RIP Gordon Lightfoot

Was there music in Canada before Lightfoot? Honestly. Plenty since, but was there a big music star before him? And anytime a Lightfoot song comes on, it seems like a good time to have a beer. Sundown? Carefree Highway?

Hard not to think of Jim Croce's "I Got A Name" as the American version of "Carefree" - so many great singer-songwriters in the '70s. I was thinking of Lightfoot being a comp of James Taylor, but Taylor's songs are just too smooth, and honestly too sweet without the rough edges that made Lightfoot songs so great.

 

The Band is quite possibly the most overrated band in history. I don't enjoy a single one of their songs and don't understand their appeal. "The Load"? I'd rather hear Piano Man on a loop than ever hear "The Load" one more time in my life.

 

I was just going to post the same thing! Even have both songs up right now so I could compare.

 

I see what you did there …

My favorite thing about “The Weight” was hearing it played and sang by a bunch of hippies as my wife, kids and I walked along a beach in Vancouver, B.C., in 2016.

I walked over to the group, joined in on the chorus and … And … And … And … put a load of embarrassment on my two teenagers.

 

Fire & Rain? Her Town Too?

 

Hah, that's great

 

The Doors say hi.

 

Sacrilege! I was a huge Doors fan in high school and college. Four years ago when I visited Paris I swung by Morrison's grave at Pere Lachaise and listened to Crystal Ship on my ear buds. There were people sitting on adjacent gravestones singing with one guy on guitar. It was fucking weird because they weren't even singing Doors songs. I believe they were on the acid.

 

Her Town Too is my favorite of his. Such a great track.

 

Ehhhh. I liked the Doors ok in real time as a grade school and junior high school kid, got into the Morrison as doomed poet thing a little more in HS and college, but have fallen off the bandwagon more and more as the years go by. They're a B level HOF act.

 

I don't disagree with that. I went to his grave almost out of sentimentality. But Pere Lachaise is strikingly beautiful and didn't go simply to see his final resting place.

A close buddy of mine used to honor Jim Morrison's passing on July 3 by always drinking a bottle of Jameson. It was always kinda pathetic to me, but particularly so when he was older than Morrison at the age of his death (27) and was still doing it. He's now been sober since 2006.

Morrison to me is like Jack Kerouac; if you're older than, say, 35 and still really into him, you need to grow the fuck up. I joined a Doors fan page on Facebook a few weeks ago just for the novelty of it and quit soon thereafter because the fawning was just nauseating, largely from people who had seen them live back in the day.

 

I like the Band well enough, but I don't like Robertson. Nothing special on guitar, plus he's an attention whore onstage, and didn't he rip off his bandmates on songwriting credits?