From: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org (shindell-list-digest) To: shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: shindell-list-digest V5 #257 Reply-To: shindell-list@smoe.org Sender: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk shindell-list-digest Wednesday, November 19 2003 Volume 05 : Number 257 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves [Tom926@aol.com] [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves [Jens Brokvist ] [RS] Re:lola ["kunigunda" ] [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves [Rongrittz@aol.com] RE: [RS] Re:lola ["Adam Plunkett" ] Re: [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves [ThisWasPompeii@aol.com] Re: [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves [Deb Woodell ] [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves [Rongrittz@aol.com] [RS] 5? [Norman Johnson ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:18:54 EST From: Tom926@aol.com Subject: [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves Favorite Five (usual disclaimers all apply) 1. "The Next Best Western"--The very first song I heard by RS and my friend and I turned to each other after the first chorus and said, "Yes!" It is also one of the most profoundly spiritual songs I've heard that didn't make me want to become an athiest, if only for a sense of balance. Christian music could learn a thing or ninety-two by listening. 2. "Confession"--I may be the only one who loves this song but to me it really nails the 90s. 3. "Reunion Hill"--Stately, gorgeous melody. A fine addition to the tradition. 4. "Fishing"--One of RS's best venal character songs. The best supporting evidence I know that the personal IS political. And vice versa. *Especially* vice versa. 5. "Wisteria"--Sweet without cloying. That is one damn hard trick to pull off. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:46:36 +0200 From: Jens Brokvist Subject: [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves Pick five? Just five? That's madness, I tell ya. Having said that, I'll gladly jump in with the rest of the loonies. In no particular order: Last Fare of the Day - simply gorgeous. Best he's even written. Accept no substitutes. Transit - layer upon layer upon layer. Peel one off, you'll find another below. Reunion Hill - great melody, even better lyrics. Next Best Western - if for nothing else, for the lines "I am wretched, I am tired/but the preacher is on fire" Calling the Moon - better than Dar's version. Which says a lot. Cheers, ~Jens ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:22:14 -0600 From: "kunigunda" Subject: [RS] Re:lola It looks like he wrote it ....from the reviews of the cd. http://www.firstmusicreview.com/Train_Home_B0000A0DWG.html http://www.hvmusic.com/article/alexander/smithers/index2.shtml carrie in kc > >Another thing-- While surfing WRSI's playlist, I saw that Chris Smither > >has a song called "lola". Is this the Kinks song or something original? > >Has anyone here heard it? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 09:07:25 -0500 From: Rongrittz@aol.com Subject: [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves OK, I usually don't jump on the "Top Whatever" bandwagon, but here goes: 1. "Last Fare of the Day": I keep trying to convince myself that this isn't my favorite Richard song of all time just because it's new, but it simply keeps rising to the top. I've participated in the Amsterdam Avenue ballet many times, and Richard simply nails it. Finding the flow. Minding the sway. Catching green lights all the way. And the St. Luke's verse may be the best thing he's ever written: And there they are outside St. Luke's With their flowers and balloons All amazement at the baby in her arms As Amsterdam makes us a place I ask about her name And we all laugh when he says "Hope" and she says "Grace" 2. "The Courier": I think this song is the most perfect statement of exactly who Richard is. 3. "Reunion Hill": Not the Royal Canadian Marching Band studio version, which I think suffers from waaaay too many instruments, but rather the slow, quiet, acoustic version. And not just ANY slow, quiet, acoustic version, but rather the one that he did at The Knitting Factory this past spring, with Tracy Grammer accompanying him on violin. I think even Richard has said that it was the finest rendition of that song ever done. 4. "Wisteria": Brilliant. Emotionally devastating. Has always reminded me of the first verse of Jackson Browne's "Looking into You." Well I looked into a house I once lived in Around the time I first went on my own When the roads were as many as the place I had dreamed of And my friends and I were one Now the distance is done, and the search has begun I've come to see where my beginnings have gone "Wisteria" is about going back to see where your beginnings have gone, and finding that your beginnings are no longer there. I particularly love the "But I know that it's not my place" line . . . as in the fact that it's not his place to tell the owners that they shouldn't have cut down the Wisteria, but also that the house is no longer "his place." 5. "Transit": A unique and wonderfully meandering story, brilliant rhyme scheme, perfectly choreographed. I can't think of anyone who could have written anything like this. And the fact that I live somewhere near Paterson doesn't hurt. RG ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 10:46:45 -0500 From: "Adam Plunkett" Subject: RE: [RS] Re:lola I have Chris Smither's new album, which is called "Train Home". This song is a Smither orginal. It's a love song about a past love who was a bit...different. Good song, good album. Chris Smither is one of my favorite songwriters, along with Richard. His live album features so many well written songs. Adam > [Original Message] > From: kunigunda > To: > Date: 11/19/2003 8:22:20 AM > Subject: [RS] Re:lola > > It looks like he wrote it ....from the reviews of the cd. > http://www.firstmusicreview.com/Train_Home_B0000A0DWG.html > http://www.hvmusic.com/article/alexander/smithers/index2.shtml > carrie in kc > > > > >Another thing-- While surfing WRSI's playlist, I saw that Chris Smither > > >has a song called "lola". Is this the Kinks song or something original? > > >Has anyone here heard it? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 11:00:13 EST From: ThisWasPompeii@aol.com Subject: Re: [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves Since I haven't heard the new songs, I'll choose just two. "Fishing" shows up on almost everyone's list, and I believe it deserves the honor. This song is as good as anything on "Sparrows Point," an album that blew me away (as is often the case with debut albums, which usually feature the best work of five or ten years; the songwriter doesn't know if there will be a second album). Marcel Duchamp said that artists create only one or perhaps two masterpieces in a lifetime of work, but since we have the star system in the art world, every little scribble Picasso did is called a masterpiece. From the artist's point of view, he has to keep working because he doesn't know which work it will be. In my opinion "Fishing" will outlive Richard. My husband used to say Alan Ladd was born to play Shane. Richard was born to write "Fishing." "You Stay Here" I won't say "Courier" is necessarily in the top five, but I've always felt drawn to it. I wonder if it's Richard's version of "The Guardian Angel." Poet Stephen Dunn has said "The Guardian Angel" was about the poet in America. Poem: "The Guardian Angel," from New and Selected Poems by Stephen Dunn (W.W. Norton). The Guardian Angel Afloat between lives and stale truths, he realizes he's never truly protected one soul, they all die anyway, and what good is solace, solace is cheap. The signs are clear: the drooping wings, the shameless thinking about utility and self. It's time to stop. The guardian angel lives for a month with other angels, sings the angelic songs, is reminded that he doesn't have a human choice. The angel of love lies down with him, and loving restores him his pure heart. Yet how hard it is to descend into sadness once more. When the poor are evicted, he stands between them and the bank, but the bank sees nothing in it's way. When the meek are overpowered he's there, the thin air through which they fall. Without effect he keeps getting in the way of insults. He keeps wrapping his wings around those in the cold. Even his lamentations are unheard, though now, in for the long haul, trying to live beyond despair, he believes, he needs to believe everything he does takes root, hums beneath the surfaces of the world. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 08:37:23 -0800 (PST) From: Deb Woodell Subject: Re: [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves It's really tough to come up with five that haven't been mentioned already, so it is probably futile to try. Here are my faves (today): 1. Reunion Hill (right time, right mood, I still get teary-eyed) 2. Transit (great snippet of life, love to see a movie about Sister Maria) 3. Merritt Parkway (someone's gotta stick up for this little gem!) 4. Spring (because I'm one of those hopeful types who plant bulbs and wait for the show) 5. Are You Happy Now? (maybe the first I heard by RS) Deb ===== This I have learned: Because we can, we must try to change the world -- fully, wisely, restlessly. -- Rudy Nemser == Life is such a changing art. -- Dar Williams == __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 11:49:39 -0500 From: Rongrittz@aol.com Subject: [RS] Re: Five Fave Raves By the way, Richard says that "There Goes Mavis" is his favorite of the new crop of songs. RG ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 13:39:04 -0500 From: Norman Johnson Subject: [RS] 5? These are my top 5 at the moment Nora-- I don't really know what it is about the song but I am obsessed with it. Perhaps it is the haunting melody, the obscure references to Abelard and Heloise (No, I did not know about them before hearing the song), the multiple possible interpretations of the song, the line "drowing his vows at the bar", the picture of the two men -- well, one of my versions is that the narrator is a woman, so it could be the man and the woman-- hunched on their barstools drinking toasts to the unseen Nora, and the lines "So Christmas was as blue for you as it was for me/ All those angels trumpeting their ecstacy"-- I could go on but there are other songs. Fishing- what a wonder character study-- another one of Richard's songs that could be expanded into a movie or play. "God rewards us for letting the small ones go/ Well, maybe but I don't know", I still say Dylan McDermont (sp?) should play the INS agent. Reunion Hill - I love how this song unfolds, with each verse telling us something more. Mary Magdalen- Just a wonderfully sweet love song. Next Best Western -- If only for the verse- " Did he who made the lamb/ Put the tremble in the hand/ That reaches out to take my quarter/ I look him in the eye/ But there isn't any time/ Just time enough to pass the tender/...." Honorable mentions- The Courier, Sparrows Point, You Again, Tune for Nowhere, I Saw My Youth, Confession, You Stay Here, Transit, and I'm sure I missed one or two or ten. Norman ------------------------------ End of shindell-list-digest V5 #257 ***********************************