today I remembered limbo you can’t stand too far from the tracks
today I remembered limbo you can’t stand too far from the tracks
some days you’re moving forward some days you’re hanging back
Bob Dylan mentions Rimbaud Van Morrison does too
Bob Dylan, mentions Rimbaud Van Morrison does too
today I remembered limbo Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus
existential boogie do that existential thing
existential boogie do that existential thing
you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring
and if you’re looking for an answer don’t ask Albert Camus
if you’re looking for an answer don’t ask Albert Camus
that dude’s been dead a long time he can’t tell you what to do
existential boogie do that existential thing
existential boogie do that existential thing
well, you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring.
I was at a concert last night at the York Theatre on Commercial Drive in Vancouver . Walter Trout and his band were playing with David Gogo opening. Walter is a virtuoso electric blues guitarist, he’s played with pretty much everyone starting with Canned Heat and on through John Mayall. One of the best shows I’ve been to in a while, electric blues at its best. But not just blues, Walter is an excellent songwriter and his insights between songs into his professional and personal life were fascinating. Rock solid band too. Made me revisit the above effort at writing a blues song! If Walter is in your area , be sure to check him out!
Yes, our song “Willie’s Oasis” has been played on the radio, RTE Radio One (Ireland). The show is Country Time, host Brian Lally , and he has some very generous things to say about the song. Here’s the link.
an Arctic cold front Amazon trucks stuck down snow-packed side roads.
Christmas
Between Christmas and New Year
You review your blog stats, as one does, and you wonder why you you are using phrases like “as one does”, have you been watching too much Britbox?
Back to the blog stats, number of views is down from last year which was down from the year before. Your viewing numbers appear to have peaked in 2019. Why? In 2019 you had the pandemic of course and a perfect storm of subject matter – the pandemic, the Trump presidency, and climate change. Now you have said pretty much all you have to say about these subjects for the moment. But isn’t that the way of some blogs, they fade because they need a fresh angle. Also, you have gone back to letting poems marinate for a while to see where they are going, giving them some quiet time.
In the meantime you have been reading, and your top read for 2022 was “Our Country Friends” by Gary Shteyngart. You read the novel one chapter at a time, each chapter accompanied by a can of Yellow Dog Play Dead IPA. Why, because Gary’s prose is too good to rush. You also enjoyed “The Nineties” by Chuck Closterman and “April in Spain” by John Banville.
You listened to “Stolen Car” by Beth Orton, because of the lyric and the guitar figure that slithers through the song like a poisonous snake. You listened to El Camino by Elizabeth Cook because who else would rhyme “annull it” with “mullet”. You listened to “Under The Milky Way” by Church because of the expanse it conjures. You listened to “Jesus etc” by Puss N’Boots because it’s Norah Jones doing a Jeff Tweedy song.
You thought “Licorice Pizza” was the best movie of the year because of Bradley Cooper and everyone else in the movie.
And now as 2022 draws to a close, you are wondering why the hell you are writing in the second person singular.
Punam over at dverse asks us to “Write about your favourite drink (alcoholic/non-alcoholic), write about getting drunk, use drinking as a metaphor, in short: write a poem in a form of your choice with a drinking connection”. (Update: I omitted to link this to Punam’s prompt, so I am now linking it to Open Link Night at dverse)
Willie’s Oasis
Houses hunker in the heat Out on highway 82 The landscape sweats and saunters Billboards block the view And this is not New York City This is not Saginaw This a dry county, son This is Arkansas
And I need a pack of Pauli Girl I need a bottle of wine I’m heading for Willie’s Oasis Outside the county line
There’s a woman in line waiting Someone’s girlfriend, someone’s wife Says she wakes up every morning And asks:”Is this my life?” Beef jerky on the counter Pickles in a jar This is a dry county, son This is Arkansas
And I need a pack of Pauli Girl I need a bottle of wine I’m heading for Willie’s Oasis Outside the county line
Good ol’ boys are chugging out Storm clouds on the horizon The water looks like iced tea Birds are improvising And this is far from New York city Far from Saginaw This is Ashley County, son This is Arkansas
My friend John Mitchell turned the lyrics into the song above (that’s Ben Mink on violin, look him up!).
Walking down Commercial On a sunlit lunchtime I see this guy talking to this girl –
She’s got tattoos, rings, black hair, Blonde streaks – he is leaning forward She is leaning back
And as I pass by, he says:” I have always thought That punk and hip-hop have more in common Than they have not.”
The peak of his baseball cap is flipped back like he‘s caught in a wind tunnel. Noise cancelling head phones circle his neck.
Is that an egg stain on his cardigan? Did he play bass once in a band called Head Lice? Or is he just another fan?
Who knows? He looks disheveled, disinterred, Pale as a Pogue*.
And I want to stop And tell him That I don’t know about hip hop
But I have always thought that punk Is the sound Of someone puking pints
Outside a pub at midnight Without implying That is necessarily a bad thing.
*Pale as a Pogue
I shared a plane once with The Pogues on a flight from Vancouver from Chicago . I got bumped up to business class (I was flying a lot at the time). The Pogues were also in business class, on the way to Vancouver for a gig. The year was 1991, I know this because Joe Strummer was with them and according to Wikipedia he joined the band for a short period in 1991 , Shane MacGowan had left due to drinking problems.
They were the palest, skinniest, sickest group of people I had ever seen. They looked like creatures who spent most of their time at the bottom of the ocean at a depth where the sun could not penetrate, or maybe they just got up late in the afternoon.
The only thing I remember from the trip is that Joe Strummer was ordering drinks as soon as the seat belt sign went off. Vodka and tonic was his drink of choice, I think. When the stewardess brought his first drink, she said: “ I hope that’s not too strong for you, sir” Joe replied: “Too strong? Too Strong?” and began to laugh hysterically and continued to laugh for quite some time. As the flight progressed he would turn every now and again to the other Pogues and shout “Too Strong?” and start laughing all over again. I guess he was taking the Shane MacGowan role seriously.
Graffiti Photo was taken in Getsemani, Cartagena, Colombia.
This poem was previously posted in Open Link Night over at dverse
“Hey Mister that’s me up on the juke box” is on James Taylor’s third album, “Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon”. I have always thought it is the best track on the album. James has a reputation as a soft rock crooner (You’ve Got a Friend) but his earlier stuff , like this one, could have an edge to it, e.g ….”I need your golden gated cities like a hole in the head”…..or these lines …”Let the doctor and the lawyer do as much as they can / let the springtime begin/ let the boy become a man”.
The musical structure of the song also has an unsettling quality to it. It starts with the chorus , followed by a verse , followed by another chorus , then a second verse . But the second verse has a completely different rhyme scheme and chord structure to the first, and it’s followed by a bridge, then the chorus then a coda to end the song. So the song has five distinct lyrical and musical sections.
Combined with the elusive, conversational tone of the lyric this makes the song one to return to, again and again….there’s more to James than that aw shucks persona!
(It’s also an example of metasongwriting in the songwriter acknowledges that he’s in a song).
At night, the rotund tourists roam the street below drinking light beer from plastic cups and watching the river flow.
And Chuck, he’s in a restaurant playing his guitar for the plaid shorts and polo shirts and salesmen at the bar.
And life is neither good nor bad it’s somewhere in between Chuck thinks that one day he should leave this river scene.
Time’s a slowly burning fuse time’s a disappearing muse in time you feel every wound time’s a slowly burning fuse.
Karla’s in the house again trying to catch his eye her hair is blond and crinkled makes Chuck think of frozen fries
and when he hits another chorus she stands upon her chair chugs back her mojito and punches the empty air
and he knows that in this deck of cards we all can’t be the ace and if you’re going to take a fall then try and fall with grace.
Time’s a slowly burning fuse time’s a disappearing muse in time you feel every wound time’s a slowly burning fuse.
Jane, the late shift waitress her husband’s out of town Chuck thinks that later he might ask her around
and he’ll forget about alimony and the rent that he owes he’ll forget just about every thing if Jane comes around.
Time’s a slowly burning fuse time’s a disappearing muse in time you heal every wound time’s a slowly burning fuse.
This is based on a short poem I had published in Cyphers magazine. There are other versions of it, even a sonnet, but I think it’s finally settled down.
I’m sitting in a café smoking a Gitane yes, I’m sitting in a café smoking a Gitane I’m reading Jean Paul Sartre and wondering who I am.
Existential boogie do that existential thing you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring.
If you’re looking for an answer don’t ask Albert Camus yes, if you’re looking for an answer don’t ask Albert Camus that dude’s been dead a long time he can’t tell you what to do
Existential boogie do that existential thing you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring
And don’t talk to me about Immanuel Kant yes, don’t talk to me about Immanuel Kant well I know that you want to but you can’t
Existential boogie do that existential thing you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring
and some people like to quote Martin Heidegger yes, some people like to quote Martin Heidegger well, all I can say is go figure
Existential boogie do that existential thing you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring
Rene Descartes said I think therefore I am yes, old Rene, he said I think therefore I am well, I call that a beginning I sure don’t call that a plan.
Existential boogie do that existential thing you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring.
This is classic laconic Tom from his Highway Companion album. The song was produced by Jeff Lynne of ELO and that’s Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers on guitar. It’s an uncluttered production and a simple enough song, but ,of course , “simple” is hard to do well. What makes it for me is the lyric.
The first line of each verse ends with the phrase “down south” and the next three lines rhyme with each other. It’s what Tom Petty does with those rhymes that makes the song stand out. For example:
Create myself down south Impress all the women Pretend I’m Samuel Clemens Wear seersucker and white linens
Women, Clemens, linen…..that’s about as witty and clever as lyric writing gets. Or this:
Spanish moss down south Spirits cross the dead fields Mosquitoes hit the windshield All document remain sealed
So take a listen and look out as well for Mike Campell’s tremolo guitar figure
My poem “Driving Home with Leonard” has been included in David L O’Nan’s anthology, ” Before I Turn Into Gold”, a collection of poems inspired by the work of Leonard Cohen. That’s the cover artwork above by Geoffrey Wren and the book contains some very fine poems and more wonderful illustrations by Geoffrey Wren.
Thanks to David for including me. The book is available here on Kindle and in Paperback. Check it out.
Also check out David’s Fevers of the Mind Poetry and Art Bloghere.
The sheriff disagreed He tried to make the distinction between death and extinction They stopped off at a place called Hamburger Heaven to grab a bite to eat But Helen had no appetite, she just drank a 7 Up while the sheriff tapped his coffee cup to a distant beat Kind of like Ooh ooh-ooh Ooh ooh-ooh It won’t look like those old frescoes, man, I don’t think so There will be no angels with swords, man, I don’t think so No jubilant beings in the sky above, man, I don’t think so And it won’t look like those old movies neither There will be no drag racing through the bombed out streets neither No shareholders will be orbiting the earth, man, neither It will be hard to recognize each other through our oxygen masks The successful sons of businessmen will set their desks on fire While 5-star generals of the free world weep in the oil choked tide It won’t sound like jazz Jazz, jazz, jazz Jazz on the Autobahn
Now isn’t that something to aim for…
The Felice Brothers are from New York City.
“The band has two main members, Ian and James Felice. Former members include their brother Simone Felice, their friend Josh “Christmas Clapton” Rawson, frequently described as a traveling dice player,[9] fiddle player Greg Farley, and drummer David Estabrook. At other times, they have featured a horn section in the band, composed of local Hudson Valley musicians. Ian is the main vocalist and plays the guitar and piano. James contributes vocals and plays the accordion, organ, and piano. Christmas plays the bass guitar. Dave Turbeville played the drums from 2009-2012, performing on Celebration, Florida, Poughkeepsie Princess, Mixtape, and God Bless You, Amigo. Simone Felice was the drummer as well as a vocalist and a guitarist. Simone is also an author, having released books entitled Goodbye Amelia, Hail Mary, Full of Holes and Black Jesus. Simone Felice left the Felice Brothers in 2009. He now leads his own band – The Duke & the King (named after the duo of con-artists in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) with Robert “Chicken” Burke. They released their debut album – Nothing Gold Can Stay on Loose / Ramseur Records August 4, 2009, followed by Long Live the Duke & King in 2010. Simone released a self-titled album in 2012, followed that up with an album titled Strangers in 2014, and then released his third album titled The Projector in 2018.” ….from Wikipedia.
From the album, Mule Variations. Written by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. That’s Charlie Musselwhite playing the blues harp.
This whole lyric is hilarious but these 4 lines get me very time:
“When the weather gets rough and it’s whiskey in the shade It’s best to wrap your savior up in cellophane He flows like the big muddy but that’s okay Pour him over ice cream for a nice parfait”
I’m standing in the liquor store staring at a bottle of Pinot Grigio when Wild Thing by the Troggs comes on the store speakers and I’m thinking, to quote Leonard, that song is a shining artifact of the past and just as I’m thinking that one of the Troggs launches into a bizarre ocarina solo and I turn around to find myself face to face with a large blue and yellow parrot perched on the leather-gloved hand of a lady who has seen hippier times never at a loss for words, I say, “that’s a nice parrot” and the lady says “I have three more at home one of them is a real man-hater but this one here is my favowite he’s a vewy, vewy, vewy nice pawwot” she says, nuzzling the parrot, nose to beak the parrot inflates its technicolor plumage let’s out an almighty squawk and displays its full wing span and I’m thinking “Wow, there’s a ocarina solo in the middle of Wild Thing, who’s that on ocarina I think it’s the lead singer what was his name, Reg Presley, I think, yeah, that’s it Reg Presley.”
This first appeared in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal.
(Willie’s Oasis…a song about looking for drink in all the wrong places)
This a song from my collaboration with John Mitchell (The Mitchell-Feeney Project).
I wrote the lyrics and John did pretty much everything else (except the violin)
The lyric was adapted from a poem I wrote called “A Dry Country in Arkansas”. The poem was published some time ago in Cyphers, a long -running Irish literary magazine. When I gave the lyric to John, I had no concept what kind of song would emerge, I couldn’t have been happier with what he did. I’ll let John explain…
“Willie’s Oasis” turned out to be quite a challenge musically. I loved the feeling of the tune, that southern heat out on Highway 82, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t hear the music. I tried using my electric guitars, my acoustics, I even tried my piano, but no matter what key I played in and what chords I used, I couldn’t make it work. So I decided to use technology, and I searched through some of my pre-recorded samples and found this rough sounding, bluesy guitar riff. As soon as I started to work with it and edit the sample, add a few more samples, voila, “Willie’s Oasis” appeared.The only live things I put on this tune were my handclaps and my vocals.
I decided that it needed something else, so I called a wonderful violin player friend of mine named Ben Mink and asked if he would put some fiddle on the tune. Modern technology allows me to send him my tracks, he puts on the violin and sends it back to me via e-mail. We were never in the same room. I expected him to put some real down-home fiddle on, but he completely fooled me and played the most smoking electric violin parts that took the song over the edge. “
(A note about the violin player, Ben Mink: Ben co wrote “Constant Craving” with KD Lang. The song won KD Lang a Grammy in 1993. Ben and KD Lang also got co-writing credits on a Rolling Stones song, “Anybody Seen My Baby”, because the Stones noticed that the chorus of their song had similarities to the chorus of “Constant Craving”).
The Left Hand of GodIndustrial StrifeThe Big Picture
Artist: Nelson Garcia and Xochitl Year: 2007 Location: 1030 East Cordova
I came across this Jimi Hendrix Mural in East Vancouver, close to Container Brewing (that’s why I was in the area). Apparently Jimi Hendrix had a strong connection to Vancouver, his grandmother lived on 827 E. Georgia Street . The area around the mural is quite industrial, so it was a surprise when I stumbled on it!.
Here’s a video of a live performance of a song I wrote with my friend John Mitchell. I wrote the lyrics and John did the rest, the hard part! That’s John and his band down in Olympic Village (Vancouver). I was in charge of taking the video (no self-respecting musician would let me near a stage and with good reason) and as you can see Martin Scorsese has nothing to worry about! Listen on headphones, this was recorded on an iphone! John and the band sound great.
Here’s the lyric:
The Note
Earl sailed up the Belize coast In his brand new custom built boat With the mother of all hangovers No water and a note
And now he’s sitting drinking In an ocean-side tourist bar Trying to get a jump on happiness In the hour before happy hour
Chorus: And the note read: Our love has lost its flavor There’s no point in hanging on No Doctor Phil, no savior We’re done, Yes, we are done.
And the people standing ‘round him Have been on Caye Caulker far too long They‘re talking about Paradise spoilt And how it all went wrong
Well Earl knows that Paradise Is a very, very temporary thing And this little piece of heaven Feels like hell to him
Chorus: And the note read: Our love has lost its flavor There’s no point in hanging on No Doctor Phil, no savior We’re done, Yes, we are done.
And Earl can’t put a finger on it Why it all went up in smoke He’s feeling like a punch line In someone else’s joke
And he don’t believe in karma Instant, good or bad He’s drunk and lonely on the beach With a bucket full of sad
Chorus: And the note read: Our love has lost its flavor There’s no point in hanging on No Doctor Phil, no savior We’re done, Yes, we are done.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
Netflix has a new series called “Song Exploder”. Each episode takes a famous song and looks at how it was made, recorded, the inspiration behind it. I have watched one episode so far, the song in the spotlight was “Losing My Religion” by REM. I found it fascinating, particularly because the members of REM are such engaging and willing participants in the analysis of the song , none more so than Michael Stipe . It reminded me what a great and idiosyncratic lyricist Michael Stipe is. I won’t quote the whole lyric (I have attached a video which syncs the lyric with the song), but here’s the second verse:
“That’s me in the corner That’s me in the spotlight Losing my religion Trying to keep up with you And I don’t know if I can do it Oh no, I’ve said too much I haven’t said enough”
What struck me, on seeing this, was how each line emerges from the page like planes in a cubist painting; each line views the subject from a different angle.
Consider this, the last verse, that play between “failed” and “flailing”, the conclusion “Now I’ve said too much”. Throughout the song, he doesn’t rhyme once, he just keeps throwing out those viewpoints, those angles, those curves: pretty much a perfect lyric.
“Consider this Consider this The hint of the century Consider this The slip that brought me To my knees failed What if all these fantasies Come flailing around Now I’ve said too much”
The great Paul Simon once said: “I’d rather be a bucket than a pail”. Ok, maybe he didn’t but perhaps he should have. Anyway, this is not about rhymin’ Simon, this is about rhymin’ Diamond who once said:
I am, I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
Implying that, in a room containing inanimate objects, the object most likely to reply would be a chair. That chair is important, not just because it rhymes with “there”. The chair suggests that Neil is in a room, and there is only one chair (“the chair”), so Neil is most likely lying on a bed and of course he is alone, so alone that he has resorted to talking to the furniture. Without the chair, he could be anywhere, it becomes the focus of his existential crisis. This is a “pop song”, and it has to look easy and that’s hard and he does it through that one detail, the chair.
It has to be said that Neil is perhaps not at the same level as Paul Simon when it comes to poetic, sophisticated lyrics, but he has his moments. Take the first verse of “ Cracklin’ Rosie”:
“Aw, Cracklin’ Rosie, get on board
We’re gonna ride
Till there ain’t no more to go
Taking it slow
And Lord, don’t you know
We’ll have me a time with a poor man’s lady”
There’s that internal rhyme happening – board, more, Lord, poor -and all those ‘O’s’, fifteen in total! And the assonance in the chorus of
“Cracklin’ Rose,
You’re a store-bought woman”
It goes a bit downhill after that – “you make me sing like a guitar hummin’” – hummin’ and woman – ouch!
But, for my money, Neil’s finest moment when it comes to writing lyrics is in “Sweet Caroline”. The song, admittedly, is not without some absolute groaners:
“Where it began,
I can’t begin to knowin’”
And that’s the first two lines.
Even the chorus, which contains that finest moment is a syntactical nightmare:
Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I’ve been inclined,
To believe they never would
Oh, no, no
I have wrestled with this for some time and the best I can come up with is this: ”I’ve been inclined to believe that good times never would never seem so good”. Think about that too long and I guarantee that steam will come out of your ears. But it doesn’t matter, because all that matters is that rhyme between “Sweet Caroline” and “I’ve been inclined”. He could have gone for “fine”, “wine”, “mine” etc but there is something about “inclined” that is so unexpected, so colloquial, so conversational. It surprises every time you hear it. And of course, the acid test of any chorus is how well it does in a pub or bar late in the evening and everyone is a little hammered and some skinny guy on acoustic guitar hauls out “Sweet Caroline” and everyone is just waiting to belt out that chorus and I guarantee you that the volume will perceptibly increase when they reach that line and everyone takes just a little credit for recognising how clever it is.
This is the song I went looking for, the day Gord Downie died. I couldn’t remember the title, all I had was the phrase “over-opiated” which had been stuck in my head for years. Why? I don’t really know but maybe it was the triple iamb and the repeated ‘o’? Unlike a lot of The Tragically Hip’s music, this song was never in heavy rotation on Canadian radio, but I knew the song that contained the phrase was on the album ‘Up to Here’ and I knew I had a cassette tape of that album which I had bought back in 1990.
That was the era of the cassette tape and over the years, as tapes became extinct and compact discs, then streaming, took over, I stop listening to the album. So on the day Gord Downie died I found myself looking everywhere for it, eventually finding it in the storage space between the front seats of my red 98 Ford Taurus station wagon. There was some serendipity to this, because the only tape deck I have left is in the Taurus station wagon. A cassette and a Taurus sound system – not exactly high fidelity, but then the Hip were never really about high fidelity; put the vocal and drums on top of the mix and let the rest take care of itself. Besides, the sound system isn’t bad. There are 4 speakers , 2 front, 2 back, and if you switch everything to the 2 rear speakers and the bed of the station wagon is empty, the sound is actually pretty good, good enough for a bar band with 2 guitar players that sound like Keith Richards and Ron Wood but not as sloppy. I don’t normally drive the Taurus except occasionally to take stuff to the dump, but on the day Gord Downie died, I drove it around Vancouver all day listening to “Up to Here”. Yes, I was one of those guys you see in a parked car with the windows closed, beating time on the steering wheel.
And it struck me what a good rock lyricist Gord Downie is. Much has been made of his talent as a poet, and he is a talented poet, but writing lyrics for rock music is a different skill. For me, both rock and blues are all about the set up and the punchline. Take this for example:
“You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine”
….Leiber and Stoller
Simple maybe, but deceptively hard to do well. Here’s Gord Downie from Boots or Hearts:
“Fingers and toes, fingers and toes Forty things we share Forty one if you include The fact that we don’t care”
Or this from the same song:
“I feel I’ve stepped out of the wilderness All squint-eyed and confused But even babies raised by wolves They know exactly when they’ve been used”
In fact, I could quote the whole song, because for me it’s as close as anyone has come to a perfect lyric. Or how about this from “New Orleans Is Sinking””
“Ain’t got no picture postcards, ain’t got no souvenirs my baby, she don’t know me when I’m thinking ’bout those years”
But Downie is also at heart a folk singer, a teller of tales. “38 years old” is about a guy serving time for avenging the rape of his sister; the story is told from the view point of his younger brother. I don’t think there’s a more devastating chorus than this one, anywhere in popular music:
“Same pattern on the table, same clock on the wall Been one seat empty, eighteen years in all Freezing slow time, away from the world He’s thirty-eight years old, never kissed a girl He’s thirty-eight years old, never kissed a girl”
Not all song lyrics look good on paper and Downie is an idiosyncratic singer who stretches and bends words to fit the song, but here’s a few more random samples from the album:
“In my dreams, a candy coated train comes to my door”
“Pumping hands and kissing all the babies Ain’t no time for shadowed doubts or maybes”
“Pulled down his birthday suitcase Brown with dust from no place Said, “I think it’s time we made a start” They danced the waltz of charity No car garage, two kids for free They were pissing bliss and playing parts”
“Up to Here” was the Hip’s first album, they want on to make many more, to become Canadian icons. Downie even wrote songs about hockey. When he died he was eulogised by a tearful Justin Trudeau and Canadian radio played Hip songs all day long. All deserved of course. Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Gord Downie – not a bad list to be part of. But Downie, was different. The rest of those artists came out of the folk music tradition, but Downie’s genre, modus operandi was bar band rock and his genius was that he succeeded in blending poetry with bar band rock. Just scroll back up and read that last verse, a short story in six lines. Rave on Gord. Now take a listen.
Stopdraggingthepanda 