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Pull that oar until it cracks
And then today I got up on two hours of sleep and spent the day at Canobie Lake Park with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel, sairaali, M., M's brother C., rushthatspeaks, gaudior, jinian, and B. It was wonderful.
I was last there as a small child in the '80's; I recognized the miniature sports cars and the narrow gauge railway, but the Kosmojets and the Matterhorn are gone. The mirror maze looked familiar. I remembered the red-and-white skyway that makes a circuit over some of the family rides once I was on it. Everything else was new to me.
I rode three coasters: Untamed, the Yankee Cannonball (twice), and the Canobie Corkscrew (twice, the last time to close out the day; it is a small coaster and it does one thing, but it does that one thing extremely well). The Xtreme Frisbee looked like a close cousin to the Big E's Fireball, which I love and find exhilarating, but it actually blurred my sense of balance in a way I hadn't experienced before, so I didn't give it another chance. TheFerris Giant Sky Wheel got two rides, the second at sunset right before the midway started to light up. So did the Mine of Lost Souls, a gonzo dark ride that starts like a tour of a haunted mine and then falls sideways into a different genre. We rode the Caterpillar and the sky ride of my childhood and the swing carousel called Da Vinci's Dream. I avoided the Policy Pond Log Flume and the other water rides because I was already freezing; the day was bright and nippy and I spent all of my time in my jacket, mostly with my hair stuffed down the back to keep it out of the wind. I also stayed away from the Psychodrome, because the idea of a scrambler ride with loud music and strobe lights was a migraine waiting to happen. The half-hour cruise around Canobie Lake was lovely. Half of my food intake for the day seems to have been ice cream in the form of Dippin' Dots and butterscotch-dipped vanilla soft-serve and the other half was some surprisingly tasty pulled pork and the bowl of clam chowder I ate as soon as I got home (after feeding the cats, who otherwise seemed to think the chowder was a special present for them). I appear to have a sunburn across my cheekbones despite putting on sunscreen. We missed the antique carousel, but that just leaves something to go back for.
Saira had made a road trip playlist, from which I learned that Heather Dale went through a phase of recording songs about shipwrecks; I suspect I need them.
I am physically very tired. However temporarily, I'm happy.
derspatchel, sairaali, M., M's brother C., rushthatspeaks, gaudior, jinian, and B. It was wonderful.I was last there as a small child in the '80's; I recognized the miniature sports cars and the narrow gauge railway, but the Kosmojets and the Matterhorn are gone. The mirror maze looked familiar. I remembered the red-and-white skyway that makes a circuit over some of the family rides once I was on it. Everything else was new to me.
I rode three coasters: Untamed, the Yankee Cannonball (twice), and the Canobie Corkscrew (twice, the last time to close out the day; it is a small coaster and it does one thing, but it does that one thing extremely well). The Xtreme Frisbee looked like a close cousin to the Big E's Fireball, which I love and find exhilarating, but it actually blurred my sense of balance in a way I hadn't experienced before, so I didn't give it another chance. The
Saira had made a road trip playlist, from which I learned that Heather Dale went through a phase of recording songs about shipwrecks; I suspect I need them.
I am physically very tired. However temporarily, I'm happy.
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Thank you for the mix! It contained only one song I had already; the rest were either entirely new or traditional versions I hadn't heard. I appreciate it.
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Great Big Sea's "French Perfume." I have at least half a dozen versions of "The Mermaid," but I didn't have one by Ben Zanes; ditto "Sir Patrick Spens" and Fairport Convention; I'd heard the Pogues' "Lorelei," but curiously didn't appear to own it. (It may have gone in a previous computer crash. This one sounds like a live version—is it from an official release or a concert you attended?) I knew "Dance Band on the Titanic" from the singing of Hamish Imlach and Iain Mackintosh, which is considerably altered from the original. The others bar Heather Dale were all new to me.
I also feel reasonably good about that version of The Greyhound since it was from an album I produced.
Cool! Is the rest of it a compilation? I couldn't find anything else about the album online.
"It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
This discussion led to a question of whether there were any songs about submarine wrecks.
Where the Lightning Strikes was a CD I produced for Contata in 2011, the second time I was con chair. It is, as you discerned, a compilation CD. It had a precursor CD, Take Out in 2008, which yes, was the first time I was con chair, both of which were culled from the filk archive I was helping to build at the time (now I'm product managing a crowd sourced version of same, so I'm no long listening to hundreds of hours of filk at a go, instead I'm drawing a lot of diagrams for permission systems).
I am happy to provide track lists if you are curious. 2008's convention featured a collaboration between Heather Dale and
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
Please have my two favorite versions, perhaps not coincidentally sharing personnel: Martin Carthy & The UK Group's "The Mermaid" and The Imagined Village's "Mermaid." (I have transcribed but not been able to trace the spoken lyrics in the latter, so if you or any of your household have ideas about the origin, I'd love to hear them.)
He also noted that I was making a distinction between songs about shipwrecks and songs about heartbreak caused by boats, which, yes, is an entirely different category.
I do have a lot of those, yes. [edit] And in the category of one of these things is not like the others, I have Stan Rogers' "The Wreck of the Athens Queen," about a bunch of happy wreckers and their boozy windfall.
This discussion led to a question of whether there were any songs about submarine wrecks. akawil was able to think of one, but it's by my adoptive brother, mrgoodwraith, so we're not sure it counts as representative of the overall canon.
Weirdly, Phil Ochs wrote two: "The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns" (USS Scorpion) and "The Thresher" (USS Thresher), which I thought I owned on mp3 but don't seem to, so that's a YouTube link. I always thought Thomas Dolby's "One of Our Submarines" was fictional, but the internet tells me it's a retelling of a family story about HMS P48. I'd love to hear your brother's.
I am happy to provide track lists if you are curious.
Please! Was it ever commercially available, or only at-con?
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
As a lifelong Phil Ochs fan, I have to wonder where the heck my brain was this morning. *hangs head* I also don't seem to have a copy of "The Thresher", which surprises me, though it is possible that iTunes is messing with me again. Much of my Phil Ochs collection is covers, and some of it is wildly colored by the fact that my first collection was Live Here and Now in Vancouver and my second one was Gun Fight at Carnegie Hall which my then-boyfriend actually dug out on vinyl so we could listen to it when he discovered that I did not know the gory gold-lame stories.
I once really startled a friend of mine who thought he was being obscure by singing "The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns" in a filk room. This was after a longish run of my having sung along on just about every other obscure song he had played, so when I came out with the words to that one from memory, I think he was a little stunned.
It would appear that I actually posted the track list for Take Out here. Somehow, probably because I was both running a convention and moving house, I didn't chronicle the existence of Where the Lightning Strikes on LJ, so here in its elongated glory is that list:
Here's the track list for Where the Lightning Strikes, as copied from J-Card track list, copied from a copy of the master j-card for the CD.
1. Not a Thousand Songs - Bob Rosenfeld (Bob Rosenfeld/Bill Steele)
2. My Name is Carla - Carla Ulbrich (Carla Ulbrich)
3. Road to Santiago - Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps (Heather Dale)
Find more of Heather’s music at http://www.HeatherDale.com
4. Earth and the Water and the Wind - Sassafras (Ada Palmer)
5. That's My Story (and I'm Stickin' to It) - Ben Newman (Ben Newman)
6. Larrywocky - Larry Kirby (Larry Kirby/Lewis Carroll)
7. The First Man in Space - I Abra Cinii (I Abra Cinii)
8. The Golem - Randy Hoffman (W. Randy Hoffman)
9. A Man Must Wear a Tie - Joel Polowin (Tom Lips)
Find more of Tom’s music at http://www.tomlips.ca/. Registered with SOCAN.
10. Fall - Sassafrass (Ada Palmer)
11. Domino Death - Devo Spice (Tom Smith) - http://www.tomsmithonline.com/
Find more of Devo Spice’s music at http://www.devospice.com
12. A Boy And His Frog - Rob Balder (Tom Smith)
13. Peace Will Come - Christine Lavin / Everybody (Tom Paxton)
14. Childhood's End - Mike Whitaker (Mike Whitaker)
15. Scotland Depraved - BDan Fairchild, Harold Feld, Diane Kachoogian (Trad)
16. Droozlin' Through the Cosmos - I Abra Cinii (I Abra Cinii)
17. Hope You're Happy Now You Made Me So Happy - Carla Ulbrich (Carla Ulbrich)
18. Catseye - Nate Bucklin (Howard Ashby Kranz)
19. Cassandra - Mike Whitaker (Mike Whitaker)
20. The Greyhound - Heather Dale (Heather Dale)
21. Where the Lightning Strikes - Nate & Louie Bucklin (Nate Bucklin, 1992)
Recording: J. Spencer Love, Harold Stein, Joe Kesselman, Mike Whitaker
Production: Merav Hoffman | Editing: Jonathan Lennox
All songs used with permission
___________________________________________________________________________
I believe copies of both CDs still exist, and I still hold the distribution rights, because I paid for licenses for the covers up to 500 copies, so more can be manufactured if they are desired. I like putting this music out into the world, and it's done a lot to benefit Contata, which has helped keep it afloat, which seems appropriate, given the subject.
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
Please have my two favorite versions, perhaps not coincidentally sharing personnel: Martin Carthy & The UK Group's "The Mermaid" and The Imagined Village's "Mermaid." (I have transcribed but not been able to trace the spoken lyrics in the latter, so if you or any of your household have ideas about the origin, I'd love to hear them.)
Ooh, I'd be interested to see your transcription of The Imagined Village's version of "Mermaid", because on these laptop speakers I can't quite make it out, and I don't to wake our twin toddler neighbours by listening at volume.
I do have a lot of those, yes. [edit] And in the category of one of these things is not like the others, I have Stan Rogers' "The Wreck of the Athens Queen," about a bunch of happy wreckers and their boozy windfall.
Rosencrantz: Do you think heartbreak could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: *inchoate spluttering*
My household approves your taste in Stan Rogers, but this does not really surprise me. :) I would love to see a Muppet version of that song someday. I can only hope the Stan Rogers estate will have the wit to license it if the offer ever rolls around.
I'm pretty sure I sent you "Backyard Sailor" way back when when I was sending you Tanglefoot songs? That's one of my favorite "heartbreak over a boat" songs.
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
Well, it's also whispered underneath a plangent fiddle-and-sitar improv and then repeated by a chorus. It sounds like:
Neptune he has favored us with fair and lively breeze
Like a thing endowed with life she bounds across the seas
Then we're off to Tibert's Bay upon some drunken sprees
To drink some rum and raise some hell and lose our dignities
But the last time I checked online, I couldn't find the verse attested anywhere. That doesn't mean it's not authentic; I'm aware that many things are not on the internet. But I would certainly appreciate some kind of double-check.
I would love to see a Muppet version of that song someday. I can only hope the Stan Rogers estate will have the wit to license it if the offer ever rolls around.
Oh, man. I would watch that. Repeatedly.
I'm pretty sure I sent you "Backyard Sailor" way back when when I was sending you Tanglefoot songs?
You did! I have a decade of very good Tanglefoot from you.
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
Like a thing endowed with life she bounds across the seas
Then we're off to Tibert's Bay upon some drunken sprees
To drink some rum and raise some hell and lose our dignities
So it look as though there is a source, though Googling it was tricky, as Tibert's Bay found no matches and neither did the last line, but weirdly, the second line brought the result. Go figure. Google's algorithm gets more bizarre with time.
I was probably thinking in Muppet terms, because we went to a Tough Pigs event last night that featured a bit where Gonzo was basically watching chicken-fancier TV in the control room while everyone else is going nuts around him.
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
Thank you! So it's a splice of two verses plus some drift of oral tradition. (Or those were the favorite lines of whoever in The Imagined Village knew the song to begin with and they just ran with them.) I'd figured it was just something that had never been transcribed where Google could get it.
I am completely unfamiliar with "Corbitt's Barkentine." Searching for it gets me Alan Mills' Songs of the Maritimes: Lumberman Songs and Songs of the Sea (1959), otherwise known an entire album of folksongs I've never heard. I know a "Banks of Newfoundland," but it's definitely not this one. Have you ever heard any of these?
Gonzo was basically watching chicken-fancier TV in the control room while everyone else is going nuts around him.
Aw.
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
I know a very differently paced (possibly even a different tune) for The Mary L. McKay and a different Harbor Grace via Great Big Sea, who may have just been inspired by the title. Otherwise these are completely unfamiliar.
The liner notes reveal that the Mary L. McKay is a poem, so it may be that the version I know is just a different setting of the same poem.
Scanning the back catalog at the bottom of the liner notes also produces a collection called We'll Rant and We'll Roar, which I expect contains a few other branches of familiar tunes or at least familiar titles.
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
Live in Vancouver and Phil Ochs in Concert are the only complete albums on my computer; the rest is on vinyl at my parents' house. I also own a double-CD anthology of covers, What's That I Hear? The Songs of Phil Ochs (1998), some of which I have still never heard sung by Ochs himself.
Somehow, probably because I was both running a convention and moving house, I didn't chronicle the existence of Where the Lightning Strikes on LJ, so here in its elongated glory is that list
Thank you! The presence of Sassafrass in this tracklist ups the chances that my cousins have a copy somewhere around their house, so I'll ask them first. (Please tell me the song about the golem is good. I don't see a lot of golem songs. As a matter of fact, this may be the first.)
I like putting this music out into the world, and it's done a lot to benefit Contata, which has helped keep it afloat, which seems appropriate, given the subject.
Heh. I am glad it's achieved its intended effect!
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
I have those as my base, particularly What's That I Hear which made me love John Westley Harding even more that I previously did (Have you heard his Love Hall Tryst album, Songs of Misfortune? it's got some amazing ballad treatments.) and I also have There But For Fortune and The Broadside Tapes, plus the fact that my Gunfight at Carnegie Hall also has Rehearsals for Retirement on it.
I think it says something about how my psyche was formed that I pretty much spent the last two years of high school listening to Live in Vancouver and Assassins in steady rotation (albeit mixed in with a lot of other things). This was before I discovered Utah Phillips, or I probably would have been listening to him too.
The presence of Sassafrass in this tracklist ups the chances that my cousins have a copy somewhere around their house, so I'll ask them first. (Please tell me the song about the golem is good. I don't see a lot of golem songs. As a matter of fact, this may be the first.)
That seems very possible, though it's also possible that it's at some other end of the giant arm of Sassafrass distribution, since there was probably only one allotted contributor copy for the entire band. The CD could well be in Texas or Chicago.
I do think it is a good Golem song, since I chose it for the album out of all the various songs that were sung at the convention, but then, I also like that there is a Golem song at all. There really do need to be more atmospheric Golem songs. I expect I could write the music for one, but I haven't got a hook for the words.
I am reminded, have you read He, She and It? by Marge Piercy? Outside of her politics, I am pretty fond of her writing, albeit, that dates back to high school, and I haven't really reread it, but it is one of my favorite modern/historical golem treatments.
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
No, I haven't! I don't even know Love Hall Tryst. The names make a promising combination, for ballad definitions of "promising."
For a shifting combination of reasons, my favorites off What's That I Hear? were usually Iain Matthews' "Flower Lady," Greg Greenaway's "Tape from California," John Wesley Harding's "Another Age," Sid Griffin and Billy Bragg's "Sailors and Soldiers," Christine Lavin and Megan McDonough's "Gas Station Women," Anne Hill's "Iron Lady," and Karen Savoca's "No More Songs." I just couldn't believe it had taken until 1998 for Tom Paxton to record "Draft Dodger Rag." Ditto Arlo Guthrie/"I Ain't Marching Anymore" and Dave Van Ronk/"Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," really.
I heard a blistering cover of "Crucifixion" live at an Arlington folk coffeehouse once, but I don't think it was ever recorded. The first time I heard Ochs singing it on the radio, it terrified me.
I think it says something about how my psyche was formed that I pretty much spent the last two years of high school listening to Live in Vancouver and Assassins in steady rotation (albeit mixed in with a lot of other things).
I don't think I discovered Assassins until college, but that was the age at which I started listening to Phil Ochs, too.
since there was probably only one allotted contributor copy for the entire band.
Right. I'll probably just end up asking you for a copy, then.
I am reminded, have you read He, She and It? by Marge Piercy? Outside of her politics, I am pretty fond of her writing, albeit, that dates back to high school, and I haven't really reread it, but it is one of my favorite modern/historical golem treatments.
I have not. Please talk to me about it! My familiarity with Marge Piercy mainly comprises a deep and abiding love for "The thief" and a near-total bounce off the rest of the one book of her poetry I picked up, including the famous one about the orange. What's with her politics?
what's with Marge Piercy's politics
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Aaagh.
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Yes, exactly. You have perfectly summed up my sentiment on the subject. This was the point at which I stopped buying and reading her work, whereas previously she had been on my 'buy it whenever you can' list. For what it's worth, I've always bounced off her poems, with a few exceptions. I have seen some nice excerpts in places, but I bought The Art of Blessing the Day and bounced pretty thoroughly.
He, She and It was the first book of hers I read, at the age of 15, so she was something of a hero to me, growing up with her progressive gender-exploratory writing, particularly Woman on the Edge of Time which had proto-polyamory, bisexuality, and thoughts about gender non-judgmentally braided in alongside modern Judiasm, and idea about working through the mistakes we make in the throes of revolutionary zeal (I may be conflating in parts of Braided Lives and Vida, it's been more that 2 decades since re-read. On the whole, I still recommend the books, but with the heavy reservation that her subsequent action brings into the picture.
Do watch Dropbox for further updates to your music library.
Re: what's with Marge Piercy's politics
Fortunately, it is possible to read an author's books without sending them money for it (if they're in libraries, anyway). Are her earlier politics consistent with her later behavior, or was it one of those distressing shifts where you always thought of them as progressive until they weren't?
Do watch Dropbox for further updates to your music library.
Thank you!
Re: what's with Marge Piercy's politics
Pretty much that, at least from my perspective. I mean, it's not like I knew her as a person, it was just that I'd read her books and then I read about her public act of signing onto something I found hateful.
Woman on the Edge of Time has an sympathetic androgynous character, and deals fairly and rationally with mental illness, and it's radically feminist/equalist. Her other work has constructed sapients that have gender, and modified people who have gender, so it's just hard to reconcile the breadth of understanding it must have taken to create those people with the sheer lack of empathy from later on.
Thank you!
You're welcome. I trust things have made their short transit to you.
Re: what's with Marge Piercy's politics
I hope I never do that to people younger than I am, and that if I do I will have the grace to apologize.
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
Amazing that
Re: "It's the story ... of a Scottish grocer ..."
I'd still like to hear it!
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I really like roller coasters.