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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 9/5/2023: End of Summer [1]
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Date: 2023-09-05
Claude Monet: Regatta at Sainte-Adresse (1867)
Good evening, Kibitzers!
At the moment, here in the Boston area it’s hotter than it’s been in a while, but nothing compared to what places with serious heat have been getting all summer. I can’t help but notice, however, that there’s an incipient storm, now a “tropical wave” called Invest AL95, hanging about at 35°W longitude, spoiling to become Hurricane Lee and take aim at the east coast. So that’ll be interesting. Of course, no knowing what it’ll actually do. [Tuesday afternoon: At this point, the map shows it as Tropical Depression Thirteen Tropical Storm Lee and says it’s “forecast to become a major hurricane by this weekend.” Ryan Hall says it’s expected to be the biggest storm of the season. He also says, at the moment we have no useful idea of where it’ll go, but most of the models currently show it turning north and not directly striking the US mainland. What we really need is for it to also not strike Puerto Rico, or for that matter, anything else. We’ll see, I guess — forecasting that far out is extremely speculative.]
We haven’t done the “songs about a thing” format in a little while, so how about “songs about summer ending”? I am sure you’ll have some more to add in the comments. I know there are more because, despite the Supreme Court’s best efforts, they cannot force me to put only white dudes with guitars in here, and that meant at least a couple of white dudes could not make the cut, to make room for somebody else. (Oooooh! White dudes are the real victims!)
Don Henley: The Boys of Summer (official video, 1984)
The music for this song was composed by Mike Campbell, guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty didn't want it for the album he was working on at the time, so Campbell offered it to Henley, who wrote the lyrics and recorded it. [4:45]
John Prine, with Brandi Carlile and Sturgill Simpson: Summer's End (Colbert Late Show, 2018)
This song is from The Tree of Forgiveness, the last album John Prine released before his early death from Covid (early in the pandemic; also, too early for John Prine). It was co-written with his sometime-collaborator Pat McLaughlin. [4:19]
Willie Nelson: Summer Wind (official video, 2018)
Summer Wind was written in 1965 as the German song Der Sommerwind, by Heinz Meier, with German lyrics by Hans Bradtke. Johnny Mercer heard it sung in Danish, and decided to write English lyrics with meaning similar to the original ones. Frank Sinatra's version was not the first with the English lyrics, but was the most wildly popular. This version is from Willie Nelson's 68th(!) solo studio album, My Way, a Sinatra tribute. [3:23]
Dar Williams: The End of the Summer (album End of the Summer, 1997)
Dar Williams is a folksinger in the tradition of people I used to follow in Boston almost fifty years ago (I had to count twice to write that, but yeah). I love the third verse of this song, about going to the moon [lyrics]. [4:12]
Bryan Adams: Summer of '69 (concert video Wembley 1996 Live)
According to Bryan Adams, he did in fact buy a guitar at a “five and dime”, in Ottawa in 1971. He was 12; we can assume that the timeline of the song is a little distorted to make the lyrics work, which is perfectly believable, or we can take him at his word when he told the CBS Early Show in 2008 that the song didn’t mean the year 1969. Why not both? [6:57]
Ella Fitzgerald: Indian Summer (Newport Jazz Festival Live At Carnegie Hall, 1973)
The melody for Indian Summer was written in 1919 by Victor Herbert, a composer better known for his numerous operettas such as Naughty Marietta. Not until twenty years later did Al Dubin add lyrics. [5:07]
x YouTube Video
Yanni: The End of August (concert video Live At The Acropolis, 1993)
Yanni’s instrumental music arises out of his work composing dance music and movie soundtracks. His new-age band gained popularity in the late 80s and 90s. For his first live album, he put up $2 million of his own to stage this concert in the Acropolis with his own band plus the 60-piece Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. His decision was a good one, as the video became one of PBS’s most popular, and also became the second best-selling music concert video of all time (after Thriller). [4:46]
The Motels: Suddenly Last Summer (TV show Solid Gold, 1983)
The Motels disbanded and re-formed several times, the chief constant being lead singer Martha Davis. She overcame quite a difficult early life to find success in the music world. [3:44]
The Doors: Summer's Almost Gone (1968; 2018 audio remaster, with montage of unrelated video footage)
In July 1965, weeks after finishing UCLA film school, Ray Manzarek ran into his classmate Jim Morrison on Venice Beach. Morrison said he’d been writing some songs, and Manzarek asked to hear them. (Morrison later said, “I was just taking notes at a fantastic rock concert that was going on inside my head.”) This was one of the songs whose fragments, sung that day, interested Manzarek enough to start getting a band together. [3:23]
Jon McLaughlin, with Sara Bareilles: Summer is Over (official video, 2012)
This song is a track from what was initially a 2011 self-financed, self-released third album from McLaughlin, entitled Forever If Ever. The next year, however, he signed a contract with Razor & Tie (also Dar Williams’ initial label) to re-release the album with some track changes, under the title Promising Promises. For this version, he re-recorded Summer Is Over as a duet with Sara Bareilles. [4:11]
Chad & Jeremy: A Summer Song (live performance, The Cutting Room, New York, ca. 2008. I liked this straight-acoustic version. The original record’s producer could not resist the strings and the horns, and that is… not my preference.)
Chad Stuart wrote this 1964 song in collaboration with Clive Metcalfe and Keith Noble. And who are they? They had formed a band, initially called Sigma 6, whose members included Roger Waters and Nick Mason, at a time when Waters was just learning guitar and had never been in a band before. The personnel changed quite a bit, and shed Metcalfe and Noble, before they ultimately morphed into Pink Floyd. [3:26]
Barbra Streisand: The Summer Knows (live performance, Paris, 2007)
This Michel Legrand composition was the theme song of the 1971 movie Summer of ‘42. Both the movie and the song were very popular; Bryan Adams has mentioned it as partial inspiration for his Summer of ‘69 — make of that what you will. [3:04]
Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band: Night Moves (live performance, San Diego, 1978)
This song is openly autobiographical, except it seems to be a bit revisionist about his feelings. It’s all, “yeah, I never really cared about this girl”, but his account to various journalists amounts to, this “black-haired beauty” had a boyfriend away in the service, and when he eventually returned and she married him, Seger was heartbroken. [5:55]
Finally, to add some pretty leaves, Nat King Cole Trio: 'Tis Autumn (1993 digital remaster of 1941 recording; autumn photography uncredited)
Jazz musician and bandleader (and sometime actor) Henry Nemo wrote a number of jazz standards, including this one. Apparently, his reputation as a hipster was such that he served as the model for Starkist's beret-wearing animated mascot, Charlie the Tuna. [3:09]
Yes, Da Doo Ron Ron is a tempting vehicle for DeSantis parodies, but we are here for them all. This one from the Parody Project has so much written material on the screen, you may have to back up now and then because you missed lyrics. [3:29]
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