I was using Spotify to check out some music and later brought up GL for some background music.
Bitter Green was playing and it appeared to be a version I hadn’t heard before. There was a background voice in harmony with GL and quite prominent.
I’ve no doubt the Lightfoot experts on this Forum can give me some information.
I'd say that background voice would have to be Gord. It's probably the one from the "Gord's Gold" recording. He was trained in harmony singing so he would know for sure which harmony would work for his songs. I was unable to get Spotify to work for me.
Bitter Green is a great song and the chorus has amazing potential for harmony. A band I once worked in included Bitter Green with harmony and audiences just loved it.
Well, I gave ‘Gord’s Gold’ a listen and ‘Bitter Green’ is definitely the version I heard on Spotify.
Some of the re-recordings on Gord’s Gold I like, but many of them ( including Bitter Green ) just don’t work for me.
Strangely, the re-recordings on Gord Gold’s 2 I really like.
Oh well, we’re all different...
Having gotten my start back in the Gord, Red and John days I tend to favour the United Artists 3 disc set most of all.
The sound on those recordings is so crystal clear.
I'd have to say that it was the live 1968 CBC studio "Wherefore and Why" show featuring that magnificent trio where I had a front row seat that sealed me in mesmerizing mode when it comes to the music of Gordon Lightfoot and I'm still there!
The show is available for viewing on You Tube
If you look carefully at the expressions on the faces, and even the posture of some audience members in that video it's quite evident that the ambience, spell or whatever was created during that performance clearly had a most profound effect on those folks.
It was an experience like non other.
There is another seldom remembered release of Bitter Green, back when UA released it as a single. Since that album, Back Here on Earth, was a stripped down basic acoustic record, UA spruced up the single release of that song with piano and strings overdubbed on top of it.
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"May this world find a resting place... where Peaceful Waters flow..."
Like ‘lighthead2toe’, my favourite GL recordings are those on the UA 3 x CD box set. Sometimes, late in the evening, I sit on my own and give a CD a listen.
From ‘Rich Man’s Spiritual’ to ‘The Way I Feel’ the music is a delight on that first disc.
The 2nd CD is almost as good...
Disc 3 is a completely different experience, as up to 2008 I’d never seen Gord in concert.
What a real treasure the whole box set is.
‘Bitter Green’
