The Best Songs: Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)


[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

The problem with that song is that I’ve forgotten the actual triangle. Whether it was my own – of course, I always felt that there was an invisible male seducing the woman I was with, now whether this one was incarnate or merely imaginary I don’t remember, I’ve always had the sense that either I’ve been that figure in relation to another couple or there’d been a figure like that in relation to my marriage. I don’t quite remember but I did have this feeling that there was always a third party, sometimes me, sometimes another man, sometimes another woman. It was a song I’ve never been satisfied with. It’s not that I’ve resisted an impressionistic approach to songwriting, but I’ve never felt that this one, that I really nailed the lyric. I’m ready to concede something to the mystery, but secretly I’ve always felt that there was something about the song that was unclear. So I’ve been very happy with some of the imagery, but a lot of the imagery.
~Leonard Cohen (BBC Radio Interview 1994)

Sometime in the early 1970s, a thief stole Leonard Cohen’s old raincoat from Marianne Ihlen’s New York apartment. God only know what happened to it, but the thief almost certainly had no idea he was stealing an object that belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, if not the Smithsonian. It was that very coat that inspired Cohen to write one of his most beloved and mysterious songs. It’s written in the form of a letter, possibly to the narrator’s brother, who stole his lover, Jane.
~rollingstone.com[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Famous Blue Raincoat (from the album – Songs of Love and Hate)

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1964: 20 Songs Released in 1964 You Must Hear





The Year 1964 world events

  • Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa (June 11).
  • Congress approves Gulf of Tonkin Resolution after North Vietnamese torpedo boats allegedly attack US destroyers (Aug. 7).
  • Khrushchev is deposed; Kosygin becomes premier and Brezhnev becomes first secretary of the Communist Party (October).
  • China detonates its first atomic bomb.
  • Three civil rights workers—Schwerner, Goodman, and Cheney—murdered in Mississippi (June).
  • President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy issues Warren Report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

My rules:

  • Only one song per artist/group
  • The song must be released that specific year
  • Songs from live albums not allowed
  • Restricted to only 20 songs

  • The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll – Bob Dylan

    Bob Dylan_The times they are a changin
    A topical song written by the American musician Bob Dylan. Recorded on October 23, 1963, the song was released on Dylan’s 1964 album, The Times They Are a-Changin’ and gives a generally factual account of the killing of a 51-year-old barmaid, Hattie Carroll, by William Devereux “Billy” Zantzinger.

    William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
    With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
    At a Baltimore hotel society gath’rin’
    And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
    As they rode him in custody down to the station
    And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
    But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
    Take the rag away from your face
    Now ain’t the time for your tears


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Racing In The Street by Bruce Springsteen – a deep dive into an iconic song




Racing in the Street is a ballad written by Bruce Springsteen, it was originally released on his album Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). The song has been referred to as Springsteen’s best song by a number of commentators. I think it’s a great song, and some nights it’s my favourite Bruce Springsteen song.

Darkness on the Edge of Town version:

“…And “Racing in the Streets” is still perhaps the best Springsteen song ever.”
– Rolling Stone magazine

Like so many times, before and since, the car is a symbol of freedom in Springsteen’s universe. Driving a car gives you the ultimate feeling of freedom in this world.

The song begins with two friends fixing up an old car. The story is made believable through Bruce’s attention to detail, he seems to know what he is talking about, “I got a ’69 Chevy with a 396, Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor”.  The two friends needs the car to go racing, to earn money from street racing. As the story is told, they go from town to town and win easy money. They’re like cowboys in the old west, riding where the work is, no strings attached.

Live version from The Darkness Box, 2010, Racing in the street (-78),”Songs from The Promise”:

The protagonist/the racer and his friend Sonny hasn’t stopped living, even if they have ordinary day jobs. They come home from work, get cleaned up and starts living, they go racing in the streets.

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Van Morrison: 4 Great Live Versions of His Brilliant “Orangefield”

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]On a gold autumn day
You came my way in Orangefield
Saw you standing by the riverside in Orangefield
How I love you then in Orangefield
Like I love you now in Orangefield[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

This great song from the album Avalon Sunset (1989) was first performed live May 18, 1989 (Swansea, Wales), and last time VM played it in concert was August 24, 2014 (Orangefield High School,
Belfast). It has been performed 92 times live, mostly in 1989 & 1990.

Here are 4 great versions…

Stadtpark Freilichtbühne, Hamburg, Germany
June 4, 1989

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10 Best Rolling Stones Songs from 1965 (Videos & Spotify Playlist)

Here is my top 10 list of songs recorded in 1965.

  1. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
  2. The Last Time
  3. Get off of My Cloud
  4. 19th Nervous Breakdown
  5. As Tears Go By
  6. Mothers Little Helper
  7. Play With Fire
  8. I´m Free
  9. She Said Yeah
  10. Cry To Me

1. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (Jagger/Richards)

This raw classic cemented the Stones as the nasty anti-Beatles. .. Keith says the way they wrote the song became typical for how he and Mick collaborated. “I would say on a general scale, I would come up with the song and the basic idea,” Keith wrote, “and Mick would do all the hard work of filling it in and making it interesting.”
– Bill Janovitz (Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell the Story of the Rolling Stones)

Built on the Stones’ greatest riff, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” near-singlehandedly turned “rock & roll” from a teenage fad into something far heavier and more dangerous.
rollingstone.com

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Classic song: Key to the Highway by Chas Segar and Big Bill Broonzy

“When I was about 14, I saw Big Bill Broonzy on TV and that was an incredible thing. Because maybe if I’d just heard it, it might not have had the same effect. But to see footage of Broonzy playing ‘Hey Hey,’ this was a real blues artist and I felt like I was looking into heaven. That was it for me and then, when I went to explore his music, the song that always came back to me was an incredible version of ‘Key To The Highway.’ That was the one that I thought somehow would, like Crossroads, capture the whole journey of being a musician and a traveling journeyman.””
– Eric Clapton (2003)

“Key to the Highway” is a blues standard that has been performed and recorded by several blues and other artists. Blues pianist Charlie Segar first recorded the song in 1940. Jazz Gillum and Big Bill Broonzy followed with recordings during 1940–41, using an arrangement that has become the standard. When Little Walter updated the song in 1958 in an electric Chicago blues style, it became a success on the R&B record chart. Continue reading “Classic song: Key to the Highway by Chas Segar and Big Bill Broonzy”