"Wichita Lineman": sucks or love it?
For me, there is nothing but love for Jimmy Webb songs.
Except "MacArthur Park."
She's terse. I can be terse. Once in flight school, I was laconic.
Wash ,'War Stories'
Buffista Music III: The Search for Bach
There's a lady plays her fav'rite records/On the jukebox ev'ry day/All day long she plays the same old songs/And she believes the things that they say/She sings along with all the saddest songs/And she believes the stories are real/She lets the music dictate the way that she feels.
dw - Aug 31, 2005 2:11:03 pm PDT #24 of 10003
Silence means security silence means approval
dw - Aug 31, 2005 2:16:55 pm PDT #25 of 10003
Silence means security silence means approval
And Newsradio utterly ruled. Wish I'd watched it more.
I'm bored again (and posting once more). Here's my afternoon timekiller: A Hurricane Katrina mix.
- "When The Levee Breaks"
- "New Orleans Is Sinking"
- "Louisiana 1927"
- "Like A Hurricane"
- "Here Comes The Flood"
- "Lakes of Ponchatrain"
That's as far as I've gotten. They're pretty obvious.
DavidS - Aug 31, 2005 2:17:11 pm PDT #26 of 10003
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
"Wichita Lineman": sucks or love it?
Love it. Unironically. Webb's best song, classic production and performance. The very zenith of late sixties / early seventies non-rock pop.
I once described it as having the existential angst of a housewife in curlers, smoking a Pall Mall and staring fretfully out the back window on the dirt backyard of her unfinished subdivision. There might have been something about her wearing a canary yellow sleeveless knit top too, I think.
DavidS - Aug 31, 2005 2:19:26 pm PDT #27 of 10003
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
That's as far as I've gotten. They're pretty obvious.
Ah, you missed two of the ones I referenced up thread: "After the Flood" - Lone Justice; "3 Feet High and Rising" - Johnny Cash (also sampled by De La Soul).
dw - Aug 31, 2005 2:24:08 pm PDT #28 of 10003
Silence means security silence means approval
Webb's best song, classic production and performance.
Maybe his best song, but I've always been partial to "Galveston." That song, to me, is what I think AM rock/pop radio sounds like. Only on an AM station could that bass line sound so ghostly.
And it's a war protest song that was #1 on the country charts at the high-water mark of the protest movement.
dw - Aug 31, 2005 2:26:18 pm PDT #29 of 10003
Silence means security silence means approval
"3 Feet High and Rising"
Aaah. Should have had that one.
NoiseDesign - Aug 31, 2005 2:29:09 pm PDT #30 of 10003
Our wings are not tired
The sound of a distant AM station coming in late at night and right on the edge of reception is just amazing. It is ghostly. I remember it so clearly. I even remember listening to station like this on the old tube radio my father listened to. I believe they still have that radio in San Diego, I need to get it from them.
It's amazing how far AM broadcasts will travel when the conditions are just right.
Scrappy - Aug 31, 2005 2:51:16 pm PDT #31 of 10003
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
LOVE Witchita Lineman. Pretty and intimate and wistful as hell, all at the same time.
Sue - Aug 31, 2005 3:13:16 pm PDT #32 of 10003
hip deep in pie
Wichita Lineman is totally one of those songs that sounds best on AM radio. It also reminds me of a Joan Didion essay where she was having a nervous breakdown (as she often is in her early essays) and that song was deepening her sense of dread.
My TV list:
Twin Peaks
X-Files 1-5
Buffy 2-3 (maybe 4)
Angel 2-3
Sports Night
Twitch City
Michele T. - Aug 31, 2005 4:43:45 pm PDT #33 of 10003
with a gleam in my eye, and an almost airtight alibi
I have both REM and Cassandra Wilson covers of "Wichita Lineman." Put me down in the "love" category.
Joe, that's one of my favorite episodes. I have it saved on my TiVo from a rerun last year since it's not on the DVDs that have come out yet. "It was just juvie!"