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Old 02-05-2011, 02:01 PM   #1
Blackberry John
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Default Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Click below for video:

Gordon Lightfoot Interview on Good Morning America
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Old 02-05-2011, 02:29 PM   #2
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Wow, what a great find! I've never seen this before. Thank you!

Guess he really likes red velvet jackets.....
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Old 02-05-2011, 03:12 PM   #3
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

they go well with black pants.
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Old 02-05-2011, 04:10 PM   #4
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

that's the same one he still wears, no? i thought someone said he had it taken in, a 'bit'

new for me also, thanks so much
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Old 02-05-2011, 04:12 PM   #5
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Love it! Thanks for posting this...
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Old 02-05-2011, 05:04 PM   #6
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Just adding my thanks for sharing the 'find'.

I don't think he will ever retire. He just LOVES to work so much.
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Old 02-05-2011, 05:37 PM   #7
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

At Hugh's Room I asked how he was doing.. His reply; "keepin' busy, been really busy."...
I think that might just sum up his whole life...

James:
1st pic - this is a red Suit Jacket with notched lapel (not velvet)

I believe the blue one he wears onstage now has been re-fashioned from his Blackberry Wine Video
and
the red one he wears onstage now was re-fashioned from the one he wears in the GMA footage and from his appearance on CBC awards show when he sang "My Love For You"..
Lapel is the same and it seems the jacket body was just shortened and taken in...both have satin lapels in a shawl collar style.
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Old 02-05-2011, 05:50 PM   #8
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

astute observations and feedback, char (and visual substantiations! this aint like TMZ!)... YOU should be the one writing a book, full of nearly every detail one can imagine
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Old 02-05-2011, 07:27 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jj View Post
astute observations and feedback, char (and visual substantiations! this aint like TMZ!)... YOU should be the one writing a book, full of nearly every detail one can imagine
All those years of being a seamstress paid off..lol
He also was wearing the blue jacket on Thicke of The Night when he sang "Lot More Living To Do"..
It's just by chance I'm watching the video now..lol

and yes James - I am finally converting a bazillion hours of video to DVD..loading up my new 3TB external hard drive and then burning to DVD..
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Old 02-05-2011, 08:46 PM   #10
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Great find, thank you. He looked a bit uncomfortable during the interview. Guess he'd just rather be singing.
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Old 02-06-2011, 12:11 AM   #11
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

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Great find, thank you. He looked a bit uncomfortable during the interview. Guess he'd just rather be singing.
Yeah he sure did seem uncomfortable....interesting interview just the same. The red jacket reminds me of a scene in a movie where a character said "THAT's not a miracle! ULTRASUEDE's a miracle!"
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Old 02-06-2011, 11:14 AM   #12
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Interesting how he's changed over the years. Back in the 70's and 80's when being interviewd, I thought he came across as a bit full of himself and made minimal eye contact with the interviewer. I chalk that up these days to insecurity about being interviewed. But in the 90's and today, he seems really happy to be interviewed and is quite connected with the person asking the questions. A case of "growing up" I suspect.
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Old 02-06-2011, 12:23 PM   #13
charlene
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

I think back in the day he seemed full of himself, arrogant even because of his wariness of reporters and music critics along with basically being a shy, quiet sort of small town person. He came across the wrong way and that misconception was in print a lot of time.
He was more comfortable onstage where he could sing what he felt about issues, love etc. He is more at ease doing interviews now but most are over the phone when he is at home or in his office where eye contact doesn't happen.
But he certainly does focus on each person he speaks to when I've observed him backstage with fans. Fans are fans for a reason and journalists/ciritcs put their interview and personal thoughts of him out into the public for all to read.

The interview posted above was when he was at his heaviest and probably drinking quite heavily as well.. It was soon after that he quit drinking and lost weight.

Here's a review of SHADOWS:
http://www.lightfoot.ca/shadrev.htm
SHADOWS
by Noel Coppage - Stereo Review
GORDON LIGHTFOOT'S "SHADOWS": A RARE CRAFTSMAN AT WORK

Is Gordon Lightfoot the best songwriter of modern times? He has written and recorded upwards of one hundred and fifty songs, of which at least ninety are not only "keepers" but demonstrably superior, in one way or another, to most of their contemporaries. I know of no one else who has lately produced such quality in such quantity. He's at it again in his just-released "Shadows" with eleven new ones, and ten of them are beauties as engrossing as they are elegantly structured.
What makes Lightfoot great, I think, is his believability, a quality that probably also explains his successful and graceful assumption of the role of No. 1 post-commercial folkie. He is amply equipped with the credentials to Cole Porter his way through life, being one of the few pop stars who are comfortable reading music, one of the few with a background as an orchestrator and one of the few with such command of the English language that he can use wordplay as an end in itself. And so he writes with the folkie's sense of what is real even as he writes with the trained musician's awareness of the many possible ways of expressing it.
Of course, he's also inordinately gifted. His melodies are so natural sounding you find yourself thinking there's no excuse for their not having existed before. How could a tune so "right" as the one to "Triangle" not have been thought of already? A New York newspaper reported not long ago that we are, according to some smart-ass computer, running out of melodic possibilities. If so, Gordon Lightfoot doesn't know it yet. But if you've ever tried to invent a tune yourself, you know that the possibilities don't come easy; the melody of "Thank You For The Promises" for example, is pulled by minor chords into a downward spiral and make you think, perhaps, of Jacques Brel. It may sound now as if it had been just hanging there in the air all the time, but it took a special ear to seize it and write it down.
"Shadows" is full of these nice touches, full too of songs for which there are precedents - but only in the earlier work of Lightfoot himself. "Heaven Help The Devil" whose forerunners include "Too Late For Praying" is the kind of generalized, generally pessimistic social commentary Lightfoot occasionally writes: "We have been captured by the thieves of the night / Held for ransom if you please." Lightfoot's two other approaches to making social comments, both as nonspecific in their own ways, involve work songs such as "Cotton Jenny" or what he calls "topical" songs such as "Circle Of Steel" or "Cherokee Bend". Similarily, the title song here is a throwback to another, softer kind of song Lightfoot has written before. But each new invocation of these composing modes has its own sound and its own special qualities. "Shadows" while fitted with quite an active melody, has a whole slew of seven-syllable lines followed by an eleven-syllable "resolution" that paradoxically leaves things still about halfway up in the air.
But I don't have to go into detail to show you there's a rare craftsman at work here; you'll hear that right away. And if you can listen to "Triangle" just once without lifting the stylus back for a quick second helping, you must be one of those perverts who can eat just "one" chocolate-chip cookie. The song is about the Bermuda Triangle, and the words are the imaginings of a sailor who's about to sail through it. It isn't quite as striking as its recent precedent, "Ghosts Of Cape Horn" but it is much more infectious.
"I'll Do Anything" is almost as strong, although the sentiment it expresses strikes me as uncomfortably close to masochism. As I suggested before, only one song, "Blackberry Wine" shows any real weakness. It and "In My Fashion" (bailed out by a nifty lyric) are variations on the droning kind of thing Lightfoot experimented with during the "Old Dan's Records" days, when he was fascinated with what he called the "E-drone position" on the guitar (he showed it to me once, but I still can't descibe it). So is their livlier and catchier cousin here, "Baby Step Back" a soft rocker worthy of Fleetwood Mac; it also has the great groove sense of "Sundown" but it's not that catchy.
The instrumental sound is a further refinement of the acoustic/pedal-steel/synthesizer blend first struck in "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald," still possibly the most restrained use of the synthesizer going. This album mutes the synthesizer sound maybe even more, being in all about as acoustic as "Summertime Dream" one of Lightfoot's best. "Shadows" doesn't rank at the very top of his work, but ten keepers out of eleven is still semi-remarkable, and you have to consider how high that top is. So, to get back to the question at the beginning: "Is Gordon Lightfoot the best songwriter of modern times?" As his compatriot Ian Tyson might put it, "Hell, yes!"
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Old 02-06-2011, 02:02 PM   #14
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Noel Coppage ruled! What a great writer. Died way too young.
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Old 02-06-2011, 02:07 PM   #15
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene View Post
I think back in the day he seemed full of himself, arrogant even because of his wariness of reporters and music critics along with basically being a shy, quiet sort of small town person. He came across the wrong way and that misconception was in print a lot of time.
I saw Gordon twice in concert that calendar year. The first time, at the Greek in LA. he seemed quite uncomfortable, even on stage. He sang quite well, but he seemed so ill at ease that he didn't talk between songs. The whole concert played out like an album, just the music, then silence between songs. The second time I saw him was right before he quit drinking. The concert was great, but he only completed half of it, then he was done. Seeing this video made me feel as uncomfortable for him as he appeared to be.
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Old 02-06-2011, 03:02 PM   #16
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Yes that was certainly a wonderful find Blackberry John and I was also very pleased to read Noel Coppage's thoughtful review of the Shadows album. I had either forgotten how good that review was or had never read it in full before. Watching the youtube video for me was rather painful because it refused to play smoothly even on a broadband connection (Poor Tucsan Ron M must have been frothing at the mouth!!) After it had played completely replay was almost as bad for some reason (yet the replay is in fact from a temporary copy downloaded on your computer into a temporary "cache" folder. It reminded me that I must finish a proper up to date tutorial on "saving youtube videos"
At this moment passing that exact phrase to Mr Google complete with the quotation marks produces no less than 130,000 results or if the quotation marks are omitted there are close to one billion!!
I know from previous checking that many of those are freeware programs or duplicate references or freeware listing websites.
I did write up a tutorial of sorts and it is at:-
http://johnfowles.org.uk/Tutorials/saving_youtube_videos_tutorial.htm
Later I found some easier methods and included them on my web page about a wonderful BBC broadcast featuring the Canadian Oscar Peterson and (Red Bank) New Jersey's own Bill The Count Basie at
http://johnfowles.org.uk/oscar/index.htm
I know I need to heavily revise the tutorial and intend adding in the four methods I show on my Oscar screed:
adding pwn ok or kiss to the youtube URL or more reliably pasting the URL into
http://www.saveyoutube.com/
finally here is a screenshot showing a decidedly less gaunt Gord in about 1982
For the record I made that screenshot very easily when the youtube video was playing in fullscreen mode by simply pressing the keyboard printscreen key (labelled prt sc)
which saves it as a clipboard object then pasting that object into Paint from where I saved it as a jpeg then using an image editing program (my favoUrite MGI Photosuite) I cropped the superfluous side black bars and resized it from the original overlarge (for the forum)width of 1024 pixels to the required 640 pixels

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Old 02-07-2011, 09:08 AM   #17
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I'm confused, which is nothing new, and a part of my nature.

The interviewer mentions that it had been 15 years since he had 'toured behind a record'. Lightfoot responds : 'Something like that'.

Since Shadows was released in '82, that implies the previous 'tour behind a record' was around '67.

What exactly does 'tour behind a record' mean ?
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Old 02-07-2011, 09:40 AM   #18
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I'd think it means he's out on tour with that records' particular songs that are a large portion of his set list helping to promote sales..
As opposed to just being on tour with nothing new to promote.
I think.
I find it hard to believe none of his tours after 1967 weren't associated with promoting a new album considering he toured every year and had a new album every year...
Seems to be a very odd statement...

list of albums and release dates: http://www.lightfoot.ca/alblist.htm
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Old 02-07-2011, 11:45 AM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene View Post
I'd think it means he's out on tour with that records' particular songs that are a large portion of his set list helping to promote sales..
As opposed to just being on tour with nothing new to promote.
I think.
I find it hard to believe none of his tours after 1967 weren't associated with promoting a new album considering he toured every year and had a new album every year...
Seems to be a very odd statement...

list of albums and release dates: http://www.lightfoot.ca/alblist.htm
Just a different interview, I think.....
I recall in 1982 driving to work one evening listening to the radio when a promo spot came on about "Gordon Lightfoot's provocative new album - Shadows". It may be that this time he had a focus on touring an album that perhaps wasn't as important to him earlier. That radio spot seemed like a first to me. But I also remember seeing "Back Here On Earth" in a record store flyer in the Toronto Star when that record first came out......
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Old 02-07-2011, 01:35 PM   #20
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good ask, rm...that went right by me...i thought every tour decades ago was for album promo and it was the album sales and radio play that brought home the bacon, not the shows...then again, GL and other 'folkies' has a relatively low cost tour I suppose..(ie unlike Pink Floyd, he has no inflatable pigs appearing halfway through his songs)

i'm glad he missed the generation of pop or AC acts that typically has the backup dancer choreography throughout the show...i could never see Gord in one of the hands free headset mics

ok, what's the Armstrong Method?
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Old 02-07-2011, 03:16 PM   #21
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ok, what's the Armstrong Method?
In this context, I would say HARD WORK

I also heard him use the term on the recording of the '87 New York Folk Festival. He was accompanied by only Terry Clements. On Christian Island (I think), Clements does some super fast strumming.
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Old 02-08-2011, 11:28 AM   #22
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thanks...i googled and only got physics type defn

that 87fest sounds cool
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Old 02-08-2011, 12:42 PM   #23
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Default Re: Gord On Good Morning America Promoting 'Shadows'

Strange, many of the same questions and answers were used in a radio interview years ago on "Music People" on the old WLS in Chicago. The interview was with Brant Miller (which is somewhere on cassette) and some of Gord's answers must've been his "stock" answers--the "as a wave? another new wave" reference, "the harder I work the more luck I have"--with the interviewer correcting him; gave up management for lent, etc. Are these the exact same questions that were on the Shadows promotional interview LP?
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