You could check out Jeff Buckey’s version too. Rather nice IMO.
Glee, I see what you mean about Fire and Rain…sob
Buckley !! Don’t know who Jeff Buckey is. Sounds like a porn star…
Saw some Elliott Smith recs. Some others you may like:
Needle in the Hay - very simple but haunting in a raw, almost punk (but soft) sort of way
Miss Misery - there’s an accompanied version but Elliott has done a solo acoustic version as well. Very elegant, and like most of his stuff, sad.
Memory Lane - fast beautiful jazzy-sounding number that took me quite a while to learn even passably
(btw, thanks for the Angeles reminder… gonna try and tackle that one next since I do need some more finger-picking exercise)
A couple of the ones I was going to suggest have been mentioned (James Taylor and Cat Stevens), but a couple haven’t been yet. One is Neil Young; try The Needle and the Damage Done, When You Dance You Can Really Love, or Old Man, for instance.
That’s the other one I was going to suggest. From the Beginning was one of my favorites to [del]play[/del], I mean butcher, back in the day.
I’ll second Everlong and Needle In The Hay. Some more of my favorites that I love to hear (and are pretty accessible to a general audience):
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town - Pearl Jam
Pink Houses - John Cougar Mellencamp
Dead or Alive - Bon Jovi
Stuck in a Moment - U2
Mrs. Robinson - Simon & Garfunkel
Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
God Put a Smile Upon Your Face - Coldplay
Overkill - Men at Work
Faith - George Michael
Don’t Tell Me - Madonna
Oh, and get some Richard Thompson to listen to.
Vyktoria Pratt Keating plays live solo acoustic guitar with such understated intricate fludity it sounds like a whole band’s worth of music. Her CDs are worth getting, although they’re more produced. It’s when she plays live and alone that her picking talent can be clearly seen and heard.