A denim-latte-favorite-song kind of day, or poetry is like travel

It's Friday.  Friday may be the popular dude, but today he just feels tired.  Or, more likely, it's just me that feels tired and Friday is the same dude he always is.  Definitely a denim day; tennis shoes and a fleece-lined sweatshirt also sound just about right.  I stopped for a coffee on my way in and waited through a long line of other folks treating themselves to a cup of joe (or joe-fancy).  It gave me time to repeat a favorite Neil Young tune a couple of times while I waited.  This is a denim-latte-favorite-song kind of day, if that makes sense.  It does to me, at any rate.

I really like music.  Probably obvious, given the essential theme of this daily brain-fart-of-a-blog about my daily commute music shuffle.  I like good music, good instrumental mastery, the craft of constructing melody, harmony, and arrangement, the poetry of well written lyrics, and that special sauce that makes one musician different from the common-commodity-pablum-of-the-day of the audio airwaves.  I also really like poetry, for it's power to evoke empathy and to take me outside of my own experiences and into another's perspective.  Poetry is like travel that way.  Mostly, though, I love the two (music and poetry) combined.

The thing about poetic song lyrics is that they combine the best of two mediums, each capable of evoking strong responses on their own.  When the two elements are perfectly combined the effect can be nothing short of magical and mesmerizing. Not all poems set to music carry this power of evocation, but you know it when lyric, melody, and rhythm combine in that just-right way.  Two of this morning's songs register that way for me.

The first is Neil Young's Four Strong Winds, an Ian Tyson song Neil says listened to over and over on a cafe juke box when he first left home and which he later recorded himself back in 1978 in what, for me at least, is the quintessential recording of this perfect song.  When this tune pops up I almost always repeat it a few times before I'm willing to move on.

Four strong winds that blow lonely, Seven seas that run high,
All these things that don't change, Come what may.
But our good times are all gone,
And I'm bound for moving on.

I'll look for you if I'm ever back this way. 

The lyrics themselves, while good, are not masterful poetry.  However, set to this particular melody, they combine to evoke a strong feeling of time and place and melancholy.  A song about seasons of relationship and those things which can be changed and those which cannot. Also, a tune that it is impossible to not try and sing harmony on.

The second song is from the Guggenheim Grotto, Rosanna (a nice acoustic live recording can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgz2kUk3n-w). This, too, is a melancholy tune with that perfect match of lyric and melody.  In this case the lyrics are more poetic:

Wash your face Rosanna 

Tonight we'll go out on this town 

Give them dogs a bone and put them down 

Shine your shoes Rosanna 

Tonight we're walking on those tiles 

Give them cats a class in feline style 

Have a drink Rosanna 

Pour it straight and knock it down 

Pull the rug of being up from the ground 

Take a seat Rosanna 

Soak your sight and suck the sound 

Skip the last train home go underground 

Have a heart Rosanna 

Clubs for fools and spades for clowns 

Diamonds only serve to fill your crown 

See me in Rosanna 

Here's a boy in shining steel 

Fighting for a part of something real

This, too, is a song I am likely to repeat a time or two before moving on.

All in all, a very good playlist this morning.  Good stuff, as they say.  The full list:

 - Sigur Rós: Avalon

 - Don McLean:  And I love you so

 - Neil Young: Four Strong Winds

 - The Guggenheim Grotto: Rosanna

-Posted via iPad