Gonna see the river manGonna tell him all I canAbout the planFor lilac timeIf he tells me all he knows'Bout the way his river flowsAnd all night showsIn summertime
I asked Martin what we were listening to, and he said "River Man" from Nick Drakes's album 'Five Leaves Left'.
A few days later I was shopping in the city center, and went to my favorite record shop in Bristol that had listening booths, so you could preview albums. There I asked if they had 'Five Leaves Left', and the sales person told me they also had Nick's albums, 'Pink Moon' and 'Bryter Layter'. I left with all three.
Over the years, all three records wore out, and cassette tapes I made of them became unspooled, and unceremoniously thrown out. Back then, I couldn't find Nick Drake records in New York, most people hadn't even heard of him, and over time I had pretty much forgotten about Nick.
Fast-forward to 2000, at work, a friend asked, "Have you seen the new Volkswagen commercial? It has a really cool song, something about a pink moon". I told her it sounds like a song called 'Pink Moon' by Nick Drake from the early 1970s.
A few months later, 'Pink Moon', 'Five Leaves Left' and 'Bryter Layter' became available on CD.
Today's freeload, is all three of Nick's Albums, all with Hi-Res 24bit/192kHz remastering, and are a nice sonic upgrade, or just a nice introduction to the music of Nick Drake.
For the freeload, tell us about the favorite pet you ever had.
Around 2010, I was going through a rough time after having another failed relationship. Friend worked at the local SPCA and asked me to help during the holiday season when they had an influx of dogs up for adoption. They had a special promotional event, and it worked well, with there being about 2-3 dogs left when it ended. He insisted that I take one of the remaining ones, and I reluctantly grabbed the much older one, that was ill (heartworms), matted, and very shy. Figured "Max" would only last another 2-3 months and I would give him a great send off without having any real emotional attachment. As with most things, I was dead wrong - Max, a 10 year old Schnauzer, kicked heartworms, when cleaned was absolutely gorgeous, friendliest canine ever, and lived to 21. I was absolutely devastated when I had to have him put down; he was fine physically, but mentally was in an advanced state of canine Alzheimer's, and would walk straight into a wall, and be completely helpless as to what to do. The last few years of his life, he had a daily walk routine that included passing a local coffee shop, where the regular patrons had gotten to know him, and always had treats ready. After he died, they had a local artist paint his portrait and it hung in the shop until I left for Spain - it now hangs on our breakfast nook wall.
ReplyDeleteThat's a very touching and heartwarming story.
DeleteThese are three wonderful albums.
ReplyDeleteThe John Martyn tune Solid Air was written about Nick Drake. John and Beverly Martyn were friends of his.
The John Martyn tune Solid Air, if you don’t know it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UikPQOaJpfU
Thanks, Bambi, I had never heard Solid Air before.
DeleteNever heard Solid Air? If there's other Martyn songs/albums you never heard, you need to address this immediately! Bless The Weather, Solid Air, and Inside Out form the Core Trio, but extending outward is absolutely worthwhile. I really rate his electric albums with Phil Collins, Glorious Fool and Grace And Danger.
DeleteFT3
DeleteSo much music....so little time.
DeleteIf you can find time for a six-disc Mosaic set, Babs, you can find time for John Martyn. I think you'd love him to bits in a where-have-you-been-all-my-life way. Probably the finest UK singer-songwriter, and certainly the least bothered about betraying his folkie roots.
DeleteFT3
As your taste in music is impeccable, I will explore John Martyn.
DeleteGo for the Core Trio first - there are some very worthwhile deluxe editions with extra tracks. Inside Out is his jazziest, most experimental album. You really can't go wrong, and I can see him going down at storm with your yenta brunch circle!
DeleteFT3
I agree with FT3, Babs you will love John Martyn. I would also recommend One World. If you can find the Glastonbury 1985(?) boot performance that is a bit of a cracker too.
DeleteLet me digest some John Martyn records, and I'll do a feature on the man.
DeleteIt's not easy, being the token Shiksa, in a yenta brunch circle.
!
DeleteHa Ha,
ReplyDeleteMy favourite pet is staring up from under my desk (he treats it as his kennel) in expectation of me telling him its time to go out in the garden. An 8 year old Golden Labrador named "Jethro" (after the NCIS character). Sadly we lost his brother ("Leroy") 5 years ago thanks to our former Vet.
I've had dogs all my life, mainly Labradors or Labrador crosses, but Jethro is the one I've probably had the closest relationship with not least because there has not been a day since he was 6 weeks old that we've been apart and as a result he knows me probably better than the wife does and as such we've developed a level of communication I've not had with an animal before (eg he tells me through his actions when he wants to finish his ball game each day).
Not satisfied with playing with one ball he manages to get two in his mouth so we have to use two for his game. He's also probably just about the best natured dog and certainly the best behaved we've had (eg he never had a chewing stage).
He's an excellent retriever as well and will happily get the post or my shoes and other things when requested (for a reward of course). He even brought us a dead grey squirrel yesterday. I don't think he caused its death but I suspect he was well pleased given the number he's chased over the years only to see disappear up a tree. The good thing was he brought it to us rather than doing something less desirable with it (like turning it into a chew toy)
And with that I've an appoinment with some garden planters that need weeding. Toodle Pip
My favorite was named, Jasper. He was a mixed breed (black lab and who knows what) we got from a friend, whose dog had puppies. Jasper was just such a sweet dog.
ReplyDeleteI had a black & white cat named Jasper Domino.
DeletePart 1
ReplyDeletehttps://we.tl/t-ucqjOUGz72
Part 2
https://we.tl/t-dUOlCDPzrx
Can't consider them pets, more working partners.
ReplyDeleteThe horses I worked with for years at Helsingfors farm-lodge in Argentina.
Great personalities including thieves, hellraisers, escape artists, knot experts (they undid them with their teeth) and slackers.
A trickstery level that made the delights of (mostly) first time riders that also fell in love with them instantly.
Learnt a lot about myself (I had to improve my own tricks)
through my youth years with them.
Most of them died gracefully grazing in remote fields after they were too old for the job instead of being sold for dog food as it's done in other places.
Most noble beasts, always remembered.
Bat
My daughter has been fixated with horses her entire life - her first toy was a pony shaped pillow. Started taking riding lessons at the age of 5 and kept insisting we get her a horse, so I mistakenly said we would do so for her 10th birthday. She never forgot, and we made good on the promise. She has 2 NCAA national championship rings for equestrian riding (jumps).
DeleteI love hearing about loved working animals, dying gracefully of old age.
DeleteIn my family we always had (& still have!) cats, even here in Thailand I continue this tradition. Our previous cat Ruay was very close to me, but after I got stuck in the Netherlands due to the Covid travel restrictions for almost a year, things changed... Once back in Thailand our relationship had obviously soured, as I was barely tolerated, but still good enough to serve her food...
ReplyDeleteWe had a female cat named Madeline, who loved my husband and daughters dearly, but disliked me with a passion. She'd momentarily suspend her dislike of me, when she heard me opening a can of cat food.
DeleteThe original Chester Franklin Kitty (I've had several) used to go hiking with me & the dogs. Once when she was half grown I'd taken her along to visit my parents who lived in a two story condo. My parents had a Siamese cat. My cat was making such a fuss one night that I let her out. Waiting to hear a cat fight. She went downstairs and up on the counter and carried her can of cat food back up the stairs. I was laughing so hard I opened her food and let her eat it all.
DeleteLiving at home as a kid, mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits. In my 20s, horses, lizards, snakes. Dogs and cats the whole time. Chickens. Later birds. Parrots, cockatiels, one cockatoo. Still later, a couple scrub jays, a gross beak (rescues) more dogs and cats. The wife and I decided it was not fair to get any more animals, as we were getting older and didn't think it right to adopt an animal that would outlive us. Then my wife died. I still had two dogs and two cats. One cat, Chester Franklin Kitty (female) has since passed. The dogs are a mixed black lab/shepherd mix (Bogart, for Humphry) and a Chihuahua/Weenie dog mix (Kirby, for the vacuum) and the cat Dynamo Hum (Moe, female, thanks Frank) are all I have left. But favorites were Phydeaux, full Shepherd and Bonzo Dog Doo Dah, Chihuahua mix. Never had a small dog before Bonzo until he bit my bare foot and drew blood. I said, "He's a keeper".
ReplyDeleteThey've all been pretty wonderful...
ReplyDeleteThe first pets I lived with were parakeets, and I didn't fully understand why we did not let them out of the cage. You can imagine how that ended.
Then we moved from an apartment to a house (two blocks away) and my mom was able to fulfill her dream of getting a cat. Since my dad's work had involved implanting cats so electrical recordings could be taken from their brains, it was a bit of shock treatment and a bit of therapy for him to interact with one in a home. "Nefertiti" had to put up with a bit of my bad behavior, but nothing too difficult as I gained maturity and learned to emulate my mom's love for warmth and purring.
I continued to often live with cats as an adult, until I began the long-term human relationship that I'm still in -- my beloved was a dog owner. As I often said, I felt I rated very high with her, but her dog rated even higher. And "Bear" was a very intelligent, social, and lovely individual. So, he was a great introduction to being with dogs.
His successor was larger (63 vs 55 lbs) and even more unusual. "Lenny" was named after a puppy my spouse knew as a litter-mate to "Bear," but who got hit by a car. We thought the name could be recycled, and the karma that came with it kept him going until he was 16-and-a-half. A calm-but-vivacious lover of life, "Lenny" used to run beside her bicycle to campus, then sit outside a building (shielded from sun or rain by a pedestrian ramp) and greet his many friends all day. When he could no longer make it to campus, he spent sometime outside my work (closer), and when he couldn't walk well, he spent time on his pad at home. Always happy, always engaged, always a joy.
We had to take a break after he left us, but circumstances lead us to some senior dogs needing homes. Wonderful companions, but the hurt from losing them so (relatively) soon lead us back to wanting a young, small dog. Somehow, that became two, each of whom has been with us for the past decade. All of them have enriched my existence.
D in California
I should have added that Nick Drake and John Martyn have both also enriched my existence. I came to "Solid Air" before I had heard Drake, but the performances by Danny Thompson on several tracks of the album made it a favorite from first listen.
ReplyDeleteOur family's first cat was named Chester, and that's because I got to name her and I was about 6 and I didn't care about male/female names so that's the name she got.
ReplyDeleteBut I digress. Favorite pet was Penny, a barred rock hen I adopted from the neglectful neighbor. Penny would peck at the door so I'd let her in to lay her egg, then want back out. Once, when the future father-in-law and future-wife were visiting, I heard a great commotion outside and she rushed in as I went out, seeing that a next-door visitor's dog had gone after Penny. I'm a big, but non-violent guy, but I petrified these folks, who'd picked up the dog and were backing up with great fear as I rushed up to give them the what-for. When I got back in the house, Penny emerged from under my chair and hopped onto my lap, which was about the cutest thing any of us had ever seen. She was my 'best chicken' -- at my feet in an open milk crate -- at my homegrown wedding, since I didn't have a 'best man', and the assembled fam & friends laughed when she made a noise when she heard her name said during the vows (which I wrote). She died exactly a month after the wedding, and I always said "She just wanted to see those kids get married before she died".
Re Nick: I fell in love with his music in the 80s and still find it overwhelmingly beautiful in its warmth and wistfulness. While in a record store in the early 90s, I was shocked to hear him being played by the young college gal behind the counter; in fact, I was really impressed, in the way a music geek can immediately be attracted to a gal with similar tastes in music. It was only later that I found out about the VW commercial, as I didn't own or watch TV. My daughter and I love -- to the point of playing it daily for a spell -- Valerie June's gorgeous cover of Pink Moon. She also has inherited my love of chickens, so I done good with her.
C in California
Great recollections!
ReplyDeleteIt's a tie: Atlanta the Irish Setter, and, Sonny, the Maine coon mix. Atlanta, named after the Little Feat song, is attached to a handful of epic tales. For example, Atlanta figured out how to open the door of two fridges. "Where did the Easter ham go?" The only dog I ever owned, the companionship and amusement she provided remain etched in my cat person's mind.
Sonny, who passed last July, was a 'people person' who would come when he was called and usually would follow my wife and me around the house. He was very large, very smart, and very very funny. He was a 20lb kitten for his entire too short 10 year life.
Were the Nick Drake links ever posted or did I just wait too long? I can only get so many flac's a month because I run out of bandwidth. Satellite.
ReplyDeleteI could have sworn, I posted a link!
DeleteCheck back here tomorrow
I thought it was here too. Thanks Babs. Didn't want to cause you more work. But the links above and below this post still work so I thought this one never happened.
DeleteI just listened to Chime of a City Clock on youtube. It not only reminds me of Donovan but more so of Mark-Almond. Yeah, could listen to Nick Drake.
DeleteBryter Layter
ReplyDeletehttps://we.tl/t-hObKX6oEmw
Five Leaves Left
https://we.tl/t-zhJiS5tlHy
Pink Moon
https://we.tl/t-DqBaAfPlHQ
Thanks Babs!
DeleteEnjoy, steVe!
DeleteThank you Babs. That's a nice commercial, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, Psychfan.
DeleteFor a twenty four-year-old commercial, it doesn't seem dated.
Ever notice that many of Nick drakes lyrics that were written in the late 1960s and early 1970s, could have been written in the late 1860s and early 1870s?