Favourite Phrases in Songs

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Rafflesbear
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 03:43 PM

This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us

from "who wants to live forever" by Brian May

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joybell
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 04:03 PM

Leaving aside Dylan -- because there's too many.

"The words of the prophet written on the subway wall"

"I'd fly away from my false true lover"

"I swim the seas within my mind and the pine trees laugh green laughter"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: ClaireBear
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 04:13 PM

"Hell is deep, hell is dark, hell is full of mice."

(from "Dives and Lazarus," trad.)


"Pittsburgh has the Steelers and the Pirates and the thieves."

(from "Grand Larceny," John Gorka, in a song about the theft of his guitar from a car parked on a Pittsburgh street)

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 04:32 PM

'The man with the cane and Italian shoes, he walks like a lion looking for a lonely Christian'
Richard Thompson - the Egypt Room

'On the little man's shirt are two skeletons screwing, and the legend says "Love never Dies" '
Martin Simpson - Love Never Dies

'In the Misty Crystal Glitter of the wild and windward spray'.....'Now from Washington and Oregon you can hear the factories hum, making chrome and making manganese and white aluminum'
Both Woody Guthrie - Grand Coulee Dam

'They call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie'
Elvis Costello - I don't want to go to Chelsea

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 05:54 PM

Lord Bateman:

"She sail-ed east and she sail-ed west
'Til Turpenstones she did chance to spy
Then she went cracking of her fair white fingers
As for Lord Bateman she did enquire."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Clifton53
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:02 PM

" If you're treading on thin ice, then you might as well dance"

Jesse Winchester

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Mark Ross
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:06 PM

"We'll be out in the marble orchard where the tombstones are in bloom,
Underneath the green grass, there's always plenty of room."

50 YEARS FROM NOW
Haywire Mac McClintock

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:15 PM

"Change and decay on every hand I see;
O, Thou Who changeth not, abide with me,"




"Such a coaxsome elf, I was ashamed of myself
For to find I was truly there!"


and many, many others....




A

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:43 PM

McALPINe's god was a well filled hod..from McAlpine's Fusiliers..which I think has the highest ratio of favorite phrases of any song I can think of..mg

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joybell
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:45 PM

"Come home with me, Madge, when I go the change will do you good."

"I will twine with my mingles of raven/raving black hair"

"First did come the thick, thick blood and next did come the thin
Last did come the very heart's blood there was no more within."

Of young men --
"They're like the stars of a Summer's morning, they'll first appear and then they're gone."

"She had to leave her country home because the wolf was at the door, and her father had fallen down and broken his leg."

"Ring down the curtain I can't sing tonight."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joybell
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:49 PM

"My life goes on in enless song above Earth's lamentation."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 08:02 PM

Amos: changest

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Tootler
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 12:40 AM

A couple from Burns

"Now westlin winds, and slaught'ring guns
Bring August's pleasant weather;"

and

"As o'er the hill the eastern star tells bughtin' time is near, my Jo,
And owsen frae the furrowed field return sae dowf and weary o,
Doon by the burn where scented birks wi' dew are hangin' clear, my Jo,
I'll meet ye on the lea rig, my ain kind dearie o."

I had to put the whole verse in. It is such a wonderful description of dusk.

One from Graceland by Paul Simon

"The Mississippi Delta is shining like a National Guitar"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Clifton53
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 02:49 PM

'and all I've done, for want of wit, to memory now I can't recall'

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Rog Peek
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 06:06 PM

They're all in here:

The Bells
(Edgar Allen Poe/ Phil Ochs)

Hear the sledges with the bells         
Silver bells
What a world of merriment                  
Their melody foretells            
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle      
In the icy air of night
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight
Keeping time, time, time
With a sort of Runic rhyme
From the tintinnabulation
That so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells

Hear the mellow wedding bells
Golden bells
What a world of happiness
Their harmony foretells
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight
Through the dances and the yells
And the rapture that impels
How it swells, how it dwells
On the future, how it tells
From the swinging and the ringing of the molten golden bells
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells
Of the rhyming and the chiming of the bells

Hear the loud alarum bells
Brazen bells
What a tale of terror now
Their turbulency tells
Much too horrified to speak
Oh, they can only shriek
For all the ears to know
How the danger ebbs and flows
Leaping higher, higher, higher
With a desperate desire
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire
With the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells
With the clamor and the clanging of the bells

Hear the tolling of the bells
Iron bells
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels
For all the sound that floats
From the rust within our throats
And the people sit and groan
In their muffled monotone
And the tolling, tolling, tolling
Feels a glory in the rolling
From the throbbing and the sobbing
Of the melancholy bells
Oh, the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells
Oh, the moaning and the groaning of the bells.


Rog

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Rafflesbear
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 06:40 PM

I think you're missing the point Rog - this thread is for one-liners - kind of helps if you read the first post

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 08:42 PM

Well, if we're going to have Burns, then:

But whilst with both hands I can hold the glass steady

The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.

'And sh---, ye bitch,' the echoes' roar'd
Lincluden wa's amang.
(-- "Grim Grizzle", which it seems has not been set to music, tho it ought to be. Lincluden is a church, whose ruins are extant, in case anyone wants to repeat the experiment.)

*

The sun shines owre the westlin hills by the lamplicht o the moon
-- Eppie Morrie

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: mg
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 01:58 AM

where are the lads who stood with me when history was made...from the boys of the old brigade. mg

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Rog Peek
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 02:47 AM

No Rafflesbar, I'm not missing the point, I did read it, it wasn't just one liners it was 'some of your favourite phrases from songs - you know a couple of lines, a line or just half a line' - I just couldn't choose between them.

Rog

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,seth in Olympia
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 03:08 AM

"that red bandanna tied around your auburn hair
you look like you oughta be somebody's wife somewhere"
                                          Merle Haggard

" Papa got us in the pick-up
With a damp rag across our nose(s)
And we drove off through the cloud
That he once plowed
In long straight handsome rows"
                                        Lawrence Hammond
" It balances on your head
Like a mattress balances
on a bottle of wine"
                                        Bob Dylan

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 09:37 AM

In this era of Uk folk perhaps settling back from a very high point what about"NOTHING EVER HAPPENS TILL SOMEONE LIGHTS THE FUSE"
If you are wondering it is from Ghost in blue suade shoes by Lindisfarne.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 10:00 AM

There's a good one in "Lady of Lough Rea", intended to signify something impossible (rather like the Scots, "The blude-red rose at Yule may bloom"):

"Ah, rose-leaf maid, 'tis easy to blame the wastrel now;
But, who was ever able for to harrow with a plough?"

Further to contributions from Tootler and Joe F, Yeats greatly admired Burns's line about

"The wan moon is setting behind the white wave,
And Time is setting with me...",

while Walter Scott said that

"Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met, or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken hearted"

contains the essence of a thousand love songs (or stories). Note, incidentally, that "parted" would be pronounced close to "perr-tit", with "hearted" rhyming.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 10:55 AM

"They couldn't do to me no harm,
so they slew my baby in my arms
and left me nought to wrap him in
but the bloody sheet that he lay in."

Amazing.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Stephen L. Rich
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 11:41 PM

From Sandy Andina's song about the Santa Ana Winds called "The Devil Wind"


"Why do people fear the Reaper when it's the wind that wields the blade?"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: raredance
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 01:01 AM

Tom Russell on Pain - physical or emotional

It goes away, it might take years
Or a hundred thousand tears.
But one day the sky will clear, it goes away

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: meself
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 01:46 AM

I fought the law, and the law won.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: boosh
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 11:09 AM

"if songs were lines in a conversation, the situation would be fine"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Albert O'Balsam
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 06:12 PM

From 'My Home In Sweet Glenlee'

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Albert O'Balsam
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 06:18 PM

I found amid the multitude a creature of great pulchritude

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Hallf-A-Mo
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 06:20 PM

My life had been a wilderness
Untouched by fortunes gaze
Had fate not linked my love to her
Sweet Rose of Alendale.

Or

And people who walk about never ask why,
The rich uns can live, and your poor daddy die.
And if they should ask me, Lord, I'd only cry,
For the Sun and the Moon's fallen down from the sky.

Or

With the love of your life,
Spend a lifetime of love,
Make her yours forevermore.

Or

So kiss me my sweet, and so let us part.
And when I grow too old to dream,
Your kiss will live in my heart.
(sniff)
God bless Sigmund Romberg!

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Jason Xion Wang
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 09:54 PM

"Are you going away with no word of farewell
Will there be not a trace left behind
I could've loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind
You know that was the last thing on my mind"

"I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all"

"My body is merely the shell of my soul
But the flesh must be given it's due
Like a pony that carries it's master back home
Like an old that's tried and been true

My spirit will never be broken or caught
For the soul is a free-flying thing
Like an eagle that needs neither comfort nor thought
To rise up on glorious wings"

"For the heart of man's a palace
And his dreams are as the sunlight
They burn away the darkness, as they warm the freezing cold
As an eagle flying higher, as a river through the canyon
The diamond star shines down upon, a pathway to the soul"

"But for just one fleeting moment
The answer seemed so clear
Heaven's not beyond the clouds
It's just beyond the fear"

Tom Paxton, Joni Mitchell, the last three by Joe Henry.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 12:35 AM

That wonderfully confused version of Scarboro Fair ballad burden, "Sober and grave grow merry in time" ~~ makes a crazy kind of sense.


Is there a better epitome of being in a great hurry than the widespread ballad floater!?:

"When she came to the riverside she fell to her breast and she swam
And when she came to the other side she took to her heels and she ran."

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Peter Trouy
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 09:52 AM

30.08.10

"Broken hearts and dirty windows
make life dificult to see.
Thats why last night and this morning
allways look the same to me...
John Prine

or:
"Beauty walks a razors edge, some day i'll make it mine".

Dylan

Peter Trout

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 10:16 AM

Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts Paul Simon

Take down this mast of gold, set up a mast of tree,
For it becomes not a forsaken maid to sail so royally..Lass of Loch Royal

The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face Dylan

The priest he sat in the airport bar, he was wearing his fathers tie Joni Mitchell

Ask them easy questions, they'll tell you easy lies..Richard Farina

She danced away thier gold and thier bright money..Bonnie Lass of Anglesy

I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me,
But the room just filled up with mosqitoes, they heard that my body was free   Cohen

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 06:05 PM

MtheGM: My own daemon made it "Sparsely sage, those wary in time!".

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Len Wallace
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 06:11 PM

One Big Union that's our plan
and the I.W.W.'s your only man,
The flames of discontent we'll fan
For the cause that never dies.

From Andy Irvine's "Never Tire of the Road".
Love singing that verse.

Yours for the cause and music that never dies,

Len Wallace

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Cool Beans
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 06:23 PM

A flat that would flatten the Taj Mahal.
--Frank Loesser, "Guys & Dolls"