"Lightfoot" Album Liner Notes
Having just successfully posted my 2-part scan of my UK early Lightfoot album sleeve as my contribution to Borderstone's recent topic on lending/borrowing stuff I remembered that I had intended to scan the liner notes from both this and the original "Lightfoot" album sleeve, for a project I am working on. The original notes by Gord's one-time co-manager John Court have always intrigued me and knowing that many readers here have hardly even heard of the United Artists albums let alone read the liner notes I have scanned both versions and was most gratified to find that my scanner's OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software produced almost faultless text from the scans
So here are the notes 1 UK issue UK United Artists Stereo UAS 29012 Liner notes "It was on June 2nd 1969 that Gordon Lightfoot's first British concert was held. British, that is to say, in the sense that the location was London's Royal Festival Hall, but if you were lucky enough to be a member of the audience, you'll have been aware of the Canadian feel throughout the evening. For Gordon is a native of Toronto a city that stages his regular concert appearances. This style of contemporary folk singing is captured in all his many songs filled with tremendously rhythmic patterns that single him out as an equally fine writer as he is a singer. This album was cut back in 1966 and spotlights the earlier days of Gordon including his original versions of "Early Morning Rain" (which he still features regularly), "Ribbon of Darkness" (a Marty Robbins country hit of a couple of years back), "For Lovin' Him" (sic)(which became a best-seller for Peter, Paul & Mary) and the George Hamilton IV speciality "Steel Rail Blues". We are pleased to present this record for your collection as a representation of the earlier days of an artist whose talent emerged in Canada and has now been recognised internationally." Alan.Warner 2.Liner notes from original Canadian album United Artists Stereo uas 6487 "So you come home from work or whatever to your favorite chair, open a cold beer and energize the telly. There is the ostensible World News and all the unrest it provokes, followed by a suggestion that Ice Blue Something is what we must look to for security in this nuclear Age of Anxiety. And as if that's not enough of the Big Lie from the Big Eye for one gulp (we must of needs deduce that Katy Winters moves in a fairly odoriferous circle), there is next this purportedly candid footage of some fellow protesting that he gets forty shaves from this extraordinary razor blade. Now we know, you and I,in our placid personal truths, that we won't get anything like forty shaves ourselves, but that this fellow has cornsilk growing out of his face and therefore possibly is not personally lying; the big grain of salt we must wash down with our beer,though, goes with the protestation that we must also get about forty shaves, or the honers of this extraordinary blade will be unhappy to buy us a pack of Coo-coo brand, the bona fide inferior blade. It can wear you down, this kind of opportunity to have a bad experience with a razor blade and then send away for your free supply of The Inferior. It can wear you down. Which brings to mind the first recording session for this album, at the risk of mentioning the real-world fact of a phonograph record's birth pangs. It was a kind of melancholy Fall night that nobody could do anything about, and we were in the small Studio D of a large and impersonal New York recording company. Since there were only to be another guitar and a bass accompanying Gordon, we thought that a small studio might conjure a musical intimacy worth going for. But the moon was pulling too hard on everybody that night, and the color of the walls in this particular studio successfully captured the mood of gloom we thought we'd left outside. Our assistant engineer, an older fella, seemed none too emotionally involved in this kind of music, maybe none too involved even in this business of recording. From all that was apparent, he might have been happier in his work had it been cobbling shoes or trimming trees; he meant no harm, neither did he mean especially well. And any- one not born and bred in New York City can be extremely sensitive to this kind of split hair. Anyway, the first tune Gordon put down that night was his Rich Man's Spiritual and in filling out the "take" sheet this assistant engineer guy wrote "Richman's Spiritual", by which he probably didn't mean to suggest anything about the implicit Brotherhood of Man, but only that, if indeed he tuned in on anything at all anymore, he certainly wasn't going to be able to tune in on that night's activities. So alien were they to anything that had ever moved him. Now, apart from all else, that's a reasonably sad circumstance for a man and probably much too common a one in these times of magnified opportunity; that the man with, say, the soul of a baker should get caught up in the role of an assistant sound engineer. And because it's a sad proposition, there was an essential sadness felt for the man when he went on to transcribe our artist's name as Gordon Whitefoot rather than ask what was it again. That kind of sympatico can serve to distract even the most insensitive among us, and the night in Studio D had definitely taken on such a cast. But what's remarkably more, and the single important fact at the bottom of all this meandering, is the privilege to report that, later on, blossoms of a sort were made to grow in such a cold and angular atmosphere. Gordon's eventual delivery of, among other tunes, his own Early Morning Rain seemed to make just the right use of those grey walls. And the great wealth of feeling he's written right into that song is about the same shade of grey as was that entire session. Oh, there were many more happy sessions after the first, but it has been mentioned here in morbid detail to demonstrate the shadowy ways in which a real artist can find virtue lurking out the other side of predicament. Gordon Lightfoot is his name, ladies and gentlemen. Gordon Lightfoot. Remember it well, as certainly you will because it's that kind of name. He sings them all like he wrote them and in most cases he did. what's even more important,and not always the case, he usually sings his own songs better than anyone else does. Which fact says a lot about the directness with which they come from the heart, or wherever that place is where artists are most comfortable with their thoughts and themselves. But whether he wrote it or not, when Light-foot the singer takes up a song there is an authority that the ear is quick to accept and relax behind. Gordon's vocal talent is doubtless a sensational example of that elusive quality that puts a chasm between the amateur and the sheerly profes- sional. Like must also be true for really great bakers and assistant sound engineers, to cloak the whole thing in terms of the necessary doing for the necessary living, and how a good feeling about one lends itself to a good feeling about the other. Yes, Gordon Lightfoot, with ample gifts and gratitude, has good reason to be a happy guy. A Canadian happy guy with Swedish wife and a season as star of an English-made Country and Western tv show under his wide-buckle belt (as well as his own monthly special currently on Canadian tv). He wears cowboy boots most of the time, like Tyson of lan and Sylvia, his friend and hand-up-the-ladder. And he says "oot" for out, like Tyson and Goulet and Bobbie Burns. But, along with Tyson, he understands about the cowboy and the psychology of open spaces that makes up the mood of life in the biggest part of Canada, as it did and does in the American West. It's these guys who have become the poets of that way of life, filtered as it now necessarily is through the Ice Blue dem- ocratic news of the world that affects us all, regardless of race, creed or color. And it's gratifying to see the songs of a Gordon Lightfoot begin to receive the attention they deserve. For, hung as they so often are on a wide-open-spaces metaphor, they nonetheless deal most poetically with the way life is for all of us, in one way or another. We won't get hung up here reciting how Peter, Paul and Mary, a fairly well established branch of folk musical royalty, have had two substantial U.S., Canadian, Australian and European hits with Lightfoot tunes (in France, they sing "Tu N' Aurais Jamais Du M'Aimer" when they mean That's What You Get For Lovin' Me). Or that Marty Robbins' version of Gordon's Ribbon of Darkness was number one on the Country and Westem charts for several weeks recently. Suffice it to say that, at the very moment of this writing, other artists of awesome stature and diverse interests are recording his originals. And meanwhile, back at the Lightfoot, Gordon's treatment of the work of his songwriter contemporaries gets and keeps the respect of audiences wherever he is heard. So, then. Of the fourteen songs on this, the first time out for an important artist, eleven are his own. All fourteen might just as easily have been his own, but in three instances Gordon felt strongly enough about other people's work to want it included in his first collection. Nor, interesting to note, were the three exceptions chosen simply for reasons of musical variety. The album is not that kind of album, really. And frankly not the sort that is paced fast song-slow song-fast song for maximum and most symmetrical contrast. It is, rather, more like a statement; a collection of thoughts most importantly on Gordon Lightfoot's mind these days. Ones he was anxious to organize in a single place and record for posterity before getting on to more adventurous projects, longer works in the ballad and talking blues vein, along with occasional and deft forays into the jungle of Top Forty competitions. Elsewhere, the expression "Country and Lightfoot" is already in use among the cognoscenti, and those who predict that a subtle amalgam of 'Rock and Country is next in sight on the Pop horizon are well aware of the work of Gordon Lightfoot. For that matter, several of the aforementioned tunes on this album are already on their way to becoming standards. It's just that the guy who wrote tnem would like to take the next little while and sing them for you, like they're supposed to be sung, before he gets on to the next thing. And that, one supposes, is the logical content of a creative life in the real world. Coo-coo him no blades." John Court I always loved "Country and Lightfoot" and "Coo-Coo him no blades" from the above notes ------------------ My Gordon Lightfoot webring starts at http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot [This message has been edited by johnfowles (edited September 09, 2003).] |
Thank you, John, for posting this! I have a copy but confess I haven't looked at the liner notes in ages. [For the young, "Katy Winters" was a fictional advertising persona pushing Ice Blue Secret deodorant - unless that turns up as a retromercial on TV Land, you are blessed to have missed it. Same with the razor blade nonsense.]
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Thanks John! I have never read or even seen those liners...but, it is kind of interesting to read them... funny how the read from that time is so changed from what we might expect today. But, I enjoyed that little trip down memory lane.
I am having fits with my OCR, because they really can do much more than small computers are capable of currently. Glad yours does good for you. |
in view of the recent rediscovery of the delights of GL music by Sheryl and the discussion on the United Artists albums I have just searched for and rediscovered a topic I started last year on the liner notes from both the UK and North American issues of the first album Lightfoot! and thought I would bring it back to the top of the pile so anybody else who had not seen it can read it.
John Fowles Note Sheryl I could probably have found it using google since I believe all corfid topics which are of course web pages in their own right are indexed by google you can google for "Sheryl Klein" to prove that point!! ------------------ My Gordon Lightfoot webring starts at http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot |
neat, JF, thanks
hey, did the Songbook liner notes disappear from that Reprise site??? i tired unsuccessfully recently http://www.corfid.com/ubb/frown.gif |
quote:Originally posted by jj:
neat, JF, thanks hey, did the Songbook liner notes disappear from that Reprise site??? i tired unsuccessfully recently http://www.corfid.com/ubb/frown.gif No Jimmy they revised their main page and forgot to include links to the other pages see thw following topic:- songbook liner notes links at:- http://www.corfid.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002478.html ------------------ My Gordon Lightfoot webring starts at http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot |
Actually, John, I *have* googled my own name before. I think it's a German porn star!!
Sheryl Klein |
You always have the great stuff John. http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif
I'm envious! http://www.corfid.com/ubb/wink.gif ------------------ "A knight of the road,going back to a place where he might get warm." ;) - Borderstone |
well, JF, i've always had those bookmarked (and thanks for the lookup, anyhow http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif) but haven't those link become 'dead'
or is it just me and my cruddy connection? http://www.corfid.com/ubb/frown.gif |
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Even the original main Rhino songbook page 1 at:- http://www.rhino.com/features/liners/75802lin.lasso together with all of the various linked pages have now been removed from their original internet locations and no longer are in the relevant google search results very strange that Rhino should do this since a search of their site for Lightfoot brings up a replacement more limited page at:- http://www.rhino.com/store/ProductDe...o?Number=75802 with no further links I had as I previously said saved the links to use when I get around to making a dummy entry page for the Rhino site in my long planned webring revamp: This is what I saved (text showing briefly each file's contents):- page 2.Producer's notes (by Thane Tierney) http://www.rhino.com/features/liners/75802lin2.html page 3.A word from Gord (his explanations of every song) http://www.rhino.com/features/liners/75802lin3.html page4.Gordon Lightfoot: Master Craftsman of Popular Song by Nicholas Jennings http://www.rhino.com/features/liners/75802lin4.html Page 5.If You Could Read My Mind: Gord Speaks Out About His Music notes on every one of the 88 tracks http://www.rhino.com/features/liners/75802lin5.html there is also:- page 6.Track List (full details of every track) http://www.rhino.com/features/tracks/75802trx.html All the original links as quoted above now lead to a "you're lost" page headed rather unhelpfully "Gabba Gabba Hey!" But thanks to the marvellous "Wayback Machine" at:- http://www.archive.org/web/web.php it is possible to recall the old pages wayback in 1999 through 2003 and even (for the "tracks" page6 March 29th 2004 the main page, page 1 is at: http://web.archive.org/web/20021226021807/http://www.rhino.com/features/liners/75 802lin.lasso Note that the links at the top try to take you to the now deleted pages'URLs so they go nowhere fast!! but there is a handy 1,2,3,4, 5 set of links at the bottom of the page that successfully and successively link to the archived five "other" pages 2.Producer's Note at:- http://web.archive.org/web/20030121172117/www.rhino.com/features/liners/75802lin2.lasso 3.A Word From Gord http://web.archive.org/web/20030121172117/http://www.rhino.com/features/liners/7 5802lin3.lasso 4.Master Craftsman http://web.archive.org/web/20030729072224/www.rhino.com/features/liners/75802lin4.lasso 5.Gord Speaks Out http://web.archive.org/web/20030729072253/www.rhino.com/features/liners/75802lin5.lasso 6.Track List http://web.archive.org/web/20040329191023/http://www.rhino.com/features/tracks/758 02trx.html i found that all the archived pages were exceedingly slow to load much slower than a 56K dial-up usually takes but I persevered as I believe they are an important resource for reference and research I now have all 6 pages safely saved on my hard drive for future reference and use Furthermore I have now devised suitable shorter URLs as follows:- page1 main rhino page http://www.rhino.notlong.com pages 1 through 5 Page 2 Producer's Notes http://www.thane.notlong.com Page 3 A Word from Gord http://www.gordword.notlong.com page 4 Master Craftsman http://www.mastercraftsman.notlong.com Page5 Gord Speaks Out http://www.gordspeaks.notlong.com plus this working link for the tracks page Page6. Track Notes http://www.tracknotes.notlong.com Note I have tested each of the six notlong links and all opened correctly given time! see below for my 18 April 2005 posting as the sixth link (to the track notes strangely no longer functions) i intend posting something relevant like this on the Newsgroup which I believe Thane Tierney occassionally reads and has memorably once posted to Hope this helps and thanks for taking the time to read it (All who get here that is) John Fowles [This message has been edited by johnfowles (edited November 22, 2004).] [ April 18, 2005, 12:05: Message edited by: johnfowles ] |
Sir John - i ALWAYS read your posts...This one is very good as I was looking for the RHINO songbook stuff the other day from the link I had.
Now Sir John--get to work on those tribute show pics that i so desperately want to see! I can't wait until Hamilton! http://www.corfid.com/ubb/wink.gif |
wow, thank you, John http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif
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I am bringing this topic back into circulation for the benefit of the newcomeres around here who never saw it before
The oppoprtunity to do this arose today because I wanted to refer to the track list section of the one time on-line Rhino Songbook liner notes that are no longer linked from the Rhino Songbook page I had previously found them thanks to the wonderful "wayback machine" at"- http://www.archive.org/web/web.php where you can copy in the address of most old sites or pages and find an series of archived copies going back several years The original topic had as its subject Topic: "Lghtfoot" Album Liner Notes (please excuse the typo there!!!) and its URL was:- http://www.corfid.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001699.html which still fortuitiously successfully opens that topic but trying to reply to that now brings up a "search error" screen because Florian's recent revamp of this forum evidently included revised page addresses for each topic the new address for this topic to which I am now replying is (as you should be able to see from your own browser address bar above) is:- http://www.corfid.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ul...c;f=1;t=001699 a subtle but vital difference!! I have checked the "notlong" links that I devised earlier and found that of the 6 only 5 still functioned so I have devised a new link for the sixth of course it had to be the very one I wanted to refer to!! for posterity therefore the complete list of archived pages with a brief descriptions are:- a new link for the main original rhino songbook page http://rhinosongbook.notlong.com/ or my earlier one that does still link OK page1 main rhino page http://www.rhino.notlong.com pages 2 through 6 Page 2 Producer's Notes http://www.thane.notlong.com Page 3 A Word from Gord http://www.gordword.notlong.com page 4 Master Craftsman http://www.mastercraftsman.notlong.com Page5 Gord Speaks Out http://www.gordspeaks.notlong.com and finally the section I was trying to find that led me to refinding this topic:- Page6. Track Notes http://www.tracknotes.notlong.com that link no longer functions so I made a new one that does:- http://tracknotes2.notlong.com I will in due course be making up a dummy "rhino" page for my Lightfoot webring and will then put those links on it John Fowles |
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"Your first GL Album " athttp://www.corfid.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=004651 which is itself a reappraisal of an earlier one:- "The first GL album you've ever owned?" at:- http://www.corfid.com/ubb/ultimatebb...=003628#000004 and to add further notes and pictures of my first GL album I have told this story before so if you know it please go and read something else! Living in Montreal in 1966 I had become used to the then novelty of high quality broadcasting using the then new VHF FM technology. one of the local top 40 stations was CJAD and I now see that back in 1962 they had started FM transmissions see:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CJFM-FM where I have just read "the station was owned by Montreal's AM station CJAD (800) and originally intended to sign as CJAD-FM, it signed on with the CJFM call and separate programming - an innovation at the time." Anyway at that time I if I heard an interesting recording I would track down the album it came from to evaliuate thev artist, resulting in a heap of LPs thayt I onkly ever played the one track. during 1966 I heard these two wonderful records by some Lightfoot fellow "Spin Spin" and his beautiful cover of Ewan's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"(I really am not sure now which one I heard first) I found the Canadian original issue of Lightfoot! http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfo..._Lightfoot.jpg in our local Morgans store (now the Bay) in Dorval and like others have said the next is very much my personal history. I loved that album but made the mistake of lending it to a girl in my apartment block whose record player was evidently fitted with a ginormous knitting needle which comprehendsively ruined it. Later after returning to the UK I found that it was in time issued there under the same title as had been used for Gord's first album (the AME collection of early Nashville recorded singles "Early Lightfoot" http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/LIGHTFO...yLightfoot.jpg I was then able to chuck the original unplayable LP and by cleverly opening the new sleeve out and pasting on the two halves of the original sleeve created a unique gatefold sleeve that of course contains both sets of liner notes that I reproduced above. To complete this story I then bought every one of the ensuing 19 albums as soon after release as possible starting with The Way I Feel in 1967 (soon after my first of to date 45 concerts http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/LIGHTFO...1_concerts.htm which was now just over 40 years ago on May 21st 1967 at Montreal's New Penelope coffee bar) http://johnfowles.org.uk/LIGHTFOOT/n...lopeposter.jpg |
I think I'm having a 'senior moment' but am guessing that the Canadian release of "Lightfoot!" was released in both a Stereo and High Fidelity/monaural version. Several years ago a work associate from North Bay, Ontario, sent me a special 'thank you' gift for what he considered as a job well done. He is an avid Lightfoot fan and knew I was, too. He sent me the first Lightfoot album that he had purchased many years ago. It was "Lightfoot!" As I look at the picture posted above I see that it is Stereo. Mine says High Fidelity and is UAL3487.
It's been so long since having purchased vinyl albums that I truly don't remember that they were released both ways. Did we really have to make choices??? Or is Stereo and High Fidelity the same thing? |
The first 3 albums were released in both monaural and stereo (UASxxxx were the stereo, UALyyyy the mono). The only real choice was when to buy the "new" stereo systems, although many audiophiles tell you that the monaural versions often sounded better. It is interesting to play first one version and then the other (yes, I did); although, I now seem to think that I may not have DSMMN in mono. Oh no! Jenney?
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It seems that my scanner alo has OCR functions..
who knew? lolol |
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but spot on Val. I recall that when I left the UK in 1964 LPs with tax were either 30 0r 35 bob (shillings) (now £1.50 or £1.75) at a time when £1 was worth 3 Canabux, so it was a welcome discovery to find that in canada they were usually just over C$3.00.However I also clearly recall that the record companies, ever eager to extract the maximum from record buyers,illogically initially were charging more for the stereo version than the cooking mono or High fidelity version despite on the face of it identical costs for production,artists' royalty and resellers profit. The premium was not great possibly around a dollar but I certainly bought a few mono LPs to save money.In my minds eye I thought that applied to my 1967 purchase of Lightfoot! but no http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/lightfoot.jpg my original Canadian copy http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/UK3.jpg Cuomposite scan of the back of the UK "Early Lightfoot" issue showning that it had a different number than the original Canadian release, and that I seemed to have had some doubt on whether I actually bougtht it in 1966 or as late as April 1967. I really cannot now remember although I suspect it was indeed 1967 The back of the original reveals that this was actually produced in the Montreal suberb of Lachine (near the St Lawrence River's rapids http://www.digitalapoptosis.com/arch...eal/rapids.jpg and a short drive from my workplace at Rolls-Royce Canada and the Dorval store where I bought it. (the LP I mean not my life!!) http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/lachine.jpg and yes the mono/Hi Fidelity and stereo issues carried different numbers as in the case of The Way I Feel http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/TWIF.jpg in fact all five UA albums I bought in Canada were the stereo version for example "Bach Here On Earth" http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/BHOE.jpg John Fowles Bt |
Thanks John.
I remember reading those notes somewhere. The part about "Richman's Spirtual" in particular. Don't remember where though and since I don't own the original LP, I'll be damed if I know how. |
Thanks for the John Court liner notes. I remember the album well...full of good tunes like 'That's What You Get for Loving Me'and a song about a river flowing past his door...the name escapes me at the moment.
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I've had that album for around 25 years. From my first attempt to read John Court's liner notes to this day, I find them to be a mountain of rambling self-indulgence, poorly written, and almost unreadable. He must've been stoned.
Just my opinion.....put your torches down. |
Re: "Lghtfoot" Album Liner Notes
I have just refound this old topic and thought yet again that it merited bringing back to the top. Sorry RonM to burden you with the poorly written mountain of rambling self-indulgence again.
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Re: "Lghtfoot" Album Liner Notes
That's ok....it's a good reminder that formatting and coherency are desirable.
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Re: "Lghtfoot" Album Liner Notes
To all who contribute,
Many thanks for all the "YEARS" of info contained in your posts!!! It makes what ever I have, seem absolutely "paltry" by comparison. But, there is somethig to be said for the newsprint, now yellow with age, the old ticket stubs, even the smell of the scrapbooks, of those of us who have them. Ron Meason, your comment about John Court's liner notes, just "cracks me up!":):) |
Re: "Lightfoot" Album Liner Notes
Speaking of liner notes : here's how you do it....From John Prine's 1971 debut album
John Prine LINER NOTES John Prine caught us by surprise in the late-night morning let-down after our last show in Chicago. Steve Goodman (who’d shared the bill with us that week) asked us to go to Old Town to listen to a friend he said we had to hear, and since Steve had knocked us out all week with his own songs, we obliged. It was too damned late, and we had an early wake-up ahead of us, and by the time we got there Old town was nothing but empty streets and dark windows. And the club was closing. But the owner let us come in, pulled some chairs off a couple of tables, and John unpacked his guitar and got back up to sing. There are few things as depressing to look at as a bunch of chairs upside down on the table of an empty old tavern, and there was that awkward moment, us sitting there like, "Okay, kid, show us what you got," and him standing up there alone, looking down at his guitar like, "What the hell are we doing here, buddy?" Then he started singing, and by the end of the first line we knew we were hearing something else. It must’ve been like stumbling onto Dylan when he first busted onto the Village scene (in fact Al Aronowitz said the same thing a few weeks later after hearing John do a guest set at the Bitter End). One of those rare, great times when it all seems worth it,, like when the Vision would rise upon Blake’s "weary eyes, Even in this Dungeon, & this Iron Mill." He sang about a dozen songs, and had to do a dozen more before it was over. Unlike anything I’d heard before. Sam Stone, Donald & Lydia. The one about the Old Folks. Twenty-four years old and writes like he’s about two-hundred and twenty. I don’t know where he comes from, but I’ve got a good idea where he’s going. We went away believers, reminded how goddamned good it feels to be turned on by a real Creative Imagination. ~Kris Kristofferson P.S. Thanks to the people at Atlantic for making good things happen fast to someone who deserves it. |
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