My own twisted way of remembering Gord

[Andy T.]

FRAGMATIC

Now that Gord has pressed on, today I found myself revisiting something that dates back to the 80s and 90s for me.

A celebration, of sorts, of the songs of Gordon Lightfoot.

Back then I was playing around with my father's reel to reel tape deck. It did allow for sort of precise editing, once I learned how to work the "pause" button. And I made all kinds of weird recordings of various music clips edited to be mashed together in an amusing way, at least for my own sense of humor. One of which, was a collage of instrumental sections of songs. Another was the same but with vocals... and by this time I was a huge Gord fan and a LOT of his songs were in there.

Circa 1998, I discovered I could record even more precisely on the computer, using the basic Windows Sound Recorder. So I decided to take the best of what I had done with the tape deck and re-do it digitally, but ONLY using Gord samples. These days, now that I know my way around a Digital Audio Workstation I cannot even imagine what I had to go through to record this, but I made two of these, one focused on Gordon Lightfoot (and the other, the comedy group The Firesign Theatre)

Due to the fragmented nature of this, I had written "FRAGMATIC" on the old analog tape reel, and continued to call the digital GL mix by that name. Now, this was never meant to be a Lightfoot Hit Parade. Many of his hits are featured, but I was after the flow of words, not the songs.

Back in USENET newsgroup days I made a low bandwidth MP3 of this track available somehow or other. I just had a listen to that very old track and to my ears, I still think it holds up fine, for a mono 48kbps file. So I just upped it to my Google Drive, if anyone is interested in hearing this, here's a link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12Ws...usp=share_link

[DellroyGM]

You, sir, have a definitely warped sense of humor. And I love it! It took a little while to see what was going on, but the recording is full of nuggets like:
"there were no illusions on the ...down side of Gitche Gumee"
"and the bar where we are is... just like an old time movie"
"I'm sailin...down around the bend in the water"
"It's come to carry ... an old seaman's chest full of...pussywillows, cattails, soft winds and roses"
"Sundown, you better take care, if I find you've been creepin' 'round...Cherokee bend"

It's also a good clip to see if you can name all of the sampled songs. I found only one I couldn't identify.

[Andy T.]

Thank you!

Back in the day I remember a comment that someone did not trig one of the clips (Pretty sure it was plumber Doug) BUT, this was never meant as some kind of a contest.

I'm glad someone got where I was coming from. I know all the clips, of course, and it was only for my own amusement that it even exists. At the time I created it, I never thought that my odd take on the Lightfoot discography might amuse anyone other than myself.

Mentioned were some highlights, but my own personal favorites are:

"Each morning when I"... "rain on the rock"

and partially mentioned above, but in full:

"I'm sailing; down around the bend in the water; down the deep canyon; all the way to Biscayne bay and all the way back again, with my banjo in my hands."