Monthly Archives: October 2008

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Song of the Day #94: ‘Amsterdam’ – Guster

I sort of swing between paying a whole lot of attention to a song’s lyrics and not paying much attention at all. Today’s song is an example of the latter, as I’m only discovering now that it apparently has a different meaning than I thought.

But I’ll get to that in a second. First a few words about Guster, one of those solid bands that has a strong indie following but hasn’t really been able to break through to mainstream success. I own three of their albums (the three most recent) and like them all quite a bit.

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Song of the Day #93: ‘If I Had a Boat’ – Lyle Lovett

Ironically, I was first introduced to Lyle Lovett by my country music-hating brother-in-law, Dana. Because Lyle Lovett is many things, but he is most certainly a country music singer-songwriter.

However, as anybody familiar with his work knows, he is equally adept at blues, jazz and gospel. The truth is, he has established such a distinctive sound that he’s essentially a genre unto himself. “Lyle Lovett” means peerless musicianship, lyrics both poignant and clever and one of the best voices in the business.

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Song of the Day #92: ‘Blind Willie McTell’ – Bob Dylan

Dylan put out some great albums in the mid-70s but then hit a long dry spell that didn’t really end until Oh Mercy in 1989. One semi-bright spot was 1983’s Infidels, best known for its lead-off song ‘Jokerman.’ I don’t own Infidels, or anything from that 1975-89 period, because there are literally 20+ other Dylan albums I own that I find far superior.

However, Infidels could have been just as worthy an album had Dylan included two songs originally slated for the album but cut for reasons nobody has ever figured out.

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Song of the Day #91: ‘Visions of Johanna’ – Bob Dylan

I don’t generally like live recordings, but the bootleg release of Dylan’s “Royal Albert Hall” concert is a major exception. It works as both a stunning work of musical art and as a snapshot of a moment in cultural history… a time when “going electric” was considered a mortal sin by an audience that had painted Dylan into a corner of which he wanted no part.

“Royal Albert Hall” is in quotes because though that’s how the concert was widely known, the show didn’t take place in that London venue after all but in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall.

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Song of the Day #90: ‘He Was a Friend of Mine’ – Bob Dylan

From the grandly poetic ‘Idiot Wind’ I now shift to one of the simplest songs in the Dylan canon.

‘He Was a Friend of Mine’ is another tune recorded when Dylan was in his early 20s that feels like it was written by a much older man.

Truth is, I don’t know if Dylan actually wrote this song. So many of his early songs (as well as many from the past decade or so) are re-imaginings of classic Civil War-era tunes. He picks up a melody line here, a phrase there and recombines them into something brand new.

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