Breaking News #27: When Common Knowledge Trumps Reality

Nice! Love me some Jackson ever since seeing him for like $10 while in college in Flagstaff; with Joe Walsh (and I think Raymond Nakai) for a tribal fundraiser.

Fun facts

• he wrote These Days when he was 16.
• Having lived in both towns my vote goes with Flagstaff as the actual “standing on the corner” spot, although I get it that Winslow lays better lyrically. That place needs all the help it can get.

Glad to have dropped that on you!

I’m going to remain blissfully ignorant of anything adjacent to Greenwood.

Thanks for the up-spin on Megan. My brief exposure to her oeuvre was… not taken positively. There are all kinds of ways to be “bad” and do good, I suppose.

Carry on!

I love this Jackson Browne clip, I’d never seen this before! Great find and send. And oh man, now I’m going to put those two Solo Acoustic albums on (right after I get off of this Bruce Cockburn kick, and hopefully before I try to unpack/make sense of the Lee Greenwood National Council on the Arts situation that I had mostly forgotten about until you mentioned him).

And out of respect for Megan Thee Stallion - if you don’t know about her back story, if you never heard her talk about her grandparents, if you haven’t seen the charitable tendencies (especially locally in Houston, where she’s from), or The Pete and Thomas Foundation which she helped start, it’s worth looking up https://www.peteandthomasfoundation.org/history

Right? The deadly ferocity of his guitar matches the lyrics. Solo; dominating an empty stage.

@MZeigler3 the algo pushed this at me in sidebar while I was playing along with Jackson Browne’s “These Days” (I know - descending progression dammit!).

What can a song do?

He’s referring to “Before the Deluge”.

Unbelievable talent. He’s the full package. How do you sing, play, think and feel like that all at the same time?

Did you hear the one about when Clapton was asked what it was like to be the greatest guitar player in the world?

He said, “I don’t know. Ask Bruce Cockburn.”

Thanks, as always, @Cactus_Ed

Indeed, Richard.

Keep that guy well away from the RPGs.

Canada’s bad ass. A true revolutionary. If I had to choose one album to take to a desert island, it would probably be Nothing But A Burning Light

I’m going to ask the question
Please answer if you can
Is there anybody’s children can tell me
What is the soul of a man?

Won’t somebody tell me
Answer if you can
Won’t somebody tell me
Tell me what is the soul of a man?

I’ve travelled different countries
Travelled to the furthest lands
Couldn’t find nobody could tell me
What is the soul of a man

Won’t somebody tell me
Answer if you can
Won’t somebody tell me
Tell me what is the soul of a man?

I saw a crowd stand talking
I just came up in time
Was teaching the lawyers and the doctors
That a man ain’t nothing but his mind

Won’t somebody tell me
Answer if you can
Won’t somebody tell me
Tell me what is the soul of a man?

I read the Bible often
I try to read it right
As far as I can understand
It’s nothing but a burning light

Won’t somebody tell me
Answer if you can
Won’t somebody tell me
Tell me what is the soul of a man?

When Christ taught in the temple
The people all stood amazed
Was teaching the lawyers and the doctors
How to raise a man from the grave

Won’t somebody tell me
Answer if you can
Won’t somebody tell me
Tell me what is the soul of a man?

One of the most impactful verses of the Rock vernacular- “What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?” Still gets to me.

Cannot love this enough; tell your uncle I get it. I’d have been ashamed not to have walked out for a welfare check and finished the tune with them.

The steps’ dad used to post it on FaceBook every TG - probably on MySpace before that - and they all knew the lyrics front to back. Some things need to live on; sadly their dad did not. (The positivity of every aspect of that relationship spills into another thread on the forum, but I digress.)

I suppose if you feel led to examine that tired trope… You can tie it into the protest pop theme with Whiter Shade of Pale. Somewhere there’s a mashup of some of the many tunes that rely on it: it would irritate me to go look for it.

I for one am eternally grateful for the rhythmic complexity of Tull, the harmonic uniqueness of, say, Smells Like Teen Spirit, or the rowdy hooligan joy of 1979.

Thanks!

last Thanksgiving my uncle and wife pulled up on the curb and then sat in the car for way too long. One of those, “you think they’re OK?” moments through the window of the house. “They’re not even talking, just kind of sitting, weird.” When they finally came in, and saw everybody looked a touch concerned, my uncle said, “Oh, did you see us outside? Alice’s Restaurant was playing. We couldn’t just not finish it!” The whole family accepted this answer in full, without further question or bother. Let he amongst us who has not let the entire song finish before entering the Thanksgiving celebration cast the first stone. FOLK SONGS. Great add-ons. And I might have to do a musicologist’s history of that descending chord progression on a future episode (because it’s pretty cool)

Forgive the fact that I’m old, living in the past, and sick to my very soul of the endless overuse of the ice cream changes and descending progression (I, vii°, vi, V, IV… iykyk, as the kids say) I’ll return to this thread with some definitely non-hipster contributions.

Continuing in the Goodman vein the step-kids and I still love singing Alice’s Restaurant; a Thanksgiving tradition for us over most of the last 15 years. It’s among the less pointed of many tunes that - if they didn’t actually turn public opinion against the war - at least drop-kicked the momentum.

And of course Bruce Cockburn’s contributions from our northern neighbor.

No question pop music leans in politically. I scratch my head at Megan Thee Stallion and Lee Greenwood equally though.