Why he's so unhip
If ya say Dylan
He thinks yer talkin' about Dylan Thomas
Whoever he was
The man ain't got no culture
But it's all right maw, everybody must get stoned . . .
I think Hoagy Carmichael was a pretty fair songwriter. Or was it him that thunk up the sandwich? Yeah, I guess it's Stokely I'm thinkin' of.
I meant Bob. I was recently looking through his lyrics... what he sings is almost all his own. It is a long and impressive list. How many did Hoagy Carmichael write? WHAT did Hoagy Carmichael write??
Steve Goodman will always remain one of my favorites and for sheer musicality, there's always Frank Zappa. His Peaches en Regalia is one of my favorite songs of all times. Frank Zappa used to have the most wonderful moustaches, I thought.
good grief, Piffka - you don't recall Stardust? Heart and Soul? Georgia on my mind? Hoagy Carmichael - one of the true greats.
but not particulary sexy outside of that
For Hoagy fans...and I am one...
http://www.hoagy.com/
Bicep Built for Two???
Well, he did write a lot, but Dylan wrote more and they seemed to be more relevant to what and who we are...Do I need to provide a list???
Now, Georgia on my Mind is lovely, there's no doubt about that. Hey, my son played H.S. jazz band for three years. I've heard a lot of this, including a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank (on the streets of Yokohama with my Honolulu Mama, doing the beat-o, beat-o, knock you on your seat-o...)
It ain't me babe, No No No, It ain't me, babe. It ain't me you're lookin' for. Babe.
http://bobdylan.com/songs/index.html
OH dear, don't get me started on Bob........(Dylan) Piffka and I might start reciting lyrics and I can go non stop. But Zappa......he was great....I miss him terribly. Dynamo Hum........"is that a reeeeeal poncho? I mean, is that a Sears poncho or a Mexican poncho?"
I coulda swore her hair was made of rayon
She wore a milton bradley crayon
But she was something nice that i could lay on
Don't remember what became of mee-ee
Carolina hardcore exstacee-ee
Frank Zappa -- why did he have to die??? I don't understand. Chula Vista, Chula Vista ..... Chula Vista, Chula Vista.
Lola -- When PaL and I were loose on the streets of New York, she driving, me navigating, we were playing a whole lotta Dylan, singing to most all the songs. It was great! You shoulda been there.
When I went to Spain with my daughter, my husband made me a tape that included this song. Nostalgia struck and I wanted to be home...
Oh, I'm sailin' away my own true love,
I'm sailin' away in the morning.
Is there something I can send you from across the sea,
From the place that I'll be landing?
No, there's nothin' you can send me, my own true love,
There's nothin' I wish to be ownin'.
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled,
From across that lonesome ocean.
Piffka, I wish I had been in town when you and P&L and others were here! Maybe you can come back soon. How about March? We could all get together on the corner of Bleecker and McDougall streets at the Le Figaro Cafe. March is a good month for New York.........maybe others could come too...we could play some Frank Zappa and Dylan, Watts, Cohen, Cocker..........it would be fun.
Sounds lovely. Too bad my fun card has most of its punches punched out already for the year. <sigh> We all agreed that we must come back soon, in fact, I thought PaL was going to make a break for it at the airport, but she was loaded down with I <heart> NYC sweatshirts!
Ah, well, maybe it's a generational thing. I have to agree with Debacle (as usual). Hoagy Carmichael is the creme de la creme . As for little Bobby Dylan's lyrics being more 'relevant', well, that's subjective. Relevant to whom? A very small and limited amount of his lyrics have any lasting relevance for me.
Dylan/Cohen/Carmichael/Porter/Waits/Ira/Gershwin/emminem......apples and oranges and floozletwips - tough to find a measuring stick that isn't subjective as hell.
At least in part, Merry is surely correct to note the generational aspect to this. My mother, who in her love of songs, introduced to to a wide range of musical and lyrical excellence, couldn't get past Dylan's voice - she wanted Ella Fitzgerald clarity and tonality.
Another corner of this is how one gets introduced to a genre. One lady I know refused outright to listen to anything from the forties or fifties, because it was her parent's music, and worthless. Or, one simply might not have bumped into it (Ladysmith Black Mombasa, Yousou N'Dour, Ry Cooder, etc)
Piffka mentions how Dylan's content is, for her, perhaps less trivial than Hoagy's. I'll buy that, but I'm glad I don't have to make a choice. For myself, the excellence of the wordsmithing done by lyricists such as Carmichael, Porter, Berlin and Ira Gershwin is so astoundingly good, that I can switch from Dylan to any one of them with no decrease in admiration.
And there is personal aesthetics too. John Capek, a composer I workshopped with (and who has written for...you name it...Sher, Manhattan Transfer, Rod Stewart, etc) really didn't like Cohen at all, though the lyricist he works with very much does.
It perhaps makes some sense to compare Dylan and Cohen as Setanta did earlier, as their lyrical styles and subject can be similar, but boy, I couldn't make a judgement call on that one.
that's kind of funny, blatham. i was going to suggest a generational component as well, but i was going the other direction - thinking that dylan and cohen would only be appealing to people of a certain vintage senior to my own. but then i couldn't figure out how i'd explain Carmichael etc. being more releveant/appealing to me. Definitely a different strokes for different folks thing.
MA and eBeth.........
You're not of the flower child generation?
We book-end the flower children. Tho i suspect MA could have easily been disguised as one.
I'm happy to listen to a Hoagy Carmichael's renditions by some people. But he didn't perform did he? He wrote. Dylan writes and sings and plays an instrument or two.
MA -- Little Bobby Dylan? That's the man who wrote Just Like a Woman and Lay Lady Lay, for Pete's sake, some of the sexiest songs of the planet.
My oh my. Points being lost dramatically.
I like Bob Dylan's stuff ... of course, his voice sucks, but hey, so does mine. And I've always been a fan of Leonard Cohen -- coupla times I even been in one of them drunken midnight choirs he was on about (I spec Dylan might have been in one of 'em too, somebody in there sure sounded like him.) But, what with Hoagy and Cole bein' from just up the road a short piece, I gotta root for the home team, now don't I? Yep, I do ... though y'all can have that "Rebel Without a Cause" Hoosier.
< I wonder why the Indiana team's all a buncha dead folks >
