Tag: wayback wednesday

Wayback Wednesday with David and David and one of the nine “brilliant pop story-songs” from their masterful 1986 release Welcome to the Boomtown. Here we have Rivers Gonna Rise.

God ain’t in his heaven,
something ain’t right
I hear church bells ringing
in the middle of the night
They’re dragging a man
by his insides
Through the broad daylight
Thieves have their season
sure but it’s getting on midnight

And the river’s gonna rise,
it’s gonna rise
There’ll be dancing in the street
when the river done rise

Cold wind is blowing,
flags flapping much too slow
The monkey men sell paradise
to the girls from tupelo
Black shirted boys in the badlands
play machine gun rodeo
The downtown missions packed too tight
with folks that got nowhere to go

But the river’s gonna rise,
t’s gonna rise
And there’ll be dancing in the street
when the river done rise

David & David (a.k.a. David Baerwald and David Ricketts) only recorded and released one album, 1986’s Boomtown, which got critical raves and went gold. It was as close to a masterful work of adult-oriented pop as anyone has ever created, including Steely Dan, the Band or Todd Rundgren. With a stellar backing band, they did this one album, propelled by two hit singles (“Welcome To The Boomtown” and “Swallowed By The Cracks”), one U.S. tour and then promptly disbanded, never to work together again.

Blending elements of rock, jazz, blues, soul, and a dash of country, David & David were able to create nine brilliant pop story-songs that somehow have a complete musical consistency. Baerwald’s Southern-blues flavored vocals are the perfect vehicle for these songs, especially, “Welcome To The Boomtown,” which remains one of the best FM radio hits ever.

Upon its release, Rolling Stone magazine gave it a four star review and summed it up pretty succinctly: “…a spare, painful chronicle of how ugly disappointment can be when it’s California’s golden promise that fails…” For reasons unknown, David & David abruptly fell apart after completing this tour. Baerwald would go on to have a critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful solo career, before resurfacing again as a contributor to Sheryl Crow’s debut, Tuesday Night Music Club. He has done several film soundtracks and recently released another solo album, Here Comes the New Folk Underground on Lost Highway Records. Ricketts, The Other Half of the duo, continued to co-write with Baerwald for his solo albums, but otherwise faded into obscurity.

-Paste Magazine

David Francis Baerwald (born July 11, 1960 in Oxford, Ohio) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and musician.
Baerwald first came to prominence in 1986 as one half of the duo David + David, with David Ricketts. David and David’s sole album, Boomtown, went platinum and stayed on the Billboard album chart for over a year, winning substantial critical acclaim, the debut single Welcome to the Boomtown became a top 40 Billboard hit. The duo split up following the success of that album for unexplained reasons.

Following the breakup of David and David, Baerwald focused on writing for others, often under pseudonyms, though he found time to record and release two albums: Bedtime Stories, a romantic album based on tales of suburban ennui and decay, featuring Joni Mitchell on guitar and backup vocals on the track “Liberty Lies” (Baerwald would later sing backup for Joni and appear in the video “Nothing Can Be Done” from her 1991 album “Night Ride Home”); and Triage, an ambitious narrative song-suite about the fringe-dwellers of America’s paranoid and disaffected subcultures. Both albums were released to critical acclaim but did not see the commercial success that Boomtown did.

In fall of 1992, with friend and producer Bill Bottrell, he cofounded the Tuesday Night Music Club, which then helped launch the career of Sheryl Crow.

His songs have been recorded by a wide range of artists ranging from the aforementioned Crow to artists as disparate as Japanese classical artists the Yoshida Brothers, opera legend Luciano Pavarotti, rebel-country frontrunner Waylon Jennings, Bangles front woman Susanna Hoffs, country star LeAnn Rimes, jazz artist Holly Cole, critic’s darling Jesca Hoop, and actor/singers Kristen Stewart, Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, Ethan Hawke, Hayden Panettiere, Ashlee Simpson, and Steven Strait, among many others.

Outside of popular music, Baerwald has worked extensively as both a songwriter and instrumental score composer in film and television, including the Golden Globe-nominated song from the Baz Luhrman musical Moulin Rouge! called “Come What May”, for which he also won the International Film Music Award, and which has been covered by a wide variety of international artists. He is also a skilled multi-instrumentalist, with a primary focus on stringed instruments.

Recent projects include the ABC shows, “Life Unexpected” and “October Road”, and the Showtime series’ “Sexual Healing” and “Pleasure For Sale”. In 2009 he completed work on the Howard Zinn/Matt Damon/Chris Moore film “The People Speak”, for which he also co-produced an album of the same name with long-term associate Tony Berg, featuring new performances from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Randy Newman, Pink, Eddie Vedder, Taj Mahal, Jackson Browne, and others.

David Jeffrey Ricketts (born February 15, 1954 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American musician and record producer.
Ricketts scored hits in the mid-1980s with David Baerwald in their group David + David, notably the track “Welcome to the Boomtown” from their only album Boomtown.

His failed relationship with singer Toni Childs formed the basis for her critically acclaimed debut album, Union, which Ricketts co-wrote and produced.

He collaborated with Sheryl Crow on her debut Tuesday Night Music Club and is credited on the songs “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Strong Enough.” He also produced and performed on Meredith Brooks’ 1997 album, Blurring The Edges, which contained her hit “Bitch”.

-Wikipedia

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Wayback Wednesday with long time favorites the Indigo Girls. What’s mot to like? Top notch songwriting with articulate and intelligent lyrics – and those harmonies! Just heavenly! 🙂
The best thing you’ve ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it’s only life after all…
Indeed.
We are all trying to somehow get a Little Closer to Fine.

I’m trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you’ve ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it’s only life after all
Well darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
And lightness has a call that’s hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I’m crawling on your shore.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before
I went in seeking clarity.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

Carl Wiser (Songfacts): I’d love to start with “Closer To Fine.”

Emily Saliers: Okay.

Songfacts: Now, that song, I’m wondering if it’s based on real experiences.

Emily: It is based on real experiences. I mean, all of my songs, they’re a combination of real experiences and what I observe through other peoples’ behavior and experience. So that song… I was with my family in Vermont, and we were sitting in this, like, rustic cabin, and I was sitting on a front porch and looking out into the trees, which, you know, whenever you’re such a bucolic setting, it can make you feel very philosophical. So that’s how I was feeling. And that song is about not beating yourself up too hard to get your answer from one place. There’s no panacea, that in order to be balanced or feel closer to fine it’s okay to draw from this or to draw from that, to draw from a bunch of different sources. So it’s about being confused but looking for the answers, and in the end knowing that you’re going to be fine. No seeking just one definitive answer.

Songfacts: Was there really a doctor of philosophy? Was that based on a real person?

Emily: No, it’s sort of a type. Like a stereotype. And I remember in high school one of my teachers had a poster of Rasputin on his door. You know, and his pictures just looked so bizarre to me, and always struck me. And I sort of put those images together, and it was sort of a poke at academia and the way it can sometimes be removed from reality. So I was saying I don’t think this professor has the right to judge me in terms of real life, when we’re caught up in this insular, sort of strange academic world. So that was sort of a comment about that.

Songfacts: And the bar at 3 a.m., did that actually happen?

Emily: Well, Amy and I used to be a bar band, and we would play ‘til 3 a.m. like every night. So practically… for 13 nights in a row. Three sets, finishing at 3 a.m., so I had some early experiences at bars at 3 a.m., certainly.

read more…

Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. They met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. They started performing with the name Indigo Girls as students at Emory University, performing weekly at The Dugout, a bar in Emory Village.

Amy Ray and Emily Saliers first met and got to know each other as students at Laurel Ridge Elementary School in DeKalb County, Georgia, just outside Decatur, Georgia, but were not friends because Saliers was a grade older than Ray. While attending Shamrock High School (now Druid Hills Middle School), they became better acquainted, and started performing together, first as “The B-Band” and then as “Saliers and Ray”.

Saliers graduated and began attending Tulane University. A year later, Ray graduated and began attending Vanderbilt University. Homesick, both returned to Georgia and transferred to Emory University.

After forming in college, Indigo Girls played small clubs in the Emory Village district of Druid Hills, Georgia.
By 1985 they had begun performing together again, this time as the Indigo Girls. In a March 2007 National Public Radio Talk of the Nation interview, Saliers stated “we needed a name and we went through the dictionary looking for words that struck us and indigo was one.”

Their first release in 1985 was a seven-inch single named “Crazy Game”, with the B-side “Everybody’s Waiting (for Someone to Come Home)”. That same year, the Indigo Girls released a six-track Extended play album named “Indigo Girls”, and in 1987 released their first full-length album, Strange Fire, recorded at John Keane Studio in Athens, Georgia, and including “Crazy Game”. With this release, they secured the services of Russell Carter, who remains their manager to the present; they had first approached him when the EP album was released, but he told them their songs were “immature” and they were not likely to get a record deal. Strange Fire apparently changed his opinion.

The success of 10,000 Maniacs, Tracy Chapman, and Suzanne Vega encouraged Epic Records company to enlist other folk-based female singer-songwriters; Epic signed the duo in 1988. Their first major-label release, also named Indigo Girls, which scored #22 on the album chart, included a new version of “Land of Canaan”, which was also on their 1985 EP album and on Strange Fire. Also on the self-titled release was their first hit “Closer To Fine” (an unlikely collaboration with Irish band Hothouse Flowers), which scored #52 on the popular music chart and #26 on the modern rock chart. They even managed one week on the mainstream rock album-oriented rock music chart at #48. In 1990, they won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. They were also nominated for Best New Artist (but lost to Milli Vanilli who eventually had that award revoked).

_Wikipedia

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Wayback Wednesday with Emmylou Harris and the Band performing Evangeline from the Scorsese concert film of the Band’s final concert “The Last Waltz”. This particular song serves to showcase the incredible versatility of the Band, and the brilliance of Robbie Robertson who wrote the song specifically for the concert. And of course, Emmy – looking and singing like an angel descended.

“Evangeline” connected Robbie Robertson’s first reflections of America, as he told Classic Albums in 1997, “It was a piece of America that was just more musical. I have no idea why but when I first went there when I was sixteen years old and I first got off the bus in Arkansas, it hit me right away. It smelled. You could smell the music. The air you could taste it, you could hear everything. Right away I said, I get it.” It was this musical philosophy The Band and specifically Robbie Robertson set on recreating their memories of their first sights, smells and senses of America into songs like “Evangeline.”

Robbie Robertson talked about “Evangeline” in an interview with Musician Magazine’s Joshua Baer, when The Band’s musical leader said, “I’d written “Evangeline” as part of The Last Waltz Suite. We did it in the concert and we did some of the other things from the suite at the concert too. But when we were done, it’s like all of these artists represented an element of popular music in their own right. Emmylou Harris was fresh and kind of represented a new school of the country music thing and also she’s very photogenic. She has a great relationship with the camera.”

When asked by Bauer about the specific cloud inspired scene in The Last Waltz where Harris looked like an angel singing next to the more mortal majesty of The Band, Robbie responded, “That smoke was ice. It was ice that Scorsese had done to diffuse the thing a little bit. The song was about this area in the Everglades, that bayou where you visualize it in a misty way, so he was just kind of going with the song.”

Author Annette Wernblad picked on the director’s use of smoke in that immortal Last Waltz scene in her book, The Passion of Martin Scorsese: A Critical Study of the Films, when she wrote, “In contrast to the stories about stealing, spitting blood, whoring, drinking, and doing drugs, Emmylou Harris looks radiantly immaculate and ethereal with her floor-length dress and long black hair. Joni Mitchell’s performance [in The Last Waltz] suggested a string, thoroughly modern woman, equal with and sharing the same lifestyle as the men. Emmylou Harris becomes the antithesis to that, invoking both the eponymous Evangeline of bygone days who slips into madness, and being herself shown as a manifest and timeless Madonna whose light-blue dress is the same color as the one in which the Holy Virgin is traditionally depicted.” “Evangeline” is one of those rare instances where the picture and lyric transcends time and brings to life a memorable performance captured eternally by Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz.

read more…

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Wayback Wednesday and a cut off the debut album of the mysteriously disappeared and still missing Jim Sullivan – Sandman.

I’m opting for the alien abduction theory. Hey, the album is called UFO! 🙂

“Jim Sullivan was a West Coast should-have-been, an Irish-American former high school quarterback whose gift for storytelling earned him cult status in the Malibu bar where he performed nightly. Sullivan was always on the edge of fame; hanging out with movie stars like Harry Dean Stanton, performing on the Jose Feliciano Show, even stealing a cameo in the ultimate hippie movie, Easy Rider. U.F.O., his debut, was a different beast to the one-man-and-his-guitar stuff Jim had been doing on stage; instead, it was a fully realized album of scope and imagination, a Folk-Rock record with its head in the stratosphere. The album is punctuated with a string section, other times a Wurlitzer piano provides the driving groove.

In March 1975, Jim Sullivan mysteriously disappeared outside Santa Rosa, New Mexico. His VW bug was found abandoned, his motel room untouched. Some think he got lost in the desert. Some think he fell foul of a local family with alleged mafia ties. Some think he was abducted by aliens.

By coincidence – or perhaps not – Jim’s 1969 debut album was titled U.F.O. Released in tiny numbers on a private label, it too was truly lost, until Seattle’s Light In The Attic Records begun a years-long quest to give it the full release it deserves – and to solve the mystery of Sullivan’s disappearance. Only one of those things happened.

For record collectors, some albums are considered impossible to get hold of, records so rare you could sit on eBay for years and not get a sniff of a copy. U.F.O. is one of those albums.”

Light in the Attic Records, November 2010.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Wayback Wednesday with His Bobness bringing us Blind Willie McTell

Written By Jim Beviglia // March 19, 2016

The diehard fans and bootleggers always knew that Bob Dylan was sitting on a treasure trove of unreleased classics, but it wasn’t until the release of the first Bootleg Series compilation in 1991 that the rest of the world found about it. The triple-disc set included a number of stunning tracks that Bob had left off his studio albums, but none was more jaw-dropping than “Blind Willie McTell.”

Dylan wrote the song around the time he was recording his 1983 album Infidels. Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame acted as his main musical collaborator on the record and played acoustic guitar on “Blind Willie McTell” next to Dylan’s piano and vocals for the take found on the Bootleg Series. Yet when it came time to sequence Infidels, Bob decided that the song wouldn’t make the cut.

In his biography Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, author Howard Sounes recounts the following exchange between Dylan and confidant Larry “Ratso” Sloman once Sloman heard the album:

Sloman: “Where’s ‘Blind Willie McTell’?”

Dylan: “Didn’t make it.”

Sloman: “What? How can you not put one of the greatest songs you ever wrote on the album?”

Dylan: “Oh, Ratso, it’s okay.”

Dylan later told Rolling Stone that he felt the song hadn’t been properly recorded, but the aural evidence suggests otherwise. Sparse as the original two-man take may have been, it’s haunting just the same, as Knopfler plays tender, understated fills and Bob’s timing on the minor-key piano chords continually surprises. Meanwhile he modulates his vocals perfectly, starting out quiet and restrained before eventually exploding with wild howls as the song concludes.

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Seen the arrow on the door post
Saying, “This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans to Jerusalem”
I traveled through East Texas where many martyrs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

Well, I heard that hoot owl singing
As they were taking down the tents
The stars above the barren trees
Were his only audience

Them charcoal gypsy maidens
Can strut their feathers well
But nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
See the ghosts of slavery ships

I can hear them tribes moaning
Hear the undertaker’s bell
Nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

There’s a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He’s dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand

There’s a chain gang on the highway
I can hear them rebels yell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

Well, God is in Heaven
And we all want what’s His
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is

I’m gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

-Bob Dylan – Blind Willie Mctell

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Wayback Wednesday with Sting and crew – I Burn For You – 1985 (from the movie Bring On The Night) – it boggles my feeble brain that this is over 30 years old. Man… Sting was just a pup!

You and I are lovers
When night time folds around our bed
In peace we sleep entwined
And your love flows through me
Though an ocean soothes my head
I burn for you, I burn for

Stars will fall from dark skies
As ancient rocks are turning
Quiet fills the room
And your love flows through me
Though I lie here so still
I burn for you, I burn for you

I burn…

Bring on the Night is a 1985 documentary film directed by Michael Apted, focusing on the jazz-inspired project and band led by Sting during the early stages of his solo career. Some of the songs, whose concert rehearsals are featured in the film, appeared on his debut solo album The Dream of the Blue Turtles. Each musician in the band, through the course of the film, is interviewed. The film won the Grammy Award for “Best Music Video, Long Form” at the 1987 Grammy Awards.

The film was released as DVD in 2005. A superb film (as well as soundtrack) that I continue to enjoy. It does not get old. This was arguably the finest band sting ever put together

Omar Hakim – percussion
Darryl Jones – bass
Kenny Kirkland – keyboards
Branford Marsalis – horns

Omar Hakim A graduate of the New York School of Music and Art, Omar Hakim began his career recording with various pop and soul groups. His father, Hasan Hakim, had played trombone for Duke Ellington and Count Basie and that influence helped to warm the younger Hakim’s ear up for the part he would play in one of the most famous jazz fusion acts ever, Weather Report.is an American jazz, jazz fusion and pop music drummer, producer, arranger and composer.

Darryl Jones also known as “The Munch”,is an American musician. Jones began his career in the music programs of the public school system in Chicago. He is known for his role as bassist for the Rolling Stones since Bill Wyman’s departure in 1993.

Kenneth David “Kenny” Kirkland (September 28, 1955 – November 12, 1998) was an American pianist/keyboardist. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1955, Kirkland was six when he first sat down at a piano keyboard. After years of Catholic schooling, Kirkland enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied classical piano performance, classical theory and composition.
Kirkland was found deceased in his Queens apartment on Friday, November 13, 1998. The official doctor’s report listed his death as due to congestive heart failure. He was survived by his mother, a brother and two sisters.

Branford Marsalis is an American saxophonist, composer and bandleader. While primarily known for his work in jazz as the leader of the Branford Marsalis Quartet, he also performs frequently as a soloist with classical ensembles and has led the group Buckshot LeFonque.
Marsalis was born in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, the son of Dolores (née Ferdinand), a jazz singer and substitute teacher, and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music professor. His brothers Jason Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis III, and Delfeayo Marsalis, and father Ellis are also jazz musicians.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Wayback Wednesday with Springsteen and the E-Street Band performing The Promise @ the Carousel House, Asbury Park, NJ.. I have always had a soft spot for this song.

The promise is broken, you go on living
It steals something from down in your soul
When the truth is spoken, it don’t make no difference
Something in your heart goes cold

THE PROMISE is a song written by Bruce Springsteen and released on The Promise collection in 2010. The above lyrics are for Springsteen’s studio version of THE PROMISE as released on The Promise.

A 1999 recording of the song was released on the 18 Tracks collection in 1999. See the Official 1999 studio version for more details.

THE PROMISE was played live between 1976 and 1978 with some lyrics variations, and was also played occasionally on-tour from 1999 onward.

Background
Despite the marvelous reception received by both Born To Run and the tour which followed, the relationship between Bruce Springsteen and his now former manager and producer Mike Appel was deteriorating. In July 1976 the storm broke; Mike Appel wrote to Springsteen saying that he would not allow Jon Landau (Springsteen’s friend and co-producer of Born To Run) to produce the next album, citing a particular paragraph from their original agreement. Bruce replied on 27 Jul 1976 by firing manager Mike Appel and suing him and his management company Laurel Canyon Ltd. in Federal Court in Manhattan, claiming fraud, breach of trust, and undue influence. Appel countersued on 29 July in New York State Supreme Court, asking the court to prohibit Springsteen and Jon Landau from working together in studio. Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band were slated to enter the studio that year for the recording of a new album, except that on 15 Sep 1976 the judge in the lawsuits case ruled that Springsteen was enjoined from any further recording with Columbia Records until Appel’s suit was resolved. This would drag for about a year.

THE PROMISE gained considerable reputation as Springsteen’s ultimate tale of betrayal following live performances beginning in 1976 and even more so in 1977 and 1978. Fans and critics alike have speculated over whether it is about the infamous lawsuit that kept him from the recording studio. When he heard the song for the first time in South Bend, IN, (on 09 Oct 1976 at University Of Notre Dame) the Chicago Reader critic John Milward was moved to write: “The song’s metaphor is ‘The Challenger,’ a race car that the singer has built by hand ‘to carry the broken dreams of all those who have lost.’ But the real twist comes during the song’s bridge, when he sings the words ‘thunder road’ and immediately transforms his car into his rock and roll dreams. In ‘The Promise,’ Springsteen mythologizes himself and compares his struggle to be true to his art to the desperate struggle of the young racer. He sings in ‘Thunder Road’ that ‘tonight’s the night all the promises will be broken,’ but the dream etched in ‘The Promise’ and put into perspective by Springsteen’s own experience is clearly a romantic notion that is not easily shattered. Despite a landscape filled with losers – the singer eventually sells his car when he needs money – it’s clear that in Springsteen’s heart the Challenger’s potential will never die.”

Dave Marsh writes in his Springsteen biography Born To Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story that “when Milward refers to ‘Springsteen’s own experience,’ he is clearly alluding to the lawsuit, but Milward is canny enough to know that the lawsuit itself is only a symbol of what Bruce had undergone since Born To Run catapulted him to fame. ‘The Promise’ is rather about the price everyone pays for success – and the dangers of settling for anything less.”

The lawsuit began in July 1976 and Springsteen debuted the song only a week or two later at an early August show in Red Bank, NJ (see “Live History” section below). One does wonder if his decision to debut the song in concert might have been influenced by the just-unfolding litigation. Springsteen has publicly denied that THE PROMISE is about the Laurel Canyon debacle. “I don’t write songs about lawsuits,” Springsteen said, and the fact that people might think that THE PROMISE was concerned only with legalities kept it off his fourth album.

THE PROMISE was originally considered for the Darkness On The Edge Of Town album, as evidenced in several handwritten lists of candidate tracks for Springsteen’s fourth studio album. These lists appear in the handwritten lyrics notebook that was reproduced in The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story box set (see scans below). Too many reviewers of the live shows had considered the song as being “about” the lawsuit with Mike Appel. Fearing that this would cause a misinterpretation of the message he meant to convey, Springsteen held it back and replaced it with RACING IN THE STREET. In the 2010 documentary The Promise: The Making Of Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Springsteen said that THE PROMISE is “a song about fighting and not winning, it was just about the disappointments of the time.” It could’ve made it on the record if they had finished recording it because it fit in the temper of the record, but Springsteen felt that he’s “too close to it,” as he said in the documentary. “I felt I couldn’t judge it myself at the time,” he added.

On 15 Nov 2010, the eve of The Promise release, Sirius XM’s E Street Radio channel broadcasted a two-hour special titled “E Street Radio on the Edge of Your Town” and hosted by Dave Marsh. The show featured Bruce Springsteen live in the studio with an intimate audience of 20 contest winners. In the first hour, each had the had the chance to ask him a question in-person about the upcoming release, and in the second hour, the phone lines opened to E Street Radio callers. At one point, Marsh was talking about THE PROMISE as being “about possibility”, and Springsteen answered quickly and directly: “It’s also about, ‘Gee, I wish I wasn’t sued!’”

It is believed that this whole “debacle” at least influenced the feel and lyrics of the song – the timing and some of the topics discussed in the song make the connection pretty obvious. By 1978, Springsteen was singing the song with a rewritten final verse (see the live 23 May 1978 version for example):

Well now my daddy taught me how to walk quiet 

and how to make my peace with the past

I learned real good to tighten up inside

and I don’t say nothing unless I’m asked

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Wayback Wednesday with the Allman Brothers putting forth with a sweet acoustic take of Melissa. Love this tune. Dickey Betts and Warren Haynes doing such a superb job (kudos to Dickey) on guitar.

Gregg Allman penned the song in late 1967. He had previously struggled to create any songs with substance, and “Melissa” was among the first that survived after nearly 300 attempts to write a song he deemed good enough. Staying at the Evergreen Motel in Pensacola, Florida, he picked up Duane’s guitar which was tuned to open E and immediately felt inspired by the natural tuning. Words came naturally, but he stumbled on the name of the love interest. The song’s namesake was almost settled as Delilah before Melissa came to Allman at a grocery store where he was buying milk late one night, as he told the story in his memoir, My Cross to Bear:

“It was my turn to get the coffee and juice for everyone, and I went to this twenty-four-hour grocery store, one of the few in town. There were two people at the cash registers, but only one other customer besides myself. She was an older Spanish lady, wearing the colorful shawls, with her hair all stacked up on her head. And she had what seemed to be her granddaughter with her, who was at the age when kids discover they have legs that will run. She was jumping and dancing; she looked like a little puppet. I went around getting my stuff, and at one point she was the next aisle over, and I heard her little feet run all the way down the aisle. And the woman said, “No, wait, Melissa. Come back—don’t run away, Melissa!” I went, “Sweet Melissa.” I could’ve gone over there and kissed that woman. As a matter of fact, we came down and met each other at the end of the aisle, and I looked at her and said, “Thank you so much.” She probably went straight home and said, “I met a crazy man at the fucking grocery.”

Allman rushed home and incorporated the name into the partially completed song, later introducing it to his brother: “[I] played it for my brother and he said, ‘It’s pretty good—for a love song. It ain’t rock and roll that makes me move my ass.’ He could be tough that way.” The duo produced a demo recording of “Melissa” that later surfaced on One More Try, a compilation of outtakes released thirty years later. In 1968, the duo recorded it during a demo session with the 31st of February, a band that featured Butch Trucks, the Allman Brothers’ later drummer. That version is thought to have featured the debut recorded slide performance from Duane Allman, and the entire session was later compiled into Duane & Greg Allman, released in 1972. Gregg Allman sold the publishing rights to “Melissa”, as well as the Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute “God Rest His Soul”, to producer Steve Alaimo for $250 shortly thereafter. He had been tied up in Los Angeles, contractually bound by Liberty Records (who had previously issued albums by the Allmans’ first band, the Hour Glass), and used the money to buy an airplane ticket to fly back.

When Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1971, his brother performed the song at his funeral, as he had grown to like the song over the years. Greg Allman commented that it “didn’t sit right” that he used one of his brother’s old guitars for the performance, but he nonetheless got through it; he called it “my brother’s favorite song that I ever wrote.” Both because he did not own the rights and found it “too soft” for the band’s repertoire, he never mentioned the song to the members of the Allman Brothers Band. Following Duane’s death, manager Phil Walden arranged to buy back the publishing rights in order to record the song for Eat a Peach, the band’s third studio album. Greg brought it to the studio the day following his birthday and the band recorded it that afternoon at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida. They felt it lacked a compelling instrumental backing element so guitarist Dickey Betts created the song’s lead guitar line.
-Wikipedia

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Wayback Wednesday and into the darkness…

“Darkness, Darkness” was written by Jesse Colin Young, with an intro performed by Charlie Daniels and was released by Young’s band The Youngbloods on their 1969 album Elephant Mountain. They released a version of the song as a single twice: in 1969, which reached #124 on the Billboard chart, and in 1970, which reached #86 on the chart. Robert Plant released a version of the song as a single in 2002 that reached #27 on the rock chart. It was featured on his 2002 album Dreamland.

Darkness, Darkness Be my pillow
Take my head and let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep

Darkness, Darkness hide my yearning
For the things I cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning
Toward the things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see now
Things I cannot see

Darkness, darkness,long and lonesome,
Ease the day that brings me pain.
I have felt the edge of sadness,
I have known the depth of fear.

Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing,
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now, now, now
Emptiness of ri-ight now.

Darkness, darkness, be my pillow,
Take my hand, and let me sleep.
In the coolness of your shadow,
In the silence, the silence of your deep.

Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with the endless night,
Take away, take away the pain of knowing
Fill the emptiness of right now,
Emptiness of right now now now
Emptiness of right…
Oh yeah Oh yeah
Emptiness, emptiness
Oh yeah

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Wayback Wednesday with Heads Hands & Feet bringing us “Warming Up the Band” Sept 1971 on the Old Grey Whistle Test, being the very first band to perform on the show.

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/heads-hands-feet-mn0000953215/biography

Following the dissolution of Poet & the One Man Band, Albert Lee (guitar), Pete Gavin (drums), Tony Colton (vocals), and Ray Smith (guitar) got together with Chas Hodges (bass, violin, vocals) and Mike O’Neill (keyboards) to form the country-influenced Heads, Hands & Feet and recorded a double album that had a great deal in common with the work of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the Grateful Dead at that time. Their self-titled debut album, populated with guests from the folk and singer/songwriter scenes, was released as a double record in the U.S., but only as a single album in Europe. The record was very well regarded, with Lee’s guitar work garnering attention.
Keyboardist O’Neill departed soon after the album’s release, and the band proceeded to move away from country influences and toward rock. While the band was able to record and release Tracks to a certain amount of acclaim, internal strife caused continuing problems, splintering the band before the 1973 release of Old Soldiers Never Die, which marked the group’s move to Atlantic Records. In 1996, See for Miles released Home From Home, a collection of recordings and demos made before the band’s first label signing. Albert Lee moved on to found the Albert Lee Band with Pete Gavin and Chas Hodges, and eventually joined Eric Clapton’s band. Chas Hodges later formed the duo Chas & Dave with Dave Peacock.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)