..from Scotland, with a connection to Margaret Atwood.
Even rocks melt in the sun
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Category: songs, in English
This post includes my favourite cover of a wistful, very famous Johnny Cash song, and a singular version of a less famous, more urgent song, authored by Stuart Adamson.
Both are “live” performances.
Darrell Scott is their American singer-guitarist, Danny Thompson their English double bassist.
And that’s not all…
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Arguably the quintessential nostalgic song, I’ll Be Seeing You was composed in 1938. (music by Sammy Fain, words by Irving Kahal)
That year it was inserted into a Broadway musical…which flopped.
The song, however, became a “standard”, covered by countless singers…and not a few instrumentalists.
It was a #1 hit for Bing Crosby in 1944.
Frank Sinatra recorded it more than once.
Even Eric Clapton did so, in 2016.
The most celebrated recording – Billie Holiday’s 1944 version – is the one which reached Mars in 2018, as the conclusion to NASA’s final transmission to its Explorer rover.
However, the most “out of this world” version to reach this Earthling’s ears is a “live” and exploratory instrumental trio treatment, delivered in “the city of fallen angels”, in June 2016.
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…as chosen by other famous musos.
In most cases, the article will take you directly to Dylan’s performance of the relevant song.
Would Mick Jagger make an interesting choice?
What about Gillian Welch, Tom Jones, Marianne Faithful, Billy Bragg or Judy Collins?
Would some/none/all have anything interesting to say about his or her choice?
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(four times, if you are new to Bob Dylan’s not-altogether-original “original”)
Look out your window and I’ll be gone
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(the “metaphorical” featured image shows climbers on what many believe to be the world’s tallest sheer rock-face…it isn’t)
This very poignant song was written a quarter of a century ago.
Its co-authors, separately, have recorded it, but the most celebrated version is a “cover”, issued 20 years ago.
None of those recordings quite “nailed” it, I think.
As of February 21, 2021, there is a “definitive” version, performed “live”…
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If the almost-titlepiece of Rhiannon Giddens’ new album were new to your ears, you would probably assume it was a venerable “traditional” song, probably from Appalachia.
Listeners who already knew many traditional Appalachian songs would likely be mightily surprised that they could have hitherto missed such a superb, particularly haunting one.
In fact, Calling Me Home was authored by Alice Gerard; it was titlepiece of her 2002 album, issued in the year of her 68th birthday. (An even better album is Follow the Music, which Alice Gerrard recorded – mostly “live” – in her 80th year)
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No sign yet of COVID:The Musical, but “the virus” has now yielded a superbly crafted song.
The context is British, but its precise skewering of the gap between self-congratulory “patriotic” government twaddle-speak and the pandemic’s reality rings true across most of “our” world.
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A big, rusting surprise was just one minute’s walk away from the house in which we recently spent sixteen nights – on a forested hill near Youngs Siding, in Western Australia’s Deep South.
This post’s musical complement: a singular treatment of an apropos Thelonious Monk number, plus the most tender song ever written about a car salesman….
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Our hero lost his “sacred” status when his Australian-ness was recognised!
As is true of many birds, Threskiornis molucca – the Australian white ibis – is wonderfully elegant when high in the sky, but rather less so when on terra firma, or in the process of becoming airborne.
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