Centerfield

I'm not a big baseball fan. I played a little bit of little league, but wasn't very good. Dropped out about third grade. My parents weren't big fans, so the fever never got passed on that way either. I know enough to enjoy watching an inning or two on TV, have gone to some minor league games as an adult. I went to a Texas Rangers game one. Saw Bo Jackson hit a home run. Also saw him strike out and break the bat over his knee. I pay enough attention to know when major records fall. I noticed when the Red Sox won the World Series, but I don't follow baseball at all.

All of the said, this song makes me wish I were a baseball fan. It makes me want to play centerfield. It is without doubt the best baseball song ever written. Could anyone else string together a bunch a cliches and make it come out sounding so fresh?

I like this video of little league baseball to go with it, it seems to me that this is what the narrator is singing about.

Sugar Mountain

Neil Young is someone who has grown slowly on me. I now wonder how I missed him all this time. sugar Mountain is a deceptively simply song, but it kinda gets under your skin. I didn't realize how much a liked it until it popped up on Pandora and I got quite happy about it. This the version from Live Rust.

Rhymes and Reasons

This was from John Denver's first solo album, and is one my favorite songs of his. OK, so it's a bit naive, but isn't that what's best about Denver? Several commenters on YouTube have noticed a connection between this song and 9/11, all stemming from the opening lines of the second verse: "Oh the cities start to crumble and the towers start to fall around us / The sun is slowly fading and it's colder than the sea." Although I see the obvious connection, I'm sure I like connecting the rest of the song. I'm not sure it works, and I would have rather left the song unconnected in my head to that day. But, there it is, the connection has been made for me, and I probably won't be able to break it.

Ramblin' Man

If you want Southern Rock, this is the definitive song. This, by the way is the other way to be an Oklahoma redneck. Well, this plus Skynyrd.

Born to Run

What can I say?

It's the Boss.

Blackwaterside

Anne Briggs is one of the most influential unknown artists in the history of folk music. Okay, she's not exactly unknown. She was quite well thought of in her day, and was considered a rising star in the folk world. However, at age of 27, she walked away from it all. She has not recorded or performed since. Her entire recorded output is about 30 songs. It seems that she didn't like recording, or the sound of her recorded voice. But others did. June Tabor is said to have been inspired to take up singing by an Anne Briggs album. She influenced all of the Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior, and others. She has continued to influence singers such as Kate Rusby and Eliza Carthy. I think that she may be the reason that female British folk singers never went down that sterile crystal pure dead end that so many American female singers went down in the 1960s. Here she is sing Blackwaterside.