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Where is "there"?

Given The Staple Singers' background I'd guess "there" is Heaven.

But from the lyrics:

Ain't no smilin' faces*...
Lyin' to the races

 __________________

* A reference to this 1971 song?

Full lyrics after the break

It's been 49 years...

...but this is pretty much how I remember it:

Link

Since he mentioned it...

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And here all along for all these years, I thought Tom Petty was saying "Shelly" went he really was singing "shove it."  That's brill!  I'm relieved too, because I strongly believe that songwriters should avoid personal names in otherwise universal paeans to love and regret. An example having such a reference is  in Badfinger's "Baby Blue:

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The band "America" has continuously existed for nearly 50 years. The band was started in London by three Americans living abroad with Air Force parents. Learning that fact immediately reminded me of Chip Ahoy.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the lyrics. The song's author claims the song was partly a remembrance of a childhood incident along US 101 near Oxnard, California. The "alligator lizards in the air" were clouds that the younger brothers saw in the sky. But I think the song is somehow about leaving home -- or loving home.

We're leaving soon to drive up Ventura Highway to visit our daughter who goes to school at Santa Barbara. That part of California is fast becoming my favorite. There's something about the east-west lay of the land. It reminds me of the Italian Riviera: Liguria as the Italians call it. It's possible that the days are slightly longer there because sunrises and sunsets are unimpeded by land mass.

US 101 is also old El Camino Real. Ventura Freeway was so-named by Angelinos because it led them to Ventura, a once and still important seaport -- just like the San Diego Freeway took them south. And just like the Pasadena Freeway took them to Pasadena. All roads led from L.A.

Like the Appian Way, there isn't much left of the original El Camino Real. Here is a photo of what's left of the unpaved original:

link to original

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I remember seeing the Wilson sisters when that song* came out:

I wonder what they thought about playing for a crowd of teenaged boys?

_________________________

*Heart's drummer stole that basic 4/4 drum beat (with bass drum triplets) from John Bonham's Achilles Last Stand.

Full, misheard lyrics after the jump

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Overheard at Lem's:

I wonder what lovely souvenirs from my (not happening) vacation I can bring home.  Perhaps some cholera, parasites or Zika. 

Jello Biafra captured a similar sentiment way back in 1980 when he stuck it to the SJWs:

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Lyrics after the jump

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When you believe in things that you don't understand, 

then you suffer, 

Superstition ain't the way 

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Full lyrics after the jump.

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Seems like ages since I've posted anything here. We're in the midst of moving -- leaving Oceanside for Irvine.

I heard this song today and it reminded me of so many regrets. I've always admired that band, and what they overcame and how they kept plugging.

@Sixty: Here are the stairs. I lovingly restored the rails, but I haven't put them back up. We love the open look too much.

Added: Lyrics for "Regret" after the jump

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Photo by Sixty Grit

Are you cirrus, Sixty?

cross reference

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Lyrics after the break

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linky

Jagger was the principle lyricist, so it's plausible that the song was -- at least in part -- about Marianne Faithfull. Other inspiration(s) remain murky. I've never read a Jagger autobiography (is there one?), so who knows. The song's meaning is universal.

I never realized that Keith Richard was a "down-pointer."  I refer to where he points the neck of his guitar. Bill Wyman was a notorious guitar neck-hugger -- to the point of nearly looking like he was playing an upright bass -- but not in this video.

There is another very famous guitar neck down-pointer. Can you guess to whom I'm referring?

Full lyrics after the jump

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Ashley Judd recited a "Beat poem" at the Washington Women's March called "#NastyWoman." Intrigued, I looked for the original. I couldn't find the text but I did find a reading by the teenaged poet, Nina Mariah:

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Where did the "Beat" label come from? Perhaps one of our beret-wearing readers can help me, daddio.

My first thought, as a codger, was:

Beatniks and politics, nothing is new

A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view

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The song that went viral for The Strawberry Alarm Clock in 1967 was not sung by the drummer, but instead by 16 year-old Greg Munford, who was attending the recording session as a visitor.

Full lyrics after the jump. Test your knowledge/memory

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linky

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Overheard at Lem's:

"Caviar"

That is one of the more disturbing stories ever posted at Lem's. I need a palliative cleanser -- one I shall forever associate with caviar:

linky poo

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Here are the full lyrics for A Pair of Brown Eyes (1985) by The Pogues. See if you can follow the two narratives. It's about a drunken encounter of two men in a pub--one young and the other much older. The plot is easier to follow with the indentation separating the two first-person points of view:

One summer evening drunk to hell
I sat there nearly lifeless
An old man in the corner sang
"Where the water lilies grow"
And on the jukebox Johnny sang
About a thing called love
And it's "how are you kid and what's your name?"
And "how would you bloody know?"

In blood and death 'neath a screaming sky
I lay down on the ground
And the arms and legs of other men
Were scattered all around
Some cursed, some prayed, some prayed then cursed
Then prayed then bled some more
And the only thing that I could see
Was a pair of brown eyes that was looking at me
But when we got back, labeled parts 1, 2, 3
There was no pair of brown eyes waiting for me
And a rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go
For a pair of brown eyes

I looked at him he looked at me
All I could do was hate him
While Ray and Philomena sang
Of my elusive dreams
I saw the streams, the rolling hills
Where his brown eyes were waiting
And I thought about a pair of brown eyes
That waited once for me
So drunk to hell I left the place
Sometimes crawling sometimes walking
A hungry sound came across the breeze
So I gave the walls a talkin'
And I heard the sounds of long ago
From the old canal
And the birds were whistling in the trees
Where the wind was gently laughing
And a rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go
A rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go
And a rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go
For a pair of brown eyes

For the longest time (30 years!) the lyrics confused me. First, I didn't understand that two different men were having a dialog about the same thing. In this sense, it's a bit like Neil Young's "Old Man." Second, I didn't understand that the older man had not only been through a horrific wartime experience but that he too had lost a woman. The older man says:

And the only thing that I could see
Was a pair of brown eyes that was looking at me
But when we got back, labeled parts 1, 2, 3
There was no pair of brown eyes waiting for me

I used to think that he was talking about literally finding a pair of disembodied brown eyes, or maybe a survivor with brown eyes who then vanished when he came back to "label (body) parts one to three." Rubbish. The soldier's memory of a woman with brown eyes back home got him through the horror. But when he returned from the war, she had left. This triggers the younger man who too had once had a woman with brown eyes. The younger man leaves the pub, hating the older man. 

I wanted to subtitle this post "When the artist betrays his own meaning." Just look at the video released by The Pogues to promote the single: 

linky

Utter rubbish. It's all Thatcher Derangement Syndrome and Big Bad Government. Why couldn't they have been truer to the meaning of the song?

It’s just about a guy getting pissed at a bar 'round here. He’s getting pissed because he’s broken up with this bird and… you know how it is when you just go into a pub on your own to drink and it’s really quiet and you get this old nutter who comes over and starts rambling on you. So this old guy starts on about how he came back from the war, the First World War. Or the Second. One of them anyway. And he tells him about the ship he had out there and how he got out and came back and this girl had fucked off with someone else, a girl with a pair of brown eyes. Which is the same situation as the young guy sitting there listening to all this rubbish and the juke box playing Johnny Cash and Ray Lyman and Philomena Begley, classic London juke box tracks. And in the end he gets to the stage where he says fuck it, and he goes stumbling out of the pub and he walks along the canal and starts feeling really bad, on the verge of tears, and he starts realising that the old guy has had a whole fucking lifetime of that feeling, going through the war and everything, but his original reaction is to hate him and despise him. I’m not saying he goes back and starts talking to him but you know… ~ Shane MacGowan link

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linky

This post was inspired by Troop's earlier one about UFO's and also the one on the Bermuda Triangle. I thought the lyrics made explicit reference to the Bermuda Triangle, but upon listening, it references a strange, strange pond in North Carolina. What's up with that? Anybody? Sixty?

lyrics after the jump

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linky

That's Jimmy Page playing guitar on Donovan's 1966 song. Trippy visuals. Don't stare at it 'cause it might induce seizures.

h/t: "House" Words And Deeds

lyrics after the jump

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I've always been a Hillary supporter. There is no one more qualified to lead America. Having said that, I never cease to be amazed at the misogynistic attitude of some people in this country. And I say to hell with them... I love you, Hillary. I'll be there for you.

~ Elton John

 linky poo

lyrics after the jump

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It was symbolic: 'If we ever get out of here … All I need is a pint a day' … [In the Beatles] we'd started off as just kids really, who loved our music and wanted to earn a bob or two so we could get a guitar and get a nice car. It was very simple ambitions at first. But then, you know, as it went on it became business meetings and all of that … So there was a feeling of 'if we ever get out of here', yeah. And I did. – Paul McCartney

linky 

lyrics after the jump

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How about a little New York togetherness, scarecrow!

Oy vey Cuomo va!

link in case the video bombs

Lyrics after the jump (NSF DC politics):