For a great number of years I have got up on Sunday mornings and listened to the Sunday morning country oldies show. Here in eastern Connecticut they do things a bit differently. The Sunday morning country oldies show is combined with a live flea market. People call in and can sell up to three items on the air. It's pretty entertaining actually, in the summertime the market is full of people advertising their garage, or as it's called here, tag sales.
Anyhow the point of that is today's record. Today's record is from the country collection and its an LP from Alabama. "The Closer You Get". I sat here sort of chuckling that they actually are often played on the country oldies show. I always grumble a lil bit and say "that's not classic country" it was produced in my lifetime, 1983, seven years old and certainly old enough to like and understand real music. How can something made in my lifetime be classic? Oh right that was twenty eight years ago. I guess time is passing me by and I don't even realize it sometimes. To be fair though I really think that radio stations should really wait till a piece of music is well over 40 years old to call it classic and even then as i stare down the barrel of turning forty, that may be too young.
Alabama "The Closer You Get" song list.
- The Closer You Get
- Lady Down on Love
- She Put the Sad in All His Songs
- Red River
- What in the Name of Love
- Dixieland Delight
- Very Special Love
- Dixie Boy
- Alabama Sky
- Lovin Man
This seems to be a record about love gained, lost and remembered. Overall pretty sad piece of vinyl. There are some good songs many that are well known some I had never heard before. Most of them sound pretty similar. "She put the sad in All His Songs" was a new listen for me. I got a hallow feeling in my chest when it came on. The point of the song is this barroom guitar picker meets a woman who changes his life one day and he falls head over heels changes his drinkin whorin ways. "She took what he had and she made it wrong." Which would have been fine if he got the girl in the end but he didn't. So he was left yearning for his old life but feeling like he couldn't live it anymore because without her it didn't feel right. She however: " She was the rattle snake that bit him. She was the blow from up behind. She thought the tear in his eye just might fit him, and he was the last thing on her mind." In the end his love was unrequited and he like the lady in the previous song "Lady down on love" was left all alone and trying to find a path in the world again. I think that is a truth that most don't realize when they are in the midst of heartache. Very very rarely do either parties walk away unscathed. It takes two to make something work and it takes two to screw it up. It's always worked that way. Even if your partner cheats on you, cardinal sin yes, but there was something you needed to improve in that relationship too. It's a lesson I learned the hard way and I, like so many others, would change things if i could but not to stop the course of direction life took but simply to change the heartache caused. But maybe like the Who's in Whooville whose Christmas spirit didn't come from shiny packages, ones person doesn't come from the shiny moments in life, but the moments instead that broke your heart and left you feeling like you would never love or breathe again.
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