more music
Feb. 18th, 2026 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarlingoneLet's try some more of this. Why is it so slowwwwwww.
* Bridge Over Troubled Water. I have the Simon & Garfunkel version and a Johnny Cash version. The Simon & Garfunkel is one of the songs that lived on my first iPod Shuffle during my first year at college, when I was perpetually exhausted and failing to recover from what the Victorians would have called a nervous breakdown. My collection during that time became very... focused on songs that give me the energy to keep going when I can't anymore (The Mary Ellen Carter being the preeminent example of the genre, of course). The Johnny Cash version is very Johnny Cash but I think just can't quite stand up to the other, and I'm hitting a point where I'm frustrated with how much music I have here and willing to cut anything that doesn't 100% spark joy.
* Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella; Mannheim Steamroller. I think I have a duplicate of this under the French title as well. I wish I could retitle tracks within VLC or at least in my phone's My Files app, but I can't seem to find a way. That would make tracking down and eliminating duplicates so much easier; as it stands, I'm going to have to pull out the SD card and make the changes on my laptop every time I want to tweak the metadata at all, which is deeply inconvenient. Anyway this is a light instrumental cover on... flute and harp, I think? I really like all of the arrangements on A Mannheim Steamroller Christmas, which is their only album I've got; I should look into their other work.
* Brown Girl In the Ring, Raffi. This is a traditional children's song and dance from the West Indies, similar to Ring Around a Rosy. I don't think I've ever heard any of the more famous versions of this song, but I do love some calypso rhythm.
* Brown-Eyed Handsome Man, Johnny Cash. I have really complicated feelings about this song because it's a crux of how fucking weird my upbringing was; I'd forgotten it existed until Soph gave me her set of Johnny Cash discography, but I remember hearing it when I was very tiny, I would say a toddler, before it was removed from the regular rotation, and knowing my parents' relationship I am 99.9% sure that it was removed because my (blue-eyed) father chose to be jealous as one of those strange irrational little hills to die on which high-control relationships use to keep their victims in line. The song itself is a bop but I'm not sure if I can separate it from that whole context.
* Buffalo Gals, Great American String Band. Fun fiddle cover, like most of the folk songs from this album; maybe a few more extraneous twiddles than I really prefer, but it's a good cheering-up track anyway.
* Burning Love, Elvis Presley. Like a lot of Elvis songs, I'm more familiar with this as a meme quote than an actual song. The instrumentation is harder rock than I prefer; probably won't keep it around.
* Bury Me Beneath the Willow, Great American String Band. I'm pretty sure I know this tune from somewhere else, possibly a hymn, which is a constant experience when I listen to folk songs while not having a great ear for a melody. This one has sung lyrics, I have no idea by what singer; he has a broad country twang in a solid tenor. I have little sympathy for pining songs in general though unless they're something special, I might not keep it around.
* Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, Johnny Cash. I have a lot of trouble taking this song seriously because the version I first encountered, which may be one of the earliest attested versions (Wiki says early 19th century), is very... I would say schlocky, and ends with a verse about cowboys "fling[ing] a handful of roses o'er the grave / With a prayer to Him who his soul will save". I strongly suspect it of being made up by some New England anonymous newspaper poet with a fake attribution as a traditional song, but I have no actual documentation for that opinion other than the general tone. Anyway, this cover is much shorter and chooses verses that work well with Johnny Cash's style, and is honestly a perfectly good cowboy song if you're not burdened with the knowledge of the excised verses.
* Bustopher Jones, Cats OST. I mainly acquired the Cats tracks for Terrence Mann (the original Broadway Rum Tum Tugger, if I recall), and haven't heard most of the others. This one is fairly unremarkable, not really grabbing me.
* Busy Doin' Nothin', Bing Crosby and some other people I forget. I think this is from the soundtrack of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which is... a Bing Crosby movie that exists? I remember very little else about it and am not sure why I have the song, but it's not a bad song. I tend to remove it from shuffle and then get disoriented when I can't find it later.
* Buxton, Tanglefoot. This one is too angry and depressing for me to want it on shuffle but it's a really damn good song, starts with a moment in 1800s Canada at the end of the Underground Railroad and uses it to talk about systemic racism in a way that the music contributes a lot more to than the actual lyrics.
* Bye-Bye My Rosieanna, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. A sea chantey used as the ending of a concert, recorded at Boston's Music Hall, with Pete encouraging the audience to sing along as he always did, and to keep singing as they go home. It's always fun to hear Pete work an audience, and I do love a singalong even though I don't have much opportunity to actually sing with my music these days.
* Bye-Yum-Pum-Pum, The Happiest Millionaire soundtrack. Did I already explain The Happiest Millionaire? Little-known '60s Disney live-action musical set in 1913-1914 with Fred MacMurray and Lesley Ann Warren, banger soundtrack (Sherman & Sherman seldom miss), very strange story. This song in particular is about college girls learning to tango, with a lot of poking fun at '20s ideas of attractiveness from a '60s perspective. I can never decide if I want it on shuffle or not.
* California, Stan Rogers. Riffing on the shape of a pining ballad to talk about how lonely it is that all his singer friends move to California to pursue their careers. Very cleverly done but it's sliding off my ear in a way I can't quite articulate; I had to look up the lyrics, which is very unusual for Stan Rogers.
* California Girls, The Beach Boys. I don't think I remember ever hearing this one before; probably my mother felt it was inappropriate for small children. It's not really grabbing me, I don't think.
* Call Me Maybe, Carly Rae Jepsen. I think I might have heard this on the muzak at some grocery store when it was everywhere but I've never listened to it properly. It's... not in a derogatory way, exactly, but it's so exactly the shape of a pop standard that I can see precisely why it went viral but also cannot distinguish any reason I should prefer it to Katy Perry's "Firework" or any other top pop standard? It's not grabbing me at all.
* Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound, Johnny Cash. A drifter's song, I like the tune but I don't love the lyrics as much. I have so much Johnny Cash I'll probably cut this one.
* Can't Help Falling In Love. For some reason I have a poppy early-aughts teen-band cover of this as well as the ballad-y Elvis version? It appears to be off the Lilo and Stitch soundtrack; perhaps it was a bonus track, because I know for a fact that the version which appears within the movie was the Elvis version, because that's why I've heard it at all. I don't actually know if I like it, either; it's one of the songs my mother put on every mix CD she made in a certain era, so I've heard it way too much. And I think the version she had was a different cover than this one, because this one is really slow and kind of soporific. I feel like I'm deleting *so* many songs? It makes me wonder if I should wait until I feel differently about them somehow.
* Can't Stop Falling, Great Big Sea. Still not enjoying their instrumentation. At least I finished the letter B.
* Candy Castles In the Sky, RCA All-Time Favorite Children's Songs. One of those songs where I know the album and really need to track down a higher-fidelity version, because this one was transferred to digital by me off a decaying cassette tape that had been copied from a library tape twenty years previously, and I didn't have a great grasp of optimal compression settings.
* Cannonball Blues aka Death of McKinley, Great American String Band. A bop, even if the singer can't pronounce Czolgosz. I have copies of this track named both "Cannonball Blues (Death of McKinley)" and "Death of McKinley (Cannonball Blues)", because sometimes that's how it goes.
* Canoe Song, Pete Seeger. You know, there's a Raffi (I think) canoe song that I have never been able to track down on any of his albums since I started collecting my music digitally; this is not that one. This is Pete singing a traditional Native canoe song with tom-tom accompaniment, which is fine for what it is.
* Canol Road, Stan Rogers. One of the types of song he did best, about cabin fever in the Yukon winter, but not something I care to have on shuffle.
* Cape St Mary's, Stan Rogers. This one always makes me wish I was a bass; I can only match the top half of his range and it's such a beautiful song. My tenor an octave above is my weakest vocal range too. :P Definitely keeping it though.
* Captain Wedderburn's Courtship, Tim Hart & Maddy Prior. There's something wonky with the stereo mixing on this track; it's shifting between my earbuds in a way that makes it very hard to follow the lyrics. It's a standard riddle song with the cherry without a stone and all, with the framing story being a maiden requiring the answers before she'll sleep with the man. Not grabbing me.
* Captain Jack and the Mermaid, Meg Davis. Ballad about a sailor's fiancée giving him permission to marry a mermaid for reasons? Doesn't grab me.
* Captain Jinks, Pete Seeger. I first encountered this song in the Little House books (I got a boxset for my fourth birthday which explains probably a lot about me), so I tend to expect it to have fiddle accompaniment, but this is actually a cappella? Pete didn't do a lot of a cappella work and it doesn't serve this song well. I might actually delete this despite not having another cover.
* Captain Kelly's Kitchen, Dropkick Murphys. This is SO LOUD. I don't think I'm going to enjoy the Dropkick Murphys. The instruments are very jangly (negative) and the vocals are very screamy.
* Captain Kidd, Great Big Sea. For some reason I've been under the impression that this song goes to a hymn tune of which I cannot currently call to mind the other lyrics -- it's not "How Can I Keep From Singing" but it's something in that range of Quaker traditional? -- but this cover is not to that tune. Great Big Sea's style works better for me on this one though because I already know all the lyrics and don't have to process them in realtime. Might keep it.
* Carol of the Birds, Mannheim Steamroller. I don't know the lyrics to this one and it's not really grabbing me.
* Casey Jones, Johnny Cash. I'm not super fond of the song because it lacks nuance about the historical events? But this is a great cover of it, I might keep it around. Johnny Cash was really damn good at folk song covers.
* Cead Mile Failte Romhat a Iosa, RTE Cor na nOg. (Through filename limitations, I have misplaced all of the diacritical marks that strictly belong in that title and artist.) Children's choir, Catholic hymn, "a hundred thousand welcomes to you, Jesus", I believe a traditional First Communion hymn? I haven't seen the liner notes in a good twenty-five years. Came from an RTÉ album called Faith of Our Fathers, the first CD my family ever owned (I think we won it in a church raffle or some such?), so when we later acquired a car with a CD player this was on constant repeat until we eventually acquired some other CDs.
* Check Mate, The Great Mouse Detective soundtrack. I do not know why I have all the instrumental tracks from this soundtrack; I'll probably trim it down to just keep the vocal numbers.
* Chicken Reel, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Did I already explain the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra? I don't remember. Their album "Down on the Farm" is very fun and they have way too many other albums I would probably also enjoy if I could ever get over the choice paralysis.
* Children Go Where I Send Thee, Johnny Cash. Spiritual that evolved from an English folk song I'm more familiar with; no strong feelings either way.
* Chim Chim Cher-ee, Mary Poppins soundtrack. I have three tracks by this title but there are two versions within the movie and I'm not entirely sure which ones I have, so I'm listening through all three to disambiguate. (The reprise that goes into "March Over the Rooftops" is one of my favorite tracks of all time; I imprinted so hard on the recitative bit about "things half in shadow and halfway in light", and the glass matte painting by Peter Ellenshaw that later illustrates it. I should watch this movie again.)
* Circles, Pete Seeger. I feel like I don't entirely understand this song? *googles* Ah, it's by Harry Chapin, so it's allusive in a different way than I'm used to from Pete. It sounds like this recording was made after Harry Chapin died. The sound balance isn't great, it's very very quiet to the point that my phone's volume control is trying to warn me I shouldn't have my earbuds this close to max. Might not keep it around.
* City Hall, Vienna Teng. I never understand what any of Vienna Teng's songs are on about until they're explained to me, so this one is the only one I have. She has a nice voice and the instrumentation isn't too jarring. The song itself is about a gay couple roadtripping to get married on one of those days early in the history of legalization where people were expecting the law to get repealed first thing Monday morning so they were rushing to get married as fast as possible over the weekend. I haven't listened to it in probably ten years and I don't think I'd actually registered what it was about when I first acquired it from Kat (I was in a fugue state for pretty much that whole year); I find myself tearing up. Not sure it belongs on shuffle but it's a very pretty, very meaningful song.
* City of New Orleans, John Denver. This might be my favorite of John Denver's songs that I've heard? I kind of judge his more explicitly "country" work because he had to learn a country twang to work in the genre and to my ear it's a bit jarringly fake in spots, but this one... I just love everything about it.
* Cliffs of Baccalieu, Stan Rogers. Less depressing than it could be? XD I like it, honestly; I really like songs with geography in.
* Climb Every Mountain, The Sound of Music soundtrack. One of the only alto songs I'm aware of in a Broadway musical, so I'm very attached to it as something that's actually in my range and not written by George Frederick Handel. (I appreciate the hell out of Handel for knowing what to do with an alto but occasionally one wants something from this century.) I'm losing the top of my alto range as my baritone develops, so this one no longer sits fully in my comfortable range, but I'm still very fond of it. I also love the message, much more than anything else in The Sound of Music.look when your given name is Maria and your mother doesn't much like you...
* Closer to the Ocean, Tanglefoot. Pretty tune, not really impressed by the lyrics; it kind of snags me as not really fitting the shape of the folk songs it's mimicking? That's a problem I have with several of their pieces. It's not trying to do a subversion but it's also not succeeding at playing it straight.
* Coal Tattoo, Kathy Mattea. This one I really like. It's got that driving rhythm and it does fit the shape of a traditional folk song even though it was apparently written in 1963 by one Billy Edd Wheeler, whose work I should probably look more into.
* Cocaine Blues, Johnny Cash. I have tracks labeled from two different albums but they appear to be the same live performance? I'm not sure if I like either one.
* Colonial Boy, Dublin Over. I'm not sure if I like the singer's voice? It has a brassy edge to it that seems like it would fit better in a more yowly arrangement, somehow.
* Columbia the Gem of the Ocean. I have tracks *labeled* as two instrumental covers, Brentwood and Columbia River, as with so many of my traditional US patriotic songs... but bafflingly, as far as I can tell, they appear to be the same or almost identical track, just one has the beginning either lopped off or reorchestrated? I *think* the very first bits are different, but there are definitely spots where the twiddles are identical. I'm so confused. No wonder I could never develop a solid opinion on these two albums! The Brentwood one is about half the length, but I do not have the ear to tell where it cuts or where Columbia repeats. What the fuck, man.
* Come All Ye Tonguers, Jill King and Bob Webb. Traditional whaler's song, angry mid-voyage edition, a cappella cover. No strong feelings.
* Come By the Hills, Celtic Thunder. One of my sisters got into Celtic Thunder at some point so what I have of their discography is a very specific cross section of the band's composition. This one is sung by Damian McGinty; it looks like the album I have is "Celtic Thunder: The Show", which was a PBS special. It's a very pretty song.
* Comin' Down the Chimney, Raffi. I honestly do not recognize this one; probably my mother didn't record it off the library tape when I was a kid because we didn't do Santa. I believe I have a Raffi cover of Comin' Round the Mountain that I like better than this anyway.
* Comin' Thro' the Rye, Tour of Ireland. Very American-sounding singer with accordion backing. I like the energy though.
* Comin' Thro' the Rye / I Belong to Glasgow, The Jim Campbell Band. Instrumental fiddle cover with traditional Celtic backing instruments. My favorite cover of I Belong to Glasgow is off Ballad to Scotland, the VHS tape I've never tracked down on YouTube or elsewhere online, but this one is unobjectionable.
* Coming of the Roads, Kathy Mattea. It's a pretty song but I'm not really about it.
* Concerning Hobbits, Howard Shore. I like it, probably because I'm used to it from many mix CDs in my late teens where it was a standard of our family's.
* Connemara Cradle Song, Frank Patterson. This is a lullaby I haven't heard elsewhere with these lyrics, to the tune of Down in the Valley, very pretty, I think backed by his wife Eily O'Grady's Irish harp orchestra?
(The only cover of Down in the Valley that I appear to possess is by Johnny Cash. That should be an experience.)
* Consequence Free, Great Big Sea. Very odd song, don't know that I like it.
* Conversation with a Mule, Great American String Band. Depression-era song about farming that for some reason I associate with Tom Waits? Not my favorite.
* Cool Water, Johnny Cash. I've never heard the original Sons of the Pioneers version. Johnny Cash handles it well but I feel like it slightly shows that it was written for a very different set of voices?
* Cotton Fields, Johnny Cash. I really like this rendition of this one.
* Cotton-Eyed Joe, Great American String Band. I have this one subtitled as "Only Slightly Slower Instrumental", to differentiate it from some of the other fiddle covers on this album. Not my favorite out of them, but I may keep it around for a bit.
* Country Boy, Johnny Cash. This one has a lot harder rock instrumentation than I prefer.
* Country Roads, Take Me Home; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. I seem to have a duplicate of this under the title Take Me Home Country Roads, which I believe is the official one? Also either two different John Denver versions or the same one twice.
* Country Trash, Johnny Cash. I absolutely adore this one, not least because I never heard it before I got this music collection; my mother was always pearl-clutchingly horrified at the thought that anyone might take us for "white trash", and would thoroughly hate this song.
* Coventry Carol, Mannheim Steamroller. This is the one to which the lyrics start "Lullay, thou little tiny child". It's not my favorite of their work, too slow and simple?
* Crazy Old Soldier, Johnny Cash with Ray Charles. Good song, maybe not on shuffle.
* Cristo Ya Nació, Pete Seeger. Christmas carol in Spanish (with a political third verse) that he has somehow taught the audience to sing the whole chorus to. This album is a concert with his little spoken introductions to each song, but the intros are broken out into their own tracks; I've always meant to go in and stitch them back together in Audacity, but I've never gotten around to it.
* Crown Him With Many Crowns, Jim Brickman. I don't remember what CD this is off of but it's a very pretty orchestral and choral cover that I enjoy.
* Crusader, John Phillip Sousa. I have an album of I believe twelve Sousa marches and I cannot tell most of them apart for shit, but at least they're labeled with names so I don't have another Big Band Hits situation. This is the one where the tune bounces back and forth between high and low instruments in a sort of dueling-trumpets manner at one point.
* Cry Cry Cry, Johnny Cash. Perfectly cromulent Johnny Cash song, not grabbing me.
* Custer, Johnny Cash. Also not grabbing me.
* Czardas / The Mason's Apron, Geraldine O'Grady and Oonagh Keogh (not the stockbroker) with introduction by Frank Patterson. Violin medley. Not sure how I feel about it, probably keep it around for a bit.
* Daddy Sang Bass, Johnny Cash. One of my older favorites.
* Dance Like Flames, Tanglefoot. I don't think I quite like the music somehow? And the lyrics don't make up for it. It's a pining song from the point of view of a voyageur, partly in French which is a neat twist I guess?
* Dance of the Cucumber, VeggieTales. Silly Songs with Larry has done so many different styles of nonsense over the years. I don't think I know any of the backstory for this one specifically.
* Daniel In the Lion's Den, Raffi. Traditional song, not quite fond of the harmonica backing line.
* Danny Boy. How do I have eight versions of Danny Boy. Three by Frank Patterson (these may be the same track on three different albums, I'll have to check), one bagpipe cover by Rob Crabtree, one by Johnny Cash of all people, one by Dublin Over, one from It's a Great Day For the Irish (did I explain It's a Great Day For the Irish? I think so, right?), and one by John Barrowman.
Okay, the Frank Patterson is one studio version and two copies of the same live concert track; I feel like his breath control was uncharacteristically weak on the studio cover, so the live concert cover is the version I'll be keeping there. I don't like the Rob Crabtree cover, it doesn't have nearly as many twiddles as I expect a bagpipe cover to. Also it's five minutes long and five minutes of Danny Boy on the bagpipe is a little much even for me. (It does go into something more skirly for the last minute and change but still.)
I can't say I ever recall hearing Johnny Cash backed by an organ before, but it works, I guess? I mean, Johnny Cash did very few things that just didn't work. He does actually sing the tune throughout rather than doing his spoken word thing, and that part really works. The Dublin Over cover is the only one by a female singer, and I'd like to like it because my first recollection of the song was my mother singing it at the piano, but something about the harmony jars me a bit; I think there's a drum just on the edge of hearing that's bothering me. The Great Day cover sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a well, very... blurry? Can audio be blurry? And I just don't like most of John Barrowman's music tracks I have for some reason. This one has a very clangy piano backing and he changes some of the lines in ways that make it scan less well, plus he just has that very... musical theatre voice? Danny Boy does not need to be belted.
Next up I have four versions of Dark As a Dungeon, and I don't think I have the energy to compare all those tonight. But I got all the way through the letter C and into D, and the total playlist length stands at 90.5 hours with 8 hours of that being music I've reviewed and kept... progress?
* Bridge Over Troubled Water. I have the Simon & Garfunkel version and a Johnny Cash version. The Simon & Garfunkel is one of the songs that lived on my first iPod Shuffle during my first year at college, when I was perpetually exhausted and failing to recover from what the Victorians would have called a nervous breakdown. My collection during that time became very... focused on songs that give me the energy to keep going when I can't anymore (The Mary Ellen Carter being the preeminent example of the genre, of course). The Johnny Cash version is very Johnny Cash but I think just can't quite stand up to the other, and I'm hitting a point where I'm frustrated with how much music I have here and willing to cut anything that doesn't 100% spark joy.
* Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella; Mannheim Steamroller. I think I have a duplicate of this under the French title as well. I wish I could retitle tracks within VLC or at least in my phone's My Files app, but I can't seem to find a way. That would make tracking down and eliminating duplicates so much easier; as it stands, I'm going to have to pull out the SD card and make the changes on my laptop every time I want to tweak the metadata at all, which is deeply inconvenient. Anyway this is a light instrumental cover on... flute and harp, I think? I really like all of the arrangements on A Mannheim Steamroller Christmas, which is their only album I've got; I should look into their other work.
* Brown Girl In the Ring, Raffi. This is a traditional children's song and dance from the West Indies, similar to Ring Around a Rosy. I don't think I've ever heard any of the more famous versions of this song, but I do love some calypso rhythm.
* Brown-Eyed Handsome Man, Johnny Cash. I have really complicated feelings about this song because it's a crux of how fucking weird my upbringing was; I'd forgotten it existed until Soph gave me her set of Johnny Cash discography, but I remember hearing it when I was very tiny, I would say a toddler, before it was removed from the regular rotation, and knowing my parents' relationship I am 99.9% sure that it was removed because my (blue-eyed) father chose to be jealous as one of those strange irrational little hills to die on which high-control relationships use to keep their victims in line. The song itself is a bop but I'm not sure if I can separate it from that whole context.
* Buffalo Gals, Great American String Band. Fun fiddle cover, like most of the folk songs from this album; maybe a few more extraneous twiddles than I really prefer, but it's a good cheering-up track anyway.
* Burning Love, Elvis Presley. Like a lot of Elvis songs, I'm more familiar with this as a meme quote than an actual song. The instrumentation is harder rock than I prefer; probably won't keep it around.
* Bury Me Beneath the Willow, Great American String Band. I'm pretty sure I know this tune from somewhere else, possibly a hymn, which is a constant experience when I listen to folk songs while not having a great ear for a melody. This one has sung lyrics, I have no idea by what singer; he has a broad country twang in a solid tenor. I have little sympathy for pining songs in general though unless they're something special, I might not keep it around.
* Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, Johnny Cash. I have a lot of trouble taking this song seriously because the version I first encountered, which may be one of the earliest attested versions (Wiki says early 19th century), is very... I would say schlocky, and ends with a verse about cowboys "fling[ing] a handful of roses o'er the grave / With a prayer to Him who his soul will save". I strongly suspect it of being made up by some New England anonymous newspaper poet with a fake attribution as a traditional song, but I have no actual documentation for that opinion other than the general tone. Anyway, this cover is much shorter and chooses verses that work well with Johnny Cash's style, and is honestly a perfectly good cowboy song if you're not burdened with the knowledge of the excised verses.
* Bustopher Jones, Cats OST. I mainly acquired the Cats tracks for Terrence Mann (the original Broadway Rum Tum Tugger, if I recall), and haven't heard most of the others. This one is fairly unremarkable, not really grabbing me.
* Busy Doin' Nothin', Bing Crosby and some other people I forget. I think this is from the soundtrack of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which is... a Bing Crosby movie that exists? I remember very little else about it and am not sure why I have the song, but it's not a bad song. I tend to remove it from shuffle and then get disoriented when I can't find it later.
* Buxton, Tanglefoot. This one is too angry and depressing for me to want it on shuffle but it's a really damn good song, starts with a moment in 1800s Canada at the end of the Underground Railroad and uses it to talk about systemic racism in a way that the music contributes a lot more to than the actual lyrics.
* Bye-Bye My Rosieanna, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. A sea chantey used as the ending of a concert, recorded at Boston's Music Hall, with Pete encouraging the audience to sing along as he always did, and to keep singing as they go home. It's always fun to hear Pete work an audience, and I do love a singalong even though I don't have much opportunity to actually sing with my music these days.
* Bye-Yum-Pum-Pum, The Happiest Millionaire soundtrack. Did I already explain The Happiest Millionaire? Little-known '60s Disney live-action musical set in 1913-1914 with Fred MacMurray and Lesley Ann Warren, banger soundtrack (Sherman & Sherman seldom miss), very strange story. This song in particular is about college girls learning to tango, with a lot of poking fun at '20s ideas of attractiveness from a '60s perspective. I can never decide if I want it on shuffle or not.
* California, Stan Rogers. Riffing on the shape of a pining ballad to talk about how lonely it is that all his singer friends move to California to pursue their careers. Very cleverly done but it's sliding off my ear in a way I can't quite articulate; I had to look up the lyrics, which is very unusual for Stan Rogers.
* California Girls, The Beach Boys. I don't think I remember ever hearing this one before; probably my mother felt it was inappropriate for small children. It's not really grabbing me, I don't think.
* Call Me Maybe, Carly Rae Jepsen. I think I might have heard this on the muzak at some grocery store when it was everywhere but I've never listened to it properly. It's... not in a derogatory way, exactly, but it's so exactly the shape of a pop standard that I can see precisely why it went viral but also cannot distinguish any reason I should prefer it to Katy Perry's "Firework" or any other top pop standard? It's not grabbing me at all.
* Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound, Johnny Cash. A drifter's song, I like the tune but I don't love the lyrics as much. I have so much Johnny Cash I'll probably cut this one.
* Can't Help Falling In Love. For some reason I have a poppy early-aughts teen-band cover of this as well as the ballad-y Elvis version? It appears to be off the Lilo and Stitch soundtrack; perhaps it was a bonus track, because I know for a fact that the version which appears within the movie was the Elvis version, because that's why I've heard it at all. I don't actually know if I like it, either; it's one of the songs my mother put on every mix CD she made in a certain era, so I've heard it way too much. And I think the version she had was a different cover than this one, because this one is really slow and kind of soporific. I feel like I'm deleting *so* many songs? It makes me wonder if I should wait until I feel differently about them somehow.
* Can't Stop Falling, Great Big Sea. Still not enjoying their instrumentation. At least I finished the letter B.
* Candy Castles In the Sky, RCA All-Time Favorite Children's Songs. One of those songs where I know the album and really need to track down a higher-fidelity version, because this one was transferred to digital by me off a decaying cassette tape that had been copied from a library tape twenty years previously, and I didn't have a great grasp of optimal compression settings.
* Cannonball Blues aka Death of McKinley, Great American String Band. A bop, even if the singer can't pronounce Czolgosz. I have copies of this track named both "Cannonball Blues (Death of McKinley)" and "Death of McKinley (Cannonball Blues)", because sometimes that's how it goes.
* Canoe Song, Pete Seeger. You know, there's a Raffi (I think) canoe song that I have never been able to track down on any of his albums since I started collecting my music digitally; this is not that one. This is Pete singing a traditional Native canoe song with tom-tom accompaniment, which is fine for what it is.
* Canol Road, Stan Rogers. One of the types of song he did best, about cabin fever in the Yukon winter, but not something I care to have on shuffle.
* Cape St Mary's, Stan Rogers. This one always makes me wish I was a bass; I can only match the top half of his range and it's such a beautiful song. My tenor an octave above is my weakest vocal range too. :P Definitely keeping it though.
* Captain Wedderburn's Courtship, Tim Hart & Maddy Prior. There's something wonky with the stereo mixing on this track; it's shifting between my earbuds in a way that makes it very hard to follow the lyrics. It's a standard riddle song with the cherry without a stone and all, with the framing story being a maiden requiring the answers before she'll sleep with the man. Not grabbing me.
* Captain Jack and the Mermaid, Meg Davis. Ballad about a sailor's fiancée giving him permission to marry a mermaid for reasons? Doesn't grab me.
* Captain Jinks, Pete Seeger. I first encountered this song in the Little House books (I got a boxset for my fourth birthday which explains probably a lot about me), so I tend to expect it to have fiddle accompaniment, but this is actually a cappella? Pete didn't do a lot of a cappella work and it doesn't serve this song well. I might actually delete this despite not having another cover.
* Captain Kelly's Kitchen, Dropkick Murphys. This is SO LOUD. I don't think I'm going to enjoy the Dropkick Murphys. The instruments are very jangly (negative) and the vocals are very screamy.
* Captain Kidd, Great Big Sea. For some reason I've been under the impression that this song goes to a hymn tune of which I cannot currently call to mind the other lyrics -- it's not "How Can I Keep From Singing" but it's something in that range of Quaker traditional? -- but this cover is not to that tune. Great Big Sea's style works better for me on this one though because I already know all the lyrics and don't have to process them in realtime. Might keep it.
* Carol of the Birds, Mannheim Steamroller. I don't know the lyrics to this one and it's not really grabbing me.
* Casey Jones, Johnny Cash. I'm not super fond of the song because it lacks nuance about the historical events? But this is a great cover of it, I might keep it around. Johnny Cash was really damn good at folk song covers.
* Cead Mile Failte Romhat a Iosa, RTE Cor na nOg. (Through filename limitations, I have misplaced all of the diacritical marks that strictly belong in that title and artist.) Children's choir, Catholic hymn, "a hundred thousand welcomes to you, Jesus", I believe a traditional First Communion hymn? I haven't seen the liner notes in a good twenty-five years. Came from an RTÉ album called Faith of Our Fathers, the first CD my family ever owned (I think we won it in a church raffle or some such?), so when we later acquired a car with a CD player this was on constant repeat until we eventually acquired some other CDs.
* Check Mate, The Great Mouse Detective soundtrack. I do not know why I have all the instrumental tracks from this soundtrack; I'll probably trim it down to just keep the vocal numbers.
* Chicken Reel, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Did I already explain the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra? I don't remember. Their album "Down on the Farm" is very fun and they have way too many other albums I would probably also enjoy if I could ever get over the choice paralysis.
* Children Go Where I Send Thee, Johnny Cash. Spiritual that evolved from an English folk song I'm more familiar with; no strong feelings either way.
* Chim Chim Cher-ee, Mary Poppins soundtrack. I have three tracks by this title but there are two versions within the movie and I'm not entirely sure which ones I have, so I'm listening through all three to disambiguate. (The reprise that goes into "March Over the Rooftops" is one of my favorite tracks of all time; I imprinted so hard on the recitative bit about "things half in shadow and halfway in light", and the glass matte painting by Peter Ellenshaw that later illustrates it. I should watch this movie again.)
* Circles, Pete Seeger. I feel like I don't entirely understand this song? *googles* Ah, it's by Harry Chapin, so it's allusive in a different way than I'm used to from Pete. It sounds like this recording was made after Harry Chapin died. The sound balance isn't great, it's very very quiet to the point that my phone's volume control is trying to warn me I shouldn't have my earbuds this close to max. Might not keep it around.
* City Hall, Vienna Teng. I never understand what any of Vienna Teng's songs are on about until they're explained to me, so this one is the only one I have. She has a nice voice and the instrumentation isn't too jarring. The song itself is about a gay couple roadtripping to get married on one of those days early in the history of legalization where people were expecting the law to get repealed first thing Monday morning so they were rushing to get married as fast as possible over the weekend. I haven't listened to it in probably ten years and I don't think I'd actually registered what it was about when I first acquired it from Kat (I was in a fugue state for pretty much that whole year); I find myself tearing up. Not sure it belongs on shuffle but it's a very pretty, very meaningful song.
* City of New Orleans, John Denver. This might be my favorite of John Denver's songs that I've heard? I kind of judge his more explicitly "country" work because he had to learn a country twang to work in the genre and to my ear it's a bit jarringly fake in spots, but this one... I just love everything about it.
* Cliffs of Baccalieu, Stan Rogers. Less depressing than it could be? XD I like it, honestly; I really like songs with geography in.
* Climb Every Mountain, The Sound of Music soundtrack. One of the only alto songs I'm aware of in a Broadway musical, so I'm very attached to it as something that's actually in my range and not written by George Frederick Handel. (I appreciate the hell out of Handel for knowing what to do with an alto but occasionally one wants something from this century.) I'm losing the top of my alto range as my baritone develops, so this one no longer sits fully in my comfortable range, but I'm still very fond of it. I also love the message, much more than anything else in The Sound of Music.
* Closer to the Ocean, Tanglefoot. Pretty tune, not really impressed by the lyrics; it kind of snags me as not really fitting the shape of the folk songs it's mimicking? That's a problem I have with several of their pieces. It's not trying to do a subversion but it's also not succeeding at playing it straight.
* Coal Tattoo, Kathy Mattea. This one I really like. It's got that driving rhythm and it does fit the shape of a traditional folk song even though it was apparently written in 1963 by one Billy Edd Wheeler, whose work I should probably look more into.
* Cocaine Blues, Johnny Cash. I have tracks labeled from two different albums but they appear to be the same live performance? I'm not sure if I like either one.
* Colonial Boy, Dublin Over. I'm not sure if I like the singer's voice? It has a brassy edge to it that seems like it would fit better in a more yowly arrangement, somehow.
* Columbia the Gem of the Ocean. I have tracks *labeled* as two instrumental covers, Brentwood and Columbia River, as with so many of my traditional US patriotic songs... but bafflingly, as far as I can tell, they appear to be the same or almost identical track, just one has the beginning either lopped off or reorchestrated? I *think* the very first bits are different, but there are definitely spots where the twiddles are identical. I'm so confused. No wonder I could never develop a solid opinion on these two albums! The Brentwood one is about half the length, but I do not have the ear to tell where it cuts or where Columbia repeats. What the fuck, man.
* Come All Ye Tonguers, Jill King and Bob Webb. Traditional whaler's song, angry mid-voyage edition, a cappella cover. No strong feelings.
* Come By the Hills, Celtic Thunder. One of my sisters got into Celtic Thunder at some point so what I have of their discography is a very specific cross section of the band's composition. This one is sung by Damian McGinty; it looks like the album I have is "Celtic Thunder: The Show", which was a PBS special. It's a very pretty song.
* Comin' Down the Chimney, Raffi. I honestly do not recognize this one; probably my mother didn't record it off the library tape when I was a kid because we didn't do Santa. I believe I have a Raffi cover of Comin' Round the Mountain that I like better than this anyway.
* Comin' Thro' the Rye, Tour of Ireland. Very American-sounding singer with accordion backing. I like the energy though.
* Comin' Thro' the Rye / I Belong to Glasgow, The Jim Campbell Band. Instrumental fiddle cover with traditional Celtic backing instruments. My favorite cover of I Belong to Glasgow is off Ballad to Scotland, the VHS tape I've never tracked down on YouTube or elsewhere online, but this one is unobjectionable.
* Coming of the Roads, Kathy Mattea. It's a pretty song but I'm not really about it.
* Concerning Hobbits, Howard Shore. I like it, probably because I'm used to it from many mix CDs in my late teens where it was a standard of our family's.
* Connemara Cradle Song, Frank Patterson. This is a lullaby I haven't heard elsewhere with these lyrics, to the tune of Down in the Valley, very pretty, I think backed by his wife Eily O'Grady's Irish harp orchestra?
(The only cover of Down in the Valley that I appear to possess is by Johnny Cash. That should be an experience.)
* Consequence Free, Great Big Sea. Very odd song, don't know that I like it.
* Conversation with a Mule, Great American String Band. Depression-era song about farming that for some reason I associate with Tom Waits? Not my favorite.
* Cool Water, Johnny Cash. I've never heard the original Sons of the Pioneers version. Johnny Cash handles it well but I feel like it slightly shows that it was written for a very different set of voices?
* Cotton Fields, Johnny Cash. I really like this rendition of this one.
* Cotton-Eyed Joe, Great American String Band. I have this one subtitled as "Only Slightly Slower Instrumental", to differentiate it from some of the other fiddle covers on this album. Not my favorite out of them, but I may keep it around for a bit.
* Country Boy, Johnny Cash. This one has a lot harder rock instrumentation than I prefer.
* Country Roads, Take Me Home; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. I seem to have a duplicate of this under the title Take Me Home Country Roads, which I believe is the official one? Also either two different John Denver versions or the same one twice.
* Country Trash, Johnny Cash. I absolutely adore this one, not least because I never heard it before I got this music collection; my mother was always pearl-clutchingly horrified at the thought that anyone might take us for "white trash", and would thoroughly hate this song.
* Coventry Carol, Mannheim Steamroller. This is the one to which the lyrics start "Lullay, thou little tiny child". It's not my favorite of their work, too slow and simple?
* Crazy Old Soldier, Johnny Cash with Ray Charles. Good song, maybe not on shuffle.
* Cristo Ya Nació, Pete Seeger. Christmas carol in Spanish (with a political third verse) that he has somehow taught the audience to sing the whole chorus to. This album is a concert with his little spoken introductions to each song, but the intros are broken out into their own tracks; I've always meant to go in and stitch them back together in Audacity, but I've never gotten around to it.
* Crown Him With Many Crowns, Jim Brickman. I don't remember what CD this is off of but it's a very pretty orchestral and choral cover that I enjoy.
* Crusader, John Phillip Sousa. I have an album of I believe twelve Sousa marches and I cannot tell most of them apart for shit, but at least they're labeled with names so I don't have another Big Band Hits situation. This is the one where the tune bounces back and forth between high and low instruments in a sort of dueling-trumpets manner at one point.
* Cry Cry Cry, Johnny Cash. Perfectly cromulent Johnny Cash song, not grabbing me.
* Custer, Johnny Cash. Also not grabbing me.
* Czardas / The Mason's Apron, Geraldine O'Grady and Oonagh Keogh (not the stockbroker) with introduction by Frank Patterson. Violin medley. Not sure how I feel about it, probably keep it around for a bit.
* Daddy Sang Bass, Johnny Cash. One of my older favorites.
* Dance Like Flames, Tanglefoot. I don't think I quite like the music somehow? And the lyrics don't make up for it. It's a pining song from the point of view of a voyageur, partly in French which is a neat twist I guess?
* Dance of the Cucumber, VeggieTales. Silly Songs with Larry has done so many different styles of nonsense over the years. I don't think I know any of the backstory for this one specifically.
* Daniel In the Lion's Den, Raffi. Traditional song, not quite fond of the harmonica backing line.
* Danny Boy. How do I have eight versions of Danny Boy. Three by Frank Patterson (these may be the same track on three different albums, I'll have to check), one bagpipe cover by Rob Crabtree, one by Johnny Cash of all people, one by Dublin Over, one from It's a Great Day For the Irish (did I explain It's a Great Day For the Irish? I think so, right?), and one by John Barrowman.
Okay, the Frank Patterson is one studio version and two copies of the same live concert track; I feel like his breath control was uncharacteristically weak on the studio cover, so the live concert cover is the version I'll be keeping there. I don't like the Rob Crabtree cover, it doesn't have nearly as many twiddles as I expect a bagpipe cover to. Also it's five minutes long and five minutes of Danny Boy on the bagpipe is a little much even for me. (It does go into something more skirly for the last minute and change but still.)
I can't say I ever recall hearing Johnny Cash backed by an organ before, but it works, I guess? I mean, Johnny Cash did very few things that just didn't work. He does actually sing the tune throughout rather than doing his spoken word thing, and that part really works. The Dublin Over cover is the only one by a female singer, and I'd like to like it because my first recollection of the song was my mother singing it at the piano, but something about the harmony jars me a bit; I think there's a drum just on the edge of hearing that's bothering me. The Great Day cover sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a well, very... blurry? Can audio be blurry? And I just don't like most of John Barrowman's music tracks I have for some reason. This one has a very clangy piano backing and he changes some of the lines in ways that make it scan less well, plus he just has that very... musical theatre voice? Danny Boy does not need to be belted.
Next up I have four versions of Dark As a Dungeon, and I don't think I have the energy to compare all those tonight. But I got all the way through the letter C and into D, and the total playlist length stands at 90.5 hours with 8 hours of that being music I've reviewed and kept... progress?
no subject
Date: 2026-02-18 06:28 am (UTC)I haven't seen it since elementary school and could not in fact tell you anything about the plot, but I remember Tommy Steele trying to get an alligator back into the conservatory.
Captain Kelly's Kitchen, Dropkick Murphys. This is SO LOUD. I don't think I'm going to enjoy the Dropkick Murphys. The instruments are very jangly (negative) and the vocals are very screamy.
I am extremely fond of the Dropkick Murphys and especially their insistence that nothing is more punk than pro-labor protest music, but the Al Barr era is very hardcore scream, Ken Casey is still very rough-voiced, and instrumentally they have always inclined toward a wall of noise usually containing at least two guitars, some bagpipes, a tin whistle, and at least the chance of a banjo. Their debt to the Pogues is audible from space. It may still have too much chug and percussion for your listening actual pleasure, but I will submit for your consideration their recent version of Ewan MacColl's "School Days Over," guest-starring Billy Bragg. [edit] Original to be found at 5:12 of Side 1 of The Big Hewer (1961).
Captain Kidd, Great Big Sea. For some reason I've been under the impression that this song goes to a hymn tune of which I cannot currently call to mind the other lyrics -- it's not "How Can I Keep From Singing" but it's something in that range of Quaker traditional? -- but this cover is not to that tune.
I know best the version by Waterson:Carthy, which is very close to the shape-note "Wondrous Love." You can hear the likeness even more closely in this instrumental by Hesperus. I've heard the major-key tune used by Great Big Sea—Jeff and Gerret Warner performed it—but I don't like it as well.
Casey Jones, Johnny Cash. I'm not super fond of the song because it lacks nuance about the historical events? But this is a great cover of it, I might keep it around. Johnny Cash was really damn good at folk song covers.
Thanks to Pete Seeger, I learned first the parody "Casey Jones, the Union Scab" which sort of screwed me for ever learning the original folk song.
City of New Orleans, John Denver.
I will have to listen to his version. I learned it from Arlo Guthrie and later worked my way around to hearing the original by Steve Goodman, but somehow I missed Denver.
Connemara Cradle Song, Frank Patterson. This is a lullaby I haven't heard elsewhere with these lyrics, to the tune of Down in the Valley, very pretty, I think backed by his wife Eily O'Grady's Irish harp orchestra?
I learned this one from Gordon Bok! I'm not sure I've ever heard another version. (If you are not familiar with Gordon Bok, you may like him. Maritime, specifically Downeaster bass-baritone with an odd kind of woodwind timbre as opposed to the hard edge you find on a lot of shantymen. Mostly his own compositions and the songs of other folk singers, although also some trad. hence this comment. His Peter Kagan and the Wind (1971) was one of the albums I used to fall asleep to as a child along with Greg Brown's The Iowa Waltz (1981) and, once it came into existence, the eponymous Highwayman (1985).)
Danny Boy. How do I have eight versions of Danny Boy.
I've got one by Carol Noonan as part of her anti-war album Somebody's Darling (2004) and actually tend to skip it because of the arrangement, so I'll check out Frank Patterson, thanks.