"Crazy River"--who does this song?
John D Tais
But she doesn't know who the artist is. The main lyric of the song
goes something like "you can find me somewhere down the crazy river."
The vocalist is male and there's a female in the background. If
anybody knows who the artist is, and better yet, the name of an album
that it's on, I'd be eternally grateful. Thanks.
John
Glenn W. Lea
: A friend of mine has a tape with her currently favorite song on it.
It's from Robbie Robertson's first solo album, "Robbie Robertson".
--
Glenn Lea
g...@genrad.com
Steve Clements
This sounds like Robbie Robertson's album from about 6 or so years ago.
Robbie was the leader of The Band, and is one of rock's great guitarists.
This album is, I think, his first "solo" -- there has been another one since.
It's a very interesting album, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Included on the album are cuts with U2, the BoJeans, and others that
escape me at the moment. The cut you are referring to features the
BoJeans --- that "female" voice singing background is male.
Your friend needs to hear the rest of this album. Get it from the library,
borrow it, buy it, whatever. It will knock her out.
PATRICK BRENNICK (603)862-1467
was the former leader of The Band. Funny thing is, he was the main
writer, but did not sing vocals. His voice is ok. The album is great.
Patrick Brennick
macd...@fisher.sunnybrook.utoronto.ca
Hi John
The song in question is off of Robbie Robertson's first solo album
(self titled I believe). A fine album indeed. Production is immaculate.
John MacDougall
macd...@srcl.sunnybrook.utoronto.ca
Frank Lepkowski
If I'm not mistaken that's from RObbie Robertson's first solo album from
about 5 yrs. back, the one with "American ROulette" on it. I think the
backing voice is actually a guy but sounds female.
Frank Lepkowski
Oakland University
David Glenn
fan of his and The Band. So I'm curious: was the original posting just
a shot-in-the-dark or is "Crazy River" a jazzy song? Does the album
have a jazz-flavor? All of the praise for it on rmb has me interested
in buying it.
Glenn W. Lea
: I have not heard the Robbie Robertson album, but I've always been a
Hardly jazzy, perhaps bluesy.
Personally, I didn't like the album and sold my copy :) I found it to
be way overproduced and pretentious, which The Band never were.
Robertson was assisted by Daniel Lanois (whose work I have appreciated
elsewhere), Peter Gabriel, and a couple U2s. I think it combines the
bad aspects of all of them and none of the good. And Robertson's
speaking voice REALLY turns me off. Just my opinion, of course.
--
Glenn Lea
g...@genrad.com
Rune Hoelseth
>From: clem...@carson.u.washington.edu (Steve Clements)
>Subject: Re: "Crazy River"--who does this song?
>Date: 6 Oct 1993 15:23:02 GMT
>In article <CEGD4...@world.std.com> j...@world.std.com (John D Tais) writes:
>>A friend of mine has a tape with her currently favorite song on it.
>>But she doesn't know who the artist is. The main lyric of the song
>>goes something like "you can find me somewhere down the crazy river."
>>The vocalist is male and there's a female in the background. If
>>anybody knows who the artist is, and better yet, the name of an album
>>that it's on, I'd be eternally grateful. Thanks.
>>
>>John
>
>This sounds like Robbie Robertson's album from about 6 or so years ago.
>Robbie was the leader of The Band, and is one of rock's great guitarists.
>This album is, I think, his first "solo" -- there has been another one since.
>
>It's a very interesting album, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
>Included on the album are cuts with U2, the BoJeans, and others that
>escape me at the moment. The cut you are referring to features the
>BoJeans --- that "female" voice singing background is male.
>
The name of the band is NOT BoJeans, but BoDeans !!!
They have released som albums on their own(at least on of them is
produced by T-Bone Burnett).
Peter Gabriel is also lending a helping hand on the album that is
titled "Robbie Robertson".
The second album is titled "Storyville", and is recorded in New Orleans
with help from among others the Neville brothers.
>
>Your friend needs to hear the rest of this album. Get it from the library,
>borrow it, buy it, whatever. It will knock her out.
>
I agree totally !!
RuneHoelz
"Yeah, and so what ..."
John D Tais
I went out and found the album and my friend is very very happy. It's just
that one song, Somewhere Down the Crazy River, which is kind of bluesy,
that's why I posted my request here. Still can't believe that background
singer is male.
Thanks again,
John
Frank Lepkowski
up here, but then again we had the Claudio Arrau question awhile back.
The song and the album are rock music, pretty good rock music. Especially
if you liked the band I would check it out. But it ain't jazz.
Frank Lepkowski
Oakland University
Warren Steel
>>I have not heard the Robbie Robertson album, but I've always been a
>>fan of his and The Band. So I'm curious: was the original posting just
>>a shot-in-the-dark or is "Crazy River" a jazzy song? Does the album
>>have a jazz-flavor? All of the praise for it on rmb has me interested
>>in buying it.
Frank Lepkowski says:
>IMO not at all a jazzy song; I don't know why the original posting ended
>up here, but then again we had the Claudio Arrau question awhile back.
>The song and the album are rock music, pretty good rock music. Especially
>if you liked the band I would check it out. But it ain't jazz.
Frank's right, it isn't a jazz album, though it's a superb rock album.
Co-producer Daniel Lanois got excellent work out of collaborators Peter
Gabriel (Broken Arrow, Fallen Angel), The BoDeans (Crazy River, Showdown
at Big Sky), and U2 (Sweet Fire of Love, Testimony); backup musicians
include Garth Hudson (of The Band), Lanois, and Manu Katche. Robertson's
growling vocals play well off the high crooning of Gabriel and Bono; in
the gospel-tinged Testimony you can even hear a similar interplay between
Robertson's blues guitar and The Edge's minimalist chiming.
Jazz fans might be more interested in Robertson's 1991 solo album
_Storyville_. Produced without Lanois, it has a looser feel and a New
Orleans mythical underpinning. Collaborators include Danko and Hudson of
The Band, vocals by Aaron Neville and Neil Young, and backups by the
Neville Brothers, the Zion Harmonizers, members of the Wild Magnolias
and Golden Eagles carnival troupes, and full-dress horn sections.
Robertson's guitar is much less in evidence, as is any country/rock
flavor, but his voice is heard, pursuing his mission as musical
"storyteller of the shadow-land."
Warren Steel mu...@sunvis1.vislab.olemiss.edu
Ray Peck
>David Glenn (gl...@oasys.dt.navy.mil) wrote:
>: I have not heard the Robbie Robertson album,
>
>
>Personally, I didn't like the album and sold my copy :) I found it to
>be way overproduced and pretentious, which The Band never were.
>Robertson was assisted by Daniel Lanois (whose work I have appreciated
>elsewhere), Peter Gabriel, and a couple U2s. I think it combines the
>bad aspects of all of them and none of the good. And Robertson's
>speaking voice REALLY turns me off. Just my opinion, of course.
I agree completely. Very pretentious, and crappy. But one
correction: Peter Gabriel was not involved at all. Robertson hired
Gabriel's whole band from "So" (Tony Levin, Manu Kache, et. al.),
which probably lead to this incorrect conclusion.
--
Ray Peck rp...@pure.com
Pure Software 408-524-3007
Warren Steel
[on Robertson's 1986 album]
>I agree completely. Very pretentious, and crappy. But one
>correction: Peter Gabriel was not involved at all. Robertson hired
>Gabriel's whole band from "So" (Tony Levin, Manu Kache, et. al.),
>which probably lead to this incorrect conclusion.
Peter Gabriel *was* involved, and sings backup vocals on Fallen Angel
and Broken Arrow; you can hear his voice plainly, and he's listed in the
credits. And I still like the album--it's one of my favorites, but not
at all jazzy.
Warren Steel mu...@sunvis1.vislab.olemiss.edu
Greg Makepeace
> I agree completely. Very pretentious, and crappy. But one
> correction: Peter Gabriel was not involved at all. Robertson hired
> Gabriel's whole band from "So" (Tony Levin, Manu Kache, et. al.),
> which probably lead to this incorrect conclusion.
Maybe the fact that Gabriel sings backup vocals on "Fallen Angel" lead
him to that correct conclusion.
I like Robertson's album. However, I find Peck's note to be "very
pretentious, and crappy" as well as "incorrect."
Brian Lindsay
>In article <291dgi$n...@sunburn.genrad.com> g...@genrad.com (Glenn W. Lea) writes:
>>Personally, I didn't like the album and sold my copy :) I found it to
>>be way overproduced and pretentious, which The Band never were.
>>Robertson was assisted by Daniel Lanois (whose work I have appreciated
>>elsewhere), Peter Gabriel, and a couple U2s. I think it combines the
>>bad aspects of all of them and none of the good. And Robertson's
>>speaking voice REALLY turns me off. Just my opinion, of course.
>
>I agree completely. Very pretentious, and crappy. But one
>correction: Peter Gabriel was not involved at all.
Sorry, he did participate. He did backing vocals on one or more tracks.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
The opinions expressed above are solely those of Brian Lindsay
--------------------------------------------------------------
Ray Peck
I'm not sure what is pretentious about my posting. Please make it
clear to me, Makepeace.
Sorry, it's been years since I heard the album (I gave it half-a-dozen
or so tries, because a friend was raving about it), so I made a
mistake on the contribution. I mostly remember my impression that
Robertson was trying really hard to be artsy, and it showed (something
that also flaws the new Gabriel album, IMO, and I say that as a
10+-year Gabriel fan).
I also recall a later interview with Gabriel, I think in "Musician",
in which he states something like "He can hire my band, but that
doesn't mean he's going to create an album like So".
So, Makepeace. I was incorrect about PG being on it. How does that,
or anything else, make my posting pretentious? Is it pretentious not
to like something that's pretentious?
I am awaiting enlightenment.
Anyway, this doesn't belong in r.m.b.
Mark Henteleff
sure like to get one in". This discussion doesn't belong in r.m.b.
but...what the hell. What the 2 albums do have in common, much more
than the band, is that they were produced by the same guy. Daniel
Lanois. And both albums are much more his products than either
Robertson or Gabriel. If Robertson had one flaw in making this
album it was in choosing Gabriel's producer and his band. Unlike
Robertson, Gabriel has never had a talent for writing interesting
songs, a problem that in fact, predates his work with Genesis and
continues to this day. What he does possess however is an acute
sense of sound and delivery. Combine that with a slick producer like
Lanois and your bound to get some megacrap in a big way, i.e, an
album like So...which should have been more appropriately titled
"So What?". The songs on So don't stand on their own merit,
regardless of the production/overproduction, they are nothing more
than MTV pablum. Robertson's stuff on Big Sky, however, is decent
enough songwriting to sing around a campfire, and in that sense,
not at all pretentious. Granted, it ain't up to par with the kind
of stuff he wrote with The Band, but nevertheless, it is head and
shoulders over anything Gabriel wrote for So. The *sound* of the
album, however, does have that Lanois trademark, which can get a bit
annoying at times and in that sense, Big Sky does tend to
suffer from the same aural abyss that So suffers from. What does
all this have to do with your post accused of being pretentious?
Nothing. In fact, I don't find your post pretentious....just a bit
misguided.
Shock the Monkey? Hardly, should have been: Spanking My Monkey
Mark H.
erk...@titan.arc.ab.ca
This is Robbie Robertson from his self-titled 1987 release. The song is title
"Somewhere Down the Crazy River". A pretty good album as well.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Erkamp A L B E R T A
--> It Could Happen <-- R E S E A R C H
erk...@arc.ab.ca C O U N C I L
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ray Peck
simple flames. What's more important, catchy melodies, or streching
the boundaries? What role does a producer have in a work?
In article <CEtnM...@news.Hawaii.Edu> ma...@ahi.pbrc.hawaii.edu (Mark Henteleff) writes:
>What the 2 albums do have in common, much more
>than the band, is that they were produced by the same guy. Daniel
>Lanois. And both albums are much more his products than either
>Robertson or Gabriel.
Here, I disagree strongly. If you've listened to pg I through pg IV
(Security), I don't know how you can say that Lanois was such a big
influence. "So" is not out of line with any of the previous albums in
composition or production. In fact, I would say that Eno, who seems
like Lanois' big influence, has also been a big influence on pg.
There are a lot of connections there, though Fripp and Levin, for
example. Eno's atmospheric productions lend a lot more to all these
albums than Lanois does to "So". Listen to "Red Rain" or "Don't Give
Up". Does that production sound like Eno direct, or Cajun-filtered
ersatz Eno? I think the former.
>Unlike
>Robertson, Gabriel has never had a talent for writing interesting
>songs, a problem that in fact, predates his work with Genesis and
>continues to this day. What he does possess however is an acute
>sense of sound and delivery.
I think it's a matter of a different perspective. Gabriel shows with
"Solsbury Hill" that he can write a catchier tune than Robertson (or
nearly anyone). But his sense of music is more than melody. It's
sound and atmosphere, and traditional musics and sounds, and
innovation, and many other things. And that's where the emphasis is.
Listen to "Security" and tell me whether or not it's more innovative
than anything Robertson has done.
>The songs on So don't stand on their own merit,
>regardless of the production/overproduction, they are nothing more
>than MTV pablum. Robertson's stuff on Big Sky, however, is decent
>enough songwriting to sing around a campfire, and in that sense,
>not at all pretentious.
Have you listened to So, or just to the two singles from it? Do you
judge his new album "Us" from the single "Kiss that Frog"? Have you
listened to pg 3 or "Security"? I'm not trying to be rude, I've just
never heard pg referred to as "MTV pablum" before.
While I agree that some of the tunes from Robertson's album are "more
catchy", I don't equate that to "better". In fact, I generally (not
always) equate "catchy tunes" with "MTV pablum".
A more global question: is a song better or worse if the performance
of it is part of the song? I.e., if Debbie Gibson (or Kenny G) can't
do a good cover version? Is the tune the thing, or is the entire
package (performance, production, sounds, etc) the thing?
>The *sound* of the
>album, however, does have that Lanois trademark, which can get a bit
>annoying at times and in that sense, Big Sky does tend to
>suffer from the same aural abyss that So suffers from.
Well, I do prefer the production on pg3 and Security to that on So. . .
>Shock the Monkey? Hardly, should have been: Spanking My Monkey
Uh, you know that that's not from "So", right?
erk...@titan.arc.ab.ca
Definetly not a Jazz album. I think that if you enjoy The Band you will like
both his solo debut as well as the followup "Storyville". The closet thing that
I can think of to this would be some of Don Henley's solo works. Buy the way
Bono (of U2 fame) appears on the track "Sweet Fire of Love".