poetry in music

[Artguy]

Leonard Cohen....Like a bird on a wire.....
Also Archie Sepp...Mama Rose, and Poem For Malcolm
I am now listening to Ginsberg reading Howl with the Kronos Quartet adding 4 string musical howl..............

[mnaz]

'in the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is king'...
(tom waits- 'singapore')

[firsty]

lr is dead on.

best line ever: mona lisa must have had the highway blues you cant tell by the way she smiled.

yesterday on the way home from work and before that on the way to work from home i listened to the following song a million times. the way the tune shifts to double time towards the end makes my teeth grind in some kind of abnormal aboriginie rhythm that nearly kills me. this is a beat song if ever i heard one.

We come on the sloop john b
My grandfather and me
Around nassau town we did roam
Drinking all night
Got into a fight
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home

So hoist up the john b’s sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, yeah yeah
Well I feel so broke up
I wanna go home

The first mate he got drunk
And broke in the cap’n’s trunk
The constable had to come and take him away
Sheriff john stone
Why don’t you leave me alone, yeah yeah
Well I feel so broke up I wanna go home

So hoist up the john b’s sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, let me go home
Why don’t you let me go home
(hoist up the john b’s sail)
Hoist up the john b
I feel so broke up I wanna go home
Let me go home

The poor cook he caught the fits
And threw away all my grits
And then he took and he ate up all of my corn
Let me go home
Why don’t they let me go home
This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on

So hoist up the john b’s sail
See how the mainsail sets
Call for the captain ashore
Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, let me go home
Why don’t you let me go home



of course if there was ever a beat song, not that this thread is about beat songs but anyway this is the point, tom waits redid a song kerouac wrote back in the day and here it is:

Well, I left New York in nineteen forty-nine
To go across the country, without a dad-blame dime
Montana in the cold cold fall
I found my father in a gamblin' hall

Father, father, where have you been?
I've been out in the world since I was only ten
Father, father, where have you been?
I've been out in the world since I was only ten

Don't worry about me, about to die of pleurisy
Cross the Mississippi, cross the Tennessee
Cross the Niagara, home I'll never be
Home in ol' Medora, home in ol' Truckee
Apalachicola, home I'll never be
For better or for worse, or thick and thin
I've been married to the little woman
God he loves me, like I love him
I want you to do just the same for him
Well, the worms eat away
But don't worry, watch the wind

So I left Montana on an old freight train
The night my father died in the cold cold rain
Rode to Opelousas, rode to Wounded Knee
Rode to Ogallala, home I'll never be
Rode to Oklahoma, rode to El Cajon
Rode to old Tehatchapi, rode to San Antone

Hey! Hey!

Rode to Opelousas, rode to Wounded Knee
Rode to Ogallala, home I'll never be
Rode to Oklahoma, rode to El Cajon
Rode to old Tehatchapi, rode to San Antone

Home I'll never be
Home I'll never be
Home I'll never be
Home I'll never be
Home I'll never be
Home I'll never be

[mnaz]

I will never quite be home again.
But since someone mentioned poetry in music,
I thought I'd mention that I was partial to Tom Verlaine--
not to be confused with that Absinthe-stoned Paul Verlaine
of that decadent France. That decadent that.
"I remember how the darkness doubled.
I recall lightning struck itself.
I was listening, listening to the rain,
I was hearing something else".