"Words are only words but we turn them into gifts... then we seem confused as their meaning slowly shifts"

Say "Goodbye" to the secret

Those of you who were kind enough to show up at The Cornelia Street Café on Friday already know the little secret embedded in my set list.

It was a song I didn’t write. Or rather I should say a song for which I didn’t write the lyric.

A dear friend of mine, Michael Vines, recently decided to try his hand at songwriting – having been a very successful writer of other things, including a novel.

He was kind enough to share with me some of his early efforts. And while his musical style is a little different to mine, his words really struck a chord. Literally. I felt compelled to put my own tune to one of his lyrics.

I didn’t even tell him I was doing this and I certainly didn’t tell him I was performing it on Friday. I knew that he was scheduled to be watching, with his son, his beloved Cardinals play the Mets. (Sadly they lost 9 – 1). There was no way I was going to spoil that evening by making him feel he had to be at my gig instead. Although, as he said later, with that score perhaps he should have changed his plans!

Anyway, I have since come clean about my commandeering his words and he says he’s thrilled that I liked them enough to do this. Of course, he has yet to hear the song but luckily he will be able to because Friday night’s performances were recorded.

For now, here are the words to “Goodbye New York City.”

And thanks Michael! 

GOODBYE NEW YORK CITY

 

This was once a place of possibility

You could make of yourself whatever you wanted to be

But now it’s not the town that I used to know

Goodbye New York City…I hate to see you go

Goodbye old New York…hate to see you go

 

This was once a place where you could find anything

We even had that store with a million kinds of string

But now the metal workers have had to leave old SoHo

Goodbye New York City…I hate to see you go

Goodbye old New York…hate to see you go

 

Kids used to come here with just the shirt on their backs

Now you need a job with Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs

That artist loft is now a luxury condo

Goodbye New York City…I hate to see you go

Goodbye old New York…hate to see you go

 

They closed all the bookstores put ATMs everywhere

And don’t even get me started on what they did to Times Square

The Lower East Side shops – the mom and pops – they just had to go

To make way for a bigger, brighter, better-known logo

Goodbye old friends...hate to see you go

 

This was once a place of possibility

It held lots of promise for the likes of you and me

But now it’s not the town that we used to know

Goodbye New York City…I hate to see you go

Goodbye old New York…hate to see you go

 

© 2008 Michael Vines

I'm sorry but do we actually want to fail?

I simply don't get it. Even the New York Times (which, I guess, it must be remembered endorsed Hillary Clinton) described Obama's Berlin speech as "weak on issues."

Here's a man behaving, speaking and uniting countries - old allies that we have lost in the past eight years - in a way that can only be described as "Presidential" and still America is not happy.

Read his speech...PLEASE! It is the most honest, thoughtful, accurate assessment of where America stands and where our relationship with the rest of the world stands, that you will hear from any politician in this country. Obama tells the truth. Period. McCain, for all his past service to his country, is living in the past. He sees things in terms of winning and losing. And it's simply not that simple in 2008. In a way the terrorists have already won - as Bin Laden himself has said, for every dollar they spent on 9/11 America has been forced to spend a billion. His, and their, goal was always economic. It's why they targeted the twin towers in the first place - the symbol of America's economic strength. They'd have hit the New York stock exchange but it's just not high enough!

There's a reason that the economy has risen to be the number one concern of most Americans. It's because we are "concerned" primarily with ourselves. And that's why some of the reactions to Obama's Berlin speech are just plain misguided. This was not a time for dealing with domestic "issues" - it was an opportunity to deal with world unity. Which he did. Magnificently.

The Iraq war has become the number one topic only for those families unfortunate enough to have one of their own serving in the military and, of course, the Republicans and their oil company financiers who have a vested interest in staying in that oil-producing nation. Permanent bases! This is what McCain meant when he talked of "100 years." Not a hundred years of war...a hundred years of control. The truth is, the number one issue should be ending our occupation. This will free untold amounts of money that can then help our ailing economy.

Even on the topic of war, Obama rightly points out that Afghanistan was and should have remained our one and only focus, being, at the time, the host of the people who actually inspired and financed 9/11. Iraq had NOTHING to do with it. A fact I wish ALL Americans would remember - especially as they cast their votes in November. (And they should remember that it is Afghanistan that borders on Pakistan - despite what McCain may say to the contrary!)

Yet again, Berlin raised the issue of Obama representing "just words."

And I ask, what is wrong with that if they are words the whole world needs to hear...nowhere more so than here at home, here in America?

Read Barack Obama's Berlin speech here.

Someone already harvested the light

As readers of this blog will know I had already decided that my next CD would be called Harvesting Light. But it seems Darren Smith already beat me to it. Back in 2000.

Now, of course, I could still use the title -  titles cannot be copyrighted - but since Mr Smith's CD is still for sale on sites like CDBaby I don't want to create any confusion for him or me.

So while my CD will still contain a song by that title I have a new title for the CD itself. And I'm keeping that to myself. It may be a while before I complete the collection and I'll be checking that my title is unique just before the covers are printed!!

My set list for Friday 25th July, 2008

Between recorded and unrecorded songs I probably have over 50 to choose from. The hardest part of any performance is deciding what to sing. Which five or six out of the total do I feel like doing?

I have never analyzed how I reach a decision. I just know it's a weird process. I sit around for weeks before a gig just playing...whatever comes into my head. And from there, the songs somehow organize themselves into rejects, possibles and probabilities.

Whatever the logic my unconscious mind applies, I've arrived at this for next Friday:

13 DOWN

The first time this song has been performed live. A little different to the recorded version.

THE WASTED YEARS

The first time this song has been performed live. Again, slightly rearranged for solo performance.

(A SURPRISE)

I have my reasons for not revealing what this is.

MARKING TIME

An unrecorded song destined for the next studio sessions. I've posted the lyrics before.

LOVE IS THE ONLY SURPRISE

Another unrecorded song that I played at my last Cornelia Street performance. A new favorite of mine.

OVERLAPPING LOVE

If I have the time! This is a song of redemption. And it too was part of my last Cornelia Street performance. 

Nothing makes me happier than familiar faces in the audience...so come along and enjoy the four great singer/songwriter's who are on stage before me...and be a part of the live recordings! Who knows,

maybe they'll end up on the next CD and save me the trouble of rerecording the songs?

For performance times etc go to Songwriter's Beat.

The Songwriter's Beat Festival is next week...

Just a reminder - next week is the Songwriter's Beat Festival. Please come along and support both the musicians and a good cause (musicandhealing.org).

26 talented singer/songwriters! Well 25 and me.

I'll be performing on Friday night, the 25th. And it promises to be an interesting night as it will be recorded and filmed! Check out songwritersbeat.com for details and start times. Or the cafe web site.

Hope to see you there. I promise a hopefully interesting mix of songs old and new.

The epitome of cool

The unAmericans

CNN today reported...Karl Rove, President Bush's longtime political guru, refused to obey an order to testify before a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday. Rove's lawyer asserted that Rove was "immune" from the subpoena the committee had issued, arguing that the committee could not compel him to testify due to "executive privilege."

This is the fourth time in little more than a month that President Bush has invoked executive privilege.

"To play it out in court ultimately means a two-year legal battle, where in the interim they'll get no answers to anything," Stan Brand, a Washington, D.C., defense lawyer and former legal counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives once said.

The sooner these men are stripped of power and privilege of any kind, the better this country will be. And we should never, ever again forget that with great power comes great responsibility - awarding that power extremely carefully.

These men have damaged America. Physically, ethically, morally and emotionally. America deserves the last laugh.

Wasted Years - not a waste of time.

One of the most amazing things that has happened as a result of my getting back into songwriting after a gap of almost 25 years is the way it's connected me with people I either never knew or had forgotten I knew.

I've written a lot - and written a song - about the way Richard Tutin, a previously unknown relative in England has made me think in an entirely new way about my ancestry. He did a family tree for me showing my bloodline going back to the late 1600s. It's remarkable when you see that written down, with birth dates, marriage dates and death dates. For the very first time I felt like I was part of chain - not some lost and lonely accident.

Just as interesting has been my reconnection with James Gould. When I was a teenager I did a casual job - riding around on my bicycle collecting weekly payments to a charity (I truly cannot remember exactly what it was, it's so long ago). I stopped at a house one time and met James. He had a guitar and I showed him some chords to a Dylan song or something. And he remembered me. I've already apologized to him for not remembering him! Although the more we exchanged emails the more the memories crept back. We went to the same school but were slightly different ages, so were in different classes. But we have a lot of friends in common it turns out.

Another thing we have in common is we both left England. And he is now a teacher in Rabat, Morocco. The kids in the photo make up last year's class 3B. And I feel like I have a special connection to them because James used my song The Wasted Years as the basis for a lesson.

After James emailed me - having discovered my web site - he kindly bought two copies of my CD from amazon.com - and I sent him another copy. The Wasted Years is a favorite of his and he asked if I'd mind it being used in his classroom. I said yes immediately - I had never imagined any of my songs serving so useful a purpose!

The class was asked to listen to the song and were given lyrics. Then James asked them all sorts of interesting questions. What mood was the singer in - sad, angry, in love? What was the meaning of "wasted years" and what emotions did the song provoke in them? They were then given a lyric sheet with some words missing which they had to fill in. And they discussed some interesting words and turns of phrase like "to get by" and "torn between."

I won't go into detail on the answers or the discussion, that should all remain in the classroom. But James tells me the responses were very positive. And that I was a particular "hit" with the young ladies! 

But my thanks to all of class 3B for listening and thinking. And my thanks to James for introducing my writing to an audience I never imagined reaching.