For a Song: Galileo

Indigo Girls: Galileo

[purchase]

I bought a book from Amazon a while back, called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles MacKay. The book is well known in the world of finance, particularly for its account of the Dutch Tulip Mania. It also discusses alchemy, dueling, and supposed holy relics, among other things. The book dates from 1841, so the use of language is somewhat archaic, and MacKay rambles, so it’s not exactly an easy read.

Well, it got to be early May, and I got an e-mail from Amazon asking me if I wanted to sell back my text book. Huh? What text book? And then I read the rest of the e-mail. Apparently, Extraordinary Popular Delusions is used as a text book for some college courses. And apparently, no one at Amazon can imagine anyone in their right mind reading the book for fun. And that is exactly what I am now doing, and I am having fun. I don’t what that says about me, but there it is.

What does any of this have to do with music? Well, Galileo is one of my favorite Indigo Girls songs, so I decided to share it this week. The song opens with an interesting percussion sound, which carries through whole song. The vocal features the wonderful harmonies of Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, aided in this case by Jackson Browne and David Crosby on backing vocals. The fiddle part sounds like an entire string section, but used really well. And if you think from all of this that I never completely heard the lyrics before, you’re right. So, now I have, and that’s what reminded me of the book. One of the major themes of the book is that a society can get an idea in its head that just grows and grows, regardless of the fact that it never really made sense. This can also happen to an individual, and in the song, the idea is reincarnation. The narrator gets into her head that she has had a number of past lives, and these past lives become both an excuse and a burden. For her, being responsible for just one life was burden enough. But as I said, the idea grows and grows. The whole thing is delivered in a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek way. Maybe reincarnation is real, but it doesn’t follow that every person would be better off for knowing that.

For a Song: Uncle John’s Band

Indigo Girls: Uncle John‘s Band

[purchase]

I’ll get to the main part of the post in a moment. I just want to clear off some blog business. There was no album review this past weekend. Basically, it wound up under a snow bank. I had things to do related to the storm, and that was the time I would have used for the review. The review I had in mind will now appear next weekend, and be the last review for the year.

Now then. Today, Oliver di Place is exactly one year old. So I wanted a song that would represent the spirit of what I try to do here. I needed folk, jazz, blues, even world music flavors. I wanted to celebrate good writing and good singing. And, if possible, I wanted something that would be a gift to my readers, something you might not have heard before. That’s a lot to ask of one song. And the Indigo Girls’ version of Uncle John’s Band doesn’t fill the bill completely.

But the Grateful Dead was one of my first musical loves. Various members brought bluegrass, blues, and jazz elements to the band, although you don’t hear all of that on every song, and I wasn’t aware of it at the time. But I think it’s fair to say that the music of the Grateful Dead eventually led me to explore all of those types of music. Mickey Hart would later explore world music, and I would explore with him. And I was always drawn to the storytelling in the Dead’s best songs. Uncle John’s Band is certainly one of those.

I know what you’re thinking. Why isn’t he presenting the Grateful Dead’s original version then? Funny thing about that. As I got older, I realized the Dead’s one major flaw: they were terrible singers. Even with the chance to clean things up in the studio, the original Uncle John’s Band is a fine example of this. And the Indigo Girls do a great job of fixing that, revealing that the song is even better than I thought.

I hope you can find the album this originally came from. It was a tribute to the Dead, called Deadicated, and it has many other gems on it. In a crime against humanity, the label has allowed Deadicated to go out of print. You can buy it at collector’s prices, but I have provided a purchase link for the Indigo Girls’ Rarities album as a more affordable option.