From: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org (shindell-list-digest) To: shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: shindell-list-digest V7 #159 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 Tuesday, July 5 2005 Volume 07 : Number 159 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [RS] RE: Great Songwriting [Jamie Younghans / John McDonnell ] [RS] Sparrows Point ["Norman Johnson" ] Re: [RS] RE: Great Songwriting [Lisa Davis - home ] [RS] Great Songwriting [Rongrittz@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 09:04:55 -0400 From: Jamie Younghans / John McDonnell Subject: [RS] RE: Great Songwriting Hi all, As a recent RS devotee, I'm interested in the qualities more "experienced" fans find in the recent works which show progress in his work. I have only seen RS once (and got yelled at!) and have only the CDs to go on, but I find some of the earlier work as good as songwriting gets. Don't get me wrong, I love "Vuelta," but I'd like to know if you have found qualities in this later work that were not present earlier. As I read that last sentence it sounds somewhat confrontational--I don't mean it that way--I genuinely would like to know, because I find all his work so rich that I'm always interested in new perspective on his songs. I can't even really explain why some are my favorites, and why those favorites often change, but I feel certain it's because they yield so many layers of meaning and emotion that they constantly evolve--at least to my ear. For example, I love "Arrowhead," and I can't fully articulate why. It was initially the melody (great singalongability), then, thanks to RG, I could play along with the CD, and then it became a recognition of RS' storytelling ability--who else could capture the Civil War and the sense of its loss through the eyes of a mascot? Phenomenal. Also true of "Fishing"--who else could write the subtle menace of a xenophobic civil servant so well? Still others have sneaked up on me--I liked "Sparrow's Point" in kind of classic, right-in-the-canon-folk-song kind of way, but then got hooked on the great images: "we laughed when nothing was funny"--the best description of short-lived prosperity I've heard, and it eviscerates the sentimentality I find common in a lot of folk songs which are retrospective. AYHN is still my favorite of all. Sorry for rambling. John McD. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 18:57:08 -0400 From: Adam Plunkett Subject: Re: [RS] RE: Great Songwriting While I think 'Vuelta" is his best album, I think he wrote songs on his first two albums that will always be high on my list of favorites. "Sparrow's Point" is a perfect song. "Fishing", "Summer Wind", "Arrowhead" are all unbelievable every time I hear them. I always thought his past albums, though, had tracks that were lesser quality. "Vuelta" I can listen to beginning to end with ease! I will be seeing Richard at the Great Waters Music Festival...I will be sure to report. On Jul 5, 2005, at 9:04 AM, Jamie Younghans / John McDonnell wrote: > Hi all, > > As a recent RS devotee, I'm interested in the qualities more > "experienced" > fans find in the recent works which show progress in his work. I have > only > seen RS once (and got yelled at!) and have only the CDs to go on, but > I find > some of the earlier work as good as songwriting gets. Don't get me > wrong, I > love "Vuelta," but I'd like to know if you have found qualities in this > later work that were not present earlier. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 19:45:33 -0400 From: "Norman Johnson" Subject: [RS] Sparrows Point Adam wrote: >> While I think 'Vuelta" is his best album, I think he wrote songs on his first two albums that will always be high on my list of favorites. << I'm not convinced that Vuelta is his best album. In fact, I would argue that Sparrows Point is-- at least in terms of writing. Nora is my favorite off of SP, but I could go on and on about other songs on that album: the title track (what a spellbinding dirge, with brilliant imagery), Courier (the intensity!), You Again (simple yet profound). Even Are You Happy Now, while overplayed, is a work of genius. Norman ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 20:15:16 -0400 From: Lisa Davis - home Subject: Re: [RS] RE: Great Songwriting >Don't get me wrong, I love "Vuelta," but I'd like to know if you have found qualities in this later work that were not present earlier. I'm one of those who actually prefers the earlier work, so maybe I"m approaching your question backwards! I still feel Sparrow's Point is practically perfect. With the others, I have a few issues with production (I am one of those who is likely to say almost anything is somewhat overproduced and country-ified, but I guess that's just me) but otherwise, there is always something that blows me away. For Vuelta, Che Guevara T-Shirt blows me away and Last Fare gets me thinking but overall, I've liked it less. Even as a lovesong I'd take "You Again" over Cancion Sencilla - at least we know they were written for the same person! NObody mentions "Trouble" which I thought was exquisite. Back to Vuelta -- Actually I think Che Guevara T-shirt is classic Shindell, it has the story, the identification with the narrator so that you see through the narrator's eyes in every way, including visually, it has the beautiful writing, the cleverness and "punchline" irony.. And also what is now becoming the hint of angry political thought (but just a hint, I always appreciated how Richard could take a topic like a war nd approach it so obliquely that you could barely tell which "side" he was on! Not that I'm in any way against "issue" songwriting or activism, far from it, I just find those songs more temporal...) Anyway, the difference to me is that the earlier stuff was more densely written, more poetic, more of an emphasis on the sheer sound of words and the music they make, than on storytelling alone. It's a stylistic issue. Some of us like to have to chew over a song and parse it and stroke each word, others like the words to be transparent. Most of the American so-called "folk" music I hear favors the latter approach. I think of it as closer to prose. Richard may now be leaning to a more self-effacing, universal style of writing, sort of Hemingway rather than James Joyce, which I can appreciate ideologically, I just don't enjoy it QUITE as much. I was thinking about how this works with Transit. The images there are poetic, the angry red sun, the prism -- but the words themselves, as sounds, are perhaps less musical. Here is where it would be really neat if Richard could chime in, because although when it comes to "what does it mean" and so forth he would seem to be a believer in lettin the song and the listener interact, when it comes to "theories of songwriting" that is something an artist can discuss. He does so on those radio interviews, from time to time! The quality I've found in most of Richard's songs is "hypnotic." What is your word of choice? Discuss! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 23:34:52 EDT From: Rongrittz@aol.com Subject: [RS] Great Songwriting Interesting stuff. I wasn't a huge fan of "Vuelta" when it first came out, primarily because I'd heard most of the songs done much better (or, more accurately, better arranged-- in my opinion) in live settings many times . . . particularly "Whippoorwill" and "Last Fare." But over the many months, the CD has really grown on me, and it's now my third favorite RS album, after "Sparrows Point" and "Somewhere Near Paterson." I believe that the two songs I mentioned above -- plus "Che Guevara T-Shirt" - -- are three of Richard's top seven or eight songs of all time. To John's point, though, I'm not sure if the songwriting has actually gotten better. Different, perhaps. Not because he's incapable of having improved, but simply because the bar was set so high from the very beginning. I mean, some of my other all time favorite Shindell songs -- "Courier," "By Now" and the brilliant "Sparrows-No-Apostrophe-Point" -- are from his very first CD. I'd even be hard pressed to say that the "Vuelta" songs have a, well, "maturity" that's not present earlier . . . although I reckon that several of the "Vuelta" songs would seem out of place on "SP." Dunno. I do agree with Lisa, though, that the earlier songs were more poetic, denser . . . maybe more akin to comparing the early poetry of Paul Simon to his later solo work like "Graceland." To me, the qualities that have differentiated one RS release from the next has been in production value. It's interesting to me that I love what Larry Campbell brought to "SNP," yet was relatively disappointed with what he brought to "Reunion Hill," my least favorite RS release, specifically because of two things: "Smiling" (easily my least favorite Richard song), and the incredibly over-the-top production on "Reunion Hill." In fact, I'll bet you dollars to donuts that even Richard agrees with me, and that's why he made the specific effort to re-record the song in the studio for the live record . . . acoustically . . .the way it SHOULD have appeared on the "RH" record. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it. But the thing that make me love Richard -- and the thing that allows me to listen to him over and over and over -- is the depth of the songs, and how they're (for the most part) NOT about Richard. With many of his contemporaries - -- Dar and Lucy obviously come to mind immediately -- they always seem to sing about, well, perhaps Glenn McDonald* said it best in his review of "Reunion Hill" in his excellent "War Against Silence" column: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ As pleasant as Reunion Hill is to listen to, however, Richard Shindell and Dar Williams are, in my opinion, folk music's two best storytellers, and so Richard's place in my heart, like Dar's, is as much a result of the stories he tells as how he tells them. Their storytelling styles are very different. Where Dar's songs always, to me, have Dar somewhere in them, even when the singer isn't explicitly a character, or is a character that couldn't be Dar herself, Richard's songs always seem to be about other characters, even when they're told in the first person. Like Raymond Carver, Shindell mostly lets his characters tell their own stories, so where Dar's songs explain and reveal and advocate, Richard's mostly just depict. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ I love the characters, and can listen to their stories repeatedly the same way I can read a good book or see a good movie multiple times. The Civil War widow. The agent in "Fishing." The stowaway. The guy on death row. The cabbie. Eliza. William Taylor. Mary Magdelane. OK, now I'm the one that's rambling. I guess, though, the thing that makes Richard special to me is that the depth of his songs -- like no one else's except perhaps Dave Carter's -- allows us to have discussions like these. Sure can't think of anyone else who does that to me. Looking forward to hearing from the rest of y'all. RG *http://www.furia.com/twas/twas0135.html#entry2 ------------------------------ End of shindell-list-digest V7 #159 ***********************************