If there ever was a "standard" folk song, this is it. Also known as "Will Ye Go Lassie, Go", it is widely sung by Scottish, English, Irish and American singers. My favorite version is by the Battlefield Band, which, sadly, I could not find. Despite that I found an embarrassment of riches, having found versions by the The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem , Sandy Denny, Dick Gaughan, Kate Rusby, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Long John Baldry, Don Williams, The Silencers, and the High Kings, amongst others.
I have gone with The Corries here, in art because when all is said and done, this is a Scottish song. The Corries were one of the prominent acts in the Scottish Folk Revival.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Radar Love
What the hell exactly is Radar Love? Whatever it is, this is the song most likely to get me a speeding ticket.
There is another interpretation of Radar Love that my brother, who used to be Air Defense Artillery, might like. Explosions are fun.
There is another interpretation of Radar Love that my brother, who used to be Air Defense Artillery, might like. Explosions are fun.
Friday, June 6, 2008
G.I. Jive, D-Day Dodgers
Today is the anniversary of the Normandy invasions. Rather than put up something predictably patriotic, I thought I would put up a piece that the boys listened to in '44. Sorry Mike, it's more swing. One of the popular tunes of the day was the G.I. Jive in a version performed by Louis Jordan. I couldn't find that version, so here's one by Johnny Mercer.
Lest we forget, there was another European front in WW II, in Italy which had been active since 1943. Many of those troops, especially the British, felt that the Italian front was ignored by the public after the Normandy landings. "The D-Day Dodgers", set to the tune of Lili Marlene was their theme song. The Italian campaign was fiercely fought, and this song is bitterly ironic in a way that Gen-X, the ironic generation, can never hope to approach.
Lest we forget, there was another European front in WW II, in Italy which had been active since 1943. Many of those troops, especially the British, felt that the Italian front was ignored by the public after the Normandy landings. "The D-Day Dodgers", set to the tune of Lili Marlene was their theme song. The Italian campaign was fiercely fought, and this song is bitterly ironic in a way that Gen-X, the ironic generation, can never hope to approach.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Sing, Sing, Sing
This song defines Swing Music. All else is commentary. Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Harry James. Does it get any better?
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Witnesses' Waltz
OK, this is not a great song, nor is the singer particularly good. I like the song anyway. It makes a bit of a subversive point, though. How, popular is the space program? One way of judging it by counting the number of people who come "to watch the spaceships take off and land"
This reminds of an incident from high school. Early in the space shuttle's history they always landed in California and took off in Florida. That meant that is had to be transported across country every time it flew. Not surprisingly, the modified jumbo jet that was used to transport it couldn't make it all the across the country without landing to refuel. Something about having a another vehicle strapped to its back decreased the fuel efficiency. NASA found an impressive variety of excuses to land the shuttle in a wide variety of mid-country airports. My senior year they landed at the Tulsa airport. Several of my space-minded friends and I made a mad dash across town after the school let out to see the thing come in and that taxi over to the spot where it was going to spend the night. We weren't the only ones. Hundreds of people showed up for the privilege of staring through a chain-link fence at the spacecraft strapped to the back of plane a hundred yards away. One of the coolest things I did when I was in school.
The song is by Leslie Fish, who is one of the greatest Filk song writers around. He is also responsible for many of the "Kiples" popular in the SCA, particularly "The Song of the Picts".
This reminds of an incident from high school. Early in the space shuttle's history they always landed in California and took off in Florida. That meant that is had to be transported across country every time it flew. Not surprisingly, the modified jumbo jet that was used to transport it couldn't make it all the across the country without landing to refuel. Something about having a another vehicle strapped to its back decreased the fuel efficiency. NASA found an impressive variety of excuses to land the shuttle in a wide variety of mid-country airports. My senior year they landed at the Tulsa airport. Several of my space-minded friends and I made a mad dash across town after the school let out to see the thing come in and that taxi over to the spot where it was going to spend the night. We weren't the only ones. Hundreds of people showed up for the privilege of staring through a chain-link fence at the spacecraft strapped to the back of plane a hundred yards away. One of the coolest things I did when I was in school.
The song is by Leslie Fish, who is one of the greatest Filk song writers around. He is also responsible for many of the "Kiples" popular in the SCA, particularly "The Song of the Picts".
Monday, June 2, 2008
Bo Diddley
I had something else in mind for today, but when one of the founders of Rock and Roll passes, I have to take note.
Bo Diddley (1928 - 2008), RIP
Bo Diddley (1928 - 2008), RIP
Sunday, June 1, 2008
The Battle of Evermore
UPDATE: I've changed the video
"The Battle of Evermore" has always been my favorite Led Zeppelin tune, has been since high school. In a nice bit of synchronicity a decade later I became interested in Celtic music and discovered the Fairport Convention/Steeleye Span school of folk rock. I became a big fan of Sandy Denny. A bit later I realized that the female voice on "The Battle of Evermore" was Sandy Denny. Sandy, is sadly no longer with us, but I was thinking about the current Robert Plant/Alison Krauss tour, and realized that Alison's voice would be quite good in "The Battle". It turns out that I am not the only that thinks so.
A lot has been made about the Tolkien references in Led Zeppelin. There are many videos combining footage from the LotR movies with this song. The Battle of Pellanor Fields is quite popular. There are websites that try to interpret Zeppelin songs as restatements of the story line of Lord of the Rings. These interpretations all seem forced to me. I think that Page and Plant used Tolkien as one of many sources for imagery, but that they were not explicitly writing songs about any particular mythos. The ring wraiths in black in the song are balanced by the non-Tolkienian Angels of Avalon. Everyone in the song is waiting for the Eastern Glow, that is the Dawn. In Tolkien the Eastern Glow was the fire of Mordor and something to feared or endured, not awaited. In the books when the glow of the sun did arrive it came from the West as the sun set below the darkness, or from the South, when the wind from the sea blew away the mirk of Mordor. (One of the few times in the LotR when you could claim that the Valar took an active role). These are brilliant songs, and they use the imagery created by Tolkien very well, much in the same way that earlier poets used the imagery of Classical mythology to paint images. An English band using the imagery from the Lord of the Rings to weave together songs comes close to to what Tolkien was aiming at when he wrote the Lord of the Rings, which was to create a English mythology.
"The Battle of Evermore" has always been my favorite Led Zeppelin tune, has been since high school. In a nice bit of synchronicity a decade later I became interested in Celtic music and discovered the Fairport Convention/Steeleye Span school of folk rock. I became a big fan of Sandy Denny. A bit later I realized that the female voice on "The Battle of Evermore" was Sandy Denny. Sandy, is sadly no longer with us, but I was thinking about the current Robert Plant/Alison Krauss tour, and realized that Alison's voice would be quite good in "The Battle". It turns out that I am not the only that thinks so.
A lot has been made about the Tolkien references in Led Zeppelin. There are many videos combining footage from the LotR movies with this song. The Battle of Pellanor Fields is quite popular. There are websites that try to interpret Zeppelin songs as restatements of the story line of Lord of the Rings. These interpretations all seem forced to me. I think that Page and Plant used Tolkien as one of many sources for imagery, but that they were not explicitly writing songs about any particular mythos. The ring wraiths in black in the song are balanced by the non-Tolkienian Angels of Avalon. Everyone in the song is waiting for the Eastern Glow, that is the Dawn. In Tolkien the Eastern Glow was the fire of Mordor and something to feared or endured, not awaited. In the books when the glow of the sun did arrive it came from the West as the sun set below the darkness, or from the South, when the wind from the sea blew away the mirk of Mordor. (One of the few times in the LotR when you could claim that the Valar took an active role). These are brilliant songs, and they use the imagery created by Tolkien very well, much in the same way that earlier poets used the imagery of Classical mythology to paint images. An English band using the imagery from the Lord of the Rings to weave together songs comes close to to what Tolkien was aiming at when he wrote the Lord of the Rings, which was to create a English mythology.
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