Homonyms: Operator

Grateful Dead: Operator

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Manhattan Transfer: Operator

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Alexis Korner with Robert Plant: Operator

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Jim Croce: Operator (That‘s Not the Way It Feels)

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When I was a child, there was only one telephone company. If you needed any help making a call, you were completely at their mercy. What we call by the more clunky name of directory assistance was simply known as “information” in those days, and you spoke to a human being, usually female. Lily Tomlin, shown above, brilliantly spoofed the information operator and the power of the phone company. But their job was twofold: to help the customer reach their party, but also to protect the privacy of that party. So, if you didn’t have enough information to help the operator find the number and connect you, you might be treated with suspicion. That created the perfect metaphor for songwriters.

Ron McKernan, better known as Pigpen, was the original keyboard player for the Grateful Dead. His song Operator has the narrator trying to find a girl for whom he has incomplete information, maybe just her name. He has a vague idea where she might be, but nothing definite. The girl could easily be a groupie with whom the narrator had a one night stand that made a strong impression on the narrator. But, in listening to the song while preparing for this post, I was struck with another possibility, one I feel sure Pigpen never intended. What if the narrator is a father searching for his teen runaway daughter? As I said, I don’t think Pigpen had that in mind, but it works.

If you have heard of Manhattan Transfer, you may know them for their doo-wop flavored hit The Boy From New York City. Maybe you also know that they went in a jazz direction in their later career. But Operator was their breakthrough song in 1975, and it is pure gospel. The song was originally written and performed about 20 years earlier by William Spivery. Aside from Operator, Spivery is really only known for two other songs, musical tributes to John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The song is a prayer, with the singer asking the operator for a connection to heaven.

Special thanks go out to fellow Star Maker Bert for making this post possible. I asked him for the two songs above, and he went beyond the call of duty and sent me a third Operator by Alexis Korner. I had never even heard it before, but it’s a keeper that is also of historical interest. Alexis Korner was one of many British rock artists in the 1960s who embraced the blues. His playing, based on this example, was fine, but Korner wasn’t much of a blues singer, and that is probably why he isn’t better known. John Mayall was probably an even worse singer, but his reputation rests on his uncanny ability to find sidemen who would go on to fame and fortune. On Operator, Korner got that kind of help too, from Robert Plant. Plant would be in Led Zeppelin a year after this recording, developing his trademark rock howl. But here is the beginning of that voice, in a blues context. Personally. I would much rather hear Robert Plant sing the blues. This Operator is a breakup blues, with nothing special about the lyrics. But the performance is great. It’s just piano, acoustic guitar, harmonica, and that great blues howl by Plant that makes this one utterly convincing. Incidentally, nothing in the lyrics explains why this song is called Operator, but Korner had to call it something.

Finally, I’m cheating a bit with my last selection. But how can you post a set of songs called Operator, and not include Jim Croce? The parenthetical That’s Not the Way It Feels in the title means the song is not a true homonym, but it fits the theme better than the Alexis Korner song in terms of lyrics. Like Pigpen, Croce’s narrator is seeking a girl he knew back when. But he knows where she is. What Croce’s narrator really wants is the ability to forgive an old hurt that won’t go away. And that is what he is asking for help with.

Homonyms: Blue Monday

Bob Seger: Blue Monday (Fats Domino cover)

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New Order: Blue Monday

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Mondays really have a bad reputation and that plays out in musical titles. Of the many songs I know about Monday, not a single one is uplifting. There's Stormy Monday, Monday Morning Blues, Manic Monday, Rainy Days and Mondays, and of course I Don't Like Mondays. So I guess it's no surprise that there are two versions of a song called Blue Monday.

The first was a 1956 hit for boogie woogie piano bluesman Fats Domino. I'm using a cover of that song, though, by Detroit's own rocker Bob Seger, used in the soundtrack for the 1989 movie Roadhouse. His version doesn't deviate much from Fats', and after growing up outside of Detroit myself, I always like some Bob Seger!

The second is a synth pop club dance song by New Order (surprisingly, we've never posted that band before). It was the biggest selling 12" single ever in the UK, and various remixes, re-recordings, and covers roam the internet. From the book Manchester England: The Story of the Pop Cult City we find that "Blue Monday was really influenced by four songs…The arrangement came from 'Dirty Talk', by Klein & MBO, the beat came from a track off a Donna Summer LP, there was a sample from 'Radioactivity' by Kraftwerk, and the general influence on the style of the song was Sylvester's '(You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real'." Both the base and drum tracks were synthesized, and the choir was sampled from Kraftwerk, one of the first records to sample another artist's song like that.

Homonyms: Goodnight Moon

Will Kimbrough: Goodnight Moon

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Shivaree: Goodnight Moon

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The homonymic pair in question comes from two singles, both released in 2000, from two artists grounded in vastly different soil yet united by their common claim to the American folk and roots traditions.

I could imagine both these songs on the same soundtrack, but the movie in question would have to have a hell of a plot arc to contain 'em both. Which is to say: don't expect much else to compare 'em with, other than song title, release date, and a distant kinship via genre coincidence.

WIll Kilbrough's pulsing, gently soothing, moog-and-brush-driven lullaby is a sweet, languid sleeper that catches the heart, as it caught mine when it re-appeared on the 2003 Oxford American Southern Sampler.

Shivaree's AAA popfolk radio hit delivers the nervous heartbeat of a late-night stalker's subject, taking us along for the ride; you may recognize it from its use over the credits in Kill Bill Volume 2.

Both aim true.

Homonyms: Sherry

The Four Seasons: Sherry

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SADS: Sherry

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Forty-one years separate these odes to girls named Sherry. The older of the two is by far better known—it was the first number one hit for those Jersey boys, the Four Seasons. The other is less well known (to say the least) outside Japan, by the Kiyoharu-fronted band, SADS. These songs are near-polar opposites except maybe for the vocal idiosyncrasies of each lead singer. The first is one of those early sixties tunes with a catchy pop melody and the world's simplest lyrics: Sherry, can you come out tonight? It implies the budding of a new relationship (or is it only puppy love?). The second is a straight-out rock song full of anguish about the end of a relationship, and okay, I know you can't understand the lyrics, so I'll tell you what the first part says:

Sherry, softly I could hear the goodbye,
Sherry, once upon a time you said to smile,
Sherry, I can no longer see the withered falling flowers,
Sherry, Sherry, Sherry, and you were not here.
(courtesy of Myspace Kiyoharu fan page)

The song ends with some effective repetition of lyrics with one word change:

Kimi ga kureta zetsubou (ushinai/yorokobi/akirame) no uta wo…

Which means: The hopeless (lost/happy/forsaken) song you gave….

My own Japanese consists of only the basics: thank you, good morning, where is the bathroom? But have you ever noticed that when you don't speak a language, certain repeated words pop out at you in songs? When I listen to Brazilian music, I always hear "coração" (heart). I think it's a law somewhere that all songs with Portuguese lyrics must contain it.

In Japanese, in every song I always hear "sayonara." I think that says something.

Homonyms: The Mountain

Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer: The Mountain

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Steve Earle with The Del McCoury Band: The Mountain

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A mountain is the product of geological upheaval, but it represents solidity. Dave Carter, in his song The Mountain, finds a symbol of spiritual truth here. Carter referred to many different spiritual traditions in his writing; I don’t think divisions between them were important to him. The Mountain refers to Native American beliefs with Carter’s typical economical eloquence. The song showcases Tracy Grammer’s voice beautifully.

Steve Earle finds both the solidity and the upheaval in his song The Mountain. Earle made the song the title track from the bluegrass album he recorded with the Del McCoury Band. The song is about a coal miner who has seen his home ravaged as strip mining replaced the traditional mining methods he grew up with. So, on the face of it, Earle takes the idea of a mountain more literally than Dave Carter. And yet, I think it’s fair to say that Earle’s song also has a spiritual dimension as well. For the album, Earle, by his own account, had to learn to sing. He was several albums into his career, and Earle had always done all of the vocals on his albums. But he had never tried to blend his voice with others before. I remember reading at the time how Earle had to basically start from scratch, and really learn how to use his voice. His performance of The Mountain remains some of the best evidence that all of that hard work paid off.

Homonyms: Power Of Love

Martha Reeves: Power Of Love

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Frankie Goes To Hollywood: The Power Of Love
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Huey Lewis and the News: The Power Of Love
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Luther Vandross: Power Of Love (Love Power)
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Give or take a definite article, singers seem to have an affinity for the power of love. In 1985, three separate songs by that title populated the UK charts. Two are featured here, but there is no good reason for anybody to own 1985’s version of waterboarding, perpetrated by Jennifer Rush (and inevitably later covered by Celine Dion).

The best of the four Powers of Love is Martha Reeves’ cover of soul singer Joe Simon’s hit. Written by Simon with the maestros of Philly Soul, Gamble and Huff, it appeared on Reeves’ eponymously titled 1974 album.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood enjoyed a third consecutive UK #1 with their “Power Of Love”. The plan was that it would be the Christmas #1, always a big deal in Britain. Carefully released in late November 1984 to accomplish that goal, it entered the top 10 on 1 December and it topped the charts the following week (succeeding the dreadful “I Should Have Known Better” by Jim Diamond, a possible candidate for the present theme). But the week after it was knocked off the top, almost from nowhere, by Band Aid’s rush-released “Do They Know It’s Christmas”. But even without that mammoth hit, FGTH wouldn’t have had the Christmas chart-topper: number two to Band Aid over the season was Wham!’s “Last Christmas”.

Huey Lewis’ “The Power Of Love”, which scored the glorious Back To The Future, came out bang in the middle of the middle year of the 1980s, and it very much sounds like it. The thing is, Huey and his pals had a reputation as a pop group that referenced the 1950s while yet sounding modern, so “The Power Of Love”, as used in a movie that timetravels from 1985 to 1955, ought to have sounded more like “If This Is It” than the synth-heavy, ’80s movie soundtrack by-the-numbers throwaway number it really is (it’s still superior to the other song Lewis did for Back To The Future).

Finally, Luther Vandross sort of spoils things for us. His 1991 hit is called “Power Of Love”, but then he dicked about with parentheses and almost had himself disqualified from this post. The song is really a stew of at least two incomplete songs. It’s all a bit formulaic, but it has a sense of joy, and it has Luther Vandross singing it.

By the time he passed away, Luther’s reputation was a bit shot by the unfair backlash to ’80s soul and his latter tendency to record pedestrian material. But we must never forget that Luther Vandross was one of the great soul singers of any age. And, as my friend Jason would point out, more people were conceived in New Jersey to records by Luther Vandross than to those of any other singer. And isn’t that really the power of love?

(Graphic borrowed from homelifeweekly.com)

Homonyms: Christine

Siouxie And The Banshees::Christine

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JK And Co: Christine

[currently unavailable]

House of Love: Christine

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Former model and showgirl Christine Keeler became famous for her 1961 involvement with both the British Secretary of War John Profumo and naval attache Yevgeni Ivanov of the Soviet Union. ( As a Texas governor recently said : "Oops.")

 I don't for a minute think any of these songs are about Christine Keeler. I just needed a nice picture.

 Siouxie's "Christine" is about the subject of the movie The Three Faces of Eve, a woman with multiple personalities.( Now she's in purple/ Now she's the turtle). Jay Kay was just 15 when he put together the band that recorded the following version of "Christine". The 1968 album, Suddenly One Summer, made The Mojo Collection, a book about the greatest albums of all time. House of Love's "Christine" is about young love crushed by the rest of the world.

Homonyms: Forgiveness

Patty Griffin: Forgiveness

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Luka Bloom: Forgiveness

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The Lonesome Sisters: Forgiveness

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Single-word song titles are often homonymic, especially those that describe an emotional state; after all, there's a LOT of songs out there, and far fewer emotional states to channel through song. These three favorite interpretations of forgiveness were released within the single decade that took me through my twenties and into my early thirties - through marriage and parenthood, through graduate school and vocational epiphany, through unemployment and homelessness and back again - and each appeared just when I needed it: Patty Griffin's raw debut runs plaintive and deep enough to make my eternal "sad songs" playlist; Irish singer-songwriter Luka Bloom pays death's tribute with eerie atmosphere and a typically low-strung, high-reverb guitar; the Lonesome Sisters won prizewinning song at Merlefest for their deep holler harmonies on this bitter, truly lonesome song of love gone astray; all gave voice to my heart, at one younger, less confident time or another.

Homonyms: Wrecking Ball

Emmylou Harris: Wrecking Ball

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Gillian Welch w Old Crow Medicine Show: Wrecking Ball

[unavailable, purchase studio version]

I suspect that we are going to see this week how certain metaphors strike different songwriters. A wrecking ball is a fine example to start with. Emmylou Harris makes a pun on the word ball, and her narrator invites a boy to a dance. The danger is implied rather than stated, and the song is an eloquent statement on the sense of personal danger that can come with the beginning of a new relationship. For Gillian Welch, her narrator is the wrecking ball of the title, and it is her life and prospects that get demolished. Welch’s Wrecking Ball was on her 2003 album Soul Journey, and that it is the purchase link I have provided, But the version heard here comes from the following year, from a live performance at radio station WXPN’s World Café program, and the backing band was Old Crow Medicine Show. Wow! It sounds as good as you would expect if you know both artists. This version is somewhat less produced than the album version; in either case, the strength of the song shines through.

And Bands: Almost Fed Up With the Blues

John Hiatt and The Goners: Almost Fed Up With the Blues

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Is it fair, this week, to post a song by a long-time solo artist who made exactly one album billed as the work of an And Band? In the case of John Hiatt and the Goners, I would say yes. In addition to Hiatt, the Goners included Sonny Landreth, Kenneth Blevins, and Dave Ranson. Although Beneath This Gruff Exterior is the only album credited to the Goners, they had been Hiatt’s touring band for many years. Almost Fed Up With the Blues is the sound of a group of musicians who know each other well having fun. The fade out at the end is needed because these guys sound like they would happily jam away on the song for hours if nobody stopped them. The baritone sax on the song is by guest musician Bobby Keys.

And Bands: Let’s Make Love Not War

Charles Wright and The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band: Let’s Make Love Not War

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As far as monikers go, it is fair to say, The 103rd Street Rhythm Band does lack the concise zip of your assorted Pips, Blue Notes or Family Stones. Precede that unwieldy handle with the name of your frontman, and you will over the years have annoyed more than one person trying to scribble your outfit’s name and title into the tiny space provided for tracklistings on cassette tapes. Or the pedant who had to suffer the torment of file name limitations on old operating systems or the first version of ID3 tags. Yes, I mean me.

Charles Wright and The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band may be unsnappy by name, but the funky sound of their late ’60s/early ’70s soul music offers reparation. They are best known (and most feared by Billboard’s typesetters) for hits such as “Express Yourself”, “Do Your Thing” and, best of all, the superb “Love Land”.

Before forming a succession of incarnations of the 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Charles Wright – who clearly enjoyed the sound of his name – led a group which he called Charles Wright and the Wright Sounds. The Wright Sounds’ keyboard player was one Daryl Dragon, who later would tinkle the ivories for the Beach Boys, where he was given the nickname “Captain”. With that moniker, he’d go on to have a few hits with his wife, Toni Tennille.

The Charles Wright and The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band song here appeared on their 1971 album You’re So Beautiful, which defied its soppy title by featuring some seriously funky grooves. “Let’s Make Love Not War” is not one of them, but it recalls Wright’s early days as a doo wop singer – though few doo wop songs have been anti-war numbers introduced by traumatic gunfire followed by the forlorn sound of the death-proclaiming bugle.

And Bands: Pygmy

Akira Ishikawa & The Count Buffaloes: Pigmy

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As the entries below already made clear, this week's theme provides ample opportunity to go obscure. And why not indeed? So let me highlight Japrockers Akira Ishikawa & The Count Buffaloes, one of the first bands to come up when I punched in & The in my iTunes. The psychedelic sludge groove of Pigmy ('72) was inspired by an actual visit to Uganda, where drummer Ishikawa spent some high times studying African percussion techniques. Space guitar courtesy of Kimio Mizutani.

And Bands: Glide / Living With God

Gandalf Murphy & the Slambovian Circus of Dreams: Glide

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Gandalf Murphy & the Slambovian Circus of Dreams: Living With God (live, WXPN)

[unpurchaseable]

At least four of our regular contributors have heard Gandalf Murphy & the Slambovian Circus of Dreams, the upstate NY-based Pink Floyd-meets-The Allman Brothers hillbilly psychedelic folk rock band which takes over the dance and main stages at our fave folk festival each summer for successive evenings of total mayhem and their infamous extended ecstatic jams. I know, because you can hear it from every distant tentsite - and for three years running, the energy has brought me out of my own camp circle like a will-o-the-wisp to dance in the moonlight with the young'uns, umbrella at the ready, already festooned with lightsticks for the journey.

The band members, several of whom are related by blood or marriage, but not one of whom is named Gandalf Murphy, style themselves as the sonic spirit guides to a mythical state of being somewhere between nirvana and Atlantis, where kindness and love reign supreme. Their leather-and-lace costumes are outlandish and cosplay-retro-fantasy, as befits their ridiculous backstory, but the mythos works: their followers are legion, known for travelling hundreds of miles to attend one of their pre-Halloween Grand Slambovian Hillbilly Pirate Balls, and I'm fast becoming one of them, thanks to those few precious nights of uncontrolled wantonness which they provide for me every summer.

Like the Grateful Dead before them, studio recordings from the Grand Slambovian camp offer but a faint hint of what their live performances provide, and so much of their recorded output is in fact live recordings released officially; appropriately, then, I've included not one but two tunes above, the first from their 2003 sophomore studio release, the second a truncated teaser from a live radio show the following year, so you can hear the difference. But really, travel the hundred miles if you can. We'll make a Slambovian of you yet.

And Bands: I Could Be So Good To You

Don and The Goodtimes: I Could Be So Good To You

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Portland's Don Gallucci is the one man link between The Kingsmen and The Stooges and it's quite a story. As a high school kid, he played those memorable electric piano riffs on The Kingsmen's 1963 hit "Louie Louie" but was too young to go on tour when the single went nationwide. Down but not out, he got some buddies together and formed Don and the Goodtimes.

They toured the Northwest circuit in top hats-- filling a gap left by the now LA-based hit making machine Paul Revere and the Raiders. In 1966, Don and the Goodtimes became the house band on Dick Clark's TV show "Where The Action Is". They got signed to Epic and, with the help of studio musicians, recorded and  released "I Could Be So Good To You" in 1967. The single went #1 in the Northwest, but failed to claw its way into the Billboard Top 40.

    After an album produced by the prolific Jack Nitzsche and a  few more singles, Don and the Goodtimes  broke up and Gallucci started a legendary progressive rock band called Touch. Alas their self titled album went nowhere and Don lent his studio wizardry to Elektra. His best known producing effort is the one Don says he just tried not to "screw up": The Stooges's Fun House, arguably rock's first punk record.

And Bands: So You Think You’re In Love

Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians: So You Think You‘re In Love

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You probably have never heard of Dennis and the Experts. I certainly hadn’t until I did research for this post. Formed in 1976, they soon changed their name to The Soft Boys. The Soft Boys included Robyn Hitchcock, Morris Windsor, and Andy Metcalfe, plus one of three guitarists, depending on when you asked. It was only in the last year the band was together that Metcalfe left, to be replaced by Matthew Selligman. The band broke up, having released two albums, and Hitchcock started his solo career. But when Hitchcock decided that he wanted to work with a band again, Metcalfe and Windsor were back on board. There was also a keyboard player, but he was only there for a year. The “new” band was Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians. By the time the band recorded the album Perspex Island, the lineup was augmented by guest musicians, including Michael Stipe and Peter Buck from REM. So You Think You’re In Love comes from that album, and it finds the band coming as close as they ever did to pop music. Earlier, the band featured Hitchcock’s surreal lyrics, backed by edgy music that could slip into an odd time signature without warning. But here, Hitchcock sounds like he has returned from his journey to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, and is becoming reaclimated to life on earth. I love both the earlier and this later sound, but I thought this would be a better starting point for anyone discovering Hitchcock’s music for the first time.

Tarot Cards (The Moon): I Can’t Understand the Moon

Andrew McKnight: I Can‘t Understand the Moon

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I collect Tarot cards, as much for the artistry as anything else. Tarot seems to inspire some amazing artwork at times, although it can also bring out the corniest side of some people as well. But the decks I like bring out all of the mystery and power of the Tarot. The Moon card I have chosen for this post is by Salvador Dali, and it comes from a complete deck that he painted. The card represents dreams. These can be the source of inspirations for great endeavors. But the Moon can also represent nightmares, or even insanity. To me, that is the aspect of the card the Dali captured best.

In my Halloween post on Oliver di Place, I promised that I would be posting another Andrew McKnight song here. McKnight captures another aspect of the Moon card. His narrator is lamenting the loss of a lover who was unattainable in the first place. He identifies her with the moon. But maybe he is literally referring to the moon, and maybe the rest is just his fevered imagination. To me, the song allows for either interpretation, and therefore is a perfect song to go with the card.

Tarot Cards (Justice): Justice

Alan Price: Justice

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We all want justice but you got to have the money to buy it/
You'd have to be a fool to close your eyes and deny it.

A cynical sentiment from former Animal Alan Price, "Justice" is one of the minor cuts on his O Lucky Man! soundtrack. (So you can imagine how great the major cuts are.) Price appears in the Lindsay Anderson film in the same Greek Chorus role as Jonathan Richman in "There's Something About Mary" and Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye in "Cat Ballou". In the film our hero, played by Malcolm MacDowell, must abandon his principles to succeed in capitalist society. Will he succeed and at what cost? The hairstyles and clothes may be dated but, in light of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the film's message has never been more relevant.

Tarot Cards (The Hanged Man): The Hanged Man

Mr. Fox - The Hanged Man

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The Hanged Man or Le Pendu (XII) is the twelfth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks, and amongst others signifies suspension, rebirth, sacrifice, and transformation. Now I'm not sure of course, but I've got a hunch that the early seventies British folkers of Mr. Fox were well aware of this when they wrote the rather spooky The Hanged Man. "Walking a valley that never saw the sun, step by the stones where the icy waters run, stand in a church where the village choir once sang, and run along the pathway where the dead man used to hang..."

Tarot Cards (The Fool): The Fool

The Fixx : The Fool

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I'm not at all familiar with the Tarot or the various meanings of its cards. Let's just say everything I know about it I learned from Wikipedia, the blogger's friend.

I know more about the British band The Fixx, though, 'cuz they're one of my favorite 80s New Wave groups. They've always shown more complexity in their melodies and lyrics than most bands of the time. This song is from their first album, Shuttered Room, which also gave us the better-known hits Stand or Fall and Red Skies at Night. The group is still active, touring, and working on a new album that will come out next spring.

The Tarot's fool is a childlike spirit on a journey. In contrast, The Fixx's fool is a sad madman wasting away in confinement (So I'm locked away in my padded cocoon, A square of hell where nightmares bloom). I think I prefer the Tarot version, especially since I'm out of town on my own journey for a few weeks.

Tarot Cards (The Tower): Franklin’s Tower

Grateful Dead: Franklin‘s Tower

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To begin our week of Tarot cards, I wanted to make a fairly obvious connection between a card and a song. I will get all mystical on everyone later in the week. But I’m starting with Franklin’s Tower, simply because it has the word Tower in the title of the song.

Actually, Franklin’s Tower has one of Robert Hunter’s more mysterious lyrics. I could make a somewhat forced connection to the meaning of the card if I wanted to. But I think it suffices to say that a tower is, symbolically, a solid structure, a foundation upon which to build. For Hunter, it is a beacon, guiding the traveler through a mysterious landscape. It is a song that asks the listener to use their imagination to fill in the blanks. The Grateful Dead were famed for their musical imaginations, so this song represents at least one side of their artistry perfectly. The version of Franklin’s Tower heard here is a live version from the album Dead Set.