Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Cannons Flashing



I love everything about this recording; a great song of course (Jimmy Webb) - gorgeous melody, sparely evocative lyrics - but also a wonderful, soaring vocal, the playing of no less than the legendary Wrecking Crew, which included Campbell (that guitar solo two minutes in!), a sound that is the sea breeze and surf of that place he's left behind and all of his longing to be back there.

They quite genuinely don't make 'em like this any more, you know.

PS: The seafront at Galveston had a hard, hard battering from Hurricane Ike in 2008, by which time still more young men were cleaning their guns far from their loved ones, in invaded lands.

Interesting Artist - 'Great Song' (1969) (see below)


(12/03: Just had this 'returned to draft' and the Mediafire file deleted, so assume it's a copyright thang - have restored the post without the file: sheesh, you all already own it anyway. Ropey, but great, old video clip here).

(23/03: Brilliantly this has been 'taken down' AGAIN. even though there is no link here. So - I have now removed the words that identify the track. Call off the bots! Sheesh x 4).

38 comments:

  1. Just brilliant. Used to play this as a kid.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love it. And that line 'I am so afraid of dying' - just perfect. Can you imagine anyone writing something similar now. Or delivering it like Glen.

    Did you hear his comeback album? Very good.

    ReplyDelete
  3. i stuck this on at the weekend. Saturday morning, getting my Geek Lair in order. I had to stop, listen, then play it again. It's a recording that demands your attention and that is totally engaging on every level. I love it to bits...

    ReplyDelete
  4. "I clean my gun and think of Galveston" is a great line.

    A mate of mine went to Galveston just because of this song (at college we talked about visiting Tulsa, Clarksville, Monterey and all the other great "song cities") and said it was a bit of a dump unfortunately.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Got to love a bit of Glen.

    It's not Southern Nights, this one, is it?

    x

    ReplyDelete
  6. My mum bought us a cheap 60s comp when I was 7 with this on it. Have loved it ever since. And then there's Wichita Lineman. What a great song.

    ReplyDelete
  7. My mum loved Galveston. Wichita Lineman is my particular favourite. There's a great version of that somewhere out there by Prefab Sprout - they used to play it live a lot. I'll see if I've got a copy somewhere and maybe post it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. he's a king round here is glen despite the suffering he put us through at manchesters foul bridgewater hall a few years back. the poor man was dying out there courtesy of a vile joyless audience of bussed in pensioners. it was desperately sad so we ran off to the pub after five songs
    x

    ReplyDelete
  9. Um, is anyone else having trouble with the link? When I click on it I end up in the Wrecking Crew's wiki page.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oops - thanks Adam: too much cutting and (mis)pasting at this end. Apologies. Fixed now.

    What a lovely bunch of comments. Frameable! I was a bit glum earlier, but you cheered me up no end.

    It's my old LP of this that's been soundtracking my Sunday mornings these last few weeks; like Alistair I've very often picked the needle up at the end of this track and put it right back down at the start again. 'Wichita Lineman' too of course

    The local library's got the new one, so I shall troll along there forthwith.

    Manchester Miss A can be a cruel place.

    ReplyDelete
  11. PS: I really love the idea of that 'song cities' tour; and yet still in my head (and Jimmy's song) the beach in Galveston is more lovely than I know it will ever be for real. And so is Monterey.

    PPS: Playing this often makes me want to hear Nanci Griffith's 'Lone Star State Of Mind' next. Mostly because the opening lines are

    Your phone call took me by surprise
    Gee, it's been a long, long time
    Since those hot and humid Texas nights
    When we went swimming in the tide

    And Corpus Christi seems so far away
    And I'm not talking 'bout the miles
    And there ain't much I wouldn't give today
    Just to see one of your smiles

    ReplyDelete
  12. Perhaps I'll post that tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Absolutely outstanding, Mr H.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thanks Davy, got it now. Take it easy on Manchester though, some of us live here.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Ha ha, mmmm, true.

    Song city though I think.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Picked this album up in a charity shop last year for the proverbial 50p - primarily for the cover. And with memories of Lineman and Galveston I thought I might find some other gems on the vinyl within. Bit disappointed in the end though.

    word veri: groanda - who probably would have been at ally's Glen gig!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Another of my college mates did make it to Monterey and called me in London at 2 in the morning just to say "Lee! I'm in Monterey and nothing's happened!"

    The plan included taking the last train to Clarksville and being 24 hours from Tulsa. You know, the silly bollocks you plan to do when you're a student.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I don't know if this counts but I got lost in France once.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I got lost in the supermarket once. Spent Christmas with some friends one year. Started drinking Christmas Eve at about 11am, finished drinking December 29th in time to have a bath and some sleep for New Years Eve.

    Christmas morning we ventured out to buy some cigs and some ingredient we were missing for Christmas lunch and found a supermarket open around the corner. It was the longest narrowest supermarket I've ever seen. I got vertigo.

    ReplyDelete
  20. They paid for our shopping and had to come back and find me.

    It was one of those Christmases. One of the guys had made a snowball, almost all for himself, of coke. It was fun to watch him melt over the course of the week.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I left my heart in San Francisco.

    No Class A drugs were involved.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I left my heart at Papworth General (HMHB)

    ReplyDelete
  23. I want to do the By The Time I Get To Phoenix itinerary (talking of Jimmy Webb, and all). Apparently the timelines don't quite work out.

    ReplyDelete
  24. With a strategic cough in the right places, I used to convince my dozy mates that the magnificent Charlene sang,

    'I've been to Paradise ..
    But I've never been to Leeds'.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Arf! My version was always

    I've been to Clapham South
    But I've never been to Cheam


    Although, actually, I had.

    ReplyDelete
  26. PS: Major I've always wondered about that - 'By the time I make Albuquerque'...days had gone by, etc

    ReplyDelete
  27. Sorry to hear you had trouble with the internet popo over this.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Strangely there was no email notification: but both draft reversion and file deletion happened suddenly and simultaneously, so it must have been The Man. *shrugs*

    ReplyDelete
  29. We love this album but esp. 'Galveston'. It's a tune that goes with anything you're doing... cleaning a gun or maybe like when you're singing doing dishes... 'Scrubbing forks, scrubbing forks, i love scrubbinf forrrrrks... bum, bum, bum.' etc. Love Jimmy Webb, brilliant songwriter. Another good version is on the pbs documentary of r.e.m.'s monster tour... would love a full mp3 of that for sure but don't think it's avail.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Damn file deletions. I hope you'll not have your whole blog zapped.

    How did you manage to keep the comments though? They usually go with the deletion.

    BTW, have you heard Jimmy Webb's version of Galveston? It's quite different.

    ReplyDelete
  31. I don't think I have Major, no. I have seen him do a few of his own things - not very well, I don't think.

    The post was returned to draft rather than deleted. Thankfully, because the comments are brilliant.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Oh and salut vie en. I never scrub forks moi meme, just shove 'em in the dishwash. But, you know, your point is well made.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Voila, mon ami:

    http://www.mediafire.com/?yyumg3zygeo

    Feel free to care & share the link, if you like.

    (36 responses. Damn, you're good)

    ReplyDelete
  34. Oo-er, that is a re-invention - thanks dear boy.

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.