Take This Tune #5 - Life Is A Highway

I have no idea what you folks will make of this one, but I wanted a fun sound to close out the summer. The band is Rascal Flatts. If you aren't familiar with them, check out the link above and some of their other videos on You Tube.

The video is the race scene from the cartoon movie "Cars". You can have a great deal of fun on the official movie web site including building and racing your own cartoon car.

The song lyrics actually have something to say. So ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. See you on Monday.



Life's like a road that you travel on
When there's one day here and the next day gone
Somethimes you bend and sometimes you stand
Sometimes you turn your head to the wind
There's a world outside ev'ry darkened door
Where blues won't haunt you anymore
Where brave are free and lovers soar
Come ride with me to the distant shore
We won't hesitate
Break down the garden's gate
There's not much time left today

Life is a highway
I wanna ride it all night long
If you're going my way
I wanna drive it all night long

Through all these cities and all these towns
It's in my blood and it's all around
I love you now like I loved you then
This is the road and these are the hands
From Mozambique to those Memphis nights
The khyber Pass to Vancouver's lights

Knock me down get back up again
You're in my blood
I'm not a lonely man
There's no load I can't hold
Road so rough this I know
I'll be there when the light comes in
Just tell 'em we're survivors

Gimme gimme gimme gimme yeah
If you're going my way
I wanna drive it all night long
There was a distance between you and I
A misunderstanding once
But now we look in the eye

There ain't no load that I can't hold
Road so rough this I know
I'll be there when the light comes in
Just tell 'em we're survivors

Life is a highway
I wanna ride it all night long
If you're going my way
I wanna drive it all night long

Take This Tune #4 - Vincent

I can still remember the very first time I heard this song. The very first words "Starry, starry night" grabbed me and I thought, "that is the name of Van Gogh's painting" only to realize that the song actually was about Vincent Van Gogh. My favorite painting has always been the last one at the bottom, "Cornfield with Crows" completed on the same day he committed suicide. There is a disorder and panic while still seeming to try for control that fascinates me. It is not a comfortable painting but one that cries and howls.

There have been so many stories and the question still hangs in the air as to how he went from the early, structured and realistic image of the early works such as the fields at the top to the depression and madness of the fields at the bottom. Much of what we know of his thinking is in the letters he wrote to his beloved brother contained in "Dear Theo".

So your mission today: Vincent Van Gogh, the life of the artist, the line between creativity and madness, the unquestioning devotion of a beloved family member, your own taste in art. Whatever you choose: Take This Tune for August 24 - Vincent

Vincent (Starry Starry Night) by Don McLean

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.

Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the strangers that you've met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they're not listening still.
Perhaps they never will...

Take This Tune - "sull'aria"

You have all probably heard this aria though many attending the show probably didn't know its source. It was played during one of the best scenes in a wonderful movie: The Shawshank Redemption.

Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding: "I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are better left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was as if some beautiful bird had flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

Now I could tell you what they were singing about, but that would spoil the fun. If you must know, go looking for Mozart's "Le Nozzi di Figaro" (The Marriage of Figaro) and the aria "Sull'aria" - A Little Song On The breeze. It is enough to say that it is a comedy and all the men and women from nobility on down are all tangled up about who loves whom, where and when with farcial chasings about in the moonlight all while Figaro is just trying to get married and bundled up in the bed he was measuring in the Act 1 opening for his about to be grateful and affectionate bride.

This results in an even more remarkable piece of music in the Finale of Act 2, "Conoscete, signor Figaro", that starts as a duet, turns into a trio, then a quartet until it ends as an octet. It represented a record in terms of sustained music in opera at the time (almost ten minutes), and is a testament to Mozart's genius.

Now we all know what can go wrong when you are planning a wedding, not to mention the trouble people can get into when he loves she, but she loves another he, who rejects her for an alternate she, who really has eyes only for the original he not to mention hes and hes and shes and shes (Ain't love strange?).

So the subject is romance, marriage, things not being what they seem, beauty in unexpected places, and all the tangles that go with when you Take This Tune - A Little Song on the Breeze.

Take This Tune - Sunday Morning Coming Down

If this doesn't prove we will be mixing eras and genres, nothing will. I love the Outlaws. When in the mood, bring on Waylon or Willie and Merle. Then there is nothing for the blues that Hank Williams and "I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry" won't improve. Charlie Daniels just keeps getting better and better with Midnight Wind or David Allen Coe and the ghostly "The Ride". When it comes to Country in general, don't get me started on Patsi, Cline, K. T. Oslin or Reba or we will be here all night. Today it's country ... Can grand opera be far behind?

There is a great distance from the country of decades ago and today, so use this song, or just write how you feel about the music, the performers, regrets, mistakes, memories of a kinder, gentler time ... Break out your inner outlaw and then Take This Tune for Monday, August 10.

Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An' I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An' stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

I'd smoked my brain the night before,
On cigarettes and songs I'd been pickin'.
But I lit my first and watched a small kid,
Cussin' at a can that he was kicking.
Then I crossed the empty street,
'n caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin' chicken.
And it took me back to somethin',
That I'd lost somehow, somewhere along the way.

On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cos there's something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothin' short of dyin',
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin' city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin' comin' down.

In the park I saw a daddy,
With a laughin' little girl who he was swingin'.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to the song they were singin'.
Then I headed back for home,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin'.
And it echoed through the canyons,
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.

On the Sunday morning sidewalk,
Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
'Cos there's something in a Sunday,
Makes a body feel alone.
And there's nothin' short of dyin',
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin' city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin' comin' down.