Hey there, haven't seen you in a while. We're still doing the FNGT every Friday at 8pm et over at https://poal.co/s/Guitar/new. Would love to hear from you again.
I don't remember getting a huge amount of airplay, but it may have on a more current radio market. The original band with Lowell George was my favorite but he disbanded, and died, in '79. They did reform and have since gone through many configurations. They've had a lot of hits and each version of the band brought a little different flavor but did stay with a familiar sound. George started out when Zappa didn't hire him (many stories why) and since many of the members have been associated with big name groups. They're still touring today but I haven't heard anything notable in quite a few years, but that just may be me.
Glad to see that. They're supposedly making a slow comeback due to people putting out flowers like you and planting milkweed. They say the Mexican Govt has tried to help in their winter refuge also. Remarkable creatures making an astounding migration each year.
Glad you enjoyed it. There's so many songs I enjoy that are just silly little things. Music is about sharing emotion and some of the time it's just fun. Rock On!
Well, I'm certainly grateful for the kind words. It's a labor of love as I consider myself very fortunate to have lived through the period. I can't remember a time as a kid I didn't listen to the radio at night as I went to bed, and then one night "Ladies and Gentlemen...The Beatles" on Ed Sullivan and I was totally hooked. These songs have been my constant companion and sometimes muse as I've gone through life. I've always been amazed at songwriters who can capture emotions so poignantly and phrase them in a lyric that dwells on forever. I frequently respond to situations with an old lyric in my head, there's a lyric for everything. I just wanted to do something to keep this decade of the greatest time in popular music alive, particularly for my kids. My only regret now is I can't devote the time and attention to the site it needs as "my body's aching and my time is at hand". My friend, TheBuddha, built and maintains the site for me and will keep it alive for me, for which I am indebted.
So keep on rockin' in the free world (while we can) and share the music that means something to you. It has the power to heal so many problems in life.
Glad you enjoyed it. If the music of the late 50's through the early '70's is of interest to you, you might want to check out my site for similar backgrounds on a number of songs:
That whole concert is pretty sweet. David had several guest artists like Crosby and Nash and David Bowie. It was also the last concert Richard Wright played. It was called Remember That Night.
Peaked is kinda subjective. Music is always evolving and different styles and genres come and go. Of course Bach and Mozart, et al, were exceptional composers, raising musical theory to new heights. Music has always been a reflection, or inspiration, of cultures of the time and provides a myriad of connections. But yeah, I agree "classical" music emphasized a peak of sorts in their compositions.
Most will agree, I think, music of the last decade has ceased to be artists that communicate, being replaced by corporate products for profit. We all relate to the music of our youth as that's a time of brain development that lends itself to forming attachments.
Well worth the time to get to know them. I have a couple other articles, Shape Of Things and For Your Love, discussed on MusicFor.Us with a little more background on the group. Just search on Yardbirds. It's been well recognized that at one point Beck's solo project, during his time with them, the song "Becks Bolero" had what was the original concept of Led Zeppelin, but fate had slightly different plans. Enjoy the journey.
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote the song for The Animals, but the band's lead singer Eric Burdon turned it down. Instead, Paul Revere & The Raiders recorded and released it as a single in 1966. Considered one of the earliest anti-drug songs, "Kicks" was composed and released during an era in which pro-hippie, pro-experimentation, and other counterculture themes were gaining popularity on U.S. FM radio stations. The song's message was consequently perceived as outdated by the emerging youth counterculture, as popular artists ranging from The Beatles to Jefferson Airplane had written songs whose themes sharply contrasted that of "Kicks." However, the song has received generally positive reviews by music critics in the decades since its release. In 2004, "Kicks" was ranked number 400 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
After the Animals had chart success with the 1965 single "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," producer Terry Melcher asked the song's writers, Mann and Weil, to compose a similar song for Paul Revere & the Raiders. The result was "Kicks," a song originally offered to the Animals, but turned down by lead singer Eric Burdon. Mann and Weil wrote the song as a warning to a friend about the dangers of drug use. The lyrics consist of a narrator telling a girl that drug use causes addiction and that soft drugs can lead to the use of hard drugs. Musically, the song's lead guitar lines recall the Beatles, while its bass figures are similar to those popularized by The Byrds. The song contains closer harmonies and a more euphonious melodic arrangement than the band's previous single, "Just Like Me". Lead singer Mark Lindsay's R&B vocal style, combined with the song's guitar and organ instrumentation, is reminiscent of British bands such as The Kinks and The Yardbirds.
Ranked No. 400 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
[Live TV version](https://hooktube.com/watch?v=IP8G4clUJBY)
"Windy" was The Association's second U.S. #1, following "Cherish" in 1966. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 4 song for 1967. Association guitarists Larry Ramos and Russ Giguere shared lead vocals on this song. It wasn't easy - the session started in early afternoon and ended at 6:30 the next morning (they had to catch an 8:30 a.m. flight to perform in Virginia). Their voices were so burned out that Bones Howe had everybody in the studio singing on the ending of the song. This is a rare hit song with a recorder solo, with was played by group member Terry Kirkman. It comes in about 1:07 into the song.
The song's composer Ruthann Friedman was 25 years old when she wrote [this song](https://hooktube.com/watch?v=MJaPZxctg3k). She had written at least 100 songs, but hadn't placed one with a major artist. When The Association turned "Windy" into a massive hit, it gave her both rent money and validation. Her mother pegged her as a secretary, and made her take a course hoping she would go that route. Instead, she left her family behind in the Bronx and headed for California to make music. "I was more of a beatnik than a hippie," she told us. "I was too old to be a hippie. I was the black sheep in my family, the one who was immediately influenced by Bob Dylan and Timothy Leary. So for me it was a moment to look at my family and say, 'Na na na na na na.'"
Friedman released a solo album in 1969 called Constant Companion, it didn't include "Windy," since she didn't want to be known just for that song, especially since the hit version was such a departure from her original. She did play the song at her shows, but did it as more of a Blues number and never included the "ba-ba" vocals, which she hated. Music remained a part of her life into the '10s, when she could still be seen performing around Los Angeles. She plays "Windy" because the crowd wants to hear it. "It's a very important song. People love it," she said. "People love me because I wrote that song." Ramos claimed that Ruthann Friedman had written the song about a man, and that The Association changed the lyrics to make it about a woman. Friedman refuted the rumor on her website:
"There are many explanations of who Windy actually was in Ruthann's life. She would have you know, she being me, Ruthann Friedman, that none of them are true. Windy was indeed a female and purely a fictitious character who popped into my head one fine day in 1967 . . .During the recording session The Association members, sure that they were in the middle of recording a hit, called the songwriter, me again, in to sing on the fade at the end. I can be heard singing a blues harmony as the song fades out . . . " But she has also gone on record with: Although Ruthann Friedman won't reveal the identity of "Windy," she tells us that he was another singer/songwriter, and not "a freewheeling Haight Ashbury Hippy" as often reported. Friedman says of the song: "I have heard so many different permutations of what the song was about. Here is the TRUTH. I was sitting on my bed - the apartment on the first floor of David Crosby's house in Beverly Glenn - and there was a fellow who came to visit and was sitting there staring at me as if he was going to suck the life out of me. So I started to fantasize about what kind of a guy I would like to be with, and that was Windy - a guy (fantasy). The song took about 20 minutes to write."
Top session musicians, The Wrecking Crew, played on most early tracks for The Association. "Windy" was recorded in a few different sessions helmed by producer Bones Howe, so it's hard to determine who played on the final version, but musicians who played at these sessions include Hal Blaine on drums, Joe Osborn on bass, Ray Pohlman on guitar and Larry Knechtel on keyboards.
>"Wicked Game" is a song by American rock musician Chris Isaak, released from his third studio album Heart Shaped World (1989). Despite being released as a single in 1989, it did not become a hit until it was featured in the 1990 David Lynch film Wild at Heart. Lee Chesnut, an Atlanta radio station music director who loved David Lynch films, began playing the song, and it quickly became an American top-ten hit in January 1991, reaching number six on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first hit song of Isaak's career. Additionally, the single became a number-one hit in Belgium and reached the top 10 in several other nations.
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was written by Robbie Robertson and originally recorded by the Band in 1969 and released on their eponymous second album. Levon Helm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the American Civil War. Frequently appearing on lists of the best rock songs of all time, it has been cited as an early example of the genre known as roots rock.
The song was written by Robbie Robertson. According to Rob Bowman's liner notes to the 2000 reissue of the Band's second album, The Band, it has been viewed as a concept album, with the songs focusing on peoples, places and traditions associated with an older version of Americana. The lyrics tell of the last days of the American Civil War, portraying the suffering of the protagonist, a poor white Southerner. It does not discuss slavery.
Robertson stated that he had the music to the song in his head but at first had no idea what it was to be about. Then the concept came to him and he did research on the subject, relying heavily on the Dunning School theories of the period. Levon Helm, a native of Arkansas, stated that he assisted in the research for the lyrics. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire, Helm wrote, "Robbie and I worked on 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down' up in Woodstock. I remember taking him to the library so he could research the history and geography of the era and make General Robert E. Lee come out with all due respect."
Dixie is the historical nickname for the states making up the Confederate States of America. The first lines of the lyrics refer to one of George Stoneman's raids behind Confederate lines attacking the railroads of Danville, Virginia at the end of the Civil War in 1865:
"Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
Till Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again..."
Sorry, this one is pretty long but I think the song deserves it:
This was Chapin's first single. Harry had his taxi drivers license in New York City and worked as a driver for 6 months in Long Beach, New York. Sandy Chapin, who was married to Harry from 1968 until his death in 1981, told this story: "He had been working in film, that was how he made his living. Harry's plan at the time was to make enough money in 5 or 6 months that he would not have to work for 5 or 6 months, and during which time he would write screenplays. And then, the money did run out and he went back to look for some work in film, but there wasn't anything available. He needed a job, he wanted to still to be able to write, so he applied for a cab license. And I was something like 8 months pregnant. I felt very positive about it, because I thought, wow, it would be a great experience, because people in cabs will tell him stories, and he'll get all kinds of characters for songs. I think he was feeling pretty low about it, and wrote the song 'Taxi' with the idea that the people he had told his dreams - that he was gonna make a great film - were gonna get into the cab, and so he ended up being a cab driver after all the big talk. And one of whom would be the girlfriend that he had while he was at Cornell. Sue was a real person."
The song is set in San Francisco. Sandy Chapin explains: "The song was moved to the West Coast from the East Coast. His life, college and otherwise, his work, was all on the East Coast. Even his film work was on the East Coast, except for that one year in California when he was doing commercials.
When I would look through Harry's notebooks, I was amazed at how little editing there was. He would start jotting down ideas for a song or a story, and then decide later that because of the rhyming or the rhythm or whatever it was, that San Francisco would be a good place. He probably just came up with the line, 'It was raining hard in Frisco,' and went on from there. There were some notebooks where he jotted down 4 or 6 lines that he might come back to later and use. But there are other notebooks where he just sat down and wrote the song."
The middle section of the song features the bass player, John Wallace, in falsetto, singing the following lines, written by poet Sylvia Plath:
"Baby's so high, that she's skying
Yes she's flying, afraid to fall
I'll tell you why baby's crying
Cause she's dying, aren't we all..."
In 1980, Chapin wrote and composed a follow-up to the song, titled "[Sequel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD8sZFe9zxw)". Written in the same style as "Taxi," it continues the story of Harry and Sue with them meeting again ten years later. Sue proves to have nothing, but she is now happy with herself. Invited to Harry's concert, she rejects the invitation by admitting that she works at night. Harry is otherwise cryptic about their reunion, urging listeners not to ask for details by saying, "If I answered at all I'd lie." The song ends with:
"I guess it's a sequel to our story
From the journey 'tween heaven and hell
With half the time thinking of what might have been
And half thinkin' just as well.
COF 0 points 3.7 years ago
Hey there, haven't seen you in a while. We're still doing the FNGT every Friday at 8pm et over at https://poal.co/s/Guitar/new. Would love to hear from you again.
/v/Guitar viewpost?postid=615409e9eb6d6
COF 4 points 3.7 years ago
Thanks, my daughter took it. Looks so relaxing.
/v/Nature viewpost?postid=615478e72f0b8
COF 1 point 3.7 years ago
She had some decent hits during the tough rebel girl period. Leather Tuscadero!
/v/music viewpost?postid=615186b339276
COF 0 points 3.7 years ago
I don't remember getting a huge amount of airplay, but it may have on a more current radio market. The original band with Lowell George was my favorite but he disbanded, and died, in '79. They did reform and have since gone through many configurations. They've had a lot of hits and each version of the band brought a little different flavor but did stay with a familiar sound. George started out when Zappa didn't hire him (many stories why) and since many of the members have been associated with big name groups. They're still touring today but I haven't heard anything notable in quite a few years, but that just may be me.
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=6150b4861b30a
COF 0 points 3.7 years ago
I'll check that out, thanks. Been missing you in the FNGT. Stop by sometime.
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=614e1157f1085
COF 3 points 3.7 years ago
I didn't listen closely to the lyrics, I just like the big band/swing sound.
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=614e1157f1085
COF 2 points 3.7 years ago
Glad to see that. They're supposedly making a slow comeback due to people putting out flowers like you and planting milkweed. They say the Mexican Govt has tried to help in their winter refuge also. Remarkable creatures making an astounding migration each year.
/v/pics viewpost?postid=614cd5a46aa25
COF 1 point 3.7 years ago
Glad you enjoyed it. There's so many songs I enjoy that are just silly little things. Music is about sharing emotion and some of the time it's just fun. Rock On!
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=614d0146163c8
COF 1 point 3.7 years ago
Well, I'm certainly grateful for the kind words. It's a labor of love as I consider myself very fortunate to have lived through the period. I can't remember a time as a kid I didn't listen to the radio at night as I went to bed, and then one night "Ladies and Gentlemen...The Beatles" on Ed Sullivan and I was totally hooked. These songs have been my constant companion and sometimes muse as I've gone through life. I've always been amazed at songwriters who can capture emotions so poignantly and phrase them in a lyric that dwells on forever. I frequently respond to situations with an old lyric in my head, there's a lyric for everything. I just wanted to do something to keep this decade of the greatest time in popular music alive, particularly for my kids. My only regret now is I can't devote the time and attention to the site it needs as "my body's aching and my time is at hand". My friend, TheBuddha, built and maintains the site for me and will keep it alive for me, for which I am indebted.
So keep on rockin' in the free world (while we can) and share the music that means something to you. It has the power to heal so many problems in life.
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=614bcec80d415
COF 2 points 3.7 years ago
Glad you enjoyed it. If the music of the late 50's through the early '70's is of interest to you, you might want to check out my site for similar backgrounds on a number of songs:
https://musicfor.us/
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=614bcec80d415
COF 0 points 3.7 years ago
Sounds like he could be.
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=614b8fe09d5de
COF 1 point 3.7 years ago
That whole concert is pretty sweet. David had several guest artists like Crosby and Nash and David Bowie. It was also the last concert Richard Wright played. It was called Remember That Night.
/v/Guitar viewpost?postid=6144c8a4dfc97
COF 2 points 3.8 years ago
Here's a live version with Crosby and Nash singing backup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zASlgFe208
/v/Guitar viewpost?postid=6144c8a4dfc97
COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
Sweet, going to watch it now.
/v/Guitar viewpost?postid=6144c8a4dfc97
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
Peaked is kinda subjective. Music is always evolving and different styles and genres come and go. Of course Bach and Mozart, et al, were exceptional composers, raising musical theory to new heights. Music has always been a reflection, or inspiration, of cultures of the time and provides a myriad of connections. But yeah, I agree "classical" music emphasized a peak of sorts in their compositions.
Most will agree, I think, music of the last decade has ceased to be artists that communicate, being replaced by corporate products for profit. We all relate to the music of our youth as that's a time of brain development that lends itself to forming attachments.
/v/music viewpost?postid=6144c1ee131dc
COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
Dang, I get "Video Unavailable".
/v/Guitar viewpost?postid=6144c8a4dfc97
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
Would love to hear what you do sometime on the FNGT.
/v/TellVoat viewpost?postid=6142bed027694
COF 5 points 3.8 years ago
Nice and to the point. Looks like that Jim guy sitting by the mic was a paid suppressor ready to get physical. The truth will never be proven.
I'm wondering what effect it had on my recent illness.
/v/Controlavirus viewpost?postid=6142c191a990d
COF 2 points 3.8 years ago*
Well worth the time to get to know them. I have a couple other articles, Shape Of Things and For Your Love, discussed on MusicFor.Us with a little more background on the group. Just search on Yardbirds. It's been well recognized that at one point Beck's solo project, during his time with them, the song "Becks Bolero" had what was the original concept of Led Zeppelin, but fate had slightly different plans. Enjoy the journey.
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=614298342243c
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
There ya go!
/v/whatever viewpost?postid=6142a224dbc80
COF 1 point 3.8 years ago
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote the song for The Animals, but the band's lead singer Eric Burdon turned it down. Instead, Paul Revere & The Raiders recorded and released it as a single in 1966. Considered one of the earliest anti-drug songs, "Kicks" was composed and released during an era in which pro-hippie, pro-experimentation, and other counterculture themes were gaining popularity on U.S. FM radio stations. The song's message was consequently perceived as outdated by the emerging youth counterculture, as popular artists ranging from The Beatles to Jefferson Airplane had written songs whose themes sharply contrasted that of "Kicks." However, the song has received generally positive reviews by music critics in the decades since its release. In 2004, "Kicks" was ranked number 400 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
After the Animals had chart success with the 1965 single "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," producer Terry Melcher asked the song's writers, Mann and Weil, to compose a similar song for Paul Revere & the Raiders. The result was "Kicks," a song originally offered to the Animals, but turned down by lead singer Eric Burdon. Mann and Weil wrote the song as a warning to a friend about the dangers of drug use. The lyrics consist of a narrator telling a girl that drug use causes addiction and that soft drugs can lead to the use of hard drugs. Musically, the song's lead guitar lines recall the Beatles, while its bass figures are similar to those popularized by The Byrds. The song contains closer harmonies and a more euphonious melodic arrangement than the band's previous single, "Just Like Me". Lead singer Mark Lindsay's R&B vocal style, combined with the song's guitar and organ instrumentation, is reminiscent of British bands such as The Kinks and The Yardbirds.
Ranked No. 400 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
[Live TV version](https://hooktube.com/watch?v=IP8G4clUJBY)
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=61429d603747a
COF 2 points 3.8 years ago
A little long, but here's some background:
"Windy" was The Association's second U.S. #1, following "Cherish" in 1966. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 4 song for 1967. Association guitarists Larry Ramos and Russ Giguere shared lead vocals on this song. It wasn't easy - the session started in early afternoon and ended at 6:30 the next morning (they had to catch an 8:30 a.m. flight to perform in Virginia). Their voices were so burned out that Bones Howe had everybody in the studio singing on the ending of the song. This is a rare hit song with a recorder solo, with was played by group member Terry Kirkman. It comes in about 1:07 into the song.
The song's composer Ruthann Friedman was 25 years old when she wrote [this song](https://hooktube.com/watch?v=MJaPZxctg3k). She had written at least 100 songs, but hadn't placed one with a major artist. When The Association turned "Windy" into a massive hit, it gave her both rent money and validation. Her mother pegged her as a secretary, and made her take a course hoping she would go that route. Instead, she left her family behind in the Bronx and headed for California to make music. "I was more of a beatnik than a hippie," she told us. "I was too old to be a hippie. I was the black sheep in my family, the one who was immediately influenced by Bob Dylan and Timothy Leary. So for me it was a moment to look at my family and say, 'Na na na na na na.'"
Friedman released a solo album in 1969 called Constant Companion, it didn't include "Windy," since she didn't want to be known just for that song, especially since the hit version was such a departure from her original. She did play the song at her shows, but did it as more of a Blues number and never included the "ba-ba" vocals, which she hated. Music remained a part of her life into the '10s, when she could still be seen performing around Los Angeles. She plays "Windy" because the crowd wants to hear it. "It's a very important song. People love it," she said. "People love me because I wrote that song." Ramos claimed that Ruthann Friedman had written the song about a man, and that The Association changed the lyrics to make it about a woman. Friedman refuted the rumor on her website:
"There are many explanations of who Windy actually was in Ruthann's life. She would have you know, she being me, Ruthann Friedman, that none of them are true. Windy was indeed a female and purely a fictitious character who popped into my head one fine day in 1967 . . .During the recording session The Association members, sure that they were in the middle of recording a hit, called the songwriter, me again, in to sing on the fade at the end. I can be heard singing a blues harmony as the song fades out . . . " But she has also gone on record with: Although Ruthann Friedman won't reveal the identity of "Windy," she tells us that he was another singer/songwriter, and not "a freewheeling Haight Ashbury Hippy" as often reported. Friedman says of the song: "I have heard so many different permutations of what the song was about. Here is the TRUTH. I was sitting on my bed - the apartment on the first floor of David Crosby's house in Beverly Glenn - and there was a fellow who came to visit and was sitting there staring at me as if he was going to suck the life out of me. So I started to fantasize about what kind of a guy I would like to be with, and that was Windy - a guy (fantasy). The song took about 20 minutes to write."
Top session musicians, The Wrecking Crew, played on most early tracks for The Association. "Windy" was recorded in a few different sessions helmed by producer Bones Howe, so it's hard to determine who played on the final version, but musicians who played at these sessions include Hal Blaine on drums, Joe Osborn on bass, Ray Pohlman on guitar and Larry Knechtel on keyboards.
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=6142834ecd2f7
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
>"Wicked Game" is a song by American rock musician Chris Isaak, released from his third studio album Heart Shaped World (1989). Despite being released as a single in 1989, it did not become a hit until it was featured in the 1990 David Lynch film Wild at Heart. Lee Chesnut, an Atlanta radio station music director who loved David Lynch films, began playing the song, and it quickly became an American top-ten hit in January 1991, reaching number six on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first hit song of Isaak's career. Additionally, the single became a number-one hit in Belgium and reached the top 10 in several other nations.
/v/PaddysPub viewpost?postid=613b4444adb81
COF 3 points 3.8 years ago
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was written by Robbie Robertson and originally recorded by the Band in 1969 and released on their eponymous second album. Levon Helm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the American Civil War. Frequently appearing on lists of the best rock songs of all time, it has been cited as an early example of the genre known as roots rock.
The song was written by Robbie Robertson. According to Rob Bowman's liner notes to the 2000 reissue of the Band's second album, The Band, it has been viewed as a concept album, with the songs focusing on peoples, places and traditions associated with an older version of Americana. The lyrics tell of the last days of the American Civil War, portraying the suffering of the protagonist, a poor white Southerner. It does not discuss slavery.
Robertson stated that he had the music to the song in his head but at first had no idea what it was to be about. Then the concept came to him and he did research on the subject, relying heavily on the Dunning School theories of the period. Levon Helm, a native of Arkansas, stated that he assisted in the research for the lyrics. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire, Helm wrote, "Robbie and I worked on 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down' up in Woodstock. I remember taking him to the library so he could research the history and geography of the era and make General Robert E. Lee come out with all due respect."
Dixie is the historical nickname for the states making up the Confederate States of America. The first lines of the lyrics refer to one of George Stoneman's raids behind Confederate lines attacking the railroads of Danville, Virginia at the end of the Civil War in 1865:
"Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
Till Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again..."
/v/music viewpost?postid=6139b8475f93c
COF 0 points 3.8 years ago
Sorry, this one is pretty long but I think the song deserves it:
This was Chapin's first single. Harry had his taxi drivers license in New York City and worked as a driver for 6 months in Long Beach, New York. Sandy Chapin, who was married to Harry from 1968 until his death in 1981, told this story: "He had been working in film, that was how he made his living. Harry's plan at the time was to make enough money in 5 or 6 months that he would not have to work for 5 or 6 months, and during which time he would write screenplays. And then, the money did run out and he went back to look for some work in film, but there wasn't anything available. He needed a job, he wanted to still to be able to write, so he applied for a cab license. And I was something like 8 months pregnant. I felt very positive about it, because I thought, wow, it would be a great experience, because people in cabs will tell him stories, and he'll get all kinds of characters for songs. I think he was feeling pretty low about it, and wrote the song 'Taxi' with the idea that the people he had told his dreams - that he was gonna make a great film - were gonna get into the cab, and so he ended up being a cab driver after all the big talk. And one of whom would be the girlfriend that he had while he was at Cornell. Sue was a real person."
The song is set in San Francisco. Sandy Chapin explains: "The song was moved to the West Coast from the East Coast. His life, college and otherwise, his work, was all on the East Coast. Even his film work was on the East Coast, except for that one year in California when he was doing commercials.
When I would look through Harry's notebooks, I was amazed at how little editing there was. He would start jotting down ideas for a song or a story, and then decide later that because of the rhyming or the rhythm or whatever it was, that San Francisco would be a good place. He probably just came up with the line, 'It was raining hard in Frisco,' and went on from there. There were some notebooks where he jotted down 4 or 6 lines that he might come back to later and use. But there are other notebooks where he just sat down and wrote the song."
The middle section of the song features the bass player, John Wallace, in falsetto, singing the following lines, written by poet Sylvia Plath:
"Baby's so high, that she's skying
Yes she's flying, afraid to fall
I'll tell you why baby's crying
Cause she's dying, aren't we all..."
In 1980, Chapin wrote and composed a follow-up to the song, titled "[Sequel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD8sZFe9zxw)". Written in the same style as "Taxi," it continues the story of Harry and Sue with them meeting again ten years later. Sue proves to have nothing, but she is now happy with herself. Invited to Harry's concert, she rejects the invitation by admitting that she works at night. Harry is otherwise cryptic about their reunion, urging listeners not to ask for details by saying, "If I answered at all I'd lie." The song ends with:
"I guess it's a sequel to our story
From the journey 'tween heaven and hell
With half the time thinking of what might have been
And half thinkin' just as well.
I guess only time will tell."
/v/music viewpost?postid=6139c935ebbf3