Thursday 9 May 2013

EVENSONG. IN OUR HEARTS WE CRIED TO EACH OTHER'S HEARTS FOR REFUGE, JACKSON BROWN AT GLASTONBURY, BEFORE THE DELUGE

15 comments:

mongoose said...

Didn't reveal any secrets to those burger-seekers in the audience, eh, Mr Ishmael. Pearls before swine. So simple and so huge.

call me ishmael said...

If anyone could read my mind, mr mongoose, it would be you. I wanted to post a still of the crowd for JB, alongside a still of the crowd for Sir Tom Jones, but I dunno how to do it. They were half a mile deep for the Boy from the valleys, rapt, they were, eejits.

Old timer said...

Nice music, but I could not understand one word of what he was "singing". My eardrums must be getting old.

Dick the Prick said...

Meanwhile, not in Ambridge but not far off - Daft Punk are back with young Pharell Williams who i've been aware of but didn't know the boy was such a piss taker. When Americans embrace Europe totally, the mirror they hold up is incredibly relaxing. Gonna be a good year if these boys have an album out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVNZEL4E62M

Mr Nile Rodgers has stared into the abyss too.

Cheers Mr Smith.

Dick the Prick said...

Better version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV2GA63HEGk

call me ishmael said...

It's a song about EarthCrime, mr ot. An antedeluvian state of mind amongst young people, fearful of their planet's destruction and it is also about loss of innocence - they exchanged Love's bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge.


Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future
With the energy of the innocent
They were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey back to nature
While the sand slipped through the opening
And their hands reached for the golden ring
With their hearts they turned to each other's hearts for refuge
In the troubled years that came before the deluge

Some of them knew pleasure
And some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in a moment they were swept before the deluge

Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge

Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky.
--------------------------
Jackson Brown is one of America's finer, gentler poets and hugely blessed musician, also, incidentally a campaigner against the tyranny of the banksters, against what he calls the Casino Nation

This old timer can always find some old time for Jackson Brown, and so should everyone. He should be available on prescription.

Mr mongoose may have a slightly different view, Ms Lilith, mrs narcoilept, mr tnp, mr dtp, mrs woar, mr ptb, wherever he is - the musos who foregather here might all have a different view but none would deny his magical craft.


I'll check that later, thanks, mr dtp.

Old timer said...

Thank you Mr Ish, I am much obliged. I played that again with a split screen - words on one side and video on the other and this time it made sense. Most enjoyable. I must admit I had never hard of this group before (having led a sheltered existence you see!), but I shall now go surfing UTube to see what else of them I can find. Thanks again.

call me ishmael said...

The miracle of YouTube offers plenty of Jackson Browne, alone, ensemble and duetting with all sorts of musicians. "These Days" is a fine song, written when he was a kid, containing lines of such maturity as "Don't confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them."

There is a fetching, sepia sort of clip of him performing Before the Deluge with Joan Baez which is worth a look. And there is a fair bit in previous Evensongs

the noblest prospect said...

Superb. Thanks, Mr Smith.

Far, far too precious for that cunt-fest.

I see maestro Lindley still sports his Phlorescent Leech costume.

call me ishmael said...

You'd never think he'd been El Rayo X, would you, all tha funk and reggae stuff, an amazing man, mr tnp, despite his apparel eccentricity.

mongoose said...

If I was an arse, Mr I, I would say that it is "as relevant today..." but thankfully I ain't quite that bad yet. I think though that you could adopt it as the blog anthem.

Gone off Baez BTW - mad now as mad St Joni, and everything now sounds the same. It didn't use to be so with her. Or maybe I had different ears.

call me ishmael said...

I dunno, mr m, the number of versions of this that I have posted sort of makes it, as you say, the anthem. There's something so plangent about it, about his big, booming, echoey piano that the words almost don't matter, it's as though he has harnessed something universal and transcendent, some Esperanto of Melancholy. And then there's also that Dorian Grey quality to Browne that is utterly bewitching, how come he looks so good and I look so me?

And I was watching his fingers on that and - not too many black notes - he looks quite amateur, in the nicest way.

And another thing is the timelessness of antedeluvianism, the historicism of the worst thing since the eviction from the Garden of Eden; Before the Deluge, most of us have a personal deluge, a personal before and after. There is a hopelessness, an inevitability, a belated wisdom in this song; the older I grow, the more it moves me.

Baez was always mad. I saw her once, long ago, in the 'sixties when she was more a figure than an artist and then I saw her at the Birmingham Symphony Hall in the 'nineties when she gave the best concert I have ever seen, including Captain Beefheart's.

I have been reading a lot - she has written a lot - recently, at Expecting Rain, a Dr Bob website, of her interlude with Dylan. Don't know if you've seen Don't look Back but as well as some amazing concert performances by Bob it reveals a vile cruelty towards Baez by both he and his speedfreak slave entourage. As with Monica Lewinsky, you wonder what would have happened if Baez had had a big brother, to slap the little cunt in the gob.

I recommended the Baez-Browne clip because it's visually interesting and because it's one of those occasions when the performers - even Baez - are subordinate to the song; it's worth a look.

Normous said...

Well, Mr Ishmeal. I will grant you that it has got something...but I hope I don't catch it.

I find this more to my liking:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iREgvt1L1Vs&list=PLE3BFF32B5D9A17B1

call me ishmael said...

I love all that, too, mr normous, as well as Jackson Browne. Reminds me of many's a night spent in the Cottage, a JazzPub, In Earlsdon, Coventry. Those are country blues and jugband chord changes, as at home in the Grateful Daed and Eric clapton as in 19th c. New Orleans; seemed a little restrained, however, in a smoke and booze-free church, like to seethem pissed.

mrs narcolept said...

It's not often that anyone sings of how it was and gets it so right.