Heh, don't get caught at the stoplight blasting that alone in the car.:lol2:

It's in a tv commercial right now, Glinda.

Don't ask which, but I heard it last night or the night before.

How can you be from Tenntucky. Dolly is a national treasure, and gets a full pass.

Anyway, I don't care. I recommend not caring because you get to enjoy so much more. I blasted the song away, rolling down the goddamn turnpike. And then I listened to it five more times at home to verify what I was hearing.

Here is the secret to the song. The key just keeps moving around.

Verse 1: G flat
Verse 2: G flat
Chorus 1: A
Verse 3: G
Bridge: G
Chorus 2: B flat
Verse 4: A flat

Bumping up the key is an old songwriter trick. Usually they bump it a full step, so it sounds like the song is moving to another "gear". My favorite cheesy example of a song doing this is "My Baby Takes The Morning Train" :eyeroll: which does it in such a cheesy way that you can't miss it. The first chorus is in G, the second in A, and the last in B. So you can really tell that they are ramping it up in that way, and that's part of what makes it 100% cheese.

For "Here You Come Again", Mann/Weil figured out a way to do that in the choruses as well as the verses!, and they jump up a half step instead of a full step. It's very subtle, and it fools you.

Oh, I hope this is true! If not, there's definitely something wrong with my brains. :D

Different does not equal wrong/defective/diminished.

Well, I'm certainly different; I won't argue that. ;)

Illegal Smile: John Prine

By way of explanation, I saw him on Austin City Limits recently. John is a must see before he shows up on one of our celebrity lists.
My favorite cut would be Paradise.

Wow, I never really heard that song before. Sad.

I've hunted on the site of the coal field that lay underneath Paradise. It's a weird dangerous place now. Canals from and to the Green River, narrow and deep. Cuts in the ground from ten to 100 feet deep, 30 to over 100 feet long, some filled with water, just anywhere and/or everywhere.

The roads there are a hundred feet wide in some places, to allow those ginormous dump trucks to pass each other, and you got to navigate around/amongst those behemoths, because they have the right-of-way.

One of the cooler things about the place is the abandoned equipment. There used to (I assume it's still there) be an enormous shovel out in this huuuuge open field, with a sign saying walking on the field is expressly forbidden. Lots of places with stay out signs. One of the world's largest shovels is buried there on the Peabody Wildlife Manage Area.

I once hunted turkey from underneath a dump truck bed out in the most BFE of woods. On my way out I walked past a sign, from the wrong side, warning to stay out of this area due to the ground might give way at any old time. They (Peabody WMA) used to charge $10 for a year land use permit, IDK what is now. Ya had to sign a liability waiver also, iirc.

There's hardly anything left to say that the community of Paradise was ever there. Indeed, Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.

Thanks for the on the ground report. Is the cover growing back?

Yeah, Prine plays a lot of humorous music but he tapped into the saddest vein here.

"Paradise"

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.

[Chorus:]
And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

[Chorus]

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

[Chorus]

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am.

[Chorus]

There are still ugly places and pockmarks on the land, but, it's recovering nicely. Still active mining in places, y'know. Land will recover given the chance.

People have put fish in some of the exploratory strip cuts. When ya get poor/hungry ya 'hit the strip' for a guaranteed fish dinner.

Ah-HAH! I was watching TV tonight and an Applebee's commercial came on with that song in the background.

I'm not crazy, after all!











Well, at least not on this topic. :p:

Thanks for clarifying, I was confused. ;)