More Bob Dylan
“From a Buick 6”:
She walks like Bo Diddley and she don’t need no crutch
“Outlaw Blues”:
Ain’t gonna hang no picture, ain’t gonna hang no frame
Well I might look like Robert Ford, but I feel just like Jesse James
“As I Went Out One Morning”:
Just then Tom Paine himself came running from across the field
“Black Diamond Bay”:
I was sitting home alone one night
In L.A. watching old Cronkite
On the seven o’clock news
“Black Diamond Bay”
Cowboy Junkies - Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning (John Coltrane)
Lunchtime. I start to dial your number
then I remember so I reach for something to smoke
and anyways I’d rather listen to Coltrane
than go through all that shit again
Paul Simon - Take Me To the Mardi Gras (Jelly Roll Morton)
Take your burdens to the Mardi Gras
Let the music wash your soul
You can mingle in the street
You can jingle to the beat
Of Jelly Roll
Paul Simon - That Was Your Mother (Clifton Chenier)
Well, I’m standing on the corner of Lafayette
State of Louisiana
Wondering what a city boy could do
To get her in a conversation
Drink a little red wine
Dance to the music of Clifton Chenier
The King of the Bayou
**
Tom Petty - Runnin’ Down a Dream (Del Shannon)**
It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down
I had the radio on, I was drivin’
Trees flew by, me and Del were singin’ little Runaway
I was flyin’
I wouldn’t call that “in passing”. The song is specifically about her. It’s called “Vera”. Three of the four lines either mention her by name or use a pronoun that refers to her.
Yep. My error.
“It’s Still Rock & Roll to Me”, Billy Joel
How about a pair of pink sidewinders
And a bright orange pair of pants?
Well, you could really be a Beau Brummel, baby
If you just give it half a chance
R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (A Salute to 60’s Rock) by John Mellencamp
There was Frankie Lyman-Bobby Fuller-Mitch Ryder
(They were Rockin’)
Jackie Wilson-Shangra-las-Young Rascals
(They were Rockin’)
Spotlight on Martha Reeves
Let’s don’t forget James Brown
Rockin’ in the U.S.A.
Rockin’ in the U.S.A.
Hey!
Since R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. was already mentioned, here are a few more from John Mellencamp.
Ain’t Even Done with the Night - You got your hands in my back pockets, and Sam Cooke’s singing on the radio
Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First) - This loud Cuban band is crucifying John Lennon
Eden Is Burning - Diane and Jack went to the movies, they went to see Richard Pryor
Peaceful World - Racism lives in the U.S. today, better get hip to what Martin Luther King had to say
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ debut LP "Rattlesnakes"
is full of such name-checks…
… because it’s an aspiring intellectual’s wry commentary on all the other aspiring intellectuals around him.
"Four Flights Up"
“You can drive them back to town in a beat-up Grace Kelly car/
Looking like a friend of Truman Capote, looking exactly like you are”
"Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?"
“Looking like a born again/Living like a heretic/
Listening to Arthur Lee records”
“Read Norman Mailer/Or get a new tailor.”
"Rattlesnakes"
“She looks like Eve Marie Saint/In ‘On the Waterfront’”
“As she reads Simone de Beauvoir/In her American circumstance.”
**“Perfect Skin”
**“At the age of ten/She looked like Greta Garbo/
And I loved her then/but how was she to know”
“Let 'Em In” - Wings
Sister Suzy (Linda McCartney)
Martin Luther (John Lennon)
Phil and Don (Everly)
Uncle Ernie (Either Keith Moon or Ringo - I’ve heard it both ways)
Country music fan weighing in:
"I Feel Lucky" Mary Chapin Carpenter
“Dwight Yoakam’s in the corner trying to catch my eye
Lyle Lovett’s right beside me with his hand upon my thigh”
"Here I Am" Lyle Lovett
“If Ford is to Chevrolet
What Dodge is to Chrysler
What Corn Flakes are to Post Toasties
What the clear blue sky is to the deep blue sea
What Hank Williams is to Neil Armstrong
Can you doubt we were made for each other?”
"If I Had a Boat" Lyle Lovett
"If I were Roy Rogers
I’d sure enough be single
I couldn’t bring myself to marrying an old Dale
Well, it’d just be me and Trigger
We’d go riding through them movies
Then we’d buy a boat and on the sea we’d sail
Alan Jackson "Gone Country"
“Some of these folks don’t sound much different than Dylan.”
Alan Jackson "Don’t Rock the Jukebox"
“Don’t rock the jukebox, I wanna hear George Jones
My heart ain’t ready for the Rolling Stones”
"You Get What You Give" New Radicals
“Fashion shoots with Beck and Hanson
Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson
You’re all fakes, run to your mansions
Come around, we’ll kick your asses!”
Told THEM, huh?
Horatio Hellpop’s post reminded me of one:
Dixie Chicks, “Long Time Gone”
Now they sound tired but they don’t sound Haggard
They’ve got money but they don’t have Cash
They got Junior but they don’t have Hank
A snippet from Detention’s Dead Rock n’Rollers"
*Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin
And Keith Moon and Elvis Presley
Are dead, dead, dead
Pulled the plug on themselves
Dead rock n rollers they were outta-conrtollers
Played the drug game but they couldn’t maintain
And now they’re dead, dead, dead
Offed themselves for the big buzz
Jimmy Morrison and Sid Vicious
And John Belushi and John Bonham
Were weak, weak, weak
Couldn’t take it at the peak
Dead rock n rollers they were outta-controllers
I guess they felt lame so they snuffed their brains
And now they’re dead, dead, dead
Why couldn’t it be Barry Manilow?
I mean I was never crazy about John Lennon
But at least he didn’t drown to death in his own puke
And what about you, Jim Carroll?
All your friends have
What are you waiting for?
Do it!*
Some fine lads from Wisconsin known as Killdozer, and this is a section from their tribute to Irwin Allen in
Man vs Nature
On the television, a ship was sinking
It seemed so real, but it was just a movie
Made by Irwin Allen (my, what a relief)
And on this ship was Ernest Borgnine
Brave in the face of certain death
He played a cop on a pleasure cruise
Along with his wife, an ex-prostitute
Shelley Winters, she was on the ship
She was good, too- but she died
As did Gene Hackman, a preacher
Who gave his life so that others could live
He died shouting “how many more lives?!”
On the screen, the city crumbled
So realistic, but but yet another film
By the master of realism, mr. Irwin Allen
No less a man than Lorne Green, and mr. George Kennedy
Risked their lives to save the lives of strangers
Their selflessness was moving
Chuck Heston was in the movie too- but he was just a ham
On the tv, a building in flames
It was “Towering Inferno” by Irwin Allen
O.J. Simpson led the cast
In a man-against-nature fight-for-survival
Monty Python tip their hats to Kant, Heidegger, Hume, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Schlegel, Nietzcshe, Mill, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Descartes, and Socrates in Bruce’s Song
There’s the stupid git Sir Walter Raleigh in The Beatles’ “I’m So Tired” and Chairman Mao in “Revolution”; Edgar Allen Poe and Semolina Pilchard in “I Am the Walrus”*.
*The Egg Man is Eric Burdon, who apparently had a thing for covering groupies in raw eggs.
Tom Paxton’s “I Lost My Heat on a 747”:
There in the middle of a spicy movie
Starring Natalie Wood.
We made our vows together.
Cutting our steaks the best we could.
More Bob Dylan
“Desolation Row”:
Einstein disguised as Robin Hood…
Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain’s tower…
“Only a Pawn in Their Game”:
A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
“Billy”
They say Pat Garret’s got your number
“Jokerman”
Michelangelo himself could’ve carved out your features
“High Water (for Charley Patton)”:
Big Joe Turner lookin’ east and west…
Well, George Lewis* told the Englishman, the Italian, and the Jew…
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway 5…
*There’re lots of George Lewises; which one is this? I’m guessing the New Orleans clarinetist. Or maybe the actor who played Don Alejandro de la Vega on Zorro.
Pencil Thin Mustache by Jimmy Buffett
“I wish I had a pencil thin mustache
The ‘Boston Blackie’ kind
A two-toned Ricky Ricardo jacket
And an autographed picture of Andy Devine
I remember bein’ buck-toothed and skinny
Writin’ fan letters to Sky’s niece Penny
Oh I wish I had a pencil thin mustache
Then I could solve some mysteries too”
Kim Carnes in Bette Davis Eyes:
She got Greta Garbo’s standoff sighs, she’s got Bette Davis eyes
Jona Louie, Stop the Cavalry:
Hey, Mr. Churchill comes over here
To say we’re doing splendidly
That’s not in passing, given the story behind the song.
La puerta de Alcalá, Ana Belén:
…una mañana llegó
Carlos III, con aire insigne
se quitó el sombrero…
…one morning Carlos III arrived
and with a grand gesture
doffed his hat…
La puerta de Alcalá, the Alcalá gate, is the monument which marks what used to be the road between Madrid and Alcalá de Henares. Replacing an older gate, it was built by Carlos III to celebrate his arrival to Madrid to be crowned king of Spain (well, of Castille and Navarre, his daddy having been legally unable to unify both into a single realm :p); he’d previously been king of Two Sicilies. A 16th-century foundation*, Madrid never had walls but only gates marking the main roads.
Neil Sedaka, Betty Grable:
That Don’t Impress Me Much - Shania Twain
So, you’re Brad Pitt