Songs to Aging Children Come December 6, 2009
Posted by Mark Folse in cryptic envelopment, Dancing Bear, Toulouse Street.Tags: The Byrds, Yesterday's Train
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There are no artists today who write songs like this. The traditions that grew out of Lomax’s tape deck, the Celtic and African echos of our ancestors that blossomed in the Fifties and Sixties when a man with a guitar standing on the shoulders of Woody and Leadbelly could speak poetry into the blue television night, all that is lost in the cannibal corporate white noise of hollow pop stars. The dregs of the story-singing country outlaws pimp Monday Night Football and the the last balladeers practice the ghost dance of hip hop, the staccato Glock-pop soundtrack of the last days of Potemkin America.
We can only remember that we were privileged to have lived in the days of the last troubadours.
or at these independent New Orleans bookstores:
Methinks you do exaggerate somewhat. They’re not big pop stars but songwriters like John Hiatt, Richard Thompson and Rodney Crowell are mining that vein as I type this. There are some good young ‘uns like Todd Snider too.
It’s the lack of young ‘uns that disturbs me in part, so I’ll have to check out Snider. The rest are all part of that very fading generation of older folks. And when was the last time you saw Richard Thompson on, say, Lettermen (since there are no prime time variety shows anymore)?
I was expecting to hear the Joni Mitchell song. This song has its own haunting thing.