A soundtrack for my life

[pecunium]

A few weeks ago commodorified made a challenge, to make a soundtrack for your life; with one song for each year. She mentioned me by name, and I’ve been tossing it about in the darker corners of my mind.

42 songs to sum up my life. It’s hard. Not just taking a mere 42 songs from the 6000+ on the computer, but trying to recall the greater number of songs I’ve ever known. How am I to choose? Those songs I really love, which speak to me when I need cheering?

What of those which were anthems for me? The one’s which carried me through hard times? What about those I think of as messages? The one’s which gave understanding?

Or those which speak to me of things I’ve done, been or wanted to be? There are some which explain some aspect of what I am, and how that happened to come about.

Perhaps the background music, those songs which were playing?

All of that.

In 42 songs?

Good Lord.

It’s not something to just dash off. I am not going to try and ascribe a single year to each of them. The first part of my life (say to about 16) isn’t clear to me from here. We build our past from the bits of the lost present we recall, and we filter it through who we are now. I’ve tried to avoid being too much in the present as I chose, but that’s not completely possible. What I think of myself is colored by the now.

It’s flawed. There is no way to recall all the possible songs. Whether I will it, or no, the songs I have in the computer get weight. The first 30 are easy. The problem is the next 70. How do I cull out this one, or that one?

Do I use a lot of the same artist? Perhaps I ought, there are artists I like, a lot (Billy Joel, Gordon Lightfoot, Al Stewart, Jimmy Buffet). The point isn’t to introduce you to music, but to make my life more plain to the rest of you, so apprehensibility is something of a concern.

The other problem is making represent my life as a whole, not my present.

So... I’ve made a list, checked it twice (or thrice, or some semblance of many times). It’s not right but it will never be right, and so it’s as good as it’s likely to get.

Rather than explain it, I will leave it stand as is. If you want to ask about the songs, feel free. I make no promises to answer but neither do I categorically refuse to answer. Odds are the shape of the question will be the framework in which the response is cast.

The songs are, by and large, in no particular order.

Sunny Day (Theme to Sesame Street)

Bury me standing/Oysterband
Dancing as Fast as I Can/Oysterband
Renegade/Warren Zevon
The Leaving of Liverpool/Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem
Distantly in Love/Jimmy Buffet
Sharp Dressed Man/ZZ Topp
Heartache Spoken Here/Warren Zevon
He Went to Paris/Jimmy Buffet
Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire/ChumbaWumba
Peace Train/10,000 Maniacs

Cloudy/Simon and Garfunkel
Like a Rock/Bob Seger
Wall of Death/Fairport Convention
Different When it Comes to You/Bruce Cockburn
Summer Roads/Liam Clancy
Turn the Page/Bob Seger
Caledonia/Dougie MacLean
My Old Friend the Blues/The Proclaimers (written by Steve Earle)
The Parting Glass/Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem
Jacob Marley's Chain/Aimee Mann

Bring us a Barrel/Poxy Boggards
Money Back Guarantee/Jimmy Buffet
Always look on the Bright Side of Life (Cockburn)
I'm Your Man/Leonard Cohen
Whatever you say, say nothing/Liam Clancy
Done with Bonaparte/Mark Knopfler
The Loyalist/Dave Nachmaninoff
The shouting end of life/Oysterband
Baby Grand/Billy Joel, and Ray Charles
Braes o' Killiecrankie/Joann Gilmartin

Donald Whar's yer troosers?/Andy Stewart
Wonderful World/Louis Armstrong
Age of Reason/Al Stewart
Vespers/Jim Croce
I'm a Freeborn Man/Liam Clancy
Summer Highland Falls/Billy Joel
The Mary Ellen Carter/Stan Rogers
She's moved on/Oysterband
And so it goes/Billy Joel
Over The Water/Oysterband

With a Little Help From My Friends/The Beatles

If/when, I get the three songs I don't have, I will make the whole thing available as a yousendint file.

Comments

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

*phrases carefully*

Tell me about Different When It Comes to You, please?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

This is one of the recurrent things. First... the rythmn of it, and the gentle insistence in the singing make the chorus really dominant, "It's different when it comes to, you.

Second, with the loves of my life (not merely the lovers) this has always been the case.

I bring you my broken self
With zero hidden from your view
I don't usually do that but it's
Different when it comes to you

The zero hidden isn't always true, but those people can get to it, if they want to know.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Tell me about Over The Water?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Who doesn't want to take friends, and beloveds to magical places?

I'll take you with me, over the water, over the water where the wild goose goes

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

On reflection, that answer is a bit lacking. That's the explanation for why one might choose to select as background music.

As soundtrack, I like to think I've managed to take a few people to places "over the water". Sometimes it's all I have ot offer.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

I can see that. One of the things we have in common, I think.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Donald, where's yer troosers - the version I (wish I didn't) know is by Andy Stewart

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. You are right. I didn't bring the drive with the music to the coffee shop, and going on memory. I know a lot of versions, but that's the one I chose. Thanks.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Turn the Page: where, when, with or without whom?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Do you know the song?

It's about life on the road, and the pains and trials of being a performer, and of being slightly out of place.

I've done faire for more than 20 years. I've been an actor, and a singer, and the gypsy life of a soldier on stateside missions in peacetime (the wartime travel is different).

So that one, is one of those things which; were my life a movie, would make a nice leitmotif for large chunks of it.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

I used to be a techie; I know the song. And it's always pretty personal.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I've often thought of doing something like this, though I don't feel any inclination to do it by years. But there is certain music that "belongs" to certain events and/or relationships and/or times in my life. I don't think any of my songs would duplicate any of yours, but some of the artists would--Warren Zevon, Bob Seger, S&G, and the Clancy Bros. for sure.

[momwolf.livejournal.com]

Wonderful list. You have me thinking....

[ckd]

I haven't seen an Edie Brickell version of Peace Train; is it really the 10,000 Maniacs version or am I missing something? (If the latter, where can I find it?)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Crap... you are right. I don't have either of them handy (packing, no CD drive working on the machine, and I misrememebered. Fixed.

[glaucon.livejournal.com]

Done with Bonaparte/Mark Knopfler

I played that one constantly for pretty much the entire month of February this year.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

http://poetry.mirandasbeach.com/content/view/745/53/

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

I'm Your Man/Leonard Cohen

Whose man have you been, and whose are you now?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

In the context of that song, I have been several person's man.

And I am, in the context of that song, several person's man.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Including your own, I hope ... *smooch*