ordinary pop songs and why they're great.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

 
Not days, not weeks but months..MONTHS!! And what has happened save for a general amount of life de-hancing (?) nothingness. Pretty much nothing, that's what. Plenty of same old same old. Funny how sparkly new ends up as same old. Life eh? Well I wasn't going to include any song just to make for a novel post. Just let blog-land know that I was clinging to the shipwreck of life. But having reminded myself by writing the very word, let's have a quick look at Rainy Night In Georgia by Randy Crawford: Funny I just found out that it was (originally?) done by Brook Benton of "Mr Bartender" fame * Anyway, it once played it's way via my subconscious as a soundtrack to a dream which was rendered all the more atmospheric (okay, sad) as a result. It's very visual, I find. Paints a lonely, dark, drizzly picture. But the core, the point, the bit that really gets you "right there" is the, ahem, middle eight - the bit that's in the middle or thereabouts and digresses from the main tune anyway - that begins "how many times I wonder.." and ends "...it's life and we just got to play the game". (Or not, I might say to Randy or to whoever wrote it, the credit is somebody called White, thre's a thing). She sings "life" in two poignantly meaningful syllables. That is the song in a nutshell per me.

* Little Brook Benton anecdote: he's probably some really credible writer/singer but, frankly, I wouldn't know him from a hole in the road were it not for that one song "Mr Bartender" that I heard on the radio, probably radio 2, at my mum & dad's house in about 1979. A day or two later I'm at school and overhear this girl (it was Kim Smith, never forget a name nor a face) waxing lyrical about George Benson and ther's me all keen to show I know a thing or two so I just have to butt in with "oh George Benson, "Mr Bartender", he's great". Fist in mouth, carrying a watermelon, I'll get me coat etc etc.