Liner Notes, or songs don't come easy

It's Tuesday, but still overcast and dark for the drive in this morning. Should clear off and be another sunny day (the forecast was correct for yesterday, so I assume it will be again today). Highs forecast for the low-to-mid sixties. Top up on the way in, should be another top-down drive home; this is the perfect weather for that sort of thing. Some folks laugh when I say that the PNW is the perfect place to own a convertible, given our reputation for rain (actually, we get about the same annual rainfall as NY City) and clouds, but with most of the year mild, a convertible is a fine daily-driver and more days than not can be top down.

I made a coffee stop this morning, and all the tunes that shuffled up to the top were pop format length, so I got a nice long playlist to mull over. Starting off with a little Mexican rap, and then pretty much everything else. Irish, jazz, folk, swing, alternative.

From the Chieftains, a fast-moving jig (Changing Your Demenour, or in the Gaelic: Mo Ghile Mear) on the merits of spending time in Ireland as a cure for what ails you:

Here we are we've come to call 

With pipes and flutes and fiddles and all

In case of death we've even brought a keener

So, if you're glum and feeling down

Just feel like us and act the clown

And soon there'll be a change in your demeanour

Now of all the places I have seen 

from China to the Caribbean, 

Are all across the goat compared to Ireland, 

From Bally Castle to Tralie the Corup to the Liffy 

There's no where else on earth but like this island.

I'm not sure I agree that our little part of the world is "all across the goat compared to Ireland," but I'd gladly swap a week or two there for here to do a little comparative research.

Cockburn rounded out the set this morning with one of his lessor-known songs, Free to Be:

Got no social graces 

Never know my place 

One thing I am sure of 

You can't judge a man by his race 

Birth don't come easy 

Freedom doesn't come cheap 

Rules and worlds get swept away 

While you waste your time in sleep

I love the later lyric, "Can it be so hard to love yourself without thinking someone else holds a lower card?" and, "You can only deal with what's before your face, and the life you're given's no use at all if you burn it up in hate." Very true, but sometimes hard to keep in perspective. Even Cockburn has to acknowledge that when he talks about the lyrics to his song If I Had a Rocket Launcher, which was written in anger after witnessing another military helicopter strike on a civillian village in Central America.

Finally, a couple words about the Sam Baker album, Pretty World. This is a very rough-hewn folk album that is unlike anything else in my collection. A survivor of an 1986 terrorist bomb on a Peruvian train, with a long list of resulting injuries, including Tinnitus and brain damage (affecting his language center), Baker weaves simple but compelling melodies with highly acclaimed narrative lyrics. The result is mesmerizing and also decidedly unpolished. The Web site (link above) details the way his injury affects the way he writes and sings, and how he has to "collect" and "gather" the words he uses.

Playlists like this, and the artists behind these songs, are the reason I do this silly little blog each morning. Mostly.

• Los Hijos del Maiz: José el Azteca 
• Travis: Writing to Reach You 
• The Chieftains: Changing Your Demeanour 
• Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey: The Votes Are Counted 
• Sam Baker: Psychic 
• Mark O'Connor & Jane Monheit: Fascinating Rhythm 
• Bruce Cockburn: Free to Be