songwriting – etikser

Choose your favorite Beatles / John Lennon song. And celebrate the inspiration.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes

John Lennon, of course. Lucy in the Sky.

Meter to me is unattainable. I can hear it, I’m sure I like it, I just can’t grasp it. It would take a whole lot of focus and concentration for me to get it. Hence, I leave it to the professionals.

John Lennon would have been 81 tomorrow, and Lucy in the Sky begins with one of my favorite lines of all time.

Photo from wallpapercave.

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time

summer’s end

September 26, 2022September 26, 2022 etikser

Summer’s end is around the bend just flying
The swimming suits are on the line just drying

~ John Prine, Summer’s End ~

reflections

It would be remiss to remember his words without remembering his image. Pearl buttons, ruffled collar, and head-to-toe fair weather clouds. An impish grin, big brown eyes, and a medley of style and spirit, working like a magnet to draw you in.

Ready?

One,
Two,
One, two, three, four.
Yeah.
Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing
But different than the day before.
That’s when I saw her, ooh, I saw her.
She walked in through the out door, out door.
She wore a raspberry beret.
The kind you find at a second hand store.

A video popped up for me the other day. It was an event honoring George Harrison. Prince and Tom Petty were among many musicians performing George’s song, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. What a great performance by Prince.

Prince…Tom Petty…George Harrison…John Prine…John Lennon…Janis Jopin…they weren’t all there, of course, but such great talents gone too soon.

Some of this is a re-post, more or less. You can’t help but remember Prince this time of year.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Image and lyrics from Raspberry Beret by Prince & The Revolution (1985).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob Dylan

white pines & music

December 15, 2021December 15, 2021 etikser

Tall white pines and a path that takes you. It doesn’t lead you, it takes you.

Do you know the long soft needles of a tall white pine? A pine tall enough to meet the sunny sky in the last moments of a December day. North Country meets Norwegian Wood meets what? I don’t know. It’s gentle. Or it’s pain, or it’s a place to leave behind.

When you choose your favorite lyrics to a Dylan song, it’s hard to find THE lines. I have this thing – sort of a pretty unimportant guiding principle. If I single out the same musical lyrics more than once, if it’s a sequence of lines or a few words, if those are the words I remember or I want to remember after I hear a song, then I guess I love those words.

In the darkness of my night
In the brightness of my day

Bob Dylan works a magic with images nobody else can do. And in the middle of all that you find words you plainly love.

music

You Say It’s Your Birthday – John Lennon

October 8, 2021October 7, 2022 etikser

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes

John Lennon, of course. Lucy in the Sky.

John Lennon would have been 81 tomorrow, and Lucy in the Sky begins with one of my favorite lines of all time.

Photo from wallpapercave.

music

Dylan

May 26, 2021May 28, 2021 etikser

This afternoon, heading out to the plant nursery, I reached for the dashboard and popped the Sirius button. The radio came on with a voice that was distinctly Dylan. It was The Beatles Channel, but Dylan’s song was a nice change of pace. Sometimes they play recordings by artists who inspired The Beatles. The program was Dark Horse Radio, a show Laura Cantrell hosts, which features George Harrison’s music. As they describe it, all things George. Minutes later, waiting at the light, I realized they were playing Dylan again. Both were songs I didn’t know.

The host spoke after the second song, noting that both recordings featured George in the instrumentation. She continued, as I turned into the parking lot, to say Dark Horse Radio was playing Dylan music in celebration of Bob Dylan’s 80^th birthday. Whoah! Bob Dylan is 80 years old?

His birthday was on the 24^th, and maybe I’ll spend the evening playing some Dylan tunes.

Bob Dylan. Surely one of the best songwriting talents of his generation.