Sunday, November 01, 2009

House Carpenter

Oh, does this bring back memories.

Joan Baez sings it nearly as well as we did growing up around the campfire.

6 comments:

bill bannon said...

The mystery of the mid 20th century.
Some of the greatest artists in the music field that make current artists seem amateur and yet when we pass them on to the young, we have to give the young a roadmap of their moral errors that are mixed into some... not all of their lyrics. Baez's Greatest Hits is always in my car but the pieces that countenance adultery e.g. etc. make one wish for a perfect world here no one errs. Aquinas saw the leper in the Pentateuch and the process of his becoming ritually clean as a symbol of the person who had a mix of the true and the false ideas within them (heresy) just as lepers have some parts of their body which seem dead and other parts seem alive. The mid 20th century artists were that over and over.
But you are correct. She is wonderful in so many moments. She and vibrato filled Buffy Saint Marie can make me tear just with their voices...If I don't even pay attention to the lyrics, they could be singing a recipe for Steak Diane and I would weep.

Madeline said...

Wow, did that bring back memories! I agree, we all sang it better. LOL! That guitar playing puts me to shame, though.

bill bannon said...

Here is Baez again with the adultery theme but this time with an opposite and unfortunate glamorization of it as a martyrdom of sorts:

http://www.metrolyrics.com/sweeter-for-me-lyrics-joan-baez.html

Anonymous said...

Bill - what's your point? We shouldn't ever talk about adultery? How about if we just throw out all of folk culture throughout the history of time?

bill bannon said...

Anonymous
Try harder. How about throwing out some of folk culture from the beginning of time. You depended on the absurd wording.."all of folk culture"... to make your point which told you not to give your name either since you knew you were wandering from the truth. The message of Baez's "Sweeter for Me" was that the adulterer in question was a virtual Christ figure who suffered sweeter for her than anyone in her whole life. Odd then that the New Testament says..."do not make a mistake...the adulterer shall not enter the kingdom of God". So if an artist mixed a toxic idea with beautiful ancillary passages, we still have the obligation to either keep such from our young or let them hear it and guide them as to what is happening within that song as an example of deception quite frankly.

Anonymous said...

What are you talking about, , , the story has a very moral you can't ending. The adulterers go to hell. Sounds like a sound message to me.
I don't know anything about the otehr song you are referring to but surely you cannot object to the use of questionable figures to represent inner good or rather hidden good. Like Nancy in Oliver Twist, Sonya in Crime and Punishment, and that kind lady in Eclipse of the sun who cares for Arrow. I've often tried to make sense of these respected author's use of these charicatures myself but I appreciate the realism in Joan Baez's work in the Chestertonian sense of the word.
Kathleen