The story covers about five days of the life of a certain Jimmy, a participant in the circa 1964 Mod lifestyle in England. “The story is set on a rock!” announced the composer, Pete Townshend, at one live performance, indicating that the opera represents Jimmy’s looking back at the events of the previous day or two that led him into the gloomy situation where he finds himself at the end of the story. The narrative is difficult to derive from the lyrics alone, but becomes clearer with the benefit of a short story (also written by Townshend) related from Jimmy’s first person perspective, that is included in the album’s booklet.
The first half of the opera consists of songs that allude to the frustrations and insecurities that govern Jimmy’s life, including brief glimpses of his home life, his job, his psychoanalyst, and his unsuccessful attempts to have a social life. Halfway through the opera he sings “I’ve Had Enough”, finds himself kicked out of his home when his parents find his box of ‘blues’ (blue pills of some unnamed drug, possibly amphetamine) (this happens in the song Cut My Hair). Distraught and with nothing better to do, Jimmy takes a large dose of blues and takes a train ride to the coast (Embodied in the song 5:15, which is supposed to be the time when the train departs). During his stay near the beach in Brighton, he encounters the former “Ace Face”, the leader of a group of Mods, whom he admires greatly. However, “Ace Face” now works as a bell boy at a nearby hotel. Ironically, this is the very same hotel Ace Face had smashed the windows of two days before. This display of masculine bravado had earned him the admiration of many of his fellow Mods two days before during Jimmy’s first stay in Brighton. Jimmy is disgusted to learn that the person he had admired as a Mod had “sold out”.
At this point, Jimmy is inconsolable. Everybody from his parents to his girlfriend had disappointed him before, but he had never expected the Mod lifestyle to let him down. Drunk and depressed, he steals the now former Ace Face’s scooter from the front of the Brighton hotel where he is employeed, takes it out to a barren rock protruding from the sea, and crashes psychologically. With nothing left to live for he finds redemption in the pouring rain, which is expressed in the final song, “Love, Reign o’er Me”.
Love, Reign O’er Me
http://djallyn.org/media/the_who-reign_oer_me.flv
Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea
Only love
Can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers
Laying in the fields.
Love, Reign o’er me
Love, Reign o’er me, rain on me
Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky
Only love
Can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high
Love Reign O’er me
On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool cool rain
I can’t sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool cool rain
Tagged as:
The Who
Arlo Guthrie is the son of American folk singer Woody Guthrie and like his father, is known for his common-man folk songs and songs against social injustice. He has both performed with and influenced artists like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, and has performed with his band Shenandoah.
His most famous work is Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, a talking blues song that last 18 minutes and a movie by its name.
First, we have a version of the City of New Orleans that he performs with his band Shenandoah.
City of New Orleans
http://djallyn.org/media/city_of_new_orleans.flv
Ridin’ on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday mornin’ rail
15 cars & 15 restless riders
Three conductors, 25 sacks of mail
All along the southbound odyssey the train pulls out of Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms & fields
Passin’ graves that have no name, freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of rusted automobiles
Good mornin’ America, how are you?
Don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done
Dealin’ cards with the old men in the club car
Penny a point, ain’t no one keepin’ score
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
And feel the wheels rumblin’ neath the floor
And the sons of Pullman porters & the sons of engineers
Ride their fathers’ magic carpets made of steel
Mothers with their babes asleep, rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel
Good mornin’ America, how are you?
Say don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.
Night time on the City of New Orleans
Changin’ cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Halfway home, we’ll be there by mornin’
Thru the Mississippi darkness rollin’ down to the sea
But all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain’t heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
“The passengers will please refrain:
This train got the disappea rin’ railroad blues
Good night America, how are you?
Say don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.
Tagged as:
Arlo Guthrie
Chris Rea is a singer-songwriter from Middlesbrough, England. His career started out in the mid-1970s with his debut album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? with a single peaking at number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978 with a song called Fool (If you think it’s over), that was nominatate for a Song of the Year Grammy, but lost out to Billy Joel’s “Just the way you are”.
Chris Rea focused most of his attention to a European audience, but every now and then something would trickle over to the US. His album, Road to Hell, released in 1989 was one of those albums, that reached number one in the UK, but never really caught fire here in the US, reaching only number 107.
Texas
http://djallyn.org/media/Chris_Rea-Texas.flv
Warm winds blowing
Heating blue sky
And a road that goes forever
Been thinking ’bout it lately
Been watching some TV
Been looking all around me
At what has come to be
Been talking to my neighbour
And he agrees with me
It’s all gone crazy
Well my wife returns from taking
My little girl to school
She’s got beads of perspiration
As she tries to keep her cool
She says That mess it don’t get no better
There’s gonna come a day
Someone’s gonna get killed out there
And I turn to her and say Texas
She says What?
I said Texas
She says What?
They’ve got big long road out there
Warm winds blowing
Heating blue sky
And a road that goes forever
I’m going to Texas
We got to get out of here
We got to get out of here
Well I got a little brother
Several meters high
Yea his built just like a quarterback
And he swears he’ll testify
he says he’s been to Texas
And that’s the only place to be
Big steaks, big girls, no trouble there
That’s the place for me
I’m going to Texas
I’m going to Texas
Watch me walking
Watch me walking
Tagged as:
Chris Rea
Chris Rea is a singer-songwriter from Middlesbrough, England. His career started out in the mid-1970s with his debut album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? with a single peaking at number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978 with a song called Fool (If you think it’s over), that was nominatate for a Song of the Year Grammy, but lost out to Billy Joel’s “Just the way you are”.
Chris Rea focused most of his attention to a European audience, but every now and then something would trickle over to the US. His album, Road to Hell, released in 1989 was one of those albums, that reached number one in the UK, but never really caught fire here in the US, reaching only number 107.
Road to Hell
http://djallyn.org/media/Chris_Rea-Road_To_Hell.flv
Stood still on a highway
I saw a woman
By the side of the road
With a face that I knew like my own
Reflected in my window
Well she walked up to my quarterlight
And she bent down real slow
A fearful pressure paralysed me in my shadow
She said ‘son what are you doing here
My fear for you has turned me in my grave’
I said ‘mama I come to the valley of the rich
Myself to sell’
She said ‘son this is the road to hell’
On your journey cross the wilderness
From the desert to the well
You have strayed upon the motorway to hell
Well I’m standing by a river
But the water doesn’t flow
It boils with every poison you can think of
And I’m underneath the streetlight
But the light of joy I know
Scared beyond belief way down in the shadows
And the perverted fear of violence
Chokes the smile on every face
And common sense is ringing out the bell
This ain’t no technological breakdown
Oh no, this is the road to hell
And all the roads jam up with credit
And there’s nothing you can do
It’s all just bits of paper flying away from you
Oh look out world, take a good look
What comes down here
You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well
This ain’t no upwardly mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the road
Said this is the road
This is the road to hell
Tagged as:
Chris Rea
Counting Crows is a rock band originating from Berkeley, California.
Singer Adam Duritz (former member of the Bay Area band The Himalayans) and guitarist Dave Bryson formed Counting Crows in San Francisco in 1991. As well as his experience in The Himalayans, Duritz had contributed to recordings by the Bay Area group Sordid Humor, although he was never a member. Counting Crows began as an acoustic duo, playing gigs in and around Berkeley and San Francisco. By 1993, the band had grown to a stable lineup of Duritz, Bryson, Matt Malley (bass guitar), Charlie Gillingham (keyboard instruments) and Steve Bowman (drums), and it was a regular on the Bay Area scene.
The band took its name from a divination rhyme about the crow, heard by Duritz in the film Signs of Life. The rhyme is used at the end of the song “A Murder of One” on the album August and Everything After: “Well I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow / Casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there, counting crows / One for sorrow, two for joy / Three for girls and four for boys / Five for silver, six for gold / Seven for a secret never to be told.” In the poem, the act of counting crows is particularly useless. Duritz reveals that a name is just a name, and, with that, is useless and can be anything. This recalls a traditional rhyme: “One crow means sorrow, two crows mean joy, three crows a wedding, four crows a boy, five crows mean silver, six crows mean gold, seven crows a secret that’s never been told.” In the United Kingdom, the rhyme is well known but uses magpies rather than crows. A popular superstition states that if one sees a single magpie, one should greet it to deflect the “sorrow”.
Mr. Jones
“Mr. Jones,” refers to The Himalayans bassist (and Duritz’s childhood friend) Marty Jones and Kenney Dale Johnson, the drummer of Silvertone (Chris Isaak’s band), describing the desire of working musicians to make it big and the fantasies they entertain about what this might bring.
http://djallyn.org/media/Counting_Crows-Mr_Jones.flv
I was down at the New Amsterdam staring at this yellow-haired girl
Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation with this black-haired flamenco dancer
She dances while his father plays guitar
She’s suddenly beautiful
We all want something beautiful
I wish I was beautiful
So come dance this silence down through the morning
Cut Maria! Show me some of them Spanish dances
Pass me a bottle, Mr. Jones
Believe in me
Help me believe in anything
I want to be someone who believes
Mr. Jones and me tell each other fairy tales
Stare at the beautiful women
“She’s looking at you. Ah, no, no, she’s looking at me.”
Smiling in the bright lights
Coming through in stereo
When everybody loves you, you can never be lonely
I will paint my picture
Paint myself in blue and red and black and gray
All of the beautiful colors are very very meaningful
Grey is my favorite color
I felt so symbolic yesterday
If I knew Picasso
I would buy myself a gray guitar and play
Mr. Jones and me look into the future
Stare at the beautiful women
“She’s looking at you.
Uh, I don’t think so. She’s looking at me.”
Standing in the spotlight
I bought myself a gray guitar
When everybody loves me, I will never be lonely
I want to be a lion
Everybody wants to pass as cats
We all want to be big big stars, but we got different reasons for thatBelieve in me because I don’t believe in anything
and I want to be someone to believe
Mr. Jones and me stumbling through the barrio
Yeah we stare at the beautiful women
“She’s perfect for you, Man, there’s got to be somebody for me.”
I want to be Bob Dylan
Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky
When everybody loves you, son, that’s just about as funky as you can be
Mr. Jones and me staring at the video
When I look at the television, I want to see me staring right back at me
We all want to be big stars, but we don’t know why and we don’t know how
But when everybody loves me, I’m going to be just about as happy as can be
Mr. Jones and me, we’re gonna be big stars..
Tagged as:
Counting Crows
Break