...Bob Dylan on his much maligned album "Self-Portrait." It had an umpah C/G bass line. I used to mimic the idiosyncratic way he pronounced "...laying low..." which was a kind phrasing "laying laow." Every once in a while, people would come up to me during breaks and say they liked it, the way I phrased that word, seriously this happened more than once. Sometimes I'd confess to stealing it, other times I'd just take the complement as if were mine to take.
What I like about this very beautiful version is that they were brave enough to not try to switch the gender of the song, two women singing "when I left my home and family I was no more than a boy," and singing about going to "whores."
I do like it better than the Simon and Garfunkel version, although Bob Dylan's version, and my "tribute" to it, basically were in the end, not really even close to being up to the par of Simon and Garfield.
I don't hear too many men singing songs written to be sung by women or vice versa. That's really wonderful that they did this here; their version is very beautiful I think.
I had three songs in my repertoire when I was a kid that were in the female gender. I used to play a version of "Ode to Billy Joe," very lugubrious, in an open Gm tuning with lots of harmonics and an elaborate guitar opening of which I was somewhat proud at the time. People used to ask me to play it, even my wife, before and after we were married. I fell in love with that song because of a wonderful version by Ellen McIlwaine, although mine ended up being very different. I sang it in an accusatory, bitter male voice gruff an angry, but the text remained a woman speaking, "Mamma said "He said he saw a girl who looked a lot like you up on Choctaw ridge..."
I also played Joni Mitchell's "Woman of Heart and Mind" in her original opening tuning, keeping, although I used to cheat by sometimes whispering my name, and sometimes mouthing it loudly with contempt, and the words "she said..." at the opening. That song meant something to me at the time, because I had a lover when I was 21 and she was 20 who loved "For the Roses," a lovely woman, very nice, kind, giving, very sexy, to whom I was a complete immature piece of shit. I always visualized her when I played it.
Really, the lines in that song...
...I'm looking for affection and respect
(Oh and I want...) A little passion
And you want stimulation, nothing more
That's what I think
But you know I'll try to be there for you
When your spirits start to sink
All this talk about holiness now
It must be the start of the latest style
Is it all books and words
Or do you really feel it?
Do you really laugh?
Do you really care?
Do you really smile
When you smile?
You criticize and you flatter
You imitate the best
And the rest you memorize
You know the times you impress me most
Are the times when you don't try
When you don't even try...
...summed up exactly what an ass I was. "Is it all books and words..." "You imitate the best and the rest you memorize..."
After she did the right thing and dumped my ass, I felt a lot of guilt, so for years, I played "Woman of Heart and Mind."
It worked out for the best, though. Eventually I got over it. I don't think I would have straightened out with her, and she and I were of very different worlds, and the woman I married did straighten me out, and has made me struggle to be worthy of her.
I did change the gender of Joni Mitchell's "Rainy Night House," which I played in a club a number of times where I hung out with the "friend" who I later married. Ironically the club as called "The Rainy Night House."
I haven't thought about playing the guitar and singing for many years; the practice was in the end about being miserable, and as Dave Van Ronk once said, "I can tell a lie, but I sure can't sing one." I'm too happy at the end of my life to play the old songs.
Sorry for this trip down memory lane, but I ended up thinking about those times, those miserable times...
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