I came home and was listening to Paul Kelly. He is kind of an Aussie Bob Dylan -writes deceptively simple songs that are just pure genius. However they are very Australian and probably aren’t much known overseas. Some are about sport and other distinctly Aussie stuff.
I put the headphones on and was listening to How To Make Gravy for the hundredth time and suddenly out of the blue I understood it all.
The lyrics are here and if you are lucky you may find a way to hear it too.
Joe is singing to Dan from jail :
Hello Dan, it’s Joe here, I hope you’re keeping well
It’s the 21st of December, and now they’re ringing the last bells
If I get good behaviour, I’ll be out of here by July
Won’t you kiss my kids on Christmas Day, please don’t let 'em cry for me
and then he sings about family stuff…until…
Oh praise the Baby Jesus, have a Merry Christmas,
I’m really gonna miss it, all the treasure and the trash
And later in the evening, I can just imagine,
You’ll put on Junior Murray and push the tables back
And you’ll dance with Rita, I know you really like her,
Just don’t hold her too close, oh brother please don’t stab me in the back
I didn’t mean to say that, it’s just my mind it plays up,
Multiplies each matter, turns imagination into fact…
And that’s it - the way he delivers the line about Dan dancing with Rita and then just drives the song to the end, had me blubbering.
The lyric posted says Junior Murvin but although it is PaulKelly.com I’m sure that is wrong.
They got married early, never had no money
Then when he got laid off they really hit the skids
He started up his drinking, then they started fighting
He took it pretty badly, she took both the kids
She said: “I’m not standing by, to watch you slowly die
So watch me walking, out the door”
She said, “Shove it, Jack, I’m walking out the fucking door”
and Bradman
England 1930 and the seed burst into flower
All of Jackson’s grace failed him, it was Bradman was the power
He murdered them in Yorkshire,he danced for them in Kent
He laughed at them in Leicestershire, Leeds was an event
Three hundred runs he took and rewrote all the books
That really knocked those gents
The critics could not comprehend his nonchalant phenomenon
“Why this man is a machine,” they said. “Even his friends say he isn’t human”
Even friends have to cut something
the one that gets my big hairy self blubbering every stinking time is Keep Me In Your Heart by Warren Zevon. Listening to the lyrics while remembering he wrote the song knowing he had terminal cancer with little time to live just makes it even more moving.
I can never get through Syd Straw’s album “War and Peace” without blubbering like a big fool. “Time Has Done This” and “CBGB’s” do me in. I very rarely put the album on because of this. snif…
I’ve posted this before, but Mary Chapin Carpenter’s John Doe No. 24 has me in floods every time. It’s has the most pathos of anything I’ve ever heard, and it’s based on a true story.
She had read a news article about the death of a deaf, dumb, and blind teenager, found wandering in Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1945. He had no discernable identity, couldn’t communicate with anyone, and ended up in an institution, where he remained for decades, named John Doe No. 24. Over the years, it was discovered that he could play the harmonica, and dance, and had some affinity for New Orleans. But he died, unknown and unloved, locked in a world of silence and darkness, though it was clear that he was perfectly intelligent.
She was moved to write a song about him, with tremendously evocative lyrics, and a very simple tune, and expressed the story with intense emotion.
I even learned the words and how to play it to sing with the guitar, but I can rarely get all the way to the end without breaking down. In fact I’m getting all dewy-eyed as I type this.
Mine are so corny and cliche that I’m almost too embarassed to post them.
Cat’s in the Cradle puts a lump in my throat every time.
I don’t like country, but Tim McGraw’s “Don’t Take the Girl” also pushes all the right buttons. And again, in the “I don’t like country vein”, I once burst spontaneously into tears when listening to Colin Raye’s “I Think About You.” Boo-hoo city, it was.
And Red Sovine’s “Teddy Bear.” Damn song gets me every time.
The song that gets me sobbing, though, is Weddings Parties Anything’s For a Short Time. Lyrics I’ve been told it’s a true story about a girl they met while playing in Canada. She died in a car accident after the concert. It’s heartbreaking.
I have the same problem with “Don’t Take the Girl”. I don’t usually listen to country, either, and maybe that is why, because all of the ones that get me are country songs. A couple that get me every time “Love, Me” sung by Collin Raye - but that is in a sweet way. I don’t know the name of it, but some female country singer had a song out in the last couple of years that is a prayer to God not to take her seven year old daughter that is the most tear-jerking thing I ever heard, but I don’t know the name of either the artist or the song. I can’t even remember enough of the lyrics to google it - I tried.
Right after Cristi died I took my daughter to Newbury Comics and they started playing this song and it summed up everything I ever felt about her. I almost started crying in the store, but now it just helps me remember what kind of person she was.
A country song that gets me every time is Concrete Angel. I’m a teacher, so the first stanza really hits me.
One holiday song that gets me all the time is The Christmas Shoes. What gets me about that song is the chorus is sung by children. I get choked up just thinking about it.
OK, maybe I am a little dense, but how exactly did a deaf guy learn to play the harmonica?
I know the deaf can feel vibrations and can dance quite well, but picking out melodic tones?
Sorry - don’t mean to nitpick your song, just curious.
