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Post by doctork on Jun 2, 2021 20:47:54 GMT -5
It has spontaneously returned to black print in new posts. I must have mistimed the purple color for the quote.
I think Paul Simon is a great song writer, and always wondered what Art Garfunkel did for the partnership, other than "arranger." I gained more appreciation for arranging when I started listening to Pat Donohue's unique arrangements of common tunes.
I'll leave formal judgement of Paul's literary merit to the English majors.
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Post by slb2 on Jun 3, 2021 1:56:20 GMT -5
Yes, this is a Dylan thread, but since a couple other songwriters are popping up, let's remember Carole King and Nina Simone and Bobbie Gentry for balance. I also adore Cyndi Lauper and her songs, though few, that she wrote like Time After Time.
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Post by booklady on Jun 3, 2021 6:18:55 GMT -5
Bobbie Gentry, yes; it is the third of June today, isn't it?
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Post by jspnrvr on Jun 3, 2021 11:36:33 GMT -5
Bobbie Gentry, yes; it is the third of June today, isn't it? www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv33eaygVDQ Here you go. Looks like a lot of little old bridges. We had one at home across Spoon River.
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Post by booklady on Jun 3, 2021 12:46:36 GMT -5
Bobbie Gentry, yes; it is the third of June today, isn't it? www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv33eaygVDQ Here you go. Looks like a lot of little old bridges. We had one at home across Spoon River. One of the greatest songs ever written and recorded, in my view.
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Post by gailkate on Jun 3, 2021 14:30:06 GMT -5
I admit I never thought of it as a great song. I'd like to hear why people do think so. The songwriters mentioned after Dylan and Simon don't - to me - come close to their poetic depth and universal themes. Of course, great poems can be either very personal or universal, so I guess Billie Joe could fall into the very personal category. Certainly all the old ballads are focused on a personal story. (I may spend the afternoon thinking of some.) I read a lot of reviews that mentioned Gentry's message about the family's cruel indifference (suicide and pass the peas). This adds lyrics I didn't know about. In fact, I have trouble understanding some of them and did long before I started losing hearing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Billie_Joe
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Post by doctork on Jun 3, 2021 19:57:17 GMT -5
To me, "Ode to Billie Joe" is a very good song, one of many linked in my heart to certain places and times, mostly from the early 1960's to early 1970's. Since we moved around so much while I was growing up, popular music was much more of a constant in my life than people and places. But those songs will evoke memories of people and places that I might otherwise forget.
When Sailor Mike was still on this board, we realized we had both lived in Hawaii at the same time and had similar memories of our mutual favorite radio station - KPOI. I don't think I "know" anyone else from my life during those years.
Carole King was one of the terrific group of songwriters in the Brill Building. Maybe they weren't great poets, maybe it wasn't fabulous music, but they were the wonderful tunes that encapsulated my life for years.
"Billie Joe" was a bridge song in my life - the summer of 1967 when I was at the Great Central Park Be-In in NYC, then moved to New Orleans which couldn't have been more different, the Doors and "Light My Fire."
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Post by booklady on Jun 4, 2021 5:11:32 GMT -5
Ode to Billy Joe is one of my "greats" because its unsolvable mystery and haunting musical arrangement are bewitching to me.
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Post by booklady on Jun 4, 2021 5:18:56 GMT -5
From Gail's link: According to Gentry, the song is about "basic indifference, the casualness of people in moments of tragedy".Which "links" me to one of my favorite Auden poems (since we are talking about poets here): Musee des Beaux Arts W. H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. [/i]
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Post by slb2 on Jun 5, 2021 1:21:32 GMT -5
What a piece of art and poem that you matched to it. Delicious
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Post by booklady on Jun 5, 2021 8:18:57 GMT -5
Both the poem and the painting are so true, aren't they? Is "the world" ever truly aware of our personal suffering? I even thought of Skeeter Davis' "The End of the World" while pondering this yesterday.
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Post by booklady on Jun 5, 2021 8:25:20 GMT -5
Here's a Dylan song in the same vein of love, loss, life goes on, and mystery. PLUS the fabulous face of James Garner.
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Post by slb2 on Jun 5, 2021 22:28:07 GMT -5
I hadn't thought of that song End of the World in ages. I think I know it from The Carpenters, though. I sang it often.
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