Why do I like songs more when I hear stories in them?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

narratives in songs: s&d

― fritz, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

search: vintage dylan (heh heh, sorry ronan)- hollis brown & squeeze - up the junction, billy joe royal: down in the boondocks, springsteen - most of nebraska, the royal guardsman - snoopy and the red baron.

― fritz, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

epmd: jane, slick rick: children's story, nick cave: most of murder ballads.

― fritz, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'the gift' by velvet underground

― fields of salmon, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Nearly every Arab Strap song.

― baxter wingnut, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Long Black Veil, trad.

It was ten years ago on a cold, dark night
Someone was killed 'neath the town hall light.
No one was there, but they all did agree
That the man who ran looked a lot like me.

She walks these hills in a long black veil
And she visits my grave when the night winds wail.
Nobody knows, and nobody sees
Nobody knows but me.

The judge said "Son, what is your alibi?
If you weren't there then you don't have to die."
I spoke not a word, though it meant my life.
I had been in the arms of my best friend's wife.

chorus

The scaffold was high and eternity near.
She stood in the crowd, but she shed not a tear.
Now sometimes at night, and always alone
In a long black veil she cries over my bones.

chorus, outro, whatever

Now, it seems to me that the owner of the long black veil has some explaining to do. The narrator—speaking from beyond the grave—commits the ultimate act of honor and sacrifice—dying in order to save the love and marriage of his best friend (and the woman the narrator presumably loves). Leaving aside the fact that the killer is still walking around free, and perhaps chuckling to himself in the gallows crowd, why in the world doesn't this woman SPEAK UP?? She "shed not a tear" but is later so broken up that she wanders aimlessly, mourning, and occasionally holding secret midnight grief-sessions in the cemetary? I mean, say he was helping you fix a broken water-pump or something, ANYTHING.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Wait I've got a clue!! "no one was there" yet everyone said it looked like our narrator. Conclusion: our man is NOT liked in the town. His lover's revelation of their affair would be compounded with everyone going "ohmigod with him?"

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

god I love that song. there are so many great versions of it too.

― fritz, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I have no doubt that the words above are my version, but they're pretty close to what I've heard from others.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"Long Black Veil" is NOT a traditional song. It was written in 1959 by Nashville songwriter Danny Dill, and was first recorded by Lefty Frizzell. Lefty's career wasn't doing too well in the late 50s, and the song was an attempt to cash in on the folk revival. It worked.

Great song. I love how it uses this quasi-ghost story imagery, but the person doing the haunting is alive, and it's the narrator who's dead.

I recently tried to collect all the versions I could. The Band's and Marianne Faithfull's are great. Nick Cave's and Mike Ness's are not. There is supposedly a Barry White version that I haven't tracked down yet.

Speaking of Marianne and narrative songs, The Ballad of Lucy Jordan is pretty swell.

― Marcel Post, Thursday, 13 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

do you like the Johnny Cash version?

(I thought it was a Cash original until about two minutes ago. me = ignorant)

― thom, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What a tune. I love it also.

I've heard the Johnny version and I think the other version I heard was by The Band. Bass is really weird in that version, it's like really wobbly and resonant. Reminds me of Will Oldham.

― Ronan, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Marcel thank you for setting me straight. I just SOUNDS so freaking traditional... Danny Dill knew his painful mountain ballads right enuf, I reckon.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"…No one was there, but they all did agree/That the man who ran looked a lot like me."

Tracer, maybe this means that no one was at the spot where the killing took place, but it was agreed that the man who ran through town looked like the narrator because "I had been in the arms of my best friend's wife" = it was this secret tryst I was running away from.

― neil, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, this makes sense because presumably the narrator needed to hightail it out of there before morning. But if this is true, and the town doesn't have a problem with this guy and are simply eagle-eyed insomniacs, and there is zero additional stigma for the affair, WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THE WOMAN DOING putting her obviously not-grebt marriage before 1) justice and 2) her true love's very life? It is BURNING MY BRANE.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

She's being *traditional* duh. The whole moral resonance of the song is that he is being PUNISHED for having an AFFAIR. and she also must be PUNISHED. This is rilly just a variant on the "black jack" tune whose history Tosches traces in Country.

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But she "shed not a tear" as well, which complicates the issue. Maybe she just has a problem with her tear ducts. Her doing-what's-right ducts might be a little faulty as well.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

she couldn't cry because that would give it away -- everyone else wants to get the murderer and she's crying for him?

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

He should have just said he was out jogging. And didn't they need to establish motive in those days?

― neil, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Country music owns this thread. It's a genre jam-packed with storytelling songs, of lots of different kinds. Try the Johnny Cash collection entitled The Storyteller.

Outside that, Dylan for sure, but also Tom Waits - Burma-Shave is a glorious little vignette, for example. And it's one of the things that makes Eminem's Stan a masterpiece.

― Martin Skidmore, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one of the greatest collections of country music narrative songs ever compiled is "The Essential Tom T. Hall - The Story Songs" - most of his albums are patchy to say the least, but this best-of is genius almost from start to finish.

― neil, Friday, 14 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"Something For the Weekend" Divine Comedy "Angie Baby" Helen Reddy (or someone) "Common People" Pulp

― Colin Cooper, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ten months pass...

How about those of you who make up your own stories, or at least read stories into, the music you listen to? (Inspired by a tangent on the opera thread.)

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 16 May 2003 14:29 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.