Under the heading of Look What Popped Up When I Looked for______, I owe this find to Trooper York’s recent posting of Tom J’s rendition of Treat Her Right, which sent me looking for the original.
What turned up in the sidebar during that search was a video containing a song I knew and a story I hadn’t heard before, coming from someone (two someones actually) whose music I’d sung along with and whose voices I used to harmonize with as I listened to 8’tracks in the car and records at home during the early 70’s. This week, as I sat physically tap tapping on the mysteriously connected thing in front of me, ordering the Goo goo god to deliver me up a song from the past, I received the surprise of a Valentine arrow from the past, going straight to my heart with a story about what matters and brings us together, along with some sweet singing I could harmonize with at the end.
10 comments:
In one of my previous lives watching Alice's Restaurant The Movie was a Thanksgiving tradition. Although Arlo and the folk crew were mostly Fellow Travelers and Useful Idiots they made some great music.
Anyway, thanks for the "arrow to the heart" MamaM. I hadn't thought about my lost love (to a car wreck at age 46) and our Thanksgiving tradition in a while.
Been to Stockbridge, MA many times in my youth. We would drive thru western MA. up to see my uncle in West Rutland, VT.
Great singing voice. So different from his speaking voice.
Pete was a commie to the core...though Some Seppo beat me to it.
And lastly, when people sing "We shall overcome".....overcome what?...their selves?....which is the only thing you do have to overcome. I know I know, don't be a super-ego party pooper.
90% of any random group of people singing "We Shall Overcome" have only ever overcome their inability to sing.
I have always liked Alice's Restaurant, possibly because it is only played around Thanksgiving so there's good memories associated and also it's charming. It's not hilariously funny or a devastatingly great tune but it's a nice mellow combination of acceptably amusing anecdotes set to music. Like when NPR isn't being political.
I always liked the line "And I said, "yes sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie. I put that envelope
Under that garbage."
Has there ever been a better explanation for how evidence got to the scene of a crime?
Or the Group W bench down at Whitehall Street - who hasn't been there, am I right?
But back to the subject at hand - I had the good fortune to see Arlo in 2002 at a local venue, and he is, in addition to being an excellent musician, he is a gifted story teller. He had family members on stage with him, including his daughter who is a pretty good player. His son-in-law needs to practice more, but he married well.
Sixty, I thought you'd bring this up.
Nothing like delivering a fancier Valentine shot than the one from Arlo's bow, Windbag! Sort of like the difference between a Whitman heart and the velvet Godiva box.
On a similar but different topic, Arlo's aging didn't surprise me as much as seeing a recent photo of Gordon Lightfoot, who's now pushing 82. Since the mental picture I'd been holding of him went back 45 years to Gord's Gold,it took me a moment to download the most recent version and bring that memory forward to run alongside current reality--A flip and reverse of a "Whose That Girl?" experience!
https://exclaim.ca/images/gordon_lightfoot_doc.jpg
MamaM, oh my, he's aged. I saw a video a few years back and his voice was still the same. He didn't look like that, though.
I just went back and read the wiki on him, windbag, and am now wondering if health issues may have been a factor?
It says he experienced a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm in 2004 with six weeks in a coma and 5 surgeries following. Also a minor stroke in 2006 that temporarily resulted in year's loss of use of two fingers on his right hand, with use of them returning during recovery. The happy news was new love realized after that, along with the strength to continue singing.
Lightfoot wed for a third time on December 19, 2014 at Rosedale United Church to Kim Hasse.
To stay in shape to meet the demands of touring and public performing, Lightfoot works out in a gym six days per week, but declared in 2012 that he was "fully prepared to go whenever I'm taken." He calmly stated, "I've been almost dead a couple times, once almost for real ... I have more incentive to continue now because I feel I'm on borrowed time, in terms of age."
Lightfoot band members have displayed loyalty to him, as both musicians and friends, recording and performing with him for as many as 45 years.
Whatever his life's included, there appears to have been some overcoming (of a different sort than the political type of injustice typically associated with the song) that's also taken place.
When music is honestly delivered there is a power to it that creates bonds and touches lives.
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