Praying mantis on screen
Canoes prowl reef in early morning sun
As it flashes on the rhythmic fall of weed cutter's cutlass blade
Everybody's got something to sell besides the obvious dollars and dope
Aloe rub, starfish, vegetable patties, braid your hair miss and bush doctor cures
Sudden angry eruption between aloe peddler and man with property to protect
Muscular security guard with truncheon of twisted wire
"Kiss my blood clot" she hisses and they're enemies for life
In the beach front bar they're playing reggae versions of Jim Reeves' Greatest Hits
The waitress sings along, eyes focused dreamily on that sentimental world and there's Dancing in Paradise...

Blue green ship in turquoise bay
Swollen bauxite-red river rushing
Stream rising from feathered bamboo hills
Tracks once paved now falling away into deep lush valleys
And the farmed-out road contracts pass through so many hands
The print erodes with the weather-worn blacktop
And the jungle's always trying to reclaim the right of way
And the mangoes cacao turmeric goats soursop
Mushrooms cane plantains limes
Horses crayfish long-legged birds donkeys
Curved horns of cattle above dense grass
Ganja sensitive plant ackee
And some thorn whose prick brings lockjaw
And tires torn by sharp yellow rocks --
Young girl stares pensively from dark door in pale blue wall
Big About and friends at their crossroads bar
With its dirt corral for dancing
Drink soursop juice all day long
In quest of the perpetual stiff bamboo
And there's Dancing in Paradise...

Biggy Dread gunned down by police at Big Bridge March 16
Riding a mule cart to Sav-la-Mar pulled out a cutlass and they had to shoot
That's what they say
Something tells me they like to shoot
Something in the eyes of the ones at the road block
Where they searched the car and tried to get us to confess to whatever...
There's truncheons and gas down in Harbour St.
Typical response where life isn't so sweet
And somebody gets desperate enough to say so
Price of fish price of flour
Going up up up almost by the hour
And they throw away money on spectacular shows
To show the world the right likes the right music
And the Prime Minister sucks ice cream in the company of a happy band of children
While a naked man, sores on his neck,
Lies for days in Washington Blvd. gnawing chicken bones
And the Chamber of Commerce thinks there's too much crime
And there's a kung fu movie in every town
And there's Dancing in Paradise...  

Yep, its the last Bruce-a-day. It will now be more like Bruce-a-week or Bruce-whenever-I-feel-like-It.  Feel free to request a song in the Comments

You can even see it from space

Embers of Eden is a lot more grounded in history than High Winds White Sky was. The chorus part of Embers came from what can be seen from orbit, on the surface of the earth. One of the early astronauts said that the only things of human origin that you could make out from orbit were the Great Wall of China and the smoke from burning rainforests. That was such a powerful image it stayed with me and eventually came out in a personal use that had nothing to do with rainforests or the Great Wall of China. It was a figurative use of that image.
 -- from "Conversations with Bruce Cockburn", Common Ground, January, 2000, interviewed by Joseph Roberts. Submitted by Audrey Parsons.

Saturday

oops; just about missed Saturday.

Though storms may still kiss the grasslands with primal fire
In the land of passive revolution, everything's for hire
Are they demons, are they lemmings, or just the humans in this place?
Lord, I'm scanning these crowds for some sign of your face

MOD!

Let's hear a laugh for the man of the world
Who thinks he can make things work
Tried to build the New Jerusalem
And ended up with New York
Ha Ha Ha...

why don't we celebrate?

"This is a song [Dialogue With the Devil] I got totally fed up with for a long time! I wrote it in the early 70's and from that time played it at almost every concert, till I wasn't able to perform it anymore. I think I haven't played that one for almost twenty years now. But this year I somehow got it back and thought it was good and so decided to perform it again...."

-- from an intro to the song at a gig in Worpswede, Germany, 31 October 1999. Submitted by Simon Gorler.

more video!

 

Tuesday; let the bad air out

Bruce said that he had encountered an old turn-of-the-century jazz tune called "Blues for Bobby Beldon" which included the line "I thought I heard Bobby shout: 'Open up the window, let the bad air out!'". Bruce explained that the air in this quote would be whorehouse air, since it was in these places where jazz was born; and, commenting on the political content of his song, he said he had thought the time was ripe for another song of this kind, because American politics have more and more come to resemble the actions going on in a whorehouse.
   -- from comments made during the intro to the song at a gig at the Alter Wartesaal, Köln (Cologne), Germany, on 2 November 1999. Submitted by Frank Lay.

Gaaa! its Monday!

Happy Father's Day

One-eyed sun leering through the haze
Hordes of loveless marching while the little drummer plays
Nail in the coffin rats in the maze
Dancing arm in arm towards the looming end of days
Got to slow down 

Trees

Mulligan: "David Suzuki says that your video and song for "If a Tree Falls" had a profound impact upon everyone who saw it and heard it. Did you get that kind of feedback from people?"

 "If he said it, that's fine. I'm glad he did. No, I got a lot of positive feedback about that, and some negative too; actually interestingly, a lot of critics didn't like that song. They felt it was too pedantic and I was being too literal and I was "stretching my metaphors too far". I have a two-word response for those people."

-- from "Stein '89 - Voices in the Wilderness" (hosted by Terry David Mulligan). Interviewer: Terry David Mulligan. Location: MuchMusic (Canadian music video channel). Airdate: 25 October 1989. Submitted by Dave Macklin.

NEIL-to-Day: Ambulance Blues

'Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride, but I saw more interesting people there.'

The First Album- 1970

"The second half of the '60s really was a kind of learning period, in terms of writing, for me. I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and... that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon... made my first album." 
    -- from "Singer Follows 'Morality' to Success" by Salvatore Caputo, The Arizona Republic, 6 October 1995. Submitted by Nigel Parry.

"A time of reaction- trying to leave behind the years of bad rock bands, trying to clear out psychedelic decadence that was itself a reaction to institutional decadence. Looking for purity in nature. Looking for connections behind things..." 
    -- from the World Of Wonders Tour Program, circa 1986. Submitted by Rob Caldwell.

Some people never see the light
Till it shines through bullet holes

All The Diamonds In The World, the image-laden song from 1973 was written in Stockholm on the day after Cockburn realized he was a Christian. He comments on Christianity, and how he views the song so many years later.

"It’s emotional, in a way. It marks a signal moment in my life. It’s there. But I have to think when I perform it now, because I don’t want to be associated with certain aspects of the Christian culture and tradition. I’m not so inclined to think of the imagery of what we associate with Christianity – the guy on the cross with the beard. It’s not so much that, as it is about what we call the Holy Spirit."

15 June 2010- from Bruce Cockburn Set for Luminato Honours - 40 Years of songs to Live By by Brad Wheeler.

from the Humans album

"A lot of the songs on Humans came out of my realization that I needed other people.....I've always been a loner and kept a distance between myself and even those I've regarded as friends. But all of a sudden when I was getting kicked around and battered, all these people were right there - they came through in a way I never would have expected."

-- from "Bruce Cockburn's Quiet Optimism", High Fidelity, 1981, by Stephen Holden.

Happy Birthday Brendan