Sundown (Gordon Lightfoot), 1974
Posted: April 6, 2012 Filed under: love, music, women 5 Comments
There are rumours that “Sundown” was inspired by his then girlfriend, Cathy Smith, later more infamously known for her involvement in the death of John Belushi. Lightfoot has commented in interviews that she was “the one woman in my life who most hurt me.”
More, from Cathy Smith’s wikipedia page:
Catherine Evelyn Smith (born Catherine Evelyn Smith, 1948 in Hamilton, Ontario) is an occasional backup singer, rock star girlfriend, “groupie” and drug dealer, who served 15 months in the California state prison system for injecting John Belushi with a fatal dose of heroin and cocaine in 1982…
…Smith became an employee and then mistress of Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot in the early to mid-1970s. At one point, she even drove their tour bus. Smith sang backup on Lightfoot’s song “High and Dry” which was on the Sundown album. She apparently sang more backup on the album but Lightfoot mixed most of it out.
By several accounts, the Smith-Lightfoot affair was volatile and illustrated in the lyrics of “Sundown”, Lightfoot’s Number One hit and most financially lucrative song. It reflects the dark feelings Lightfoot was experiencing at the time. Drinking too much and married to another woman, he on one occasion broke Smith’s cheekbone in a fight. Lightfoot has stated of his three-year relationship with Smith, “I was sometimes crazy with jealousy”.
Picture of Cathy Smith, from this amazing website:
Once, on a bus between Vancouver and Whitehorse, I heard a woman tell the story of how Gordon Lightfoot kissed her one time.
“Hello Stranger” (1977)
Posted: April 4, 2012 Filed under: Fate, music 1 Comment
from the heroes at Art Decade I learned of Emmylou Harris and Nicolette Larson covering The Carter Family:
What became of Nicolette Larson, I wonder, whose voice is certainly too pretty for this world?:
Larson died on December 16, 1997 in Los Angeles as a result of complications arising from cerebral edema triggered by liver failure. According to her friend Astrid Young, Larson had been showing symptoms of depression and her fatal seizure “was in no small way related to her chronic use of Valium and Tylenol PM”
(album cover lifted from a French blog)
The Civil Wars
Posted: March 30, 2012 Filed under: everyone's a critic, music Leave a commentThe Civil Wars won the Grammy for Best Country Duo/Group Performance and for Best Folk Album of 2012. I’d never heard of them until then. I’ll be impressed if you can get through one of their videos without getting massively douched out:
The duo’s web site says that the name of their band, The Civil Wars, and their thematic direction, is best summed up in the lyrics of the song “Poison & Wine”. It is about the good, the bad, and the ugly of married life.
Coup in Mali
Posted: March 23, 2012 Filed under: Mali, music Leave a commentI hope Amadou and Mariam are ok
Luke Kelly’s Hair
Posted: March 23, 2012 Filed under: hair, heroes, how to live, Ireland, Irish traditional music, music Leave a commentOK, wikipedia, gimme the tragedy:
On 30 June 1980 during a concert in the Cork Opera House Luke Kelly collapsed on the stage. He had already suffered for some time from headaches and forgetfulness, which however had been ascribed to his alcohol consumption. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
The subject of the song, btw?:
[Kelly] was dragged from his bed and hanged by British soldiers who decapitated his corpse and kicked his head through the streets shortly after the fall of Wexford on 21 June 1798.
O’Donoghue’s Opera (St. Patty’s Roundup, Finale)
Posted: March 20, 2012 Filed under: film, Ireland, music, musicals | Tags: musicals 9 CommentsIn the 1960s, some impoverished Irish musicians and folk singers decided to put together an Irish musical. Based on the balled “The Night Before Larry Was Stretched,” attributed to “Hurlfoot Bill,”* the film, “O’Donoghue’s Opera,” starred Ronnie Drew, later incredibly famous for his work with The Dubliners. The film, left uncompleted when the makers ran out of money, was found in 1997 in a junk shop in Galway.
Now you can enjoy the entire film on YouTube. I can’t encourage you to power through the whole thing. But I think you’ll have some fun around 2:44 of Part 1, where some winning girls sing an old IRA recruiting song. Then hop to 7:51 to see Larry’s cat burglar costume and the temptation that proves his undoing.
The stirring conclusion I have TubeChopped for you.
It is quite moving, really, to see Ronnie get hung. This really happened to people all the time.
A great shame that I never had the chance to discuss this film with fellow cinephile/Hibernophile SDB, who was seemingly designed by the Almighty to enjoy this picture.
Elvis Costello recorded “TNBLWS” but I prefer the version by The Wolfe Tones:
* Wikipedia has some stern words on the subject of attribution for this song.
Helytimes 