Thursday, 12 January 2023

Mid-Life Crisis Songs #88: Bad Back


Did my back in at the weekend. I went to the tip with a car-load of post Christmas junk, including a single mattress, and managed to unload them all with no trouble. Once back, trying to refit Sam's car seat in the pouring rain, I twisted in slightly the wrong way in the confined space and bingo. 

I'm hoping it'll be better by the time this post runs, but in the meantime, here are some of the songs I listened to while stretching out on a cold hard floor...


I go to church all day Sunday
I go out and get drunk all day Monday
And ain't nobody's business what I do

There are loads of different versions of this old blues standard, and the lyrics change depending on who's singing it. I've been listening to Nina's 1961 album Forbidden Fruit lately, and this is one of my favourite tracks.


Tom T. Hall was known as "The Storyteller". For very good reason...

I looked 'round the room, as a tourist would do
That's when I saw the girl in the booth
She sat there and cried in the smoky half-dark
The silent type crying that tears out your heart
Her clothes were not cut in the new modern way
And her suitcase had seen better days

Nobody asked her what caused her such pain
Nobody spoke up, yet no one complained
Without even asking, I knew why she cried
Life is just like that sometimes


From his second album way back in 1974. What joy I felt when I heard this and recognised it from my childhood. I'm guessing Terry must have played it back in the day.

Shut up.

Finally, inspired by Charity Chic's recent Saturday Series, I've been listening to Townes Van Zandt's Roadsongs LP. Unlike CC's series, where we have to judge Townes' originals against covers, this is a live album on which Townes covers other people's songs... often improving on them. He does that here on my favourite version of The Stones' Dead Flowers, as immortalised in my favourite movie. The Dude abides.



7 comments:

  1. Hope you're fully recovered. Look forward to Top 10 songs with 'back' in the title.

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  2. It was a bit frustrating that I couldn't include anything from Roadsongs.
    Hope your back is on the mend
    Backs are buggers!

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  3. Big fan of Tom T Hall and his story songs - hope you're back is better.

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  4. Argh, hope you have made, or will make, a quick recovery. Horrible having a bad back, you don't realise how much we take them for granted until they let us down. I'm rather out of sorts myself at the moment and music is a massive help.

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  5. Hope the back improves soon. I thought for a minute C had asked if you’d made a will! My mistake. Car seats are the worst, you have to bend and twist at the same time - poor design.

    Good to see Barry in there - probably from Terry’s show as you say, but how uplifting.

    Alyson

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  6. Having a bad back is akin to toothache and earache - it's always there, and twinges at random when least expected.
    It also provides plenty of amusement for Mrs D as I shuffled about and crouched down to pick things up from the floor.
    It did right itself after a week or so, so pleased about that.
    Thought it was coming back last year - turned out it was just a badly adjusted car seat

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  7. I have a historic bad back: a slipped disc caused by falling down the stairs and breaking my arm (didn't find out about the disc till much later). It's inoperable, so I've learned to live with it. This latest unpleasantness was unrelated to that... but hopefully is getting better now.

    Thanks for all the good wishes.

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