The featured image (copyright Doug Spencer) shows produce being sold on the footpath in the “old city” quarter of Jaipur, Rajasthan, on 07 February 2020.
This post has two very different songs.
Neither is new, but each is fresh.
Both vividly remember the calls of actual produce sellers, but the second song is really about something that money cannot buy.
As previously promised, when the pandemic has eased I will publish a post that will allow you (vicariously) to take a lunchtime walk through the streets and lanes of Jaipur’s old (walled) city.
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Today’s songs are both “live” performances.
Market Song was co-authored by all five members of Pentangle, whose second release was the 1968 double LP Sweet Child.
Its first, “live” disc was recorded at a June 1968 concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
Here, Bert Jansch & Jacqui McShee share lead vocals, Danny Thompson plays double bass, Terry Cox is drummer-percussionist, John Renbourn plays electric guitar, & Bert is acoustic guitarist.
No Love Today is one of many beautifully crafted songs by Chris Smither.
It first appeared on his 1999 album Drive You Home Again.
Most of Chris’s childhood (in the 1940s and 1950s) was spent in New Orleans, at a time when produce-sellers still worked the streets on foot – their own, and/or those of their horse or mule.
The way they shouted/sang/spruiked is etched in Chris Smither’s memory, still.
This is an August 2014 performance.
…and a bonus – an altogether different Chris Smither original.
Sellers of snake oil in “religious” clothing will not like it.
In Australia, Chris has at least once introduced this song by expressing his delighted amazement that one of Australia’s capital cities – and a university – had been named after Charles Darwin.
That, he said, would be “impossible” in his own nation.
Chris’s fingers and feet will both reward your close attention…