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Trial Balloon: August 19, 2009 Archive

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Songs in the News

Posted at 5:25 AM on August 19, 2009 by Dale Connelly (19 Comments)

Congratulations to Patrice of Stewarville and Teresa of Minneapolis who both won tickets to the Americana Songwriter's Showcase at the Rochester Civic Theater tonight! The evening features Chris Knight of Nashville, Brandon Sampson and Dezi Wallace of the band Six Mile Grove, and The Porchlights (Martin Devaney and Jake Hyer), now re-named The Flatwheelers.

Mid-to-late August is slow for news, which is why we're so grateful to Brett Favre and Hurricane Bill. Bill is shaping up to be the perfect hurricane - big and nasty and horrifying and on a track to miss making a direct hit on almost everybody. But a hurricane is a brainless, random thing that makes no sense. Just like the song "A Horse Named Bill".

Oh I had a horse and his name was Bill
And when he ran he couldn't stand still
He ran away one day
And also I ran with him

He ran so fast he could not stop
He ran into a barber shop
Fell exhaustionized - with his eye teeth -
In the barber's left shoulder

I went up in a balloon so big
The people on earth looked like, a pig
Like a mouse, like a katydid
Like flyses and like fleases

The balloon had turned up with its bottom side high
Fell on the wife of a country squire
She made a noise like a doghound, like a steam whistle
And like dynamite

What, could you do in a case like that
What can you do but stamp on your hat
Or on your mother, on your toothbrush
And on everything that's helpless

Let's hope Hurricane Bill doesn't get a chance to do any stomping. Alas, we are bound to be hit square on by Hurricane Brett. Favre is our poster boy for mid-life indecision. Anyone who has been 39 knows how difficult it is to face the likelihood that you will soon have to leave some things behind. But not quite yet. I'm still good! Really! If anything, this melancholy Favre dance might make Vikings football interesting for people who really don't care otherwise. It has all the elements of a cheap, tragic romance. The neediness of one. The desperation of the other. The long held expectation by most observers that the two would eventually get together. The remote chance that it could possibly work. The near certainty that it will end badly.

Sigh. I hear Frank Sinatra singing Kurt Weill's "September Song".

When I was a young man courting the girls
I played me a waiting game
If a maid refused me with tossing curls
I'd let the old Earth make a couple of whirls
While I plied her with tears in lieu of pearls
And as time came around she came my way
As time came around, she came

When you meet with the young girls early in the Spring
You court them in song and rhyme
They answer with words and a clover ring
But if you could examine the goods they bring
They have little to offer but the songs they sing
And the plentiful waste of time of day
A plentiful waste of time

Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn't got time for the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I'll spend with you
These precious days I'll spend with you

Ah yes, we will wind up with more than we want of Bill and Brett.
Any other songs come to mind?

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