Hulver's site || Goodbye Liza Jane?

Goodbye Liza Jane?

Makes sense but you transcribed it wrong	0 votes - 0 %
Makes sense but you don't understand it	0 votes - 0 %
Doesn't make sense	2 votes - 100 %

2 Total Votes

I look at people and I see nothing worth liking | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback

WIPO: by ammoniacal (4.00 / 3) #1 Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 03:10:40 PM EST

Doesn't make sense when a Briton is interested in American Cowboy Culture.

General rules are: All skirts no lower then [sic] two inches below the knee (unless it's for Church) --Travis Frey

: Surely by TheophileEscargot (4.00 / 3) #2 Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 03:13:48 PM EST

If there's a gun on the belt in Stanza One, it has to be fired by Stanza Five.
--
"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." -- Bertrand Russell
[ Parent ]

Over the top? No way. by Tonatiuh (4.00 / 2) #3 Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 03:22:03 PM EST

I know plenty of oilmen. The character in the movie is pretty understated in comparison.

Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys! by atreides (4.00 / 3) #4 Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 03:33:33 PM EST

Actually, Liza Jane probably has different lyrics because there's a long tradition in country, jazz and cowboy music to change around lyrics to fit your needs. Sometimes the song is old and needs updating, sometimes they can't remember the original words, sometimes they personalize the song to themselves or the people around them at the time. I hear there's a tradition of that in Mexican folk music, but I can't tell you that with any certainty.

And as a minor sidebar, I came to find Bob Wills by accident when I was looking for a recording of a certain jazz tune on Soulseek... He definitely liked the jazz big time...

_{He sails from world to world in a flying tomb, serving gods who eat hope.}

Most if not all folk music, surely, does this by motty (4.00 / 1) #9 Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 09:13:50 PM EST

This is using 'folk' music in the widest possible sense. I'm sure (unless Robert Graves was lying to me) this kind of thing was prevalent also in the old Celtic bardic tradition; it's also true in the vast bulk of rock, blues and reggae also. Compare and contrast, for example, Dawn Penn's version of 'You Don't Love Me' with the one on the Bloomfield / Kooper / Stills SuperSession album - there is a still more ancient blues antecedent of these two variants which has different lyrics again, to say nothing of arrangement. Yet it's still essentially the same song.

It's easier to enumerate kinds of music where this doesn't apply, because singers change the lyrics as they see fit any time where it's more important to be singing with real feeling and conviction than to be parroting something that has been laid down in stone by some weird authority figure. Off the top of my head, only classical styles and liturgical music really require a sacred text; one could argue that it is precisely the point that a lyric has become sacred in this way that it stops being folk music and becomes classical somehow. Or liturgical. And also often boring.

I amd itn ecaptiaghle of drinking sthis d dar - Dr T
[ Parent ]

You're probably right... by atreides (4.00 / 2) #13 Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 08:59:55 AM EST

...but I am not the musical master that you are. I didn't want to talk to other forms I'm unfamiliar with. And I have no idea why I didn't mention the blues. That's a big "duh!" on my part...

_{He sails from world to world in a flying tomb, serving gods who eat hope.}
[ Parent ]

Master shmaster by motty (2.00 / 0) #14 Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 03:26:13 PM EST

I wish.

eanwhile, here's more on 'You Don't Love Me', which I just found, and which includes verses I've not come across before and refers to a Grateful Dead version I didn't know about. How did I not find this stuff last time I researched this?

I amd itn ecaptiaghle of drinking sthis d dar - Dr T
[ Parent ]

: You never find it when you need it... by atreides (4.00 / 1) #15 Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 04:01:54 PM EST

...but it always in mind when you don't. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
_{He sails from world to world in a flying tomb, serving gods who eat hope.}
[ Parent ]

Stop inciting the Canadians by georgeha (4.00 / 4) #5 Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 03:35:22 PM EST

the Avro Arrow ranks up there with Olympic figure skating on things that piss off Canadians.

And that whacky flying saucer concept by jump the ladder (4.00 / 1) #10 Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 05:06:45 AM EST

Stolen from the aliens in area 51

[ Parent ]

Hm, interesting . . . by slozo (4.00 / 1) #11 Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 07:45:07 AM EST

. . . thanks for that link - hadn't heard of their flying saucer project before.

[ Parent ]

Canada was a once a major miltary power by jump the ladder (2.00 / 0) #16 Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 06:17:28 AM EST

Due to WW 2 as it had the fourth largest navy in the world and the 6th biggest army. It was vital to Britain especially before the Americans entered the war.

I think the Avro Arrow and the flying saucer project were hangovers from that period.

[ Parent ]

Yes, Canada used to be . . . by slozo (1.00 / 1) #17 Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 07:22:58 AM EST

. . . a decent military power; now we have switched it up as a leader in arms sales. Hiding behind the camouflage of an undeserved reputation as peacekeeper, it's working out pretty well . . .
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/10/29/military-exports.html?ref=rss

Today, as started it started after WWII, I think this is all just an extension of the military industrial complex of first Britain, then the US of A. Projects that they want to be covert, seem too fanciful for funds approval, etc - do it in Canada!

[ Parent ]

: you have no idea what you are talking about. by garlic (2.50 / 2) #18 Sat Mar 29, 2008 at 02:33:49 PM EST

[ Parent ]

To second a previous comment . . . by Christopher Robin was Murdered (4.00 / 5) #6 Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 04:27:14 PM EST

Bob Wills version of "Goodbye Liza Jane" grew out of a 19th century blackface minstrel song of the same name published in 1871 by an otherwise unknown composer by the name of Eddie Fox. The sheet music can be seen here in a scan of the Library of Congress's copy.

There's an argument that the song existed before in a relatively wordless version - a Civil War Era fiddle tune whose only lyric was the chorus "Goodbye Liza Jane" over and over - but I can't find much evidence for this.

The reason this might be important is that blackface performers took the song and basically turned it into an excuse to improv musically and lyrically. More often than not, these songs would sound like "Goodbye Liza Jane" and would mention her name, but they were otherwise full of nonsense lyrics. Sometimes these tune got new names. One of the earliest recorded examples of this is African-American black musician George W. Johnson's unfortunately entitled "The Laughing Coon" recorded for Edison 1897, which starts off as "Good Bye Liza Jane" and then takes off into Edward Lear territory before the first verse is over. Other versions would keep the name, becoming one of a vast army of Liza Jane tunes.

By the time Wills would have learned the tune, there would literally hundreds of versions to chose from and he would have been aware that most versions were the product of people improvising music and lyrics on the spot and recording them later.

This is pretty common - there are more versions of Stagger Lee's shoot out with Billy than there are Kennedy assassination theories and tons of John Henry's never even see a steam drill, let alone compete with one.

+1 Informative by TheophileEscargot (2.00 / 0) #7 Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 04:32:53 PM EST

I'm impressed.

Good to know that the lyrics aren't supposed to make sense or tell a particular story, and it's not just that I'm stupid to understand them...
--
"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." -- Bertrand Russell
[ Parent ]

: Thanks. by Christopher Robin was Murdered (4.00 / 1) #8 Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 04:54:23 PM EST

Though I was supposed to write "African-American blackface musician George W. Johnson's" rather than the redundant "African-American black musician George W. Johnson's." Oops.

[ Parent ]

There will be blood by Scrymarch (4.00 / 2) #12 Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 08:58:22 AM EST

I think this article would be the only reason I would catch it ...

His performance - or rather behaviour - in There Will Be Blood puts the tin hat on everything. It doesn't just dominate the film, it IS the film, and while watching him deliver the near three-hour film's climactic monologue it's possible to speculate whether any other acting was done anywhere else in the world that day, because Dan looks like he's doing it ALL.

_{The Political Science Department of the University of Woolloomooloo}

I look at people and I see nothing worth liking | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback


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