This time around, Linda the wonderful photographer with the unbelievably talented artist daughter has requested this week's Take This Tune. Visit her on Are We There Yet
The Things We Do For Love
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Too many broken hearts have fallen in the river
Too many lonely souls have drifted out to sea,
You lay your bets and then you pay the price
The things we do for love, the things we do for love
Communication is the problem to the answer
You've got her number and your hand is on the phone
The weather's turned and all the lines are down
The things we do for love, the things we do for love
Like walking in the rain and the snow
When there's nowhere to go
And you're feelin' like a part of you is dying
And you're looking for the answer in her eyes
You think you're gonna break up
Then she says she wants to make up
Ooh, you made me love you
Ooh, you've got a way
Ooh, you had me crawling up the wall
Like walking in the rain and the snow
When there's nowhere to go
And you're feelin' like a part of you is dying
And you're looking for the answer in her eyes
You think you're gonna break up
Then she says she wants to make up
Ooh, you made me love you
Ooh, you've got a way
Ooh, you had me crawling up the wall
A compromise would surely help the situation
Agree to disagree but disagree to part
When after all it's just a compromise of
The things we do for love, the things we do for love
One of our regular participants, Travis of Trav's Thoughts picked this week's Take This Tune song. Whistle Down the Wind is a musical based on the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Jim Steinman. This is one of Webbers few unsuccessful musicals despite the wonderful music. The Broadway opening was cancelled after poor reviews of the out of town preview. A more successful West End production did run and a concept album was issued that achieved several hit songs
You can read all about the book, movie, and musical production on the above link. The show has strong religious conotations as it delves into the nature of faith, belief, unanswered dreams and deception as the town children mistake an injured wanderer for Jesus in Act One, but who may really be a fugitive. It ends with whoever he was imprisoned inside a burning barn but still a mystery.
That is one side of the story. The other is much simpler, a beautiful song about the persistence of hopes, dreams, love and memory.
Whistle Down The Wind
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Whistle down the wind
Let your voices carry
Drown out all the rain
Light a patch of darkness
Treacherous and scary
Howl at the stars
Whisper when you're sleeping
I'll be there to hold you
I'll be there to stop
The chills and all the weeping
Make it clear and strong
So the whole night long
Every signal that you send
Until the very end
I will not abandon you my precious friend
So try to stem the tide
Then you'll raise a banner
Send a flare up in the sky
Try to burn a torch
And try to build a bonfire
Every signal that you send
Until the very end
I'm there
So whistle down the wind
For I have always been
Right there
Howl at the stars
Whisper when your sleeping
I'll be there to hold you
I'll be there to stop
The chills and all the weeping
Make it clear and strong
So the whole night long
Every signal that you send
Until the very end
I will not abandon you my precious friend
So whistle down the wind
Let your voices carry
Drown out all the rain
Light a patch of darkness
Treacherous and scary
Every signal that you send
Until the very end
I'm there
So whistle down the wind
For I have always been
Right there.
This week we are giving you three songs that are all about home towns, small towns, and places you leave behind on the way to somewhere else. First up Mary Chapin Carpenter's "I Am A Town" then Iris Dement with "My Town" and finally, Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown". They are the places where we are from or just pass by on the way to somewhere else. Do you have a story to tell?
I Am A Town - Mary Chapin Carpenter
I'm a town in Carolina, I'm a detour on a ride
For a phone call and a soda, I'm a blur from the driver's side
I'm the last gas for an hour if you're going twenty-five
I am Texaco and tobacco, I am dust you leave behind
I am peaches in September, and corn from a roadside stall
I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl
I'm the pines behind the graveyard, and the cool beneath their shade,
where the boys have left their beer cans I am weeds between the graves.
My porches sag and lean with old black men and children
Their sleep is filled with dreams, I never can fulfill them
I am a town.
I am a church beside the highway where the ditches never drain
I'm a Baptist like my daddy, and Jesus knows my name
I am memory and stillness,
I am lonely in old age; I am not your destination
I am clinging to my ways
I am a town.
I'm a town in Carolina, I am billboards in the fields
I'm an old truck up on cinder blocks, missing all my wheels
I am Pabst Blue Ribbon, American, and "Southern Serves the South"
I am tucked behind the Jaycees sign, on the rural route
I am a town
I am a town
I am a town
Southbound.
Our Town- Ireis Dement
And you know the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.
Up the street beside that red neon light,
That's where I met my baby on one hot summer night.
He was the tender and I ordered a beer,
It's been forty years and I'm still sitting here.
But you know the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.
It's here I had my babies and I had my first kiss.
I've walked down Main Street in the cold morning mist.
Over there is where I bought my first car.
It turned over once but then it never went far.
And I can see the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.
I buried my Mama and I buried my Pa.
They sleep up the street beside that pretty brick wall.
I bring them flowers about every day,
but I just gotta cry when I think what they'd say.
If they could see how the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.
Now I sit on the porch and watch the lightning-bugs fly.
But I can't see too good, I got tears in my eyes.
I'm leaving tomorrow but I don't wanna go.
I love you, my town, you'll always live in my soul.
But I can see the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on, I gotta kiss you goodbye,
But I'll hold to my lover,
'Cause my heart's 'bout to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to my town, to my town.
I can see the sun has gone down on my town, on my town,
Goodnight.
Goodnight.
My Hometown
Bruce Springsteen
I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around this is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
In `65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
My hometown
My hometown
My hometown
Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys
and they ain't coming back to your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I'm thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around
Awhile back we played with Vince Gill's "Some Things Never Get Old". One of the lines about things that never get boring in that song reads "Eatin' watermelon down to the rind, any song by Brother John Prine". If you aren't familiar with John Prine, seek him out. His songs can be hilarious, sad, angry, or sweet. What they will always be is powerful in some way. Prine doesn't cheat. He always has something to say. This is one of the best known, tragic, and cause for thought as he sings of those who come home from war broken either physically or mentally.
Sam Stone
John Prine
Sam Stone came home,
To his wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas.
And the time that he served,
Had shattered all his nerves,
And left a little shrapnel in his knee.
But the morphine eased the pain,
And the grass grew round his brain,
And gave him all the confidence he lacked,
With a Purple Heart and a monkey on his back.
Chorus:
There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin' I suppose.
Little pitchers have big ears,
Don't stop to count the years,
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.
Mmm....
Sam Stone's welcome home
Didn't last too long.
He went to work when he'd spent his last dime
And Sammy took to stealing
When he got that empty feeling
For a hundred dollar habit without overtime.
And the gold rolled through his veins
Like a thousand railroad trains,
And eased his mind in the hours that he chose,
While the kids ran around wearin' other peoples' clothes...
Repeat Chorus:
Sam Stone was alone
When he popped his last balloon
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair
Well, he played his last request
While the room smelled just like death
With an overdose hovering in the air
But life had lost its fun
And there was nothing to be done
But trade his house that he bought on the G. I. Bill
For a flag draped casket on a local heroes' hill.
This is a two for one Take This Tune. I first heard "He Rode All The Way to Texas on the Trio album featuring Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Dolly Parton. Unfortunately, You tube doesn't have that video, but you might want to go hunting on I Tunes to download. It is a song about a love 'em and leave "em man who happens to be an entertainer. The sentiments are similar to those of The Groupie (Superstar) here with the original recording by Delaney and Bonnie rather than The Carpenters. In both songs, the women are left with nothing but the radio. Somehow it sounds better and a little less cruel in bluegrass. Apparently Hollywood likes the subject as at least ffour movies have been made on the topic (The Rocker, Walk Hard, The Banger Sisters, and Almost Famous) What do you have to say about stars and their obsessive fans?
He rode all the way to Texas on an old freight train
Didn't miss the girl he left behind
He rode all the way to Texas
Didn't shed a tear
He's letting you know that he's the moving kind
A light shines from my window
Just can't sleep no more
Lord it hurts so much to be alone
But the real men never do admit
It's them that might be wrong
At least that's what he told me in his song
Chorus
The freedom that he sings about
I guess I'll never know
Just can't shake the guilt or kill the pain
But he lets me ride when the lights turn low
Get on board the radio and take a ride to Texas on his train
He rode all the way to Texas on an old freight train
Didn't miss the girl he left behind
He rode all the way to Texas
Didn't shed a tear
Letting you know that he's the moving kind
He's letting you know that he's the moving kind
Long ago
and oh so far away
I fell in love with you
Before the second show
Your guitar
it sounds so sweet and clear
it's just the radio
but you're not really there
Don't you remember you told me you love me baby
you said you'd be coming back this way again baby
baby baby baby baby oh baby
I love you, I really do
Loneliness, is such a sad affair
and I can hardly wait
to sleep with you again
what to say to make you come again
come back to me again
and play your sad guitar
Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby
you said you'd be coming back this way again baby
baby baby baby baby oh baby
I love you, I really do
Don't you remember you told me you love me baby
you said you'd be coming back this way again baby
baby baby baby baby oh baby
I love you, I really do
