Long time readers of Soul Surmise might remember that I am a fan of Tribute albums. I have liked them for two reasons. In the very old days when I made my obligatory 90 minute best of tapes I loved a rare cover version by an artist to give it a wee surprise! Imagine that Bruce Springsteen tape and suddenly there is Linda Paloma as a duet with his wife. See the kind of curve I am talking! Then, and I think more importantly, I love to hear other people cover songs I know so well because they can have a habit of throwing a different hue across familiar terrain. There is a chance that they can eke out another nugget from a song that I think I have pretty much spent on meaning. Take Bob Schneider’s Running On Empty here. He slows the running down that highway to a crawl and gives it a yearning that underlines those lines: -
“Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive/Trying not to confuse it with what you do to survive.”
That in essence is what Looking Into You has done for me. It has drawn to the surface line after line of the poetic genius and introspective soul searching that made Jackson Browne the absolute King of the 70’s Songwriter.
Take Fountain Of Sorrow:
I'm just one or two years and a couple of changes behind you
In my lessons at love's pain and heartache school
Where if you feel too free and you need something to remind you
There's this loneliness springing up from your life
Like a fountain from a pool
Take Your Bright Baby Blues
Cause I've been up and down this highway
Far as my eyes can see
No matter how fast I run
I can never seem to get away from me
No matter where I am
I can't help feeling I'm just a day away
From where I want to be
Now I'm running home baby
Like a river to the sea
Take For A Dancer
I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song playing right in my ear
That I can't sing
I can't help listening
Take The Pretender:
I'm going to be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Thought true love could have been a contender
Are you there?
Say a prayer for the Pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender.
These are lines that pummel your soul and your society with questions and critique that can only do them good!
If there is a weakness on this double CD of Jackson Browne covers it might that too many are too similar to the original. Yet, there are some that will shake your default. Interestingly it is the female vocalists that for me dig a little deeper. Joan Osborne’s Late For The Sky, Shawn Colvin’s Call It A Loan, Eliza Gilkyson’s After The Deluge (though the versions of either Christy Moore or Moving Hearts would have been an even better addition here), Sara Watkins with her brother Sean on Your Bright Baby Blues and above all Lucinda Williams’ The Pretender are for me the biggest standout here.
Don’t get me wrong though. This is a valuable exercise in Browneology. Another voice can be enough to refresh and awaken those songs that lie to comfortable in the belly of your soul. Lift your soul to some attention and then give it the gentle but firm bath of twenty three Jackson Browne classics reworked. It will do you good!
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