THAT'S GREAT, IT STARTS WITH AN EARTHQUAKE: What with events earlier this week and forecast for this weekend in the Northeast, this week's Playlist is naturally "songs about/referencing natural disasters." Let's start off with "Shake It Up" from the Cars and then move to David Wilcox's "Eye of the Hurricane" (not actually about a storm, but still apropos). Stay safe and dry, everyone!
I'm going with Eli's Coming taking the lesser known Dan Rydell reading of Eli as a portent of doom
ReplyDeleteObvious, but Rock You Like a Hurricane by the Scorpions.
ReplyDelete"Like A Hurricane", Neil Young
ReplyDelete"Hurricane", Bob Dylan (yeah, I know but the title fits)
"High and Dry", Radiohead and the cover by Jamie Cullum
Stay safe, everyone!
"Snowstorm," Galaxie 500.
ReplyDelete"Flood," TMBG
"The Hardest Button to Button," White Stripes. ("it sounded like an earthquake")
"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," Gordon Lightfoot.
Fleetwood Mac, "Landslide"
ReplyDelete"Lost in the Flood"-Bruce
ReplyDelete"Shelter from the Storm"-Dylan (or many, many excellent covers)
"Blizzard of '77", Nada Surf
ReplyDeleteBruce Cockburn, "The Coming Rains" (It's more preparing for the storm rather than referencing one, but seems perfect for today.)
ReplyDelete"I Feel the Earth Move" Carole King
ReplyDelete"Louisiana 1927," Randy Newman
ReplyDelete"My Oklahoma Home," Bruce & the Seeger Sessions Band
"How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live," Bruce & the Seeger Sessions Band
"Ridin' the Storm Out," REO Speedwagon
Oh, and "Crumblin' Down," John Mellencamp
ReplyDeleteHurricane Party, Cowboy Mouth
ReplyDelete"Feels Like Rain" by John Hiatt and particularly the Buddy Guy version. One of my all-time favorite songs.
ReplyDeleteThe New Yorker had the same idea this week!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/08/hurricane-irene-playlist.html
It's a stretch - but I can't resist.
ReplyDeleteSit Down You're Rocking The Boat - Guys and Dolls.
Gilligan's Island Theme
ReplyDeleteThat's what I was going to say!
ReplyDelete"When the Levee Breaks," Led Zeppelin.
ReplyDelete"Texas Flood," Stevie Ray Vaughan.
"Here Comes The Flood," Peter Gabriel. And even though it was mentioned already, have to give props to the Randy Newman song. I saw Marcia Ball play it once at Jazzfest during a torrential downpour.
ReplyDeleteAlso: "O Mary Don't You Weep," by Springsteen. I suppose Pharoah's army getting drownd-ed qualifies as a natural disaster. But, again, I associate it with Jazzfest: the first Jazzfest after Katrina, when Bruce appeared and sang this song and the reaction from the crowd was just transcendent, like the world's largest revival meeting ever.
Additionally, Beethoven's Pastoral symphony.
ReplyDeleteIt's the End of the World As We Know It - R.E.M. ("That's great it starts with an earthquake..."/"I am a hurricane....")
ReplyDeleteMatt, I had no idea that you and I had such similar taste in music - earlier this week with the Christine Lavin, and now with the David Wilcox. This pleases me.
ReplyDeleteI am a man of many deep and surprising secrets, Marsha.
ReplyDeleteAfter The Flood: Lone Justice
ReplyDeleteSee, now, here I thought you were an International Man of Mystery. Ah well.
ReplyDelete(I am now on a Wilcox video kick at my desk. Well done.)
Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season by Jimmy Buffet
ReplyDeleteBlowin' in the Wind by Bob Dylan
Like Joe Strummer, I live by the river (the Delaware, that is), so most of the songs that come to mind deal with flooding.
ReplyDeleteRandy Newman's Louisiana 1927 has already been mentioned, but the same flood also inspired Bessie Smith's Blackwater Blues. It's been covered alot; my favorite version is Dinah Washington's at the Newport Jazz Festival, but it doesn't seem to be online anywhere.
Harold Arlen wrote two famous storm songs (both with lyrics by Ted Kohler), Stormy Weather and Ill Wind. Famous versions by Lena Horne, Ethyl Waters, and Ella.
The importance of having adequate provisions for a storm is a key plot point in one version of the folk song "The Er-i-e Canal." Not the version sung by Pete Seeger or Bruce ("low bridge, everybody down"), but the version done by Burl Ives ("Oh the Er-i-e was a-rising, gin was a-getting low, and I scarcely think we'll get a drink, till we get to Buffalo." Some kind stranger posted it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtGxUG12H6I
Several Dylan songs have been mentioned, but not Down in the Flood ("Well it's sugar for sugar, salt for salt, you go down in the flood, it's gonna be your own fault")
And finally, given the apocalyptic potential in having an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week, and since "The End of the World As We Know It" has already been mentioned, I'll proffer the country gospel standard "God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign" ("no more water, the fire next time"), by the Carter Family and Ralph Stanley, among many others, and hope that it isn't a prophesy for Labor Day.
Reaaly? This far without "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"?
ReplyDeleteOh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve fleeing hipsters,
I've walked and I've crawled on six shut down buslines,
I've stepped in the middle of seven dead subways,
I've been out in front of a closed Coney Island,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of this Irene,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
"New Orleans", on Emmylou Harris's latest album. Speaking of, am I the only person afraid that Rebecca Black's going to get her hands on "Big Black Dog"?
ReplyDeleteI just remembered another appropriate apocolyptic country gospel song: The Carter Family's "The Storms are on the Ocean" ("The storms are on the ocean, the heavens may cease to be, this world may lose it's motion, love, if I prove false to thee").
ReplyDeleteGodzilla - Blue Oyster Cult ("History shows again and again / how nature points out the folly of men...")
ReplyDeleteOh, and Toots and the Maytalls' "Pressure Drop."
ReplyDeleteIf you're in a Buffet frame of mind, how about "Volcano"?
ReplyDeleteStormfront by Billy Joel
ReplyDeleteI was hoping this would be today's theme.
ReplyDeleteI saw Buddy Guy at an outdoor concert years ago and the weather was threatening to make it a short show. He got all the way to the encore before the storm started and as luck would have it, he was covering "Knock on Wood." (It's like thunder / Lightning)
The Volcano Song - The Budos Band
Suddenly There Is a Tidal Wave - The Magnetic Fields
Five Feet High and Risin' - Johnny Cash
Little Earthquakes - Tori Amos
Dust Storm Disaster - Woody Guthrie
This Old Town - Nanci Griffith
Wasn't That a Mighty Storm - Nanci Griffith
High Water - Bob Dylan
Muddy Waters - James and Bill Monroe
Rain Please Go Away – Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski
Storms Never Last – Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter
How Much Rain Can One Man Stand – Waylon Jennings
Flood of ’57 – Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys
I Can't Stand the Rain - The Commitments (or Ann Peebles)
Hurricane - Joan Osborne
Earthquake Song - The Little Girls (Happiest song ever about impending natural disaster)
And, honestly, if the sky really started Raining Men, that would be kind of a natural disaster, right?
Antarctica - Midnight Oil (It starts "I'm a landslide")
ReplyDeleteThe Doors - Riders on the Storm
ReplyDeleteThe Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
The Epic Storm -- Spotify playlist
ReplyDeleteI was just kissing a guy in the bathroom on the right, and he says the line is "eye of a hurricane."
ReplyDeleteOh, also: "Apres Moi" by Regina Spektor. (le deluge, evidement.)
Bad Moon Rising -- Creedence
ReplyDeleteTexas Flood -- Stevie Ray Vaughan
I hereby stick Nelson's "After the Rain" in your head.
ReplyDeleteHow about Bruce Cockburn's "After the Rain" too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, from the unofficial Sports Night soundtrack:
Sweet Destiny - Todd Thibaud
" Somewhere down south, now, looks like it's starting to blow.
It's a hurricane warning...."
How about Bruce Cockburn's "After the Rain" too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, from the unofficial Sports Night soundtrack:
Sweet Destiny - Todd Thibaud
" Somewhere down south, now, looks like it's starting to blow.
It's a hurricane warning...."
How about Bruce Cockburn's "After the Rain" too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, from the unofficial Sports Night soundtrack:
Sweet Destiny - Todd Thibaud
" Somewhere down south, now, looks like it's starting to blow.
It's a hurricane warning...."
"Guest" was me. oops
ReplyDeleteNo idea why the duplicate posts, though.
Rainy Night in Georgia-Brooke Benton
ReplyDeleteAnother from Springsteen: "I'm A Rocker" ("True love is broken and your tears are fallin' faster/
ReplyDeleteYou're sufferin' from a pain in your heart or some other natural disaster").
This Tornado Loves You---Neko Case
ReplyDeleteThe artist name may have been enough of a clue, but yes, that guest = me.
ReplyDeleteYou pretty much said what i could not effectively communicate. +1
ReplyDeleteMy site:
internet anbieter www.dslvergleichdsl.com
Cry Like a Rainstorm - the Bonnie Raitt version
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it's been said, but I didn't see it: "Landslide," Fleetwood Mac
ReplyDeleteTwo more rain songs that came to mind (even though we've seen basically nothing in NYC yet):
ReplyDelete"Rain" by Jackopierce
"Rain" by Dana Glover
Cassandra Wilson!
ReplyDeleteI'm meaning at some point to put on the 4 (?) Storm Interludes from Peter Grimes today . . . Or maybe they're not all storm interludes? It's been a while.
ReplyDeleteHeard it in the car this morning (as I scoured the area for those rarest of beasts, C and D batteries) and realized it was a perfect fit:
ReplyDelete"All You Zombies," The Hooters
I may be pulling at straws here, but I'm bored, forgive me. "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" by Mama herself, Vicki Lawrence
ReplyDeleteOops, that was me.
ReplyDeleteAll these comments and no one mentioned "Who'll Stop the Rain" by CCR?
ReplyDelete