seen otherwise. One night in Halifax I was stunned to witness college students in Halifax dancing to "Barrett's Privateers", an a capella sea shanty, something I am sure I would never see in Ontario (Upper Canada). There is a delicious irony in that the song was written by a guy from Dundas, Ontario, about as deep into Upper Canada as one can get. It turns out I can find the song, in a great version, on YouTube:
Coincidence often creates a sense that something was meant by an actor that does not act.
And I have been through a good run of that today!
My last post showed I had discovered Katie Melua and was about to start my research on her, which has been delightful! As the heroes of my generation die off it is SO great to have these younger ones coming up.
In reading the Wikipedia entry, I learn it is a song about Eva Cassidy that caused Mike Batt to pay attention to her and basically get her career started.
So last winter one of my Australian nieces visited and we had a great party, and on top of it, her father (one of my brothers) had brilliantly sent gifts to his siblings, in the form of CDs I assume meant something to him. I got first dibs, and grabbed the Eva Cassidy CD. Of course I have not opened it; I cannot recall the last time I played a CD. I shall try to fall asleep to it tonight.
Then from another front came yet another sign! One of my daily blog reads is the Minnesota group blog PowerLine and what happens but we get a post by Scott Johnson on Irving Berlin, certainly the greatest American songwriter, featuring Eva Cassidy yet again! In this rendition of Berlin's great 'Cheek to Cheek', a rendition I don't much like, but I feel the God that does not exist is manipulating me.
Purported proposed list of 100 greatest singer-songwriter albums of all time. How plausible is it that all 100 would be English-language? Apparently quite plausible to the idiots who compiled the list. Probably no reason to visit that site again.
I want to post thanks to the Goodenough family for the funeral for my friend Terry today, and the following gathering. They allowed me to share fond memories with true friends I have missed for a while. None of us liked the circumstances; a funeral is particularly final for an atheist like me.
Maybe accidentally, I stumbled across this song from someone I am coming to think of as the best songwriter of his generation:
There are indeed only happy tears. And I know it is wrong to think of the world as shrinking, as it was clear from today's gatherings that Terry has left an enormous footprint of influence on so many lives. But to us geezers it feels a bit like shrinking. My heart says one thing - my brain knows Terry's world has expanded mine.
Chris Dillow's normblog profile is unsurprisingly a pleasure to read - the answer to one of his questions caught my eye; asked who are his cultural heroes, he responds with a list starting "Hank Williams, Dar Williams,...". A nice rhetorical flourish and a good signal of some eclecticism. I have been working my way through my CD collection of late, hoping to find ways to donate old CDs to local charities, and reduce the space they consume in my home. Right now I am sampling in my car a CD from yet another Williams, Don, who sings a great song on it from Bob McDill, "Good Ole Boys Like Me", which has as its chorus line the very witty:
And I still hear the soft southern wind in the live oak trees And those Williams boys they still mean a lot to me, Hank and Tennessee
It is a very interesting song, I think about "identity" - this is one of those words I have never understood and still do not, rather like "spiritual". McDill's lyrics are in the song are full of contradictions, all very believeable - one nice example of the tension he creates:
Then Daddy came in to kiss his little man With gin on his breath and the Bible in his hand
And in the end you discover why he is a songwriter and not in jail:
I was smarter than most and I could choose learned to talk like the man on the six o'clock news
Now in the song he never forgets the smell of live oak. Well, I lived a while in a climate with live oak and that smell still hits me. In fact my work travel schedule has me looking forward to inhaling under a live oak tree (one I know) in Austin, Texas, in January. There is no question I view that as a sensual pleasure of some significance.
McDill's point is, of course, that he is a southern boy, but that even that means a broad variety of things, both Hank and Tennessee. His "identity" is broader than any simple classification, though many of the stereotypes are correct.
So add Don Williams to the list of Williams', and expand your identity by sharing in the spiritual experience of listening to all of them performing.
Steyn Writes on Elvis Costello and He is VERY VERY Good
I have never forgotten walking into a bar pub in Leeds in the summer of 1979 and hearing a song from the jukebox "There are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder, But I heard you mention my name - 'can't you talk any louder?'".
I spluttered in laughter - the lyrics were so good. But note, and so self-absorbed.
Later I learned Elvis Costello had written the song, and I later came to love many of his songs; I found the rather sinister ambiguities of 'Allison' artistic. At an age when this would mean a lot to the lustful me, I loved the lines "sparks are flying from electrical pylons, snakes and ladders running up and down her nylons". (Well, actually, I still like that stuff.)
Years followed and I enjoyed his move to country and thought it was cute that he chose to marry about the most boring and homely performer Canada has ever produced (except for Steven Page), and that one of our subsidized TV stations gave him a platform that produced the very occasional interesting show (though mostly mutually self-congratulatory tedium from the old farts).
In the end though he seemed like a Quentin Tarantino of music - no real discipline in the art, a scattergun, who would write anything that sounded good and utterly lacked any clear moral sense. A great wasted talent.
So when I heard that Elvis Costello was the next of the libtard artists to decide to boycott Israel it fit perfectly. I was disappointed but by then I had not listened to a song of his in ten years; he did not age well as an artist.
So it was fascinating to read Mark Steyn, who had a LOT more interaction than I with Declan McManus (Elvis has a real name). And I cannot comment on the facts Steyn discusses, but he writes much better than I am used to seeing on this. And it is depressing. I will extract. You have the link above.
I felt rather saddened by the news. It’s some years since I’ve seen the old rocker, but I enjoyed the conversation immensely: We discoursed on Sinatra concept albums, Vic Damone, the late BBC radio host Benny Green… Elvis Costello’s eclecticism-for-the-sake-of-eclecticism can get a little wearying (and didn’t do his wife Diana Krall many favors on her post-wedding album), but, on much of the stuff I dig, he knew whereof he spoke. Physically, he reminded me a bit of my old friend Lionel Bart, the East End Jew who wrote Oliver! But I guess he’s not. And it’s always sobering when someone you assume you’ve got a lot in common with turns out, in the most basic sense, to see the world entirely differently.
That somewhat banal thought used to occur to me whenever I’d be in a “moderate” Muslim state chatting up some westernized Arab hottie and, just at the point at which I’d be thinking we were getting along gangbusters, she’d say something utterly nutty, invariably involving Jews. These days, the thought is as likely to occur at London dinner parties. There’s no “incursion” or “disproportionate response” by Israel that prompted Elvis’ divestment from the Zionist Entity: These days, it’s just business (or lack of it) as usual. I wouldn’t say I exactly avoid the topic in English or French drawing rooms, and if it does come up I robustly defend Israel and eviscerate Palestinian “nationalism”. But no minds are changed – and these days the talk is less of the “occupied territories” and more of how the very creation of the Jewish state was a dreadful mistake. Once upon a time, a pro-Palestinian European would reluctantly concede the point if you brought up the Arabs’ refusal to recognize Israel’s “right to exist”. No more. Now Israel’s “right to exist” has as few takers among Europe’s “intellectual” class as it does on the Hamas executive board.
...
In “Palestine”, only one side lives under continuous threat of extermination – now upgraded, in the face of western passivity, into nuclear extermination. The means change but not the desired end. And the ease with which the principal expression of contemporary Jewish identity has been delegitimized in the salons of the west is both pathetic, and awfully familiar. When I read the announcement by Elvis Costello, an old line from his fellow songwriter Alan Jay Lerner (whom I mentioned here a few weeks ago) sprang to mind. As Hitler's favorite composer, Franz Lehar was untouchable, but his Jewish colleagues weren’t so lucky. His librettist, Franz Lohner-Beda, died in a concentration camp in 1942, the same year Lehar conducted a production of their operetta The Land Of Smiles. To the end, Lohner-Beda expected his old friend to intercede, but he never did. “To this day,” said Alan Lerner, “when I am transported by the music of Franz Lehar, my glass of champagne is rimmed with aloes” – a fine operetta image.
I was never exactly “transported” by the music of Elvis Costello. But my glass of champagne is rimmed with aloes.
I recommend you follow the link to his article; you will find that my one complaint about Steyn is that he sometimes stretches facts is justified, but he is the one to document it.
It affects in no way the sorry message that people who know better are conniving in a possibly really ugly outcome in the Middle East and they think they are being moral as they sign up as allies to the Muslim Brotherhood, about as ugly a gang of people as one could imagine.
