Ghosts - a song by Mark Geary

When I laid in the sand I thought about you
When you laid in the sand you said you saw
I don't know how much time we're given
Am I fighting for your fight to fail?

And then just after you left the dream was broken
Just your shape in the sand
No words were needed
I don't know how much time we're given
Fighting for your fight to fail

When you're driving your boats
And you're waiving me in
Run around with your ghosts
Who're perpetually grinning
No, god only knows if you're calling me
home

And I played in a band
And I thought about you
You said you'd lend me a hand
When you felt you could
I don't know how much time we're given
Fighting fire right to fill?

You're just a nail on a cross
With a call coming in now
Dividing your highs and lows
But you won't let me in
You know god only knows if you're calling me home
When you're driving your boats
And you're waving me in
Run around with your ghosts
Who're perpetually sinning
God only knows if you're calling me home

Photo: flickr (Scott M Duncan)

Note: The song Ghosts by Mark Geary is included on the Hear Music CD, This is Us. See our earlier review of This... at:

http://troybear.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-time-starbucks-brews-it-up-right.html

Bob Dylan Warms Our Lives...

We earlier posted three separate reviews of Bob Dylan's latest album, Together Through Life, and expected that this would be the end of our highlighted reviews... Until we came across this review by Bob Lines - abridged here - published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on Tuesday, May 12, 2009.

From the Daily Bruin to Troy Bear:

Bob Dylan achieved his fifth Billboard No. 1 last week. His 33rd studio album, "Together Through Life," beat the soundtrack from "Hannah Montana" to claim the top spot.

Excuse me while I briefly celebrate. It's not that I have anything against Hannah Montana per se (I'm sure the soundtrack's great), but it's a moment for small jubilation when, in the age of Miley Cyrus, the music of Bob Dylan reaches a large audience.

That said, "Together" is probably the weakest of Dylan's albums since his stellar comeback in 1997 with "Time Out of Mind" - but this is hardly a criticism. It's just that the sound of the latter-day Dylan is fairly familiar to his fans, and here Dylan doesn't do much new. He sings with the same grit and wheeze and employs the same mix of jazz, spiritual and blues, just without as many good songs.

At its worst, "Together Through Life" feels humdrum and turgid. The finger-picked electric guitar and staccato organ work well on the good tracks but feel bland on the weak ones. The album's opener, "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'," a low-key blues turn almost slides into pastiche, heavily influenced by the songs of Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

"If You Ever Go to Houston" could have been cut from the final track list: the song feels like a cut-and-paste of the blues ballads of the '50s that Dylan plays so regularly on "Theme Time Radio Hour." The lyrics, co-written by former Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, are similarly lackluster.

Nevertheless, the album is a welcome addition to the Dylan catalogue. "Life is Hard" is a sweet melancholy ballad, originally written for Olivier Dahan's upcoming film "My Own Love Song." The gentle slide guitar accompanies Dylan's straining voice. As Dylan stretches his vocals to (the) breaking point, he sounds more vulnerable than ever.

The penultimate track, "I Feel a Change Coming On," is both a nod to the presidency of Barack Obama and a mischievous and wistful ode to an old lover. Add into the mix a cheeky reference to James Joyce, and you're left with Dylan at his best on "Together..." Here, David Hidalgo's organ-playing alongside Dylan's affectionate vocals is a welcome addition.

While the album doesn't reach the heights of "Love and Theft" or "Modern Times," it's still a pretty good effort from the nonstop touring 67-year-old. Dylan could have easily not released anything for the last 20 years. If he had died sometime after "Blood on the Tracks," his reputation would have been firmly cemented with Lennon, Hendrix and the other members of rock royalty who have sadly passed on.

Dylan was never one to spend retirement pottering around the garden. Now the challenge for both Dylan and his fellow rock elder statesmen is how to mellow into old age without declining into parody or Starbucks-promoted cheese.

Dylan has done neither, but then we wouldn't have expected him to. His late career return to form has been more than we could ever have hoped for. As such, every record he gives us should be savored like the final days of a wonderful summer - it will be cold when he's gone.

This time Starbucks brews it up right...

The used CD/album store that I frequent doesn't seem to accept Hear Music (Starbucks) CDs as trade-ins. In a way, this isn't surprising as the sound quality on the early Hear releases was sub-par. On those Hear Music compilations - and there were a lot of them - the individual songs often sounded worse than they did on the original albums/CDs. In other words, remastering and improving the sound was not part of the equation.

Well, things have now changed and for the better. On January 3, 2009, Hear Music and Rhino released a new collection called This Is Us. This compilation has 17 tracks and the sound is superb. The sound is mid-range all the way through with just enough bass and a positive lack of any overly high-range sounds. The sound is quite comparable to that on the excellent The Definitive Collection series from Universal Music.

The content isn't bad, either. There are two tracks from the highly talented Aimee Mann, one from the early-electric period Bob Dylan, the best song written for the Byrds by their best-ever songwriter (Here Without You by the late Gene Clark), a Paul Simon favorite, Once from the film of the same name, and Guinnevere - a great early track by Crosby, Stills and Nash. Yes, this song sounds better here than on the recent CS&N first album re-release on Rhino.

There's also a fine track from David Gray who sounds like Van Morrison II, and Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris team up on the title song. The lyrics of This Is Us are a bit too close to Paul McCartney's That Was Me, but this track rocks in the style of Dire Straits.

Mark Geary's Ghosts sounds like Lindsey Buckingham, which is all good.

Sure, there are a few quibbles. The CD notes indicate that George Harrison's song, If Not for You, is a Bob Dylan cover. Not so, as Harrison and Dylan co-wrote the piece; thus, neither of their versions is a cover. She & Him's stripped down cover of You Really Got A Hold on Me is interesting and creatively performed but it sounds like it was recorded in a tin-can mini-van (it is definitely the track with the worst sound). The Constantines & Feist contribute an OK cover of Islands in the Stream, but the note writer doesn't realize that the songwriting attribution to Gibb-Gibb-Gibb equals a Bee Gees song.

We're also told that Shelby Lynne's I Only Want to Be With You, an exemplary cover of a Dusty Springfield song, is virtually equal to the original. Well no, as this is like saying that someone recorded an Elvis, Sinatra or Beatles track that's equal to or better than the original. Not gonna happen, as the first president Bush might have said on Saturday Night Live.

Finally, I could have done without the final track from Jennifer Warnes with Leonard Cohen. Oh, she sings fine and Cohen's lyrics are interesting but I've never "got" whatever it is we're supposed to get from the "deep" songwriter Cohen. Maybe it's because he recites rather than sings his lyrics. Or maybe it's the memory of what his album covers looked like.

All in all, this is a very good collection which provides a nice balance of old and new music (every listener will find something new here). In these recessionary times, paying $12.95 for 17 tracks is a pretty good bargain.

If you received a Starbucks coffee card for Christmas, use it to pick-up this CD and it will seem like you got it for free. Best served with a bold Starbucks brew.