In keeping with the Thanksgiving theme, some songs of gratitude.
Kris Krisofferson, Thank You for a Life
Beatles, Thank You Girl
Led Zepellin, Thank You
Merle Haggard, Thanking the Good Lord
Roy Clark, Thank God and Greyhound You're Gone
Alanis Morissette, Thank You
Joan Baez, Gracias a la Vida
Hank Williams, Thank God. Compare Lost Highway
And now, stretching a bit:
Grateful Dead, Truckin'
Ella Mae Morse, Forty Cups of Coffee
Cream, The Coffee Song
Johnny Cash and Ramblin' Jack Elliot, A Cup of Coffee
Commander Cody, Truck Drivin' Man. This one goes out to Sally S."Pour me another cup of coffee/For it is the best in the land/I'll put a nickel in the jukebox/And play that 'Truck Drivin' Man.'"
Dave Dudley, Coffee, Coffee, Coffee
Calexico & Roger McGuinn, Another Cup of Coffee. A good version of this old Dylan tune.
Mississippi John Hurt, Coffee Blues
Peggy Lee, Black Coffee
Annette Hanshaw, You're the Cream in my Coffee, 1928
Johann Sebastian Bach, Coffee Cantata
What is wrong with people who don't drink or enjoy coffee? They must not value consciousness and intensity of experience. Poor devils! Perhaps they're zombies (in the philosophers' sense).
UPDATE (11/24): Up from a nap, I pour me a serious cup of serious java (Kirkland Portland Bold), and log onto to email where I find a note from Patrick Kurp who recommends Rick Danko and Paul Butterfield, Java Blues, one hard-driving, adrenalin-enabling number which, in synergy with the nap and the aforesaid java, has this old man banging hard on all synaptic 'cylinders' and ready for some more scribbling.
Chicory is a cheat. It cuts it but doesn't cut it.
"The taste of java is like a volcanic rush/No one is going to stop me from drinking too much . . . ."
The Man Who Wasn't There is one of my favorite movies, and the best of Ludwig van Beethoven is as good as classical music gets. So enjoy the First Movement of the Moonlight Sonata to the masterful cinematography of the Coen Brothers.
Here is the final scene of the movie. Ed Crane's last words:
I don't know where I'm being taken. I don't know what I'll find beyond the earth and sky. But I am not afraid to go. Maybe the things I don't understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there. And maybe there I can tell her all those things they don't have words for here.
That is the way I see death, as an adventure into a dimension, into "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns," in which we might come to understand what we cannot understand here, a movement from night and fog into the clear light of day. It is a strange idea, I admit, the idea that only by dying can one come into possession of essential knowledge. But no more strange than the idea that death leaves the apparent absurdity of our existence unredeemed, a sentiment expressed in Peggy Lee's 1970 Is That All There is?
Elvis Presley, She's Not You
Patsy Cline, She's Got You
Bob Dylan, She Belongs to Me. Bootleg version, 5/7/65. YouTuber comment:
Hazy, warm memories of listening to this on the Bringing It All Back Home album . . . with my sweet girl at an after-party in some guy's pad following a night at the Sink on the Hill in Boulder, 1965 . . . filtered, rosy light . . . youthful bliss before Vietnam . . .
Beatles, She's a Woman
Jefferson Airplane, She Has Funny Cars
Johnny Cash, She Used to Love Me a Lot
Beatles, She Said She Said
Lesley Gore, She's a Fool
Beatles, She's Leaving Home
Zombies, She's Not There
Eric Clapton, She's Waiting
Before we get on to songs with 'I' in the title — the word, not the letter or the Roman numeral — we pause to note the passing of Jack Bruce, bass player for Cream who died a week ago. It is appropriate, therefore, that we should begin with
Cream, I Feel Free
Cream, I'm So Glad
Simon and Garfunkel, I Am a Rock
Beatles, I'm a Loser
Beatles, I Feel Fine
Beatles, I am the Walrus
Beatles, I Call Your Name. Nice cowbell. Mamas and Papas' version.
Who, I Can See for Miles
Muddy Waters, I'm a Man
Peggy Lee, I'm a Woman
Patsy Cline, I Fall to Pieces
Country Joe and the Fish, I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag
Beatles, I Don't Want to Spoil the Party
Sarah Vaughan, I Got Rythm
Sonny and Cher, I Got You, Babe
Petula Clark, I Know a Place
Barbara George, I Know
Dusty Springfield, I Only Want to be With You
Petula Clark, I Couldn't Live Without Your Love
Peggy March, I Will Follow Him
Ivory Joe Hunter, Since I Met You Baby
Lenny Welch, Since I Fell for You
Skyliners, Since I Don't Have You
Flamingos, I Only Have Eyes for You
Beatles, If I Fell
Beach Boys, When I Grow Up to Be a Man
Beach Boys, I Can Hear Music
Beach Boys, Then I Kissed Her. The answer to, and no match for, the Crystals' Then He Kissed Me.
Band, When I Paint My Masterpiece
Timi Yuro, I'm So Hurt
Brenda Lee, Alone Am I
Eddie Rabbit, I Love a Rainy Night
Dylan, The Band, et al., I Shall Be Released
Tom Petty, I Won't Back Down
U2, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. Read the lyrics.
Arlo Guthrie, I Want to be Around
Bob Dylan, I Want You
Brenda Lee, I'm Sorry
Pter, Paul, and Mary, If I Had a Hammer
and these are only some of them.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 223, Notebook L, Aph. #67:
If we did not remember our youth, we should [would] not be aware of old age: the malady of age consists solely in our no longer being able to do what we could do formerly. For the old man is certainly as perfect a creature in his own way as is the young.
The title I supplied alludes to Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years. (What a great song!)
Sex, drugs, and rock & roll without the drugs. In memory of the recently late Paul Revere of Paul Revere and the Raiders, a '60s outfit with a garage-band sound I never much liked, which had a hit with the anti-drug Kicks with which I shall kick off tonight's offerings.
Buffy Sainte-Marie, Cod'ine
An equally powerful version by Janis Joplin
Hoyt Axton, The Pusher
Dave Van Ronk, Cocaine Blues
Velvet Underground, Heroin
Warren Zevon, Carmelita
Dubiously classified as drug songs:
Peter, Paul, and Mary, Puff the Magic Dragon
Doors, The Crystal Ship
Tim Hardin, Red Balloon. Small Faces version. Hardin died of a heroin overdose in late December, 1980.
Donovan, Mellow Yellow. Supposedly about cigarettes filled with dried banana peels. I tried one of these mellow yellow joints in Hollywood, Cal, in '67. It had no psychoactive effect I could discern.
Beatles, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Supposedly about LSD.
UPDATE 10/19: Jeff Hodges thinks I should have included Neil Young, Tonight's the Night. He's right.
No “Cocaine” by Eric Clapton?! That’s a huge and surprising omission, unless you don’t take it to be either pro- or anti-drug. Clapton himself calls it anti-drug, so perhaps a Sunday supplement should ensue. On the kudos side, I’m glad that you labeled “Puff” and “Lucy” as only dubiously classified as drug songs, as both songs’ authors have vehemently and repeatedly protested their songs’ innocence.
My title indicates that my focus is on anti-drug sons. J. J. Cale's tune "Cocaine" is pretty clearly pro-drug, as witness the lyrics:
If you wanna hang out you've got to take her out; cocaine.
If you wanna get down, down on the ground; cocaine.
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie; cocaine.If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues; cocaine.
When your day is done and you wanna run; cocaine.
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie; cocaine.If your thing is gone and you wanna ride on; cocaine.
Don't forget this fact, you can't get it back; cocaine.
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie; cocaine.
True, Clapton has claimed that the song is anti-drug, but the claim is simply not credible. Generally speaking, artists' opinions about their works are not to be given much credence. Dylan is an example of one who has spoken nonsense about the meaning of his own songs.
Just read the above lyrics. The meaning is clear. You need cocaine to 'hang out' and to 'get down.' The second phrase means to party, to have sex, to have a good time, to jump up and dance. It does not mean to bring yourself down either physically or mentally. But then why "down on the ground"? Because it rhymes, and this is just a popular song the lyrics of which were scribbled in a couple of minutes. To write a song like this you start with a chord progression and a guitar riff and then find some words to go along with them.
And then we are told that cocaine "don't lie"; she takes you away from the phony workaday world of the uncool and puts you in touch with reality. And in her embrace there is an escape from bad news and a cure for the blues. If you've lost your 'mojo' and its on the sag and your 'thing' is gone, you can get it back with this stuff. And "she don't lie!"
There is simply no way this song could be interpreted as anti-drug. It is pretty clearly, though not obviously, pro-drug.
Clapton ought to 'man up' and admit it. Arguing that it is anti-drug would be like arguing that the Rolling Stones' Let's Spend the Night Together is a stern warning against premarital sex, or that their Under My Thumb is a feminist anthem.
That's why I didn't include Clapton's "Cocaine" on my list of anti-drug songs.
These tunes go out to Sally Shoaf. It was great to see you again after 50 years, Sally.
I'm So Glad to join you, My Best Friend, as we follow Mr. Tambourine Man on an Embryonic Journey to hear the Chimes of Freedom as we Break on Through to the Other Side.
Jack Kerouac in a letter from 17 January 1962: "Everybody is making money off my ideas, like those "Route 66" TV producers, everybody except me . . . ." (Selected Letters 1957-1969, ed, Charters, Viking 1999, p. 326; see also p. 461 and pp. 301-302.) Here is the Nelson Riddle theme music from the TV series. And here is part of an episode from the series which ran from 1960-1964. George Maharis bears a striking resemblance to Jack, wouldn't you say? And notice Maharis is riding shotgun. Kerouac wasn't a driver. Neal Cassady was the driver.
Now dig Bobby Troup. And if that's too cool for you, here is Depeche Mode. Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Dr. Feelgood, and others have covered the tune.
Anarchist philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, over at The Philosopher's Stone, writes,
While I was making dinner, Susie put on a CD of Pete Seegar [sic] songs. I was struck once again by the oft-remarked fact that for half a century, the left has had all the good songs. That cannot be irrelevant.
By the way, the old commie's name is 'Seeger' not 'Seegar.' In the ComBox, some guy confuses him with Bob Seger! The Left has had all the good songs over the last 50 years? Nonsense. Here are 50 counterexamples.
The really interesting case is Bob Dylan. The Left can of course claim the early topical songs such as "Only a Pawn in Their Game" and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. (Not that we contemporary conservatives don't take on board all that was good in these critiques of racism and Jim Crow.) But it wasn't long before Dylan distanced himself from politics and leftist ideology, a distancing documented in My Back Pages. And then came the absurdist-existentialist-surrealist phase represented by the three mid-'sixties albums, Bring It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde. After that, the motorcycle accident and another attitude adjustment culminating in a couple of masterful albums, John Wesley Harding and New Morning, in which religious and conservative themes come to the fore.
I'll give just one example, Sign on a Window, from the October 1970 album, New Morning. This marvellous version sung by Melanie Safka. The song concludes:
Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me 'Pa'
That must be what it's all about
That must be what it's all about.
To appreciate the full conservative flavor of this song, listen to it in the context of Masters of War from the protest period and It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) from the absurdist-existentialist-surrealist period.
Now for a few tunes from the NRO list with the NRO write-up.
1. Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who.
The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off naïve idealism once and for all. “There’s nothing in the streets / Looks any different to me / And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye. . . . Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.” The instantly recognizable synthesizer intro, Pete Townshend’s ringing guitar, Keith Moon’s pounding drums, and Roger Daltrey’s wailing vocals make this one of the most explosive rock anthems ever recorded — the best number by a big band, and a classic for conservatives.
2. Don’t Tread on Me by Metallica. A head-banging tribute to the doctrine of peace through strength, written in response to the first Gulf War: “So be it / Threaten no more / To secure peace is to prepare for war.”
3. 20th Century Man by The Kinks. “You keep all your smart modern writers / Give me William Shakespeare / You keep all your smart modern painters / I’ll take Rembrandt, Titian, da Vinci, and Gainsborough. . . . I was born in a welfare state / Ruled by bureaucracy / Controlled by civil servants / And people dressed in grey / Got no privacy got no liberty / ’Cause the 20th-century people / Took it all away from me.”
4. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band. Despite its sins, the American South always has been about more than racism — this song captures its pride and tradition.
5. Wake Up Little Susie by The Everly Brothers. A smash hit in 1957, back when high-school social pressures were rather different from what they have become: “We fell asleep, our goose is cooked, our reputation is shot.”
From time to time it is perhaps appropriate that we should relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow. A fitting apologia for a bit of indulgence and even overindulgence is found in Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind, XVII, 8-9, tr. Basore:
At times we ought to reach even the point of intoxication, not drowning ourselves in drink, yet succumbing to it; for it washes away troubles, and stirs the mind from its very depths and heals its sorrow just as it does certain ills of the body; and the inventor of wine is not called the Releaser [Liber, Bacchus] on account of the license it gives to the tongue, but because it frees the mind from bondage to cares and emancipates it and gives it new life and makes it bolder in all that it attempts. But, as in freedom, so in wine there is a wholesome moderation.
Sed ut libertatis ita vini salubris moderatio est.
. . .
Yet we ought not to do this often, for fear that the mind may contract an evil habit; nevertheless there are times when it must be drawn into rejoicing and freedom, and gloomy sobriety must be banished for a while.
Amos Milburn, One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer
The Champs, Tequila. Arguably unique in that its lyrics consist of exactly one trisyllabic word.
Electric Flag, Wine. Great video of the late Mike Bloomfield and his Gibson Les Paul in their prime. Definitive proof that a Jew can play the blues.
Canned Heat, Whisky-Headed Woman.
Doors, Whisky Bar
Buck Owens, Cigarettes, Whisky, and Wild, Wild Women
Cigarettes are a blot on the whole human race
A man is a monkey with one in his face
So gather 'round friends and listen to your brother
A fire on one end, a fool on the other.
Ramblin' Jack Elliot's version
Tex Williams, Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette, 1947
Commander Cody's version
Etta James, Cigarettes and Coffee
Jr. Walker and the All Stars, Shotgun
Mississippi John Hurt, Stagger Lee
Gene Pitney, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962
Joan Baez, Rock Salt and Nails. "If the ladies was squirrels with high bushy tails/I'd fill up my shotgun with rock salt and nails." This is undoubtedly (!)the best version of this great Utah Phillips song.
Doc and Merle Watson's version
Rosalee Sorrels' version
UPDATE 9/14: Malcolm Pollack recommends Procol Harum, Whisky Train. Joe Odegaard points us to this bluegrass version of Rock Salt and Nails.
UPDATE 9/16: I forgot EmmyLou Harris, Two More Bottles of Wine. I must be slipping . . . .
UPDATE 9/17: Zimmi too has a rendition of "Rock Salt and Nails." Sounds like it's from The Basement Tapes.
In memory of Joan Rivers. Here is the young Joan on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1967.
Rolling Stones, Watching the River Flow
Doc and Merle Watson, Banks of the Ohio
Neil Young, Down by the River
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Green River
Doc Watson, Life is Like a River
Hoagy Carmichael, Lazy River. I scratched my long arm something fierce reaching back into the musty mausoleum for this moldy oldy.
Hank Williams, Lost on the River
Leon Redbone, Mississippi River Blues
J. J. Cale, Mississippi River
Janis Joplin, River Jordan
Moe Bandy, Red River Valley
Leadbelly, Red River Blues
Dr. John, Swanee River Boogie
Bill Monroe, River of Death
Bonnie Raitt, River of Tears
Chase Webster, Moody River
Johnny Burnette, Moody River
Henry Mancini, Moon River
Update 9/7: Jeff Hodges recommends Robbie Robertson, Somewhere Down the Crazy River. Tom Coleman wonders why I didn't include Joe Cocker, Cry Me a River. Reason: I don't like it all that much. The same goes for Ike and Tina Turner, River Deep, Mountain High.
Calexico, Alone Again Or
A great cover of Love's version from '67.
Ry Cooder, Paris, Texas
Ry Cooder, He'll Have to Go
Ry Cooder, Yellow Roses
Spade Cooley, Detour
Old Crow Medicine Show, Sweet Amarillo. Dylan wrote it.
Marty Robbins messes with the wicked Felina in El Paso and comes to an untimely end.
Dean Martin is down and out in Houston.
A lonely soldier cleans his gun and dreams of Galveston.
A slacker standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona spies a girl in a flatbed Ford.
Johnny Rivers heads East via Phoenix and Albuquerque.
From Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah, this sojourner of the American night has driven every kind of rig that's ever been made.
Update (9/1). Ed Farrell writes, "The Little Feat version of I'm Willin is a good one. But my favorite version will probably remain the one done by Seatrain circa 1970–which was the standard road song for Sierra climbing trips in late high school/college. Seatrain never really took off as a band but their musicianship was quite good though their style was difficult to pigeonhole."
That is a good version, indeed better than Little Feat's. There were a lot of great bands back in the day that never really made it. Another is Fever Tree. I remember hearing them circa '68 live at a club called The Kaleidoscope in Hollywood or West L. A. Give a careful listen to The Sun Also Rises.
Ed also recommends Seatrain's version of the Carole King composition, Creepin Midnight. Produced by George Martin.
Finally, please take a look at Ed's spectacular photography.
A musician needs a muse. George Harrison and Eric Clapton found her in Pattie Boyd. Here are five of the best known songs that she is said to have inspired. If you don't love at least four of these five, you need a major soul adjustment.
Something
Isn't it a Pity?
Wonderful Tonight
Layla (The best part starts at 3:13 the poignancy of which still rends my soul the way it did 44 years ago)
Bell Bottom Blues ("If I could choose a place to die, it would be in your arms . . . .")
Try to guess the English title before clicking on the link.
Aliquid. Probably George Harrison's best composition. One of the great love songs.
Hic venit sol. YouTuber comment: "The Beatles are an antidepressant. This song is a great example!"
Intus te sine te. Another great Harrison song.
I have borrowed from here and here. There may be errors in the Latin. I am not enough of a Latinist to be sure.
