Best lines

Subject: Best lines
From: kendall
Date: 27 Mar 00 - 03:58 PM

We have had threads on the best songs, and, the worst lines, so, how about a thread on best lines?
To start, how about Rick Fieldings Margins of my neighborhood,Charlie in the library baffled by the printed word, stroking the books and saying "Let me in" that really grabs me. Another line..Bob Coltmans rewrite of Patrick Spense.. the waves rolled up like mountain tops, and the wind like a thing in pain.. Utah Phillips,.."then I played up the booze and the holes in the shoes of a man whose life is a cage, and all the things done to make a man run, the hard luck and the failures of age.. .. I stopped with a crash, we looked into the ash, helpless with longing and rage..

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Kara
Date: 27 Mar 00 - 04:03 PM

and I said let grief be a falling leaf at the dawning of the day

(Ragland Road)

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: DonMeixner
Date: 27 Mar 00 - 05:31 PM

And the Bush has friends to meet him,

and their KINDLY voices greet him,

In the murmur of the breezes and the river on it's bars,

And he views the vision splendid on the sunlit plains extended,

And at night the wonderous glory in the everlasting stars.

"Clancy of The Overflow", A. B. Paterson

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Stewie
Date: 27 Mar 00 - 05:47 PM

'Naked as the eyes of a clown' - John Prine.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: GUEST,Frankie
Date: 27 Mar 00 - 11:06 PM

The dust that Pancho bit down south, Ended up in Lefty's mouth.

(Townes Van Zandt)

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Gary T
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 12:18 AM

There's a little girl who is worth her weight in gold
And that's a decent dowry, don't you see

From the Irish folksong, "Bridget Flynn"

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Mbo
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 12:27 AM

"Like a sick man longs for the dawn
I do long for the light of her smile"

from Is Ar Eireann Ni Nosfain Ce Hi

--Mbo

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Gypsy
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 12:40 AM

If i'm gonna add to a THREAD, just have to add the immortal "stringamajig" ya know, that thing that you play with when not on a keyboard?

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: kendall
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 07:28 AM

????

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: catspaw49
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 08:00 AM

"Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?"...Pat Sky

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: kendall
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 08:05 AM

and their dreams were washed away, and their spirit died..

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: SDShad
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 10:02 AM

I'm on a Shane MacGowan kick these days:

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
There's devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign lands

"The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn"

Chris

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: The Beanster
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 10:07 AM

"Never take no cut-offs and hurry along as fast as you can."

Virginia Reed, surviving member of the Donner Party. Her words of advice in a letter to another family member who was about to embark on the journey from Illinois to California.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Mooh
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 01:16 PM

"...Kick at the night 'till it bleeds daylight..." Bruce Cockburn "...Rama lama fa fa fa..." MC5 Matthew 7:12 is pretty good too.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Bert
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 01:16 PM

but when your heart's heavy, and you're shackled and pinned, you can reach out for help with the Blue Clicky Thing

From "The Blue Clicky Thing" by McGrath of Harlow.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 01:19 PM

Hello, in there. Hello?

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 01:39 PM

Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine. Bob Dylan

And in the shade of an oak, down by the river, sat an old man and a boy, settin' sails, spinnin' tales and fishin for whales, with a lady that they both enjoy Willie Nelson

Mr. engineer, let a po' boy ride the blind, he said I'd love to fella, but this railroad train ain't mine. Blind Willie McTell.

Pearline, what's the matter with you, Pearline, what's the matter with you, Pearline, what the hell did I do? Son House.

Hey there Brother, who you jivin' with that Cosmic Debris? Frank Zappa.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: GUEST,Mrrzy-while-at-work
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 01:39 PM

Do these lines have to be from folk songs? How about:

I believe in coincidence. Coincidences happen every day. I just don't trust coincidences.

Or:

Joel: Try reality, Ed! Ed: (laughs) No thanks!

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 01:53 PM

I think you'll always find a lot of John Prine songs in a thread like this. Here's one from PARADISE

Where the air smelled like snakes, and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

Here's a traditional one I've always loved:

Ev'ry time I come to town
The boys keep kickin' my dawg aroun';
Makes no diff'rence if he is a houn',
They gotta quit kickin' my dawg aroun'.

(HOUND DOG SONG)

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: kendall
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 01:59 PM

I was hoiping for something a little more profound folks..

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 02:20 PM

profound eh?

Just about anything written by John Gorka qualifies in my book... Like...

"When her sweet summer love had turned and gone
He put a bigtime Moses lonesome on
He got back the ring with the note she'd sent
When he tried to make it permanent"

I don't know what a bigtime Moses lonesome is but it's sounds horrific!! LOL!!

Or this one...
"He's never been far from trouble
Trouble is as loyal as a dog
He drinks in the muddy water
And he sleeps in the hollow log
His troubles all have mirrors
And they double up the size
His problems all have patches
And they cover up his eyes"

Simple and brilliant... the best of both worlds...

{~`

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 02:22 PM

Joe, thanks for reminding me of the Hound Dog Song, haven't heard it in years. I can't remember who I heard doing it, but it was accompanied by a Jew's Harp and foot stomping.

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 02:35 PM

I find it hard to improve on Dylan:

"Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet?"

"Money doesn't talk, it swears"

"To live outside the law, you must be honest"

"Let me forget about today until tomorrow"

A pretty random sampling, really -- choose just about any line from the songs quoted above, or from many of his others, and you'll get my vote.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: GUEST,NancAurelia
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 03:15 PM

How about some Joni Mitchell:

"She removes him like a ring to wash her hands; She only brings him out to show her friends."

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: GUEST,Carisa
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 03:28 PM

Not a folk song, but I always thought it was pretty profound...

"There is freedom within, there is freedom without. Try to catch a deluge in a paper cup."

actually, any line from that song will do it. Can't remember the name of the band, something from the 80's.

-Carisa

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: GUEST,zenduck
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 03:40 PM

Carisa, your line is from Crowded House, "Don't Dream It's Over"

Coupla ideas:

"Between Marx and marzipan in the dictionary There was Mary" - Billy Bragg

"You can bury my body down by the highway side So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride" - Robert Johnson

"I saw two falling stars last night I wished on them, but they were only satellites It's wrong to wish on space hardware I wish, I wish, I wish you cared" - B. Bragg

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 04:12 PM

"but how strange the change, from major to minor...." -- Cole Porter (best music/words link line ever?)

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: SDShad
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 04:30 PM

An all time favorite that I never tire of singing is Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," particularly the first verse:

I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah

Chris

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: pastorpest
Date: 28 Mar 00 - 05:25 PM

Dare I admit how much I like these lines from the honky tonk Shakespeare, Hank Williams?

The silence of a falling star/ Lights up a purple sky,/ And as I wonder where you are,/ I'm so lonesome I could cry.

Leonard Cohen, who references Hank Williams by times, has been quoted once already and here is one I like:

Ring the bells that still can ring;/ Forget your perfect offering./ There is a crack in everything,/ That's how the light gets in.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: GUEST,mary g.
Date: 29 Mar 00 - 12:45 AM

and you can roll me in your plaid, and I will be your dearie (third greatest line...I already used up the other two in a previous thread...)

mg

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 29 Mar 00 - 01:58 AM

" Ozone on the Midnight Wind
Got me thinking of the Sea
And the mercies of the current that brought
Me to you and you to me
And in the silence at the heart of things
Where all true meanings come to be
I see the Rose above the Sky
Open"

Bruce Cockburn The Rose above the Sky

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 29 Mar 00 - 02:48 AM

How I long for the touch of your lips, dear,
But much more for the touch of your whips, dear,
You can raise welts like nobody else
As we dance to the Masochism Tango!
For rhyme, scansion and profundity, you can't beat Tom Lehrer with a big stick. If you tried to, he'd probably add another verse to the song. All the best.
Seamus

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Mbo
Date: 29 Mar 00 - 10:29 AM

I come from a long line of love
When times get rough, we don't give up
Forever's in our hearts and in our blood
You know I come from a long line of love.

Michael Martin Murphy Long Line of Love

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Midchuck
Date: 29 Mar 00 - 11:01 AM

An awful debility,
a lessened utility,
a loss of mobility
is a strong possibility.
In all probability,
I'll lose my virility,
and your fertility,
and desireability.
And this liability
of total sterility
will lead to hostility
and a sense of futility.
So let's act with a agility
while we still have fertility
for we'll soon reach senility,
and lose the ability....

bridge from Tom Lehrer's When You Are Old and Gray. Just wanted to see if I could still do if from memory.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Midchuck
Date: 29 Mar 00 - 11:03 AM

Damn. I screwed it up. Third-from-last line is "While we still have facility.

Guess it's too late for me.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 29 Mar 00 - 11:07 AM

I'm sick of love, but I'm in the thick of it.

Bob Dylan, Lovesick

Here my phone ringing, sounds like a long distance call, I pick up my receiver, party said another mule's kickin' in your stall.

Muddy Waters, Long Distance Call

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: GUEST,Mrrzy-at-work
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 10:46 AM

I used this in another thread, but it's still a great line:

Give the woman in the bed there more porter!

It's from A Wet Day In London (Wolfe Tones).

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 10:55 AM

It's not folk but Victoria Wood's "Let's do it" (an eager wife and reluctant husband song) has quite a few including her: "beat me on the bottom with the Women's Weekly*" and his: "I'd rather read a catalogue on vinyl flooring" among others. I don't like most of her songs, I prefer her sketches and plays, but this one ( and NO I don't have the full lyrics, about five minutes long)always tickles my funny bone.
RtS (where did I put that catalogue..?) [*A very staid UK home hints and love story magazine.]

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Stewie
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 11:10 AM

Another great Leonard Cohen line was:

'I raised my hand against it all and caught the bride's bouquet'.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Mbo
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 11:21 AM

From "Les Miserables"

Take my hand
And lead me to salvation
Take my love
For love is everlasting.
And remember
The truth that once was spoken
To love another person
Is to see the face of God..


--Mbo

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: kendall
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 11:36 AM

The woman in the bed was written by Tommy Makem.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Noel P
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 12:24 PM

Folks, I alway's thought this line from "The Ballad of St Anne's reel" somehow caught the moment "Leap, the heart inside him went, and off across the floor he sent His clumsy body, graceful as a child " and also by Dave Mallet from the "Garden song"

An old crow watching hungrily From his perch in yonder tree, In my garden I'm as free As that feathered thief up there.

There's also a line in a song called "The Button Pusher" by Enoch Kent (I think) which is not in the DT which goes "If my wife denies my conjocular rights or my breakfast milk is sour" which makes one think, what was HE thinking when he dreamed up this line. I wish I could write some lines like this. Noel P.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Gervase
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 12:38 PM

For me many of the lyrics of Ian Dury - who sadly died last week - are brilliantly memorable. Very English (You have to be familiar with the wilds of Essex and the wilder behaviour of Essex folk), and very funny - a modern-day W.S.Gilbert - Dury's stuff was wonderfully observed. Not exactly folk, not exactly blues, but bloody brilliant. It's a measure of how goof he was that the leading lights of the poetry, pop and literary worlds will pay tribute to the late Ian Dury tomorrow night (tue) at the Poetry Olympics in London. Dury was due to appear, but now the other performers have decided to dedicate the event to his memory, with a tribute to him being planned by organiser Michael Horovitz. Other performers are due to include former punk rocker Joe Strummer of The Clash, punk poet John Cooper Clarke, Sixties singer-songwriter Julie Felix, author and playwright Hanif Kureishi, dub poets Linton Kwesi Johnson and Jean Binta Breeze, writer Beryl Bainbridge and jazz pianist Stan Tracey. Remember a great lyricist.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: SDShad
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 12:42 PM

MacGowan again, can't help myself:

Fifteen minutes later
We had our first taste of whiskey
There was uncles giving lectures
On ancient Irish history

from "The Body of an American"

Shad

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 04:32 PM

God Damn them all, I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold, we'd fire no guns, shed no tears, now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier, the last of Barrett's Privateers

Stan Rogers

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: GUEST,mary g
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 08:17 PM

rifle to rifle and horse against horse..from Fenian Men..

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Sailor Dan
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 08:56 PM

I think that I shall never see, A Poem as lovely as a tree

Not country, not folk, but sung by an Irish tenor it will make you cry.

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Mbo
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 08:57 PM

Right on, Quiet Man. My sister and I love that poem.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Chocolate Pi
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 09:06 PM

"And Ophelia, with her dad kilt
By the man she wished to marry
After saying it with flowers
She committed hari-kari."
--Oor Hamlet

"The Earth will soon dissolve like snow
The sun forbear to shine" --New Britain (Amazing Grace (Sacred Harp 42 on the top))

"Now shall my inward joys arise
And break into a song
Almighty love inspires my heart
And pleasure tunes my tounge
" --Africa (Sacred Harp 170-something)

and to continue the Tom Leher theme: "We are the Folk Song Army; every one of us cares
....
There are innocuous folksongs, yeah
But we regard them with scorn
The people who sing them have no social conscience
Why, they don't even care if Jimmy crack corn!
....
It doesn't matter if you cram a couple of extra syllables into a line
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English
And it don't even gotta rhyme. (Excuse me, rhyne.)"


Chocolate Pi

Subject: RE: BS: Best lines
From: Petr
Date: 03 Apr 00 - 09:11 PM

I could have been someone, (Shane) Well so could anyone, (Kirsty) You took my dreams from me (K) when I first found you (K) I kept them with me babe (S) I put them with my own (S) Cant make it all alone (S) I built my dreams around you. (S)

Fairytale of New York Shane McGowan (I believe)

Petr. I think that song turned me on to celtic music.