Songs About Cars and Angels and the Rain

[Ted]

I used to like those absurdly technical surfing Car songs.

Little Deuce Coupe - "she's ported and relieved and she's stroked and bored"
409 - "my four speed dual quad pos-a-traction 409"
Little GTO - "three deuces and a four speed and 389"

TW

[NormanD]

Can you recommend a Lucille Bogan CD? Her name seems to come up again and again.

Finbar Saunders writes:
Try Reckless Woman: 1927-35. This is a French compilation: Blues Collection 159852. Shave 'Em Dry is the "cleaned up" version, but it also has, to quote the sleeve notes, "Coffee Grindin' Blues full of double meanings, Alley Boogie, describing sexual games and They Ain't Walking No More, a worried prostitute bemoaning the lack of clients". Fun for all the family.

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Rain Fats Domino: It Keeps Raining; Bob Dylan uses it a lot (lost in it in Juarez, standing inside it with Johanna's visions,etc), supposedly as a metaphor for scag

Cars I especially like Ford Econoline by Nancy Griffith, and Car Wheels On A Gravel Road by Lucinda Williams

Angels No one's mentioned the pan-African song Malaika yet, so I will. There's probably dozens of versions, but the most recent one is by Bob Brozman.

norman

[Ted]

"Hatful of rain" What does it mean? Where does it come from?
TW

[David Godwin]

Do you mean the "handful of rain" , that Louise is holding in "Visions of Joanna", whilst, apparently being. simultaneusly, "so entwined with her lover". I always thought that this was a remarkable feat.

[Ted]

No although I suspect its related. I've heard it used as a kind of vague drug allusion, and it was apparently the name of a play about a junkie in the fifties. I've heard it crop up in a number of songs (none of which spring to mind right now).

Cheers
TW

[NormanD]

"Tonight as I stand inside the rain..." from Just Like A Woman by Dylan. I read somewhere that Otis Redding wouldn't sing this song (it may have been written for him, or certainly pitched his way) 'cos it had too many words, and he didn't like the amphetamine reference. And let's not forget those Rainy Day Women Nos 6 and 47..

Another great angel song is Angel From Montgomery by John Prine. Do check the lyrics, it's such a moving non-sentimental song ".....how the hell can someone/go to work in the morning/come home in the evening/and have nothing to say?". I prefer him to Dylan.

norman

[RobHall]

In the sad old world of blokerock there's an album by John Hiatt called "Slow Turning" that has a wonderfully atmospheric rain song - "Feels Like Rain" - and you can take your pick of car songs from "Tenessee Plates", "Drive South" or "Ride Along". It has no songs about angels, unfortunately; for that you have to go all the way back to 82's "All Of A Sudden", which features the song "I Could Use An Angel".

[Buoi]

Here's a few more suggestions, from my music collection:

Cars

Big Star - 'Big Black Car'
Radiohead - 'Killer Cars'
Stereolab - 'Speedy Car'

Angels

Great Lake Swimmers - 'A Song for the Angels'
David Sylvian - 'When Poets Dreamed of Angels'

Rain

Felt - 'The Day the Rain Came Down'
Eyeless In Gaza - 'Back from the Rains'
Rain Tree Crow - 'Rain Tree Crow'

[Dominic]

He looks around, around .....
He sees angels in the architecture,
Spinning in infinity,
He says, Amen! and Hallelujah!

I can't remember if Paul Simon got the phrase from somewhere else, but it has certainly been used extensively since, first as the title of an Eno-compiled ambient compilation, more recently as the name of a band, the title of a "A Photographic Elegy to an American Asylum", a ballet and a theatre production company who put on performances in unusual places, eg Noel Coward's "Still Life", at the Aldwych Tube. Isn't google wonderful! :-)

[Mark Speck]

One of each...

CARS--"Buick '59"--The Medallions

ANGELS--"Blue Angel"--Roy Orbison

RAIN--"Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow"--Strawberry Alarm Clock (as featured in the movie "Psych-Out")