Me and Bobby McGee, by Kris Kristofferson / Janis Joplin.
I did a cover of the original but I know the more famous cover better and kinda sang it like that sometimes and like the original sometimes. Got that?
[reads Wikipedia once]
Actualllllllly… Kristofferson wrote it; Roger Miller recorded it first; then everyone else in country music, inclusive of Kenny Rogers, then Janis makes it a #1 hit. (Two years have passed since the original recording at this point.)
Who else records this song later? The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, Olivia Newton-John, (Jennifer Love Hewitt, for that matter), Joan Baez, etc.
Let’s just assume you’re here for the feeling of this song, and not the audio quality. Still a long way to go to get this new mic position right, especially for a song like this where I want to bang away at the strings in the big dumb black hat, because Johnny Cash.
I am no Rick Rubin, though we have “NYU dorm room” in common. He was incrementally more enterprising and entrepreneurial in his.
OK, I have been to 31 places mentioned in this song. What’s your score?
Also, the one I absolutely butchered, well, more than the rest, was Ombabika, and if you mash your mouse on that link, you’ll find someone who visited is visiting? WAS visiting?? all 92 places mentioned in this song.
And apparently he is not the only one. This is a thing. His last post was March 11, and was a different post about Ombabika, which apparently is not easy to get to. Upon further review, I think he did it?
You probably know the Leadbelly version of this, or at least the Nirvana (Unplugged) cover of that one, which you should hear, if somehow you haven’t. I don’t even know which I heard first or how the heck I got into the Louvin Brothers, but I had this one album and played the heck out of this one song.
“The longest train I ever saw was 19 coaches long The only girl I ever loved is on that train and gone.”
That’s goddamn poetry right there.
Once in New Mexico, at a small town bar with a live two-step band, I hollered something like “Y’ALL KNOW ANY LOUVIN BROTHERS?” Mind you, I’m pretty sure it was dinnertime, and I couldn’t have been that drunk. Yet. No one in the room had any idea what I was talking about, which is right and good and correct.
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I tried a harmony on the 4th this time, and it’s present in the background somewhere, but mostly you’ll hear my whine an octave up, but that’s kinda fun, too. I looked up “bluegrass harmony” and accidentally downloaded an html file of what I guess isn’t much of a website anymore, and learned that bluegrass vocal harmonies should stay pretty close to the lead, but idk if that means I should sing just like a full step up or down, which seems weird, but we’ve established I don’t know what I’m doing with the harmony.
Plinky second guitar to give the vaguest impression that I’ve ever heard a mandolin before.
My relationship with Leonard Cohen started with the movie Pump Up The Volume, which I feel like maybe I’ve already mentioned here, but… maybe not? The key Leonard Cohen songs in that one are Everybody Knows and If It Be Your Will. And I had the movie soundtrack, but that only had the Concrete Blonde version. So I made a point of getting a hold of I’m Your Man.
And if I remember correctly, I did that via a special order of a cassette at my first record store job? That makes no sense, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it went down.
It was worth it. Jazz Police, First We Take Manhattan, and this song, among others, gave that album a very 1980s Wim Wenders (or pre-Dogme Lars von Trier?)
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Easy one tonight. One Leonard-deep backing vocal. Sorry, didn’t do the whole backup singers thing or a proper one-finger piano solo, but I did a little trinkling in the background to try and get a similar feel.
More tracks than I’ve used yet, including the sound effects, duplicated backup vocals with different effects, two electric guitar tracks, a software synth, bass, and two separate drum loops on top of each other.
FUN!
M.I.A. is usually fun. Let’s just flag her as “not as problematic as Kanye” and move on? Maybe? No? It seems pretty silly to be a middle-aged suburban white dad singing a song by a clearly non-gangsta that kinda sorta tongue-in-cheek glorifies violence just for the sake of sounding kinda sorta “gangsta” but then later she’s much more provocative when it comes to her actual activism and cites the Clash (sampled in this song).
I’m not complaining if you aren’t.
I would do Bamboo Banga if I thought I could pull it off.
Woe unto thee, 11-12 year olds in the 1988-89 school year, spending the months between summer camp ruefully counting the days and playing this song over and over again on the Guns and Roses cassette called Lies with the fake-scandalous insert, and various other bits that aged well or didn’t.
It took another summer before I sang this in front of the whole camp at the annual talent show, a collaboration with two counselors, a violinist, and me, where my specialty was doing the whole rising coda solo bit at the end under the spotlight and whatnot, and that night was still probably my biggest ever audience for a song.
I didn’t do as good a job with the singing part at the end here, but I managed to hit like 80% of the solo and all of the little descending run when the backup singers kick in, etc., etc., this is one of those songs I never stopped playing, little solo bits inclusive.
No additional software instruments on this, mostly because I got excited and finished it before adding bass, or maybe a shaker or something, but the guitars are supposed to carry this anyway, so off we go.
The first two Black Crowes records (and to be clear, the only two I remember) hit at just the right moment for me, absolutely teenaged, enamored with the blues and the Stones, and the sound of a guitar tuned to an open chord, and this song is wrapped up in all of that.
I can’t think of this music without being transported directly to my bedroom from age 8-16, the room where I learned to play guitar, where I imagined myself on stage in front of my mirrored closet doors, where I spun around under black lights and tangled my cables, where my way too heavy bass amp dutifully transmitted the sound from my knockoff cherry red Ibanez clone that wouldn’t stay in tune (my fault) to the wood floor.
And goodness is it fun to play.
Had to add the organ, obvs. Hit the opening solo riff much better than the one in the middle, obvs. Can’t hit the highest notes, obvs.
My son is particularly skilled at trolling me by disliking whatever music I put on in the car, but we have managed to find some common ground around mildly harder rocking stuff like Social Distortion.
This song has been a mainstay of our “driving to soccer practice” get psyched up playlist for a couple years now. Sometimes he tolerates the Beastie Boys in phases. (Rap with audible cursing is deeply uncomfortable and frowned upon.) Daft Punk is acceptable, but repetitive. LCD Soundsystem is forbidden.
Jazz is encouraged for the wind-down drive home, along with various Spongebob and assorted novelty songs of today, none of that classic Weird Al crap, dad, thanks.
If you are somewhere close to my age, and were a romantic elementary/middle school kid in just the right years, INXS KICK played a part in your puberty, probably.
Need You Tonight was the pinnacle of that breathy unknown, of course, but this song is the strings-and-saxophone power ballad you might’ve imagined slow dancing to with some dramatically won sweetheart.
No? Just me? Also, it’s OK for karaoke if you can hit the note that I miss in that one part.
Afternoon project on a day off, so you get electric guitar and the finest “epic synth strings” that Garageband has to offer, among other things.
How large did The Doors and Jim Morrison’s poetry loom in my teenage years? I’d say those two things, as channeled through the Oliver Stone movie (Val Kilmer!), were maybe the biggest influence on my attempts at writing poetry, songs, letters, a story for myself, screenplays, going to film school, and lots more, with connections to summer camp and even then so much of it was mine and mine alone. (Yes, I thought this as a teenager.)
This song is just another riff for Jim to Jim over and for Ray to Ray over, but I like it. Not sure how it got there, but it popped into my head tonight and I thought I’d try it out.
A little backup vocal and one run with the MIDI keyboard to add the requisite organ.