From: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org (shindell-list-digest) To: shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: shindell-list-digest V12 #339 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, February 5 2013 Volume 12 : Number 339 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [RS] Much Madness, Round One. [Shelda Eggers ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2013 18:06:40 -0600 From: Shelda Eggers Subject: Re: [RS] Much Madness, Round One. Okay, it took me awhile, but once you start listening to make sure you have picked the right song, and follow all the currents that come up, listening some more, it could take some time. 1. You Stay Here Still amazes me how much anguish and despair are packed into the rather spare images of this song. For me, the love is the very bedrock of the narrative, and hardly needs to be stated explicitly. Love they have, the other necessities of life, not so much. Mariana's Table is fine, and evocative in its own way, but no real competition. 2. A Tune For Nowhere Like them both, but all the lyrical repetitions in Nowhere do it for me. 3. Wisteria No contest, although Abuelita is also a favorite, and would make the cut paired with many of the other contendors in this round. Both heartbreaking, but Wisteria is right up near the very top for me. I still remember the first time I heard it, and how gobsmacked I was. I played nothing else for days (love that repeat-one function), and it has never lost its power. Probably also has to do with a good friend who's been taming a stand of wisteria for years. So the specifics resonate for me as well as the general nostagia. 4. Last Fare Of The Day Another slam dunk. Although Get Up Clara is sly and witty and tons of fun (and I also love the Visigoths line). Some of my very favorite RS songs are about drivers of one kind or another (cab drivers, truckers, etc.), and/or roads, and I love what he does with a very specific point in time that gets incorporated into the day-to-day realities of the driver's days/nights. There's something very moving in the rhythms of the road echoing the rhythms of the city. And I love those descriptive lines that run through it: (I know it well, this old ballet/Finding the flow, minding the sway/Catching green lights all the way). 5. Ascent Another obvious one for me. Ascent is so powerful. Not that I don't like TV Light. 6. Balloon Man Mmm... Easy Street is nice too though. Not sure I would say Richard ever wrote a bad song :) I hadn't heard that last verse of Balloon Man that was posted, and it's a really lovely addition. 7. Fenario Love the flow of this one, and the Donne lines. Richard tells a great story about how he ended up with that ending on the Kalamazoo Public Library concert videos on youtube. 8. By Now Without doubt. Amazing song. It creeps me out on so many levels! 9. I Saw My Youth Today Like the lyrics better, and the guitar is superb. 10. Parasol Ants By a nose. Not a huge fan of either. I wish I could stick one of the other songs in here, or teven wo of them :) The catchy happy rhythm of Parasol Ants edges it over for me. 11. State of the Union Had to listen to both of these repeatedly to make a decision: it wasn't at all clear at first pondering. Disjointed thoughts: *love* the title of One Man's Arkansas, love the guitar rifts as well, so spare and beautiful; it's fairly hard to write a song that says anything new about addiction, and State of the Union manages it, or at least sets it nicely into a larger context. In that way SotU reminds me a bit of Springsteen's incredible "Highway Patrolman" though there the context is family. And I do love the line about the president's smile! So State gets it for me. 12. On A Sea Of Fleur-De-Lis Another slam dunk. Hazel's House is a lovely song, really sweet, heartfelt, all that. But somehow I realize I don't come to Richard for sweet, which probably says more about me than about Richard. Come to think of it, though, has *anyone* picked Hazel's House? And besides, for all its opacity and ambiguity, OASOFDL is a tour-de-force. 13. So Says The Whipporwill Oh, well, damn. This is just *painful!* Mary Magdalen was my entree song into Richard's work, and I've never lost my delight in it. I think he's brave for keeping it going at this political moment. It's sly, it's funny, I love so many of the lines, and the flip of "Jesus Loves Me." That said, I was so delighted when Ron initially said he would include it with several others that would automatically go into the end round. It belongs there, I believe, it's so absolutely quintessential Richard. But... but... So Says the Whipporwill is just incandescent, and another of the songs that ended up on my repeat cycle when it first came out. And the Dave Carter tribute verse just makes me shiver (Yodel-ay-hee-hoo, yodel-ay-hee-hoo/He sang right up until/He caught sight of the open blue/And became a whippoorwill). So, reluctantly, since I *have* to choose, So Says The Whipporwill. Thanks! It's been fun reading responses and responding myself. Shelda ------------------------------ End of shindell-list-digest V12 #339 ************************************