From: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org (shindell-list-digest) To: shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: shindell-list-digest V9 #87 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 Monday, May 14 2007 Volume 09 : Number 087 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [RS] Mercy St./connections [Em ] [RS] shindell [] [RS] sittin' [Em ] Re: [RS] shindell ["Vanessa Wills" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 04:17:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Em Subject: [RS] Mercy St./connections Jim wrote: > I love that comparison; I wouldn't have thought of it, but I can > certainly see it. > > First version of Mercy Street I ever heard was by Iain Matthews, on a > CD (Pure > and Crooked; wonderful disc for its time if you stumble across it) > which > followed Iain doing an entire disc of Jules Shear songs. wow! that's great..I feel like a connection was made, even though Jules, in fact, didn't write "Mercy St". Em ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 07:37:45 -0500 (CDT) From: Subject: [RS] shindell My congrats to anyone whose musical taste is diverse enough to be able to enjoy the music of both Richard Schindell and Peter Gabriel. Totally different genres. It helps to be old enough to have been around since Gabriel's early days such as RS and myself. I didn't hear the show (yet), but I understand RS mentioned during his recent WFUV interview that he was quite a Peter Gabriel fan at one point. Tim > >> Mercy Street: >> ALso If I'd had to guess from scratch who wrote that song, I'd have >> said Jules Shear. > >I love that comparison; I wouldn't have thought of it, but I can certainly see it. > >First version of Mercy Street I ever heard was by Iain Matthews, on a CD (Pure >and Crooked; wonderful disc for its time if you stumble across it) which >followed Iain doing an entire disc of Jules Shear songs. Iain's manager at the >time? > >Charlie Hunter. > >Hmm... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 09:07:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Em Subject: [RS] sittin' realized what Richard's version reminds me of...reminds me of some early John Renbourn deliveries of bluesy stuff. Real quiet, kind of. But tasty! Em ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 13:14:40 -0400 From: "Vanessa Wills" Subject: Re: [RS] shindell I'm finding the comments inspired by Richard's cover of "Mercy Street" to be so interesting. As I think I mentioned once before, Mercy Street is one of my very favorite songs, and has been since I was a teenager. I vividly recall laying in bed before sleep came, with this song on repeat, spinning away in my stereo. (Funny how quaint *compact discs* seem, anymore! I buy them mostly for sentimental reasons these days, or for when I am feeling especially picky in my audiophilia, and listen to most things either on my MP3 player or on my computer using Rhapsody. But I digress.) Anyway, not only do I enjoy the music of both Richard and Peter, but they are both in my top five of singer-songwriters, which is why I regard it as something of a gift from heaven that Richard should cover one of Peter's songs. All I need now is for Peter to return the favor, and I'm set. I actually don't think of the two artists as being so radically dissimilar. It's certainly true that Peter's pop sensibilities distance him stylistically from most of Richard's published work to date, but they do have in common a progression from music located firmly within a particular regional vernacular, to an acquired facility with rhythms and instruments from other cultures. "Sparrows Point" is very "contemporary American folk music," but that would be a peculiar thing to say about "Vuelta." Likewise, Peter's earliest songs simply could not have been more English (and if you don't believe me, that's probably because you've never heard the album "From Genesis to Revelation"), but then there is his more recent work with artists like Yussou N'Dour, and especially Peter's establishment of the Real World music label. A more interesting difference is that over the past eighteen years or so, Peter's work has taken on a definite confessional bent, and it's a much rarer thing for Richard to write in a confessional style. However, they both manage to get at something startlingly universal in their songwriting. Richard shows us that the Argentine grandmother seeking her son's lost child is not so different from you. Peter, on the other hand, tends to force us to recall that the most off-putting parts of anyone's psyche should strike us as familiar, as we're really all driven by the same basic impulses. I see them both as being preoccupied with the question of what it means, in the end, to be human. Sometimes, that inquiry into what it means to be human, moral creatures, doesn't even turn out so different, as when Richard writes that "there is no sin," and Peter writes, "with no guilt and no shame, no sorrow or blame,/ whatever it is, we are all the same." They both also have a history of writing intricate story-songs that reveal entire worlds, although Peter has certainly taken something of a more fanciful approach to this, at times. Anyway, as for Mercy Street. I'm surprised this hasn't come up yet, but Peter wrote the song for a poet named Anne Sexton, and the song is inspired partly by Sexton's poem, "45 Mercy Street," in which she recounts a dream wherein she searches vainly for the street sign marking "Mercy Street," only to conclude that the sign is now "unfindable for an entire lifetime," as is her home at 45 Mercy Street, and all the familiar personal relationships that were a part of home. (that poem can be read here: http://plagiarist.com/poetry/546/) Sexton wrote an entire book of poetry with the same title, as well as a play called "Mercy Street." Sexton battled clinical depression for years before committing suicide, and wrote as a form of therapy to grapple with her condition. What strikes me most about Richard's cover of the song is that the voice of the narrator feels much more removed from the dream or the emotions of the subject, Anne, than is the case on the original. For me, this comes out most of all in the lines, "Dreaming of the tenderness,/ The tremble in the hips,/ Of kissing Mary's lips." In Peter's vocals, you can hear the sensual shudder in his own voice, whereas Richard seems to interpret it in a way that is more mediate. More generally, Peter sings in hushed, whispered tones, where Richard's vocals are far more robust and "big." To me, it's such an unexpected way of interpreting it, because I never thought of the things that are said in the song as the sorts of things that were to be said "out loud," as it were. Richard's approach to the song feels less intimate and secret to me, which is interesting, especially given the subject matter. The arrangement as a whole gives a more mediate feel, as well--on the original, there is a baritone harmony throughout most of the song, up until the last few lines, and there is also a constant primal, biological-sounding drumbeat, giving the song as a whole a more echoey, immediate, dreamlike quality. Lucy's harmonies (which are beautiful, by the way) feel more like something added to the song to compliment it (which they do, and nicely), whereas the harmonies on the original seem to seep up unbidden from the deep. Anyway, I'm really enjoying listening to Richard's cover because it's making me take a whole new perspective on the dream and the experience recounted in the song. I haven't heard the WFUV interview, yet. That's so interesting that Richard was once "quite a Peter Gabriel fan." I'm somewhat obsessed and have been for years, although shamefully I have to admit that I haven't seen him live. However, I have seen the greatest Peter Gabriel-era Genesis tribute band, and quite possibly the greatest tribute band ever *period*, The Musical Box, three times, so that's gotta count for something. ;) If you are a Genesis fan, and you've seen them, then you know what I am talking about--they have a spooky attention to detail. Most notably, the frontman stays perfectly in character as "Peter Gabriel" throughout the entire duration of the show, as do "Tony Banks," "Michael Rutherford," and "Phil Collins." I would defy almost anyone to tell the difference between a Musical Box recording and a Genesis recording. They each look remarkably like their counterparts, as well. Sadly, "Peter" is retiring, but in a funny instance of art imitating life, "Phil" may start fronting the band, and they'll begin doing early Phil Collins-era Genesis, which is actually really still quite amazing music. - --Vanessa On 5/14/07, timhe@verizon.net < timhe@verizon.net> wrote: > > My congrats to anyone whose musical taste is diverse enough to be able to > enjoy the music of both Richard Schindell and Peter Gabriel. > Totally different genres. > It helps to be old enough to have been around since Gabriel's early days > such as RS and myself. I didn't hear the show (yet), but I understand RS > mentioned during his recent WFUV interview that he was quite a Peter Gabriel > fan at one point. > > Tim > > > >> Mercy Street: > >> ALso If I'd had to guess from scratch who wrote that song, I'd have > >> said Jules Shear. > > > >I love that comparison; I wouldn't have thought of it, but I can > certainly see it. > > > >First version of Mercy Street I ever heard was by Iain Matthews, on a CD > (Pure > >and Crooked; wonderful disc for its time if you stumble across it) which > >followed Iain doing an entire disc of Jules Shear songs. Iain's manager > at the > >time? > > > >Charlie Hunter. > > > >Hmm... > - -- "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." - --Martin Luther King ------------------------------ End of shindell-list-digest V9 #87 **********************************