Great Tom Waits Song – Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Hey Charley I’m pregnant
Living on 9th Street
Right above a dirty bookstore
Off Euclid Avenue
I stopped taking dope
And I quit drinking whiskey
And my old man plays the trombone
And works out at the track[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]One of Tom Waits’ most beloved songs from one of his more obscure albums, Blue Valentine, “Christmas Card…” is a live standard. The song showcases Waits playing a barroom piano melody, weaving words together — in essence, doing what he does best in one long, bittersweet song. The lyrics are essentially a reading aloud of what the title says it is — a Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis. Waits takes the voice of the female character: “Hey Charley, I’m pregnant…”; you can guess the rest. The song is littered with characters with names like Mario. There are references to the track, a filling station, and a used car lot. There is whiskey, dope, grease, a trombone, and Little Anthony & the Imperials. What more could you want from a Tom Waits song?
– Denise Sullivan (allmusic.com)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Studio version:

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Van Morrison – 5 Wonderful Live Versions Of “In The Garden”

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]The streets are always wet with rain
After a summer shower when I saw you standin’
In the garden in the garden wet with rain[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Released on his 1986 album “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher“, this is a major VM song – certainly  among his 10 best.

Van Morrison has played this beauty well over 400 times live, here are five of them.

Here are 5 Great live versions..
Special attention to Dublin 2012 – 5min & 16s and onwards – Van is obviously moved and it´s all MAGIC. In The Garden.

New University of Ulster
Coleraine, Ireland
April 20th 1988

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Van Morrison – 5 Wonderful Live Versions of “And The Healing Has Begun”

 

And we’ll walk down the avenue again
And we’ll sing all the songs from way back when
And we’ll walk down the avenue again and the healing has begun

And we’ll walk down the avenue in style
And we’ll walk down the avenue and we’ll smile
And we’ll say “baby, ain’t it all worthwhile?” when the healing has begun

“It starts just like ‘Cyprus Avenue’, no coincidence as the line about ‘songs from way back when’ hints, and with a walk down the avenue (of dreams), to the sound of a haunted violin. A song of full, blazing sex as well as revelation. The healing here is like that in Arthurian myth, the wounded King restored through the action of the Holy Grail, but it is also through as graphic a seduction, almost, as the original live version of “Gloria”
-Brian Hinton (Celtic Crossroads)

This beauty was recorded at the Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California in spring 1979. He has performed it live 274 times according to the brilliant website ivan.vanomatic.de.

Here are 5 lovely versions..

Live At The Oasis Centre – Putting The Boot In – Swindon – 1999:

I want you to put on your pretty summer dress
You can wear your Easter bonnet and all the rest
And I want to make love to you yes, yes, yes, when the healing has begun

Louder, when the healing has begun
So good
Whoo
All right, whoo
Yeah
Aah
Whoo

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August 23: The Late Great Keith Moon was Born in 1946

keith moon

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]We lived the life with Keith Moon. It was all Spinal Tap magnified a thousand times.
-Roger Daltrey[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Keith Moon Tribute (featuring clips from the life of Moonie, song: Baba O’Riley):

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August 21: Happy 78th Birthday James Burton

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]He’s insprired guitarists as diverse as Hank Marvin and Albert Lee. He’s played with musicians from Rick Nelson to Emmylou Harris and from Elvis Presley to Elvis Costello. He is JAMES BURTON, surely the original guitar heroes’ guitar hero.
– Guitarist Magazine, England January, 1992

James Burton is a poet. He plays things on that guitar that are so simple… and there is nobody comparable to him.
– Emmylou Harris, GP Magazine, 1978

I recently was playing it [GE Smith signature Fender Telecaster] with James Burton. That’s amazing. It’s like talking to Jesus. It’s insane.
– GE Smith, 2009
[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Keith Richards inducts Johnnie Johnson and James Burton to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame:

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August 20: Happy 69th Birthday Robert Plant

Robert-Plant

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]It’s sort of a feeling of power onstage. It’s really the ability to make people smile, or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time, and for it to have some effect later on. I don’t really think it’s power… it’s the goodness.
~Robert Plant

My vocal style I haven’t tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish whine it is today.
~Robert Plant[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Whole Lotta Love – live 1970:

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