Took a left, hit a nerve, took a right, hit the curb
For various reasons not limited to the overhead activity of children in the mornings, last night was the first real time all week that I slept and have thus spent most of the day in a vague state of hibernation despite the warmth of the air. There was a mauve overcast around sunset that turned out to belong to a volcanic wall of gold and bougainvillea over an agate-blue cloud-band. Have some mostly musical links.
For the more than twenty years since![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lesser_celery made me a CD of Peter Gabriel's Melt (1980), I have assumed that the eerily voiced French refrain of "Games Without Frontiers" was either the singer's own falsetto or pitch-shifted vocals. It turns out to be Kate Bush. I would never have identified her on my own, but then I thought about "Army Dreamers" (1980).
I grew up on Arlo Guthrie, but my favorite version of "City of New Orleans" (1971) is almost certainly Steve Goodman himself in 1970, where he reminded me unexpectedly of a Chicago-accented Stan Rogers. It's driving me nuts that I would swear the first person I heard lead "The Twentieth Century Is Almost Over" (1977) was Pete Seeger and I can't figure out where.
WERS has been playing nothing but female artists for International Women's Day, which means everything from Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman" (1978), Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" (1983), and Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl" (1993) to Tegan and Sara's "I'll Be Back Someday" (2019), Orla Gartland's "Little Chaos" (2024), and Arlo Parks' "2SIDED" (2026). I had a moral obligation to let my father know when Rickie Lee Jones came around.
Video quality regardless,sholio's "Waking Up in Vegas" (The Greatest American Hero) remains one of my all-time favorites of their vids.
For the more than twenty years since
lesser_celery made me a CD of Peter Gabriel's Melt (1980), I have assumed that the eerily voiced French refrain of "Games Without Frontiers" was either the singer's own falsetto or pitch-shifted vocals. It turns out to be Kate Bush. I would never have identified her on my own, but then I thought about "Army Dreamers" (1980).I grew up on Arlo Guthrie, but my favorite version of "City of New Orleans" (1971) is almost certainly Steve Goodman himself in 1970, where he reminded me unexpectedly of a Chicago-accented Stan Rogers. It's driving me nuts that I would swear the first person I heard lead "The Twentieth Century Is Almost Over" (1977) was Pete Seeger and I can't figure out where.
WERS has been playing nothing but female artists for International Women's Day, which means everything from Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman" (1978), Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" (1983), and Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl" (1993) to Tegan and Sara's "I'll Be Back Someday" (2019), Orla Gartland's "Little Chaos" (2024), and Arlo Parks' "2SIDED" (2026). I had a moral obligation to let my father know when Rickie Lee Jones came around.
Video quality regardless,
sholio's "Waking Up in Vegas" (The Greatest American Hero) remains one of my all-time favorites of their vids.
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The sunset was amazing. The snow turned pink! The phone exaggerated the effect, but....
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That's so neat! I just found out from Wikipedia. I was listening through the album, but I can't remember what prompted me to look.
The sunset was amazing. The snow turned pink! The phone exaggerated the effect, but....
It wasn't that far off! Your snow seems to be holding up better than ours. Thanks to the sudden spell of spring, we still have giant heaps crusted everywhere, they have just melted down into their debris. I saw a piece of tarmac stuck in one.
sholio's fan vid is great!
I can't think of the song without it.
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(The definitive version of "City of New Orleans" for me is unfortunately one that's not recorded and no longer exists outside my head, because my dad was an amateur folk singer and the version I first heard and listened to throughout my childhood was his, but at least judging from the sounds of the various versions, I assume he learned it by listening to the Steve Goodman original. I've heard the Arlo Guthrie cover now and then, but didn't know that Steve Goodman was the writer-singer of that song until relatively recently, and prefer his version by far.)
Video quality regardless, [personal profile] sholio's "Waking Up in Vegas" (The Greatest American Hero) remains one of my all-time favorites of their vids.
Thank you so much; I really appreciate that! <3
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Yes!
I had not, however, ever heard Steve Goodman sing "Sixteen Tons." He got it from Tennessee Ernie Ford and he's having a ball.
The definitive version of "City of New Orleans" for me is unfortunately one that's not recorded and no longer exists outside my head, because my dad was an amateur folk singer and the version I first heard and listened to throughout my childhood was his, but at least judging from the sounds of the various versions, I assume he learned it by listening to the Steve Goodman original.
I am glad you have it inside your head.
You will appreciate that in the last hour, I learned that part of the reason that "Eve of Destruction" sounds so ragged and urgent is that Barry McGuire was singing it off a lyric sheet that had been living in his back pocket at the last minute of the recording sesssion and had trouble reading the crumpled and handwritten paper and really was crashing his way through the song, which accounts for the audibly weird punch-in in the final chorus where he missed the high note—it's a completely raw single take otherwise. He didn't like it at the time because it sounded like he was flailing and came around to feeling it was the right sound for an angry, panicked, frustrated song and I agree with him. The arrangement is acoustic mid-'60's folk down to the harmonica, but the vocal is proto-punk, straight out of garage rock. It sounds great.
Thank you so much; I really appreciate that!
It's exuberant and it captures the show at its best: what's not to love?
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I'm so glad. I love it. You can hear the ties clicking under the wheels in his version.
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https://www.riseupsinging.org/songs/twentieth-century-almost-over
There may also be a copy of the book Rise up Singing in the house, but I think it's at Flo's.
I didn't know that John Prine co-wrote it, but his tribute page has the lyrics and the wikipedia page about the Highwayman album that includes it lists SG & JP as co-writers.