and we're back

End of All Rivers

....you have to wonder: is a river still a river if there is nothing to swim in it?"

- from concert: Life Short - Call Now Tour, Centre for Performing Arts, Vancouver, BC, 3 November 2006. Reported by Mark Classen

the 1970's

"We owe the Winnipeg Folk Festival in a lot of ways to Bruce (Cockburn), because people did not have any idea at all what a folk festival was — none. We knew we had Bruce and we used Bruce in a way we didn’t use anybody else. "We said, ‘There’s a free Bruce Cockburn concert in the park,’ and 14,000 people showed up the first night to see that, and what they got was the folk festival. Thank you, Bruce."
    --From the article From the article Good Times, Great Music by Melissa Tait & Joe Bryska. 

Lovers in a Dangerous Time

"When I wrote that, I was thinking of kids my daughter’s age. She was quite young at the time. But, for any given individual, the world has always been a place where you could die. That’s the baseline. At times we can ignore that, more than other times. There are times when fear is in the air, and, of course, there’s always people around willing to exploit that, and enhance it, if need be."

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

Monday - Roll It!

Somebody Touched Me

Somebody touched me
Making everything new
Somebody touched me
I didn't know what to do
Burned through my life
Like a bolt from the blue
Somebody touched me
I know it was you

Fallout

"Radium Rain, for instance, came out of, uh, my own experience of the aftermath of Chernobyl, in Germany. I'd gotten, I arrived in Germany three days after Chernobyl happened. I had wrestled with myself to some degree before I left, thinking "Oh, I don't know. I wonder about going to Europe at this moment." But it seemed like it wouldn't matter where you were anyway, that stuff's gonna come down on you sooner or later so I might as well go and see what it looked like. And I did and it was very interesting experience, and, uh, quite frightening in some respects and funny in others. The extremes that people went to. The extremes that governments went to to try to sort of suppress peoples anxiety about the whole thing and it became ridiculous at a certain point, you know. At first they're saying, and I'm sure it was true of all the governments involved, they were saying Oh, there's no problem, you know, those stupid Russians just made a mistake, but we've got it together, don't worry about it". And, you know, the next day they'd be saying "Well there's a little bit of a problem, don't let you kids play in the dirt", you know. And the next, the next day, or week later they'd be saying "Well, you know, if you're a mechanic, you should avoid changing the air filters of cars, unless you're wearing protective clothing, and, you know, if you're a pedestrian, hold your breath when cars go by, cuz of the dust", you know. And I mean it's absurd. How can you possibly not breath when the cars are going by on the street? And it just went from the horrific to the ridiculous." 
     -- from "Interview and Segments" a CD released in 1990 by True North/Epic. Anonymous submission.

Tibetan side of town

"An attempt to capture the flavour of Kathmandu. China has been bulldozing Tibet and its culture since the 50's. This has produced a lot of refugees, many of whom live in Nepal. One of the aspects of Tibetan tradition which was immediately accessible to me was the consumption of Tungba (spelled various ways by various Westerners). This is a kind of flat ale made from fermented millet, drunk hot. An acquired taste, but not that hard to acquire. The search for Tungba came to occupy a fair amount of what leisure time I had on that trip. Tom Kelly is an American photographer who at the time had lived in Kathmandu for 9 years, and who had the largest motorcycle I saw in Nepal.....
   -- from "Rumours of Glory 1980-1990" (songbook), edited by Arthur McGregor, OFC Publications, Ottawa, 1990. Submitted by Rob Caldwell.

remember NAFTA anyone?

Used to have a town but the factory moved away
Down to Mexico where they work for hardly any pay
Used to have a country but they sold it down the river
Like a repossessed farm auctioned off to the highest bidder

Goin' Greek

One more time- Call it Democracy

"That song came from the time of neo-conservatism, when governments supported business at the cost of lives and nobody gave a shit. We have since moved on to neo-liberalism, when governments support business at the cost of lives and nobody gives a shit; and I see we're moving on to neo-feudalism, that's the service economy coming at you. We will all serve. I'm not quite sure who we're serving. There's a sort of mystery there; are we serving Bill Gates? I think not, he's too visible. Somebody else? Maybe you're sitting right here (in the audience). Are you out there? Fuck off, if you are....And if you're not, well we missed a grand opportunity to level with each other."
    -- from a live performance at Massey Hall, Toronto, Canada, 25 March 2000.

Greeks failed. No one can say their courage flagged, but their chosen leader proved unable to resist, to reject, to tell European Union leaders and that truly dangerous figure in the German cabinet, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, “Enough. Keep your euro. If we are to suffer we will do so for what we believe in.”
    --Patrick L. Smith, July 14, 2015

Waiting for a Miracle

[“Waiting for a Miracle” became a Jerry Garcia Band staple in 1989]

Sometime that same year, the Dead were doing one of their week-long extravaganzas at Madison Square Garden. I happened to be in New York, and somebody said, “Let’s go put you together with Jerry.” So I was ushered up onto the stage behind the amps where his tent was, and Jerry came out. He was very gracious and a lovely guy. We shook hands, and he said, “Man, it’s great to meet you! That’s a beautiful song, I hope I didn’t screw up the lyrics too much!” And then I said, “Well, I was going to wait till the second time I met you to bring that up, but it’s OK you did it your own way, and I’m glad you did…
    --Bruce Cockburn, interview with Dean Budnick on May 01, 2015

 

Dead, dead

The Dead's "last" show was in Chicago last Sunday. Long live the Dead.
Below, the Grateful Dead's 'short' 20 minute rendition of "Morning Dew" in 1976. See the Hippies dance! 
The actual recognizable song starts around the 7:00 minute mark.

the Candy Man's gone

Sun climbs toward high noon,
Glints metallic off the bowl of the spoon
Sliding through the air toward parted lips
Watch the expression when the straight taste hits
Face crumples, tongue's quickly withdrawn
I hate to tell you but the candy man's gone

Oh sweet fantasia of the safe home
Where nobody has to scrape for honey at the bottom of the comb
Where every actor understands the scene
And nobody ever means to be mean
Catch it in a dream, catch it in a song
Seek it on the street, you find the candy man's gone
I hate to tell you but the candy man's gone

In the bar, in the senate, in the alley, in the study
Pimping dreams of riches for everybody
"Something for nothing, new lamps for old
And the streets will be platinum, never mind gold"
Well, hey, pass it on
Misplaced your faith and the candy man's gone
I hate to tell you but the candy man's gone

"To me, politics is an external expression of something that people carry round in their hearts. The songs I wrote in the Eighties touched on issues because they had touched me personally, not because I had an axe to grind or an ideology. The songs in support of the aspirations of the Nicaraguan people, for example, were written because I was there and the situation touched me emotionally in a very personal way. There's no great difference between the mechanics for songs like that and for love songs."

- from "Faith in Practice: Holding on to the Mystery of Love" by Bruce Cockburn (as told to Cole Morton), Third Way, September 1994. Submitted by Nigel Parry.

You get bigger as you go
No one told me -- I just know
Bales of memory like boats in tow
You get bigger as you go

That about Covers it

BURN

Look away across the bay
Yankee gunboat come this way
Uncle Sam gonna save the day
Come tomorrow we all gonna pay...

And it's burn baby burn
When am I going to get my turn

Something dead under the bed
Local diplomats hang their heads
Never mind what the government said
They're either lying or they've been misled...

And it's burn baby burn
When am I going to get my turn

Phillipines was yesterday  [updated lyrics June 2003] - Vietnam was yesterday
Santiago and Greece today  [updated lyrics June 2003] - Kabul and Baghdad today
How would they ever make the late news pay
If they didn't have the CIA?

And it's burn baby burn
When am I going to get my turn

Here it comes, the loaded gun
"Must keep the Commies on the run " [updated lyrics June 2003] - gotta keep the bad guys on the run
You'd buy or bury everyone
For liberty and life
And just plain fun

And it's burn baby burn
When am I going to get my turn

With pain the world paves us over
Lord let us not betray
God bless the children with visions of the Day

Blackie and the Rodeo Kings- whose that playing guitar?

Ships moving into this cave of cloud
Out of the white light up river
At a certain point you can only die

High contrast resolution
Of wet rock and new snow
These bodies remind me
Of tire marks frozen in the mud

We thought we could change something
We helped them win
We changed the slogans
We get hunted again
When you're the fighter
You're the politicians tool
When you're the fighter
You're everybody's fool

They move like bears through city streets
They've got a flag flying over every factory
I'd like to put a bullet through the world

Wagon full of logs with one flat tire
Armed men moving down through the bush
Up river at a certain point you can...
Ships... white light... only

Dancing in Paradise