Van Dyke Parks has said that the song The All Golden was written from the perspective of his friend Steve Young, who guested on Song Cycle. It's a seemingly unlikely connection; the Hollywood parlor academic Parks and the gritty outlaw Young, but a listen to Young's debut on the Stone Country album makes it clearer.The album is stylistically fluid, drawing from diverse sources but sounding quintessentially American - in that sense, much like Song Cycle. Its refusal to conform to a specific genre didn't help sales or radio plays, but it's an exceptionally fine album, encapsulating the spirit of the late 'sixties with kaleidoscopic clarity.
Young's solo career albums focused his direction and his song-writing into something timeless. Even the titles seem mythic - Seven Bridges Road, Rock Salt & Nails, Lonesome Onry & Mean. But something had been lost - the very datedness of the Stone Country album makes it unrepeatable and precious.There will always be guitar-slinging songwriters as long as there's a back porch to pick on, but there will never again be groups created and animated by the same energy that shaped the times back then.This post made possible in part through the support of the Sitarswami Chakra Wax N' Lube Shop, Pork Bend, AZ.
What *thing* have you had the longest? I don't mean body parts or non-physical conditions or qualities, I mean ordinary objects. I have a book I've had since I was maybe five. That's over sixty years.
ReplyDeleteAs a non-youngster around these parts, and one that needs to do some spring cleanin', I have many things that have been along fer the ride for decades. But the longest one you say, well I'll have to scritch my brain a bit to come up with that one. (Said as I pensively eye the shelves in my office, jus waitin' fer sumpin to jump out at me...)
ReplyDelete"As a non-youngster around these parts ..." Oh! The irony!
DeleteSchoolboys' Pocket Book 1954
ReplyDeleteI have an easel I was given for my eleventh birthday, in 1961.
ReplyDelete@Farq - what's the title of your book?
The Chummy Book Of Wonders, a small paperback of, well, Wonders. Back when the world was full of them.
DeleteI have a pipe cutter and a saddle-topped hand drill, both of which belonged to my grandfather. One would press their body down on the drill to add torque to the drilling, it was how it was done before electric drills became the next big thing.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested not so much in the oldest thing you own, but the thing you've had the longest - something which was originally yours, not inherited.
DeleteMy old man called the saddle-topped drill a "belly-brace". The hand-rolled drill he called a "wheel-brace".
Deleteooooohhhhhhhhhhh!
DeleteHad the longest? Sorry, I'm down a couple of divorces, i got nothin.
I was awarded the prize of a book of my choice, when I was about 8, at my primary school, probably for being a sanctimonious prat. I chose A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. I still have it, somewhere. It's a drastically abridged version, down to about 20 pages! What a swizz!
ReplyDeleteAs I'm writing this I wear the same wool jacket I had back in 1978. It's dark blue and I must admit it is in bad condition, half of the right sleeve is going to pieces;but I still wear it when no one is looking.
ReplyDeleteOr else I still posess the first jimi hendrix french EP (Hey Joe) I bought in the spring of 1967. I was twelve and didn't know who the guy was, but the man at the store said it was the original version. He was wrong; I don't blame him for that
My oldest companion's a one-eyed Teddy Bear named Tim. We've been together about 75 years. He sleeps more and better than I do...
ReplyDeleteLike Iggy above, I have a beat-to-crap teddy bear a friend of my mom gave to her for me when I was born 67 fingers ago. I've rescued him from the trash more than once.
ReplyDeleteI have a rubbery plastic squirrel-sitting-on-a-tree-stump nightlight which I used back in the late 1950's. My sons used it in the early 90's and I'm hoping to pass it on to one of them if/when they have kids.
ReplyDeleteEveryone should have a rubbery plastic squirrel-sitting-on-a-tree-stump nightlight.
DeleteHaving lost everything I then owned in 2005, the oldest thing I ghave is bellybutton lint and earwax.
ReplyDeleteCould you donate it to the I.O.F. museum? I guarantee a glass-like Lucite case with handsome velvet-look display cushion.
DeleteA King Penguin 1944 edition of a book on the Bayeaux Tapestry given to my father as a school prize who had to leave school at 14 to work on the fields to support his mother.
ReplyDeletea small blue plastic plate from a set my grandmother gave me when I was 2 (60 years ago) that I often have a piece of toast or bagel on in the morning.
ReplyDeleteA book, the Jackie Robinson Story by Arthur Mann. Published in 1957. The first "real" book I ever read. And I became a Dodger fan for life.
ReplyDeleteA good haul of treasure - if there are any other Four Or Five Guys© out there, let's hear from you.
ReplyDeleteRe: I'm interested not so much in the oldest thing you own, but the thing you've had the longest - something which was originally yours, not inherited.
ReplyDeleteA Chalk Skull won with my father at a fair in 1971 I know because I inscribed date on the back.
A large sterling silver ring, inscribed with my name, about 3cm in diameter and as high, not quite sure for what purpose, a very large napkin? bit hard for a teething ring. Given to me for my christening, circa December 1950. One of only 2 things my uncle ever did for me. The other was giving me a book, 10 years later, which kickstarted my love of the history of cricket.
ReplyDeleteNearly missed this one but I have ‘My Picture Book of Trains’ with flyleaf inscribed in my dad’s immaculately oldshool handwriting … “For being a good boy in his first week at school 11th September 1959”. And cant be so sure of the date but maybe a couple of years earlier my Teddy Bear, given to me in West Berlin by my mum’s sister Phyllis, a G.I. bride shipped out to the States after the war, her husband Otis stayed in the military got posted to Berlin in the fifties. I have zero recollection of the trip but my mum told me I was nightmare on the flight out, but better on the way home maybe thanks to the reassuring presence of my new bear buddy from Berlin. He sits on a bookshelf watching me write this, and I swear he just flashed me that same old reassuring glance.
ReplyDelete(If anyone wants the albums without joining in the thread, just ask.)
ReplyDelete(May I please have the albums without joining in the thread, just asking)?
ReplyDelete-Muzak McMusics
Here ya go!
Delete(Stealth Link activated)
Mr. III, Don't let anyone ever tell you that you are not a generous prince of a sharer. I will defend you against all naysayers.
Delete-Muzak McMusics
Like a bunch of them four or five guys, mine's a stuffed animal that I had since birth or shortly thereafter. My wife just recently sewed him up, as he has an open neck injury for about...oh more than thirty years.
DeleteHe's probably about 43, like me. I know, I'm bringing the medium age way down here, but what can I say. I have a soft spot for geezers.
Oh, I completely forgot to talk about Steve Young. Have never heard the Stone Country album but will rectify that.
ReplyDeleteBut my lord, "Seven Bridges Road", what a song. I could bathe in the warm glow of that song for ours. It makes that road sound like the most beautiful place on earth. (Narrator: It isn't).
And no one should miss the definitive cover of "Seven Bridges Road" by Tracy Nelson and Mother Earth.
ReplyDeleteI have a piece of heavy gauge steel cut with a blowtorch in the shape of a collie. I remember my father getting this from a friend of his, who was teaching him to use an arc welder in our back yard, when I was about 5.
ReplyDeleteIt hangs in my garage now.
Cheers
oBeyGravity
Sorry, started at the bottom again......
ReplyDeleteI have a scrapbook from when I was 13......full of clippings about the classic Movie Monsters mostly from "Famous Monsters" magazine.
Cheers
obEyGRavity
I've not got it, but it's in the capable hands of a family member:
ReplyDeleteA very worn "Smokey the Bear" (stuffed animal), an object, I am told, with which I had a very close relationship for quite some time in my younger years. Now, let's not get weird and say anything about "fetishists"...