Favorite Lines

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: meself
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:39 AM

By this pipe in me mouth then replied the old woman
and that's a great oath on me soul for to say


-anon., Daniel O'Connor (Making Babies by Steam)

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: PHJim
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:40 AM

The Leonard Cohen line suggested by Elmore reminds me of this one by Martin Mull:

I'm tired of rock & rollin'
Let's get married Honey, let's go bowlin'.
Throw away our pot and acid,
Spend the weekend in Lake Placid
'Cause it's hard to live in this town if you're strange.
What say you and I get normal for a change.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Elmore
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 01:15 AM

My old man wasn't really old, It's just that I was young. And anyone over 12 years old was halfway to the tomb. from "My Old Man" by Ewan MacColl.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 01:38 AM

The best love songs are written with a broken arm.. (The Carpenters)

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 09:59 AM

Pharaoh he sits in his tower of steel
The dogs of money all at his heel
Magicians cry "Oh truth! Oh real!"
We're all working for the Pharaoh

-Richard Thompson

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Cool Beans
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 10:53 AM

These are great! One of my faves, by Frank Loesser,in "Guys and Dolls":
When you see a gent paying all kinds of rent
For a flat that would flatten the Taj Mahal...

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:13 PM

... after losing his girl to a stranger and going off to get drunk...

♫"And since it is no better, I'm glad it is no worse,
Brandy in my bottle and money in my purse."♫

From the singing of Mike Seeger, who probably got it from the book Our Singing Country... at least I've found no other source. You can see the complete text at that link.
I heard Mike sing it at the Smithsonian Festival about 1975. He recorded it on "Music from the True Vine.

I have sung this ever since....

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 01:18 PM

"Well, I'm a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin' down to take a look at me"

(Jackson Browne/Glenn Frey)

You can't get any better than those first four lines above.
Perfection!

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 06:41 AM

From Phil & June Colclough's 'Song For Ireland'
Drinking all the day, in old pubs where Fiddlers love to play' My iea of heaven ;)
And from Brendan Behan's 'The Auld Triangle'
Up in the female prison, there are seventy fine women, and it's among them I wish I did dwell

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,Dave Hunt
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 10:51 AM

'Across the hills the sun has gone astray, tomorrows cares are many dreams away',,....in fact ALL of John O' Dreams by Bill Caddick....who has written so many memorable lines/songs.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,Johnmc
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 01:18 PM

"God didn't make those little green apples
And it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime".

" Born at the instant church bells chime
Whole world listening
Born at the right time".    P Simon

Thought if I could submit without checking they must be good.
A bit like The Beatles songwriting - if they couldn't remember it the next day why
should anyone else, so song was ditched.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 02:46 PM

G. K. Chesterton described that widespread "floater"

Over the hills and far away

as "the finest line in English literature and the silent refrain of all English poems".

(Not quite sure what he meant by the last phrase; but it is certainly a most exquisitely nostalgically expressed concept, isn't it?)

~M~

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Mr Red
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 03:19 PM

the Ballad of Andrew McCrew by Don Maclean

Well, what a way to live a life and what a way to die.
Left to live a living death with no one left to cry.
Petrified amazement, and wonder beyond words,
A man who found more life in death than life gave him at birth.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Mr Red
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 03:25 PM

Keith Hancock - more of a chorus.

When I were a lad eeee time they were bad,
But not as bad as when my dad were a lad.
When my dad were a lad, eeee times they were bad,
but not as bad as when my dad's dad were a lad.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: kendall
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 07:41 PM

If you cheat again, he'll have to move the flowers.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 04:30 PM

Our pen is the sword and our voice is the cannon ...bold fenian men

I live in montana i wear a bandana

It wasnt his intent he got a.fine head of cement..
Building. Up and tearing england.down

The girls will wear new.sealskin pants when the boys come home from swiling

Slugger otoole who was drunk as a rule

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 07:58 AM

"Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon" - Skylark

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 08:38 AM

Finest description of pregnancy in the ballad Gil Morrice, when the lady, confessing she is the mother of the man her husband has just killed, with that of the thin layer of flesh surrounding the stone of the rose hip berry:
"I ance was full o' Gil Morrice as the hip is of the stone".
Or the description of the moon as an ill omen in Sir Patrick Spens;
"I saw the new moon yestere'en with the auld moon in its arms"
Or the best ever description of a card game in the workplace in The Golden Vanity:
"Some were playing cards, and some were playing dice,
And some were standing round giving good advice".   
They don't make 'em like that any more!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,mauvepink
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 12:52 PM

From Corole King and the late Gerry Goffey's "Goin' back" and made famous by Dusty Springfield. Four brilliant lines (bolded) below:

I think I'm goin' back
To the things I learned so well in my youth,
I think I'm returning to
The days when I was young enough to know the truth

Now there are no games
To only pass the time
No more coloring books,
No Christmas bells to chime
But thinking young and growing older is no sin
And I can play the game of life to win

I can recall a time,
When I wasn't afraid to reach out to a friend
And now I think I've got
A lot more than a skipping rope to lift

Now there's more to do
Than watch my sailboat glide
Then everyday can be my magic carpet ride
And I can play hide and seek with my fears,
And live my life instead of counting my years

Let everyone debate the true reality,
I'd rather see the world the way it used to be
A little bit of freedom, all we're left
So catch me if you can
I'm goin' back


I am always amazed as I sing this beautiful song at those lines

mp

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 09:10 PM

awesome line from La Marselleise...which I probably misspelled. It does not get much more serious.

Aux armes cityoens...formez vos battalions..

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Jul 14 - 11:32 PM

Gets even better when it goes on to the impure blood irrigating our plough-furrows!

Sacré bleu!

~M~

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: PHJim
Date: 21 Jul 14 - 12:02 AM

The opening lines to Tom Lehrer's "We'll All Go Together When We Go" are:

When you attend a funeral
It is sad to think that sooner o' L-
-ater those you love will do the same for you.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 21 Jul 14 - 03:09 AM

"By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong" always hits me when I hear it.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,GUEST: BlueJay
Date: 21 Jul 14 - 04:23 AM

"You know, the law of averages says anything will happen that can,

But the last time the Cubs won a National League pennant was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan".

From Steve Goodman's, The Dying Cub Fan's Last Request

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: PHJim
Date: 31 Jul 14 - 02:38 PM

"They say 64 percent of all the world's statistics
are made up right there on the spot
82.4 percent of people believe 'em
whether they're accurate statistics or not."
-Todd Snyder's Statistician's Blues

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Joe_F
Date: 31 Jul 14 - 06:14 PM

Her hair shone like gold in the hot morning sun.

He was born on land, but he sure enjoys the sky.

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel.

And turns to put the mirror, gently, face down by the stove.

And we had to make do with gin.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,SqueezeMe
Date: 31 Jul 14 - 11:13 PM

"The feet that were nimble tread carefully now;
As gentle a measure as age will allow..."

(Austin John Marshall - The Ladies Go Dancing at Whitsun)

A favorite not only within the context of the song, but life and aging in general....

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: PHJim
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 12:08 AM

When I play my fiddle in Dooney
Folks dance like a wave of the sea.

W.B.Yeats

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: PHJim
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 12:09 AM

Lord preserve us and protect us
We've been drinkin' whiskey for breakfast

Mike Cross

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 12:50 AM

When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art ?"
            
    Rudyard Kipling The Conundrum of the Workshops

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,Abdul on ipad
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 02:12 AM

"To me, it all goes hand in hand. The music and the land. Who could fail to understand such simplicity". Jumps out from Jim Causleys' "Rewind" but the whole song is great.
Al

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 03:30 AM

Someone has quoted "As gentle a measure as age will allow". That line is a definite unfavourite of mine, because it doesn't make sense. The sense should be that the ladies tread as energically as they can manage (which might be not very, given their age) not as gently as they can.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,SqueezeMe
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 03:41 AM

I don't agree, Richard, but I have learned a new word, so my post wasn't totally wasted :-)

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: David C. Carter
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 06:22 AM

"Come down off the cross,
we could use the wood".


Tom Waits

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 05:23 PM

Only takes one tree to make a thousand matches
Only takes one match to burn a thousand trees

Stereophonics - A Thousand Trees

DC

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: NightWing
Date: 01 Aug 14 - 07:28 PM

My favorite line from a song remains the missing line from Tom Lehrer's My Home Town.

That fellow was no fool who taught our Sunday school
And neither was our kindly Parson Brown
[spoken] Shall I? No, better not
[sung] In my home town

The imagination runs wild ... and then boggles. *LOL*

BB,
NightWing

P.S. Tom said that in many different forms, depending on whether he was live, in the studio, recording, or whatever.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Tootler
Date: 02 Aug 14 - 01:17 PM

I'll buy you beavers and fine silken gowns
I'll buy you fine petticoats all flounced to the ground
If you will prove loyal and constant to me
And forsake your own true love and get married to me.

I don't want your beavers or fine silken hose
I was never so poor as to marry for clothes
But if you will prove loyal and constant to me
I'll forsake my own true love and get married to thee.

Who's kidding who?

And

Eleanor Rigby
Put on her face that she kept in a jar by the door (IIRC)

I've always liked that one

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: PHJim
Date: 05 Aug 14 - 01:47 AM

I dip my cup of soup back from the gurglin', cracklin' cauldron in some train yard

John Hartford

John's Gentle On My Mind has a pile of really lovely lines from which to choose.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Aug 14 - 02:07 AM

"He'll huddle you, he'll cuddle you
He'll love you for your sake
But keep your legs together
Coming home from the wake"
.,,.

"Caviare's the roe of the virgin sturgeon"
.,,.,.

"Madam, may I tie your garter
Just a little above the knee?
And if my hand should slip a little further
Would you think it rude of me?"
,..,

"Get up, Musgrave, put on your clothes
As quickly as you can
I'll ne'er have it said in this country
That I fought with a naked man"
.,,.

"And he cut off her head from her neckbone
And kicked it against the wall"
.,,.


≈M≈

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Aug 14 - 02:10 AM

And that wonderful floater, most poetic exemplar of the journey in great haste:

And when she came to the riverside
She lay on her breast and she swam
And when she came to the other side
She took to her heels and she ran

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Aug 14 - 02:17 AM

Cosher Bailey's sister Anna
She could play the grand pianner
She went hammer hammer hammer
Till the neighbours cried God damn 'er
.,,.

"How can I live, how shall I live,
How can I live for thee?
For don't you see my own ❤'s blood
Come trinkling down my knee!"

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Aug 14 - 02:25 AM

All round my hat I will wear the green willow
.,,.

All round my hat I wear the tri-coloured ribbon
.,,.

"Whirl your whiskey around like blazes ~~
Thunderin' Jaysus, did you think I was dead!"

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: PHJim
Date: 05 Aug 14 - 10:57 AM

I thought this was a neat lyric when I first heard it on a Lonnie Johnson & Elmer Snowdon record.

Lonnie Johnson (and many other early blues singers) sang:



I'm sittin' here wonderin' will a matchbox hold my clothes,

Just sittin' here wonderin' will a matchbox hold my clothes.

Well I ain't got so many, but I sure got a long way to go.



The idea, of course is that he has so few "clothes", not "matches", that they might even fit into a matchbox.

Carl Perkins (and other rockabilly singers) seem to have interpreted it as though the singer has a shortage of matches.

Which makes more sense?



Carl Perkins' Lyrics:



Well I'm sitting here wondering, will a matchbox hold my clothes
Yeah I'm sitting here wondering, will a matchbox hold my clothes
I ain't got no matches, but I got a long way to go


This makes less sense to me, but here's what the Beatles did with the lyrics.



Beatles' Lyrics:

I said I'm sitting here watching, matchbox hole in my clothes
I said I'm sitting here wondering, matchbox hole in my clothes
I ain't got no matches but I sure ot a long way to go


What?

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Musket
Date: 05 Aug 14 - 11:03 AM

I must be drinking the same cooking sherry as Michael. One of my favourite lines from a traditional song is from Matty Groves / Little Musgrave whatever..

"It'll never be said in fair England that I slew a naked man."

Christy Moore of course, prefers "this fair land" as he could never be seen to say anything nice about the country where he made most of his money and concert goers always give him a warm welcome.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 06:06 PM

Entirely different sort of song:-

Cole Porter's

"Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today ~~ Madam"

followed by

"She is sorry to be delayed, but last evening down in Lover's Lane she strayed ~~ Madam"

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 08:05 PM

you who are her maidens open up her gown

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 06 Aug 14 - 08:08 PM

Every time I gaze behind the screws
Makes me long for St Peter's shoes
I'd walk on down that silver lane
And take my love in my arms again

brings back memories of refurbishing cruise ships and missing my new wife.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: Bert
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 12:03 AM

And as for Cosher Bailey, there is this glorious verse

There are lots of honey bees
and they swarm around the trees
The go into Llangollen
and the suck up all the pollen.

So of course you have to pronounce Llangollen correctly and rhyme pollen with it.

For those of you who don't know, ll in Welsh is pronounced like the ch in loch in Scottish or the kh in Arabic. There is no such sound in English, it sounds as though you are about to expectorate.

In Welsh the stress is on the penultimate syllable and in LLangollen the e is close to the English i as in fit.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: PHJim
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 12:39 AM

Cosher Bill, I always thought that the "ll" in Welsh was more "chl", with the "ch" pronounced as you said above. In other words, isn't there an "l" sound after the sound that resembles an expectoration?
I will admit that I have not been in Llangollen since 1969, so my memory might be faulty.

Subject: RE: Favorite Lines
From: GUEST,silver
Date: 07 Aug 14 - 06:01 AM

Can't choose between all these gems:

And all I've done for want of wit/ to memory now I can't recall (The Parting Glass, trad.)

By love's light my foot finds the old pathway to thee (Bheir Me O, trad.)

My heart's a boat in tow (Loch Tay Boat Song, trad.)

With heather honey taste upon each name (The Road to the Isles, McLeod/Kennedy-Fraser)

The fallen leaves that jewel the ground/ they know the art of dying,
And leave with joy their glad gold hearts/ in the scarlet shadows lying (R Williamson)

They're all dressed up in feathers with colors outrageous,
they soar from this earthly-bound kingdom of cages
on delicate wings, so small and courageous (Wild Birds, Jan Harmon)

And her own dark hair like clouds over fields in May (Raglan Road, P Kavanaugh)

I never got to Heaven but I stayed out of Hell, and still I'm on my way (Blackbird, J Goodenough)

She's finer than a frog hair split four ways (The Deed and the Dollar)
Sung by Shooter Jennings, but who wrote it? Can anyone tell me? You must agree it's brilliant.