And how death seems a comely thing In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
Except for nature's glorious display of colour, this time of year -- with darkness falling ever earlier and colder weather descending, can seem rather depressing for some people. No wonder then, that the poetry and music which has been inspired by it is often melancholic.
These two songs performed by Gordon Lightfoot on one of his earliest albums have been favourites of mine forever! In fact, I dearly love the entire album Lightfoot! and have referred to it before in an earlier post. But I did not realize until very recently that this next song was not written by Lightfoot but by Phil Ochs. If you are not already familiar with the work of Phil Ochs I urge you to click on his name (which is highlighted) above the following video. The link will take you to a Wikipedia article about him. I will admit, although I had heard of him, I was not aware of the range of his work or his lasting influence.
Guy of Gisborne, the character portrayed so realistically by Richard Armitage in the BBC's rather campy production of Robin Hood 2006-2009 undergoes his own fall from grace. Luckily he redeems himself in the end.
When You're Falling: a Guy of Gisborne (Richard Armitage) fanvideo / by Delicateblossomvideo
Many of us who have seen his work, have fallen for the talent and dedication to his craft, of Richard Armitage, (not to mention his amazing good looks) and even more amazingly the shy humbleness and good humoured generosity of his personality. Many fans came to know his work in Robin Hood as Guy of Gisborne. Even though he played a "bad guy" who struggled and failed to win the heart of Maid Marian, he was able to capture the hearts of many fans.
This song was written by Hamilton Camp and was recorded in 1964 by Gordon Lightfoot on his first album Lightfoot! which was released two years later. It is my favourite album of all of his great works probably because it is his only true "folk" album. He is accompanied only by his own guitar and harmonica. The song Pride of Man was apparently written in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis but when listened to in the post 9/11 world it is eerily prescient of what happened on that terrible day exactly 10 years ago.
This next song is a tribute to the indomitable spirit of the American people and especially to the heroes who rushed to the scene risking their own lives to save others.
You Raise Me Up / Celtic Woman
This last song echoes my hope for peace for all in the future.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.....
It's cold and snowy here in Central Canada. So nice to stay inside where it's warm and watch a lovely fanvid. This one puts two of my faves together -- my favourite miniseries with a song by one of my favourite Canadian songwriter /performers.
Yorkshirewench has graciously allowed me to post her North and South video Song for a Winter's Night by Gordon Lightfoot.
Here are the lyrics to this beautiful song by Gordon Lightfoot.
Song for a Winter Night
The lamp is burnin' low upon my table top
The snow is softly falling
The air is still in the silence of my room
I hear your voice softly calling
If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter night with you
The smoke is rising in the shadows overhead
My glass is almost empty
I read again between the lines upon the page
The words of love you sent me
If I could know within my heart
That you were lonely too
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter night with you
The fire is dying now, my lamp is growing dim
The shades of night are lifting
The morning light steals across my window pane
Where webs of snow are drifting
If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
And to be once again with with you
To be once again with with you
November 7th 1885 was the date that the last spike was driven into the track of Canada's first transcontinental railway (the Canadian Pacific Railway -- a.k.a. the CPR). Sorry, my post is late by a few days, but I just got the memo!
Actually I missed seeing last week's episode of the Rick Mercer Report. Luckily I subscribe to his Youtube channel and what to my wondering eyes did appear -- but this excellent clip where Rick interviews Parks Canada employees about the Last Spike and rides the rails over some of the most beautiful railway scenery to be found anywhere in the world!
The history of Canada is defined by this transcontinental railroad. There is a good chance that without the persistence of Sir John A. Macdonald (Canada's first Prime Minister) and the partnership of railway engineer Sir Sanford Fleming and CPR general manager Cornelius Van Horne, Canada would not exist in its present form today of 10 provinces and 3 territories linked together from east to west coast by a fragile network of rail (and now highways). In fact, it was mainly in order to bring the province of British Columbia into Confederation that started the mad rush to build the railroad in the first place.
Is it any wonder then that so many talented performers have paid homage to Canada's railways?
Here's a famous song called Canadian Pacific by country music star Hank Snow
And one of my favourite songs by Gordon Lightfoot, Steel Rail Blues
Now you know I can't leave without a picture of Richard Armitage, so here he is as Claude Monet in The Impressionists admiring a train.
screencap courtesy of RichardArmitageNet
*******UPDATE*******
Just had to share this lovely montage done by a dear friend and fellow admirer of Richard Armitage.
Just look at the way she has blended Richard as Claude Monet in The Impressionists with Monet's own artwork and a quote by fellow Impressionist painter Edouard Manet about his artistic vision.
The quote in English is "I paint what I see, not what pleases others to see".
Monet is more appropriate to this post than I at first realized! His birthdate was November 14, 1840 which means that I just missed his 170th birthday by one day!
If you like trains as I do, don't miss my first post on this blog, "I Think I Can"
Like the Little Engine that Could, I THINK I can start a blog!
It seems like a huge venture, when I don't really know what I'm doing, but like any new adventure you just start out with some sort of planned destination, and hope that at some point, you will actually arrive there!
This book is a classic of children's literature and is still as popular today as it was when first published. As I have just learned since researching this blog, there is some controversy over exactly when it was first published as a story and even a mystery as to who is the original author! http://tigger.uic.edu/~plotnick/littleng.htmeng.htm
This reminds me of one of my favourite records I used to listen to as a child, Sparky's Magic Pianoand on the flipside was Sparky's Talking Train. I so enjoyed this little record that I was disappointed when our family moved, my mother made me give it up, so I lent it to my little niece and nephew (thinking naively that someday I might have it back!) Well, long story short...the little charmers destroyed it! --A fact that I never let my poor sister (their mother) forget! Fast forward years later, when I have my own little ones and I receive a Christmas package in the mail from my sister...I open it and discover the very same recording I had been lamenting losing all those years ago, but in cassette form now! It brought tears to my eyes, and was in fact, one of the best Christmas presents of my adult life. Unfortunately, my own children were slightly beyond the age of appreciating it, nevertheless it certainly brought me great pleasure to hear it again.
You can hear it too, if you are a child at heart or if you have a child you want to play it for: http://www.landofmagic.co.uk/audio_books/mp3_books/sparkys_talking_train.mp3
Note: If this link doesn't work, try copying it and pasting it into your browser. Alternatively, it also can be found as a clip on Youtube.
You might ask, what besides a children's record would make you so fond of trains?
Well, train travel has been called romantic, but in my case the train really did help my romantic life!
My husband and I started dating in High School, but then I moved quite far away. We stayed in touch with letters and phone calls, but because part of my family remained in town I had a good reason to travel back for any extended holiday to see him, and as the train was the cheapest mode of travel, that was the way to go!
Even when he moved much closer to me, one of us was always taking the train to see the other, and we got to joking that "our song" was the little musical noise which always preceded the announcement of the coming train. "Wah-WAH-wah-wah-waaaahh! VIA Rail on route to....(and ending in the French) ...entre la gare".
Here's a great video of train clips to the music of "I'm a Train" by Albert Hammond, (a great '70s tune). The video is by MysticVideo.
Railroads played an important role in the history of the world, but nowhere more so than in North America, where it opened up the frontier to immigrants from other lands and changed forever the way of life of the native tribes of the interior plains. Much blood was spilled over control of the land that would provide the pathway for the long tracks that plowed their way across the continent A Mari Usque Ad Mare (From Sea to Sea).
Gordon Lightfoot's song "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is such a classic it deserves a Blogpost all of its own, but as it is certainly one of my faves, I had to include it here.
This video is courtesy of anippygirl whose Youtube channel includes other train videos as well as great Canadian music. Also, she has Lightfoot's Steel Rail Blues, another fave train song!
There are lots of songs about trains, but I have to mention another one of my all-time faves: "Peace Train" by Cat Stevens. Regardless of anyone's opinion of him now, he still wrote a great hit song with a lovely optimistic sentiment:
Now I've been smiling lately,thinking about the good things to comeAnd I believe it could be,something good has begun
And lest you think my musical tastes stopped developing in the 1970s, here is a more current great band whose name just happens to beTRAIN!
I am sure there have been many artists throughout the last century or so that have painted scenes of trains or railroads, but it just so happens that one of my favourite artists, the Impressionist painter Claude Monet, has painted quite a few train scenes.
These pictures are entitled Top to Bottom: Train in the Snow,the Bridge, and St. Lazare Station, Paris. The last picture is only one of a series of this train station. I have picked, I think, the most vibrant version of the scene. (More about Monet another time, as he is definitely worthy of another post!)
Railroads and trains have been the inspiration for quite a few great movies and books.
One of my faves was a television series in the 1970's that was inspired by the books by Pierre Berton called "The National Dream" and "The Last Spike" Pierre Berton / First Impressions / Toronto Arts Foundation / Sites / eZ Publish - Toronto Arts Foundation
Pierre Berton himself, is one of Canada's iconic personalities and also deserving of his own Blogpage!
Here are some other of my favourite movies with a "train theme":
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) A great western with Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda and a killer soundtrack! This movie gets into the dark side of the American mythology about the West with the Robber Barons of the railroad playing havoc with the good folk of the town, and the mysterious stranger antihero who stands up for the powerless. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064116/om/title/tt0064116/
Silver Streak (1976)
I saw this movie a very long time ago, so I hope it is still as funny as I remember it. It was the first movie pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and they went on to make several other comedies together. This movie not only has almost all the action taking place on a train, but it ends with a spectacular train wreck...but don't worry -- it's a happy ending!
Part romantic comedy, part murder mystery, part thriller, it has a lot of witty dialogue and is certainly worth watching if it ever shows up on television. But you don't have to take my word for it, why not read some reviews from IMDb.com? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075223/
Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
One of Dame Christie's most adapted literary works, but my favourite version (so far) was the Sidney Lumet version with Albert Finney. However, as I really prefer David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, I was delighted to learn that a remake of this movie has been done starring none other than my fave Poirot!
According to IMDb.com (Internet Movie Database) ITV has made a new season of the Hercule Poirot series and this one is episode 4. Has anyone seen it yet? Has it even aired yet? I am very excited!
There are only 2 more books/miniseries I am going to mention and they are both by my new favourite author, Elizabeth Gaskell. She is a new discovery of mine....(where HAD she been hiding all these years?) even though she was a contemporary of Charles Dickens! I find her writing much more accessible than his though. Enough said for now, the reason I mention her at all is that she definitely has a train theme running throughout two of her books.
Cranford, a series of short stories written for Dicken's literary magazine was published in book form in 1853. Adapted for television in 2007 and starring the magnificent Dame Judi Dench, this series and perhaps more so it's sequel Return to Cranford, paint a picture of a small British Victorian town before industrialization and the railroad intruded upon it, changing it forever. It is really very humourous, as well as quite touching.
When the matriarchs of Cranford (who are so against having the railway line cut through their little haven) are finally treated to a little jaunt in a passenger car, they decide to alter their opinions of Railway travel for the better. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974077/
And I have saved the best for last, so I hope there are still some readers left! Elizabeth Gaskell's masterpiece (in my opinion) and my most favourite adaptation in mini-series of any period drama that I have ever seen before!...North and South.
You may wonder, what this wonderful BBC production has to do with trains?
Well, let's see...only that it starts and ends on a train! The railway is used as an image to tie together the two disparate parts of England: the gentile, pastoral and cultured south and the energetic, industrial and independent north. It's about the clash of cultures, the rise of the working class, and the coming of age of a young, opinionated and slightly snobbish girl (played by Daniella Denby-Ashe) who learns to love the harsher ways of the north along with a certain cotton mill owner (played by Richard Armitage).
Many bloggers have had a lot to say about this movie, so rather than me repeat it all, here are a couple of links to their great reviews: http://reviewerama.blogspot.com/2009/08/bbcs-north-and-south.html
