Favourite Phrases in Songs

Subject: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Rafflesbear
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:28 PM

Would you like to share with us some of your favourite phrases from songs - you know a couple of lines, a line or just half a line where the songwriter has just encapsulated a thought in a way that leaves you wishing you could write like that

Tiny pieces of poetry thrown in and almost lost in the song

here's a couple of examples to show what I mean and maybe get the ball rolling

Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
"does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours"

and from Rufford Park Poachers on the death of Roberts the head keeper
"He never will rise up until the final Judgment Day"

over to you, Mudcats

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:32 PM

Some previous contributions are here:
Favorite Lines thread -- not to discourage any new thoughts...

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Rafflesbear
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:40 PM

Thanks for the link Becky - some ready-made answers there - but if you could look for the really short bits in this thread please

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Snuffy
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 05:46 PM

She made her way homewards, with one star awake

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,MeadowMuskrat
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 05:57 PM

from Gordon Bok "Fundy's long and Fundy's wide, Fundy's fog and rain and tide."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: curmudgeon
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 06:04 PM

"She smiled all over her face,   she did,
They call me Jackie Monroe."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: meself
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 06:14 PM

"He has a baseball team of whiskers all over his jaws"

- Five (Four?) Famous Fishermen, from the Helen Creighton collection; I forget who wrote it ...

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:41 PM

rocks the cradle and cries
too late, but never mind
some helped in hallways
the man of independent mind
drips Carnation from the can
the silent stars go by
in the fight that followed
that evening sun
sweet whips ding dong

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 10:29 PM

Buddy Mac Donald ( Getting Dark Again)
"For the second time since we got up, it's getting dark again."

Scrooll down on music to title:

Buddy Mac Donald

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:00 AM

From ' A Pub With No Beer '

There's a far away look on the face of the bum.

eric

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Oldguit
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:15 AM

Dad's gawn darn the dog track,
Muver's playin bingo,
Sister's cawtin on the soffa,
You wanna ear the spring go.

From: What a crazy world, sung by Joe Brown. Sheer poetry!

Oldguit Arr.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Acorn4
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:21 AM

Steve Knightley: RED DIESEL:-

"He said he sang a folksong once , but he didn't inhale"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: BusyBee Paul
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:26 AM

From "Seat of Ease" by Duncan McFarlane

"That's when they spied the bare, tanned hide upon the seat of ease"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Oldguit
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:29 AM

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell. Fleetwood Mac.

Teach your children well / teach your parents well. Graham Nash.

I was floating in the ocean, greased in suntan lotion. Loving Spoonfull.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: topical tom
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:18 AM

What can we do with the rest of our life
But love 'til we love it away,
Love 'til we love it away.

From "Thanksgiving Eve" by Bob Franke

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Peadar (formerly) of Portsmouth
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:13 AM

I don't know why the two that leap to mind both involve wings, but...


"On the wild and crazy wings of youth they went flying around in the rain,
Until their feathers once so fine were torn and tattered
In the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
They traded love's bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge"
    --Jackson Brown, Before the Deluge


"Since their wings have got rusted,
the angels wanna wear my red shoes."
      --Elvis Costello, Red Shoes

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: quokka
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:22 AM

I second Jackson Browne's 'Before the Deluge'. Mind you, the first time I heard it , it was Christy Moore singin' it! I've got LOADS of phrases that stir the heart and soul in songs...Don't get me started or maybe I'll just bookmark this thread and get back to ya...(er... that's a promise, not a threat[!])
Cheers,
Quokka

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:30 AM

I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You coulda done better, but I don't mind.
You just kinda wasted my precious time.
So don't think twice, it's all right.

Oh how bitter, yet oh so true Bob.

JM

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:39 AM

From Billy Bragg's New England.

I loved you then as I love you still
Tho I put you on a pedestal,
They put you on the pill
I dont feel bad about letting you go
I just feel sad about letting you know

I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them but they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish, I wish, I wish youd care

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: oldhippie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:39 PM

David Mallett: "Life is a rainstorm, but love is the ark",

from Hard Time Love Song

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: astro
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:55 PM

I love

    "He knows his rhyme from his reason..."

Astro...

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:18 PM

Peter Blegvad's written some beauties. The middle eight of In Hell's Despite ("We'll build a heaven... in hell's despite") always gets me:

No one said,
No one said it would be,
Said it would,
Said it would be *easy*...

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: JeffB
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 07:58 PM

A great theme for a thread. Some of you (I hope including Rafflesbear) might find these lines appealing; some will scratch your heads and say "What's this about? ..." Well, they're just lines I especially like for various reasons.

Here's adieu sweet lovely Nancy :-

"The secrets of your heart, dear girl, are the best of my goodwill."

Not a profound line, but whenever I sing it I think, "Ah, that's so sweet." As I do with :-

"And may good angels send the rain on desert stretches sandy, and when the summer comes again, God grant it brings us Andy." (Andy's gone with cattle). For some reason that just brings the old lump into the throat. Just an old softie, me.

Clyde Water :-

"You had a cruel mother, Willie, and I have had another; and now we'll sleep in Clyde Water like sister and like brother."

Ballad of Springhill :-

"All their lives they had dug their grave - two miles of earth for a marker stone ... "

The Amphitrite :-

"So farewell Valparaiso and farewell for a while, and likewise all them Spanish girls all on the coast of Chile "

Captain Mansfield's fight :-

"If you must have my tops'ls down, come aboard and strike them down for me."

O good ale :-

"It is you that makes my friends my foes, it's you that makes me wear old clothes; but since you be so near my nose it's up you comes and down you goes."

Long Lankin :-

"There's blood in the parlour, there's blood in the hall, there's blood in the chamber where my lady did fall."

The molecatcher :-

"Ten pound?" cried the young man, "Oh that I don't mind - it only works out about threepence a time."

Shallow brown :-

"Though it breaks my heart to leave thee - though it breaks my heart to grieve thee."

Three maidens a-milking :-

"Here's a health to the bird in the bush ... and we'll drink down the moon and we'll drink up the sun, let the neighbours say little or much."

The unquiet grave :-

"Oh had you a kiss from my clay cold lips, my breath is earthy strong .... "

The week before Easter :-

"The young men of the forest they now ask of me - How many strawberries grow in the salt sea? And I answer them with a tear in my eye - How many ships sail in the forest?"

The yeoman's wooing (trying to get the girlfriend to decide) :-

"I will put on my best white slop and I will wear my yellow hose, and on my head a good grey hat and in it stick a lovely rose ... wherefore you should make no delay, and if you love me, love me now. Or I shall seek some othwerwhere, for I cannot come every day to woo."

Well, there's many another of course, but a personal selection like this would not be complete without something by Les Barker. From "The hard cheese of Old England" (do your own scansion) :-

"Those edam foreigners are not worth a mention; that old Gorgonzola's renowned for his stench and his brother Emile wrote novels in French, and it's oh the hard cheese of Old England, in Eng-e-land very hard cheese."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Mudlark
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:16 PM

Pancho and Lefty....The dust that Pancho bit down south ended up in Lefty's mouth

Just about any line from Tom Wait's Lookin' for the heart of Sat. Night

Hobo's Lullaby....Do not let your heart be troubled, if the world styles you a bum. For if your Mother lives, she loves you; you will always be your mother's son.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 09:14 PM

If ever the dead can pray for the living

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Pilgrim
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 09:56 PM

Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 08:44 AM

For I saw the new moon yestereen wi' the old moon in its arms.
Sir Patrick Spens.

I once was full o' Gil Maurice as the hip is of the stone.
Gil Maurice

For we are young and the world is wide.
Rambling Boys of Pleasure.

Some were playing cards and some were playing dice,
And some were standing round giving good advice.
Golden Vanity

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:09 AM

"She jumped right in beside him to keep herself warm,
Thinking that a sailor wouldn't do her any harm..."

From Home, Dearie, Home

Linn

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Snuffy
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:17 AM

A lobster boiling in the pot,
A bluefish on the hook
They are suffering long, but nothing like
The ache I bear for you, my dear, Mary Anne.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 08:17 PM

Pilgrim: That's a lovely line. What does it belong to?

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: open mike
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:27 PM

Kate Wolf..
"Here in California, the fruit hangs heavy on the vine
but there's no gold, i thought i'd warn ya,
and the hills turn brown in the summer time"

Hugh Prestwood,
"Way up on the mountain near the high timberline
there's a twisted old tree called the bristlecone pine
the wind there is bitter it cuts like a knife
keeps that tree holding on for dear life
but hold on it does, standing it's ground
standing as empires rise and fall down
when Jesus was gathering lambs to the fold
this tree was already a thousand years old.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: bobad
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:33 PM

"I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now"

Da Bob

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Songster Bob
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 11:04 PM

"Be it murder or treason, oh, what a great crime,
To drown poor Naomi and leave her behind."

[Naomi Wise]

"The prophets old, they foretold,
Of a city to come all made with gold.
Peradventure they saw the day
Now dawning in Californi-ay."

[Banks of the Sacramento; the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1850]



Bob Clayton

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: open mike
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 10:41 PM

written by Julie Gold and performed by Nanci Griffith , Bette Midler and others:


From a distance the world looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.

From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man.

From a distance we all have enough,
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.

From a distance we are instruments
marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.
They're the songs of every man.
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.

From a distance you look like my friend,
even though we are at war.
From a distance I just cannot comprehend
what all this fighting is for.

From a distance there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves,
it's the heart of every man.

It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves.
This is the song of every man.
And God is watching us, God is watching us,
God is watching us from a distance.
Oh, God is watching us, God is watching.
God is watching us from a distance.

_____

there are so many phrases here..i will jsut post the whole song..
is it in the D.T. i wonder?

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Janie
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 11:01 PM

If dreams were lightning, and thunder was desire
This old world would have burned up a long time ago.      John Prine

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Bert
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 01:45 AM

Nice one oldguit.

I love that song.

Law caught me out thievin', took me down the nick
The sergeant made out his report, and he layed it on real thick
He said "I'll get your parents", I answered with a grin
"Save yourself the trouble, mate, you'll never find 'em in"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Oldguit
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 06:49 AM

Hey Bert

They don't write em like that anymore, sadly!

another goodun that I love is:

So I bought meself a guitar, bout a year ago
bloke said I could learn it in a week or so
he gave me a little book, pick or two
He said e'are mate now its up to you

Unsure of origin but sung by saint Lonnie.

Oldguit Arr

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Frank_Finn
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 09:28 AM

Mary from Loughrea

The sun will miss the glowing of your golden yellow hair
The lads will miss you from the dance on a Sunday evening fair.
The grass will miss your flying steps as you sweep the dew away
But I will miss you most of all, my Mary from Loughrea

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Michael
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 12:05 PM

"What makes you go abroad fighting with strangers
When you could stay at home free from all dangers?"

Mike

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 01:15 PM

I'm also very fond of the phrase in "Cherry Tree Carol" --

"So Mary gathered cherries while Joseph stood around..."

Linn

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Fantum
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 04:20 PM

Her breasts they were warm an by eck they were big uns
A pale shade of white like wet tripe in moonlight

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe G
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 04:50 PM

John Tams

'And go we must - no longer can we tarry'

Jez Lowe

Greek Lightning - whole song but especially

'At the wettest of Durham big meetings/oh how your heart it was easily won/I shouted for tunes by the Beatles/not that fat man from Athens they kept putting on' & 'Sometimes call me a coww then you think I'm your mam'

Loads more by Robb Johnson, Tom Bliss, George Papavergis spring to mind but Dave Vermond's

'We're raffling off the headmaster to pay for the new school roof' is one I have never forgtten!

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,John from Elsie`s Band
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 05:05 PM

"Home and Abroad" by Jerry Butlers Runaways (Paul Deane, 2003)
"His voice, though plaintive, breathy and faint
There was no mistaking, he said "Mines a pint"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 08:33 PM

Bat Goddess: I am fond of that one, too. It is obviously a recent American addition (in Britain, one person cannot stand around), but it is so perfectly in the spirit of the original that I take care to sing it.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Hellene
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 09:05 PM

Glueman, you beat me to it. "It's wrong to wish on space hardware" has always been a fave of mine.

I will set my fox to run and with my quiver and my gun
I will ride to the hunting with my hounds.
(Anne Lister - The Hunter)

"You shall strike the very first blow, strike it like a man.
I shall strike the very next blow, and I'll kill you if I can"
(Matty Groves)

Tracing one warm line, through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea
(OK, that probably owes something to Paul Gross and Callum Keith Rennie)

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Warsaw Ed
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 10:37 PM

I can just see the members of the polar bear club swimming in the ocean
"..See the bathers so bold as their noses turn blue.."
Bob Franke "Under The Willows"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Fred Maslan
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 08:16 PM

"you can't jump a jet plane
Like you can a frieght train"

From "early morning rain"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Jayto
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 08:24 PM

Promises given
Promises broken
words stain my lips
just like blood on my hands -- Lyle Lovett

This is the best part of the day
the dawn the final cleansing breathe
unsullied yet by acrid fumes
or death's cacophony
the rank refuge of unchained ambitions --- Steve Earle

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 11:48 AM

Perhaps because three generations in our family went to sea with the U.S. Navy - aviators all, this hymn has always resonated with me. Though I've been accused of being stoic on occasion, and no fan of war, the memory of my lost heroes always brings a tear when this one is sung or played.


"Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep,
Its own appointed limits keep.

Oh hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea! Amen."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Jayto
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 12:13 PM

Pour the sun upon the ground
stand to form a shadow
watch it grow into a night
and fill a spinning sky --- Townes Van Zandt the highway kind

You know you can't hang yourself
if you don't have enough rope ---- Chris Knight Enough Rope

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours --- Gordon Lightfoot Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

I'm a rolling stone all alone and lost
for this life of sin I've paid the cost
when I pass by all the people say
just another guy on that lost highway --- Hank Williams Lost Highway

I hurt myself today to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain the only thing thats real
&
and you can have it all my empire of dirt
I will let you down I will make you hurt ----- Trent Reznor Hurt

My daddy worked in the coal mine
until the company shut it down
then he sit around and drank himself blind
until they put him back underground --- Steve Earle Oxycontin Blues

We were bad for one another
but we were good at having fun --- Robert Earl Keen Corpus Christi Bay

Gotta keep moving
gotta keep moving
Blues falling down like hail --- Robert Johnson Hellhounds on my Trail

I always play Russian Roulette in my head
&
I will always remember to forget about you --- Tom Waits My favorite Color is Red

She had that kind of razor sadness --- Tom Waits

It was the kind of place that smelled like kerosene and you took on the dreams of the ones that had slept there before --- Tom Waits

They drive along the pipeline
they tango till their sore
they take apart their nightmares
and they leave them by the door --- Tom Waits Tango till thier sore

Take you hatred out on me
make your victim my head
you never ever believed in me
I am your torniquet --- Marilyn Manson Torniquet

The wind was as steady as the throttle on a funeral train -- John Prine Mexican Home

I met her on the night of fire and noise -- Nick Cave Do you Love Me

A cheap hotel a long way from my home
so many people make you feel so alone
dreams die easy out here in these streets
while your heart grows cold in the city heat --- Steve Earle Angry Young Man