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Home » Songs for our times

Songs for our times

The New Neo Posted on by

You may have noticed that on weekends I often like to post something about the arts. Because everything’s been so COVID-centric lately, this is the song that has been rolling around in my mind. So – merging arts with COVID – we have the old but still very apropos “Keep Your Distance.”

Enjoy! But don’t get too close.

Comments

Songs for our times — 21 Comments

  1. RT has been a favorite of mine since his days with Fairpoint. I love his 1,000 years of popular music album and play it often. Thanks.

  6. here are some good URLs for adults and children to avoid becoming stir-crazy while being shut in:

    https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

    https://epod.usra.edu/

    https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/

    https://hubblesite.org/news/news-releases

    https://chandra.harvard.edu/

    https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/

    https://www.gutenberg.org/

    https://babylonbee.com/news

    https://icanhas.cheezburger.com/

    http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=global2&timespan=24hrs&anim=html5

    http://hint.fm/wind/

    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=continental+drift&FORM=HDRSC3

    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=astronomical%20discoveries&qs=n&form=QBVR&sp=-1&pq=astronomical%20discoveries&sc=8-24&sk=&cvid=1102E9B2365E44B7982B5AC624500001

  8. Kennedy Center Tells Musicians It Will Stop Paying Them Hours After $25 Million Bailout Is Signed

    They’re getting the bailout and are dumping the people anyway.

    Via Free Beacon:

    The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts informed members of the National Symphony Orchestra that they would no longer be paid just hours after President Trump signed a $25 million taxpayer bailout for the cultural center, according to an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

    Nearly 100 musicians will no longer receive paychecks after April 3, according to an email from the orchestra’s Covid-19 Advisory Committee.

    “The Covid-19 Advisory Committee was broadsided today during our conversation with [Kennedy Center President] Deborah Rutter,” the email says. “Ms. Rutter abruptly informed us today that the last paycheck for all musicians and librarians will be April 3 and that we will not be paid again until the Center reopens.”

    Keep reading…

    https://freebeacon.com/issues/kennedy-center-tells-musicians-will-stop-paying-them-hours-after-25-million-bailout-signed/

  10. I mostly work alone as a one person handy man contractor, usually on the outside of houses. So during the day I often keep a radio near me or in my ear piece. I go back and forth between Talk Radio and various Christian music stations. I need the balance ! Where I live there are a number of local Christian Radio stations, some of which are likely available on line. Here is a national one that plays encouraging music. http://www.klove.com/?utm_source=PPC&utm_medium=Bing&utm_campaign=KL-2020-Brand&utm_term=Radio&utm_content=Search

  11. I’m getting a kick out of this genuine song for our time — a video of the Carpenter’s “Close to You,” created by the group Pub Choir a week or so ago. The song choice may be the best thing about it — but the whole thing is fun, cheering and oddly touching. Here’s how Pub Choir explains it:

    “Over 1000 people from 18 countries submitted a video of their performance of “Close To You” (The Carpenters) in just TWO DAYS. Every submission that we successfully received was manually added to the collective. And then we saw the magic unfold… Plug in those earphones and turn this up.”

    https://youtu.be/HezxInuN1YA

  17. I have had “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” stuck in my head ever since reading this thread yesterday evening. Actually, as earworms go, this song is not too bad! Thanks, Ed Bonderenka.

  18. Maybe no one is still looking in here, but this is for Tom if you are.

    One of our church organists has been playing for meetings since her early youth, as she is very proficient amateur. Sometime back in the seventies (being a twenty-something at that time), she realized that no one really listened to the prelude music, so she started fooling around a little bit. One of the pieces that she arranged used the very high treble pipes for a quite lovely ethereal sound, and she began playing that tune more frequently.

    One day, a speaker from another ward in the area came to speak, an older man who was a good friend of her family. After the service, he came over to her and said, “If you ever play that song in church again, I will tan your hide.”
    (This was Texas, after all.)

    The song, of course, was “House of the Rising Sun.”

    For years after that, whenever he was in a meeting where she played, she only had to lift her hands ostentatiously over the upper keyboard and they both would have to smother their laughter.

  19. Hey Aesop, ha ha ha – There IS
    a House
    in New Orleans…

    Treble? Ethereal? How bizarre.

    I use MS edge mostly, but sometimes also Chrome. And sometimes have old comments on an open tab when I open it up. So I might see what’s been written lately.

    Nick Cave did a pretty good, even more base version.
    I sing, in my head, Kate Bush’s “Running up that Hill”, in my Eric Burden voice…
    Tonight I’m adding an E. Power Biggs organ intro
    urrrRrrr urrr urrr
    urrrRrrr urrr urrr
    urrrRrrr urr urr urrr
    …
    And if I only could,
    I’d make a Deal with God.
    And get him to swap our places.

    Thanks for some inspiration.

  20. John Prine, singer-songwriter, died of Covid the other day. He was 73 so it wasn’t a shock as things go these days, but still he was a very personal writer and I miss him already.

    His masterpiece IMO was “Angel from Montgomery,” which was covered by so many people that Prine practically doesn’t get credit. Bonnie Raitt did such a bang-up job, she made it her own. I can’t think of a better song written by a man from the viewpoint of a woman. But that was a Prine specialty — to get into the skin of someone else and sing their song.

    John Prine, “Angel from Montgomery”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CDLCr0fxOQ

    Bonnie Raitt, “Angel from Montgomery”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toJ3ZYWRh24

  21. And then there was the sublime Prine goofiness, which I will leave you with. Here’s one he wrote while homesick in a foreign country and he found an American paper with a familiar advice column:

    Dear Abby, Dear Abby,
    Well I never thought
    That me and my girlfriend would ever get caught
    We were sitting in the back seat just shooting the breeze
    With her hair up in curlers and her pants to her knees
    Signed, Just Married

    Just Married, Just Married,
    You have no complaint
    You are what your are and you ain’t what you ain’t
    So listen up buster, and listen up good
    Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood
    Signed, Dear Abby

    John Prine, “Dear Abby”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF8S5XB-eYs

    Words to live by.

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