Thanksgiving Time

We've been having some lovely fall weather lately, nothing like last year!  I only wish it could last longer.  But some strong winds keep blowing away that glorious golden foliage.  My back door (which needs replacing) keeps banging open and shut and it startles me every time.  This is also the time I am cleaning up our cabin to close it for the dreaded winter!

The song Four Strong Winds keeps running through my mind.  My favourite version is sung by Neil Young with Nicolette Larson from his Comes a Time album (1978).  This album is not only one of my favourite Neil Young albums, but also one of my all-time favourite albums period!

I found this video of the title song from the album.  The video seems to suit this season quite well.

I love Neil Young songs, but mixed with the harmonies of Nicolette Larson - it is so good it makes the hairs stand up on the top of my head!  I love to sing -- I used to be in a church choir, very small but we had some very good male voices and we were able to do 4 part harmony.  Sometimes, when I was singing and I hit a certain note, it mixed with the other voices I was hearing and gave me a buzz like a micro-second eargasm!  Have you noticed I love harmony?

But wait, now I'm off on a tangent -- this was supposed to be my Thanksgiving post.  I guess I get bored doing similar posts every year.  What else can I say?  Here was my post in 2010, my first year of blogging, where I attempted to explain our Canadian tradition of Thanksgiving:
It's Thanksgiving in Canada.
The next year I was lucky enough to be able to share a Gizzy cartoon, especially made for Thanksgiving by a fellow Armitagemaniac who is much more talented than I! :
Give Thanks for Gizzy!

So while Canada celebrates our Thanksgiving Day, I hope Armitage fans around the world have seen this wonderful video from Morrighan's Muse.  She has just celebrated her first anniversary as a fan of Richard Armitage.

Thank You Richard Armitage / by Morrighan Muse

Tomorrow I'll be baking some pumpkin pies and 

taking them over to my sister's house for our big turkey feast!

This is the best I could muster from my limited graphic skills, 

thanks to a couple of great free apps on my iPad.

My Guitar Man



Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste de Gas,
the Artist's Father. c.1871-72 by Edgar Degas

When my husband turned 40 I was all set to put up with-the dreaded "mid-life crisis".  I thought he might want to buy a car with a souped-up engine, or return to his motorcycle riding early days or worse yet, decide he had more wild oats that needed sowing!

But no, at the age of 40 my dear husband decided it was time to learn to play guitar!  And he did so, with only the help of a DVD and the occasional lesson with a fellow player.  He is now some 10 years later, quite good at it, although still too shy to play in public.

But that's okay because I enjoy his private concerts, especially when we sing together.  He even taught himself to sing on key from a video!

The first song I'd like to feature is from the early '70s and has a calm and peaceful vibe. It's by the group Bread headed by lead singer and songwriter David Gates.  The lyrics describe very well the attractiveness a guitar player has for me.

Guitar Man / Bread (1972)

I have had a fondness for John Denver ever since I first heard him singing Take Me Home Country Roads.  My favourite of his songs was Annie's Song, and it still has the power to make me teary.  He wrote this song about his wife, who later left him.  I don't think I could ever leave a man who wrote me a song like that!

Here he is singing about his old guitar. In his introduction to the song he tells us the history of it and his song explains why it is so important to him.  The guitar was cremated with him after he was killed in a plane crash in 1997.  His ashes were spread over the Colorado Rocky mountains.

This Old Guitar / John Denver (1974)

portrait of John Hiatt by Jim McGuire

My husband's excellent taste in music was my introduction to John Hiatt.  I came to really appreciate his raunchier sound, and especially his lyrical style. One of my favourite of his songs is The River Knows Your Name which I posted on my All Wet blog post last summer.

In this next song Perfectly Good Guitar I can't help but agree with him when he sings:

It breaks my heart to see those stars
smashing a perfectly good guitar
I dont know who they think they are
smashing a perfectly good guitar.

I never understood that practise of Rock stars smashing their guitars on stage. What a waste!

Perfectly Good Guitar / John Hiatt (1993)

Neil Young's album Prairie Wind is so special to me.  In it, he explores his youth living on the prairies of his Canadian home in Winnipeg, Manitoba.  He developed the album after a terrible interlude in his life where he almost died from a brain tumour.  This caused him to reflect on his past, how he came to be the person he was, and which direction he should take in his future.

This video comes from his performance at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.  Jonathan Demme filmed his concert there in a movie called Heart of Gold. It is a very moving film and the best concert movie I have ever seen. In this song he is accompanied by Emmylou Harris.
UPDATE: 24/09/13 (The original video is no longer available, so I have replaced it with this one from a benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina).

This Old Guitar / Neil Young (2005)

.

*****UPDATE (Feb. 10, 2012)******

 I have realized that I should have included one of my favourite guitarists and singer/songwriters of all.  George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps takes his love of his guitar to almost spiritual levels. When I stumbled upon this fanmade video I knew I had to add it to this post.  The video shows George Harrison as a young Beatle cavorting with his bandmates, and in his solo career after The Beatles' breakup. Throughout he is shown playing various types of guitars. His sense of humour and his pensive otherworldliness really come through for the camera.  It is a wonderful video!

I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps.

I thought this might be the best I could do until...

I discovered Heirs of Durin's fabulous post about how various musicians are reproducing the song first heard from the Hobbit trailer.  She has found sheet music,  a piano version and of course a guitar version!  And being the talented graphic artist that she is, here what she came up with when trying to imagine Thorin Oakenshield playing it on guitar.

It certainly works for me!

Train of thought

 I can't seem to leave this theme of trains alone.  Here are some of my favourite artists singing songs about trains.  I actually hadn't heard the first three songs before (I came upon them serendipitously) but they are fast becoming new/old favourites.

Neil Young / Boxcar

Remember this guy?  I posted about him just recently.

Murray McLauchlan / Never Did Like That Train

 

April Wine / Fast Train

This isn't my favourite April Wine song, by any means, but the video has some excellent visuals so I had to include it.

You know I had to include a Gordon Lightfoot song... Although this one only makes passing mention of the train.  The singer is on the train, escaping to the northland from a romance gone wrong. I have already included his other train songs in previous blog posts.  Steel Rail Blues in my tribute to The Last Spike, and Canadian Railway Trilogy in my very first blog post.  You may find this hard to believe but I actually didn't realize I was so enamoured of trains until I started blogging!

Gordon Lightfoot / Sixteen Miles

I have seen this next group perform this song live and I am a big fan of this indie Canadian duo. Corin Raymond is the singer/songwriter with Sean Cotton providing harmonizing vocals and guitar.  I was actually saving this song for a Halloween post because it's kind of spooky and only incidentally about a train, but I couldn't resist including a song from my new fave Canadian band with the likes of old standards like Neil, Gord and Murray!

The Undesirables / Night Train

Not only do I enjoy songs about trains but artwork as well.  I have included Monet's paintings of trains on previous posts, here are a couple of different artists who feature a train in their paintings.

 Alex Colville /Horse and Train

I am an admirer of Alex Colville's paintings, but I also like this because it was featured on an album cover by Bruce Cockburn (I will have to do a post on him sometime!)

 Here is another one of his with a train theme.  Rather romantic, isn't it?

Alex Colville / Soldier and Girl at Station

J.M.W Turner / Rain. Steam and Speed 

This has always been one of my favourite paintings. It was part of the set of paintings in the art auction board game "Masterpiece" which I used to enjoy playing as a child.  That was my introduction to Monet as well.  Speaking of Monet, this painting was one of the ones he studied during his first visit to London.  It is very impressionistic, isn't it?  It must have been very inspiring to him.


Here is what I have found very inspiring.... Fan videos starring Richard Armitage!  Here is a lovely one of him as John Thornton in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South.  The video uses music from the miniseries to show us the final scene in the train station.  Every scene in this production is a work of art as is the score by Martin Phipps, but this scene is the most gloriously romantic in film history!  It makes me forget the fact that it would have never actually happened at a real train station in England during the Victorian Age. It keeps me from thinking at all! But who wants to think, when you are watching the best kiss ever?!

Veryval / North and South 'When it happened at the train station.....

Promise of a Man

Well, here I go again with another video using a Neil Young song. I really don't go around thinking, how can I bring my love of Neil Young's music into my Richard Armitage obsession? Honestly, I do think it is rather odd myself. But this is how this particular video came about. 

As I may have explained somewhere before, I live in a very small town in Northern Ontario with very few outlets for those with a love of art and / or music.  However, we are lucky enough to have other music lovers who band together and bring talented people to our neck of the woods.  One such couple host a music night in their home for travelling musicians who are making their way across Canada singing in bars and various other venues. They invite around 50 paying customers to their home for a "House Concert" and we get to hear exceptional, though not very well known musicians perform in very intimate, friendly surroundings and get to have a chat with them during the break (usually while we are purchasing their latest CD).

One of the latest musicians to visit performed many of his own songs (which were excellent) but he also sang quite a few of Neil Young's songs, (some of which I was not even familiar with).  When he started to sing "Harvest" I was very pleased, as it has always been one of my favourites.  As I listened to him singing the lyrics, I could suddenly see Dawn French as the Vicar of Dibley longing for a love of her own. Of course what better "Promise of a Man" than the handsome stranger Harry Kennedy as played by the always delightful Richard Armitage (may he soon play another handsome stranger).

This may be the last video I ever make!  I have grown tired of Windows moviemaker and my thoughtful and generous husband very kindly bought me the Sony Vegas Platinum professional edition! for Christmas.  I am embarrassed to admit that it positively terrifies me! It does not seem very user friendly and is waaaay beyond my meager vidding skills. I feel like I went from Kindergarten to Graduate school with nothing in between!  

I will do my best to learn how to use it, but it will be a loooong learning curve.

Meanwhile, I will continue to enjoy fanvids from many other very talented vidders out there and hopefully I will be able to find a mentor to assist me in my quest for knowledge. :)

65 years Young

Neil Young was born 65 years ago today on November 12, 1945.  Yes, that's right, that means he is now officially a senior citizen. Well, it's quite an accomplishment to be still actively touring and creating music for an adoring public for the past 40 plus years! I'm sad to say I have never seen him perform in concert. I missed my chance a couple of times now. :(
Although Neil now lives in the United States, he is still proudly Canadian, born in Toronto, Ontario, he lived briefly in Northern Ontario during his youth and performed in a high school band (called The Squires) when he lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I understand that Thunder Bay, Ontario  also has a claim to fame (as the place where Neil first met Stephen Stills).
 He is a singer/songwriter who has been honoured by many musical awards, Grammys, Junos, and even an Academy award for the song Philadelphia used in the film of the same name starring Tom Hanks.

He made a name for himself during the 1960s with his country / folk flavoured Rock sound and most notably for his protest songs against war.  He teamed up with Stephen Stills in the group Buffalo Springfield and then with the supergroup Crosby Stills & Nash who changed their name to Crosby Stills Nash & Young when Neil agreed to join them. Their soaring harmonies and Neil's brilliant songwriting skills added greatly to the fame of that band.

(Neil when young) I like his brooding looks.

Always serious and intense about his music, he was sometimes not the easiest person to get along with. Although he took his music very seriously, he didn't seem as concerned about his appearance and his unkempt, dishevelled appearance is also part of his mystique.

I have enjoyed his music since his Harvest album, released in 1970.  I find his melodies haunting, combined with his warbly falsetto, his sound has an otherworldly quality. But it is his lyrics that really shine. Neil always has something worthwhile to say, but he says it like the poet and troubadour that he is.

There are so many songs of his that I love. I have actually made some fanvids starring Richard Armitage using them. Here is a page at Amazon.com with some song clips you can listen to from his Greatest Hits album.  My personal favourites are: Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Helpless, Needle and the Damage Done, Ohio, Comes a Time and of course, After the Gold Rush.

Because it is this time of the year, here is a song I haven't heard before but it is very much in keeping with the themes of most of his work.  This song is entitled Love and War.

This is one of his newer songs -- It's a Dream. It talks about the memories of his youth in Winnipeg, when he roamed around the banks of the Red River and how things have changed over time. This song touches me deeply and can even bring me to tears.

 This isn't the first time I've posted about Neil Young and it probably won't be the last. But before I'm done just let me say -- Thanks Neil! For all your wonderful music and for your generous spirit to share it with all of us.

Happy Birthday to Neil Young!

After the Gold Rush revisited...

 After the Gold Rush (the album and the song) was released in 1970, so this is the 40th anniversary of its release, which is certainly worth celebrating. This is an update to an earlier post about Neil Young's song "After the Gold Rush". Earlier I had said that I had wanted to make a video for this song but I didn't know how.  Well,  since then I have made a few simple musical slideshows, soooo after a bit of tinkering, here is what I have come up with. I have put together pictures from various productions in which Richard Armitage has had either a major or minor part, in order to fit with the words of the song.

Haunting me for years with it's fantastical and dire vision of the future mixed with Young's plaintive voice, I believe this song to be a masterpiece of classic folk rock.  I am grateful that Mr. Armitage has had such a varied career that I was able to be inspired to envision certain scenes which seemed to fit so well with the lyrics.

My only regret (besides the fact that I still haven't managed to make an actual moving picture video!) is that I really wanted to capture his updated lyrics "in the twenty-first century" rather than the original "in the 1970s".  But so far, Mr. Young has not (to my knowledge) made a recording of this version, although he has sung it many times in concert. I did try to cut and paste, but with my limited skills and equipment, the mix did not sound right at all.  Perhaps this is still a work in progress, and I will return to it again in the future...

A Man Needs a Maid

I started this video before I went away on vacation, and now I've finally finished it. I hope all you Guy of Gisborne fans like it. For some reason I am stuck on a Neil Young kick, but this song has haunted me since I first heard it back in the '70s. At the time, although I loved the song, I had issues with the subject matter. It just didn't seem right to refer to a modern woman as a "Maid", and what woman wanted to be an actual "maid" to a man anyway?! So to put this song in a medieval context is, I think -- just right! (I did have to edit out the last verse as it had some modern references).

In case there are any readers out there who are not aware of my current obsession, this video features Richard Armitage in the BBC's Robin Hood series.

From Georgia to Ontario

I was so excited to see a package waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday. Avalon sent me my prize! I won Charlotte Hawkins' "The Tempest" on Avalon's blog a couple of weeks ago.  I see she mailed it on June 9th and it arrived on June 23rd. That's 2 weeks to go from a small place in the state of Georgia, U.S.A. to an even smaller place in the province of Ontario, Canada. Snail mail indeed!

Dear Avalon,

It was so neat to see your address and imagine what it might be like where you live.  So I got to thinking about Georgia -- which immediately brought to mind the song  Georgia on My Mind.

I love when Willie Nelson sings the Blues. You have to wait a bit until Ray Charles comes in, but he's worth waiting for. What I like most about this video is it shows how much fun they seem to be having as well as their mutual respect for each other.
As far as biopics go, one of my very faves has to be Ray with Jamie Foxx deservedly winning an Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles. If you would rather hear just Charles's version of this song, please follow this link. It's worth clicking on just to read the introductory blurb below the video!


One of my favourite songs to sing at Karaoke Night down at our local Royal Canadian Legion Hall is Gladys Knight and the Pips' Midnight Train to Georgia. I am always looking for a few good Pips!

How romantic is that? "I'd rather live in his world, than live without him in mine."

Then I remembered my all-time favourite song about Georgia! Brook Benton's 

version of Rainy Night in Georgia.

This is the live version, which is very nice but I still  prefer the original radio hit as it had a more bluesy feel to it. Brook Benton has such a deep and emotional voice, I can't enjoy anyone else's version of it.
The lyrics are wonderful too: "A distant moaning of a train, seems to play a sad refrain to the night..."


Aren't there a lot of wonderful songs about Georgia? Those are my faves, but some of you Country music fans may prefer "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", or how about the theme music for the Harlem Globetrotter's basketball team, "Sweet Georgia Brown". The Globetrotters actually visited my High School way back in the day! There were only a few of them, not the whole team, but they were very impressive and entertaining indeed. ...But I digress...

So now my train of thought has arrived with the book to the hinterland of Ontario. Unfortunately there are not as many songs about Ontario as there are about Georgia. And even less about my neck of the woods -- Northern Ontario, which is as different to Southern Ontario as the proverbial North and South miniseries I keep blathering about!

But luckily, two of my favourite songs by Neil Young are about places in Northern Ontario (or it is at least mentioned).

The first is Helpless from the Crosby Stills Nash & Young album Deja Vu (1970). **UPDATE: I had to replace that video with a LIVE performance from The Last Waltz (with The Band.) I hope this video doesn't disappear too, from the video police! :p

This might well be my very favourite Neil Young song, probably because it does have special meaning for me. But k. d. Lang does a fabulous job of her cover version of this song, performed when Neil was recovering from surgery. Listen to her version here.

 The second offering I have from Neil is Long May You Run

Yeah, I know it's only about his car...(you know how goofy guys are about their cars)! But did you catch the lyrics "Well, it was back in Blind River in 1962..."  That's Blind River ONTARIO, near Elliot Lake where Neil came from before he moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba and his music career took root.  Blind River could arguably be the halfway point between Northern and Southern Ontario (on the TransCanada Highway).  It's still part of the North, but it's within a looong day's drive to Toronto. Ontario takes about 3 days to traverse, if you are not a crazy driver. I've known some people to do it in a 24 hour driving stint without stopping. (That's 2 drivers with one sleeping while the other drives.) Which makes me think that Neil Young's paean to his car is not really so silly. A reliable car that won't break down (literally) in the middle of nowhere is a very good thing indeed!

So now, I get to settle down and read Charlotte Hawkins' lovely alternate ending for the Guy of Gisborne story. If you would like to win a copy, you can visit her blog here and leave your email address.
What a treat! Gisborne...here I come!

I can't help it! This picture makes me melt!
Or you could say, it leaves me helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless...

(Source: Richard Armitage Central)

After the Gold Rush

Neil Young is an acquired taste. I know this myself, as I first discovered him as a prepubescent who was only just beginning to discover my Rock sensibilities. I remember commenting negatively on his high-pitched, reedy (some would say whiny) voice to my older sister when I first heard his Harvest album. Now, of course it is one of my most favourite albums, and except for a strange period in the '80s, (his -- not mine!), I have been a fan of his since then.
The following song has always haunted me, as the lyrics are so mysterious. Is it a fantastical vision of earth's doom? Or maybe just a drug induced dream sequence?
I found an interesting discussion of the lyrics on this forum:
http://www.thrasherswheat.org/fot/atgr.htm

Although I do love Neil's version of the song, I also find this a cappella version so beautifully harmonious, and the video has such fantastically beautiful pictures that I had to share it with you.

Video by feythdemacedo

Now, here are the lyrics with a bit of a different perspective. I have chosen to illustrate them with scenes from various productions from the repertoire of Richard Armitage.  They include: Robin Hood (BBC) 2006-2009 Sir Guy of Gisborne; Spooks /MI-5, Season 7 2008 Lucas North; Strike Back 2010 John Porter; and Star Wars Episode 1, the Phantom Menace 1999  Naboo fighter pilot (uncredited).
If I were more talented, (and had the proper equipment) I would do a fanvid. Anybody out there care to help me with this? "Or do it for me", I think, with a sheepish grin.

Well I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming

Saying something about a queen

There were peasants singing and drummers drumming

And the archer split the tree

There was a fanfare blowing to the sun 

That was floating on the breeze

Look at mother nature on the run
In the twenty-first century 

Look at mother nature on the run
In the twenty-first century 

I was lying in a burned out basement 

With the full moon in my eyes 

I was hoping for replacement 

When the sun burst through the sky 

There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like I could cry 

I was thinking about what a friend had said

I was hoping it was a lie

 Thinking about what a friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie 

Well I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flyin'
In the yellow haze of the sun 

There was laughing, crying and colors flying
All around the chosen one 

All in a dream, all in a dream, the loading had begun 

Flying mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun
They were flying mother nature's silver seed to a new home

I should apologize to hard-core Neil Young fans that the lyrics are not quite the same as originally written. I must admit I copied the lyrics from a version done by Dolly Parton! Wow! Who else has covered this song?
I was going to change them back, but I had already made my picture choices by then so... unless someone out there can find a good picture of Richard Armitage where he it looks like he "feels like getting high", I think I will just leave it like that...

Pictures are from the treasurehouse screencap galleries of  RichardArmitageNet.com, and RichardArmitageCentral.co.uk, also a great source was http://robinhoodtree.blogspot.com. I nabbed the picture of RA with Natalie Portman from Nat's blog -- http://armitagefanblog.blogspot.com  I'm not sure where I got the other ones! Please let me know if I need to give someone the credit! The last photo is by Tom Raven on Flickr.com

***UPDATE: ***September 18, 2010
I have finally posted a video version of this song, using Neil Young's original song (couldn't find a good version of him singing with the "21st century" lyric which I would have preferred).  At first the video was blocked, but hopefully I have successfully disputed this claim.
Here is the link on Youtube if you would like to watch:

Neil Young's After the Goldrush video (featuring Richard Armitage)