Friday, May 25, 2007

I've been tagged

I don't know whether this is a new technical term in the blogosphere or the game we played when we were kids, but Peter Pereira has tagged me, and now I'm supposed to come up with my five favorite songs. Of all time? Only five?

For his list, Peter chose "songs that still take me back to the time when I first heard them, first played them (or the album they were in) over and over." I chose some of those, although I couldn't tell you the names of the albums (maybe what the cover looked like), and I also chose songs that I bashed out on my guitar (even if I never heard it performed by the original artist).

Here is my list:

  1. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
    I did not attempt to play this one on my guitar!

  2. City of New Orleans (Arlo Guthrie)

  3. Tangled up in Blue (Bob Dylan)

  4. Chelsea Morning (Joni Mitchell—not Judy Collins)

  5. Gabriel and Me (Joan Baez)
    I never heard Ms. Baez perform this, but it was in a song book that belonged to Missy, another girl at camp. I copied down the words and the chords. It was my introduction to bass runs, and it's one of the influences on the Camargue poems that I am writing.

A close runner up was Perfect Circle, by R.E.M.—but in trying to find the title for it, I came across the lyrics. I had always thought that they said something about "silk shoulders high in the rain," which makes no sense but is lovely and mysterious. It turns out that the actual lyrics have shoulders but no silk and no rain.

And as soon as I post this, I will say, "But what about…?" I'd like to be able to include everything ever done by Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash AND Young, Elliott Smith, They Might Be Giants, Eels, Cake, Peter Gabriel, the aforementioned R.E.M., and Roxy Music, plus Wildwood Flower (another entry in the J.B. songbook and made famous by the Carter family), and a couple of sea chanteys that I don't know most of the words to. So I'm cheating a little bit.

Now, I shall tag Sandra, because she's the musician. And Greg (maybe he'll throw in a show tune or two). And Jamie (perhaps it will inspire him to update his blog and tell us about his recent cycling adventures).

You're it.

1 comment:

Peter said...

I *love* "Tangled Up In Blue." Blood on the Tracks was an amazing album.