#30DaySongChallenge - Day 24
May. 19th, 2020 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johncomicDay 24: A song with lyrics you love
The Dear Departed Past by Dave Frishberg
Dave Frishberg is one of my fave songwriters, he's a worthy pianist, and I love his voice (which I once heard perfectly described as “avuncular”). He's also one of few who can get me to really pay attention to lyrics, and this is probably my all-time fave piece of lyric writing. Not just for its message, but for its level of craft. His accomplished use of internal rhyme, his skill in keeping long sentences coherent, his ability to use words like antiquarian or disenfranchised in such a way that they flow smoothly and fit perfectly and draw almost no attention to their own rarity. A master.
Here are the first few lyrics from this song, recalled from memory as I heard them in his first recording of this song on his Live at Vine Street album:
Am I hopelessly old-fashioned
'Cause I'm harboring a passion for the olden days?
Is my sense of time so out of joint
It's starting to distort my point of view?
Does my antiquarian brain contain
Imaginary memories of golden days?
Can one feel a real nostalgia
For a time and place one never even knew?
I anticipate times to come
With something less than jubilation
And I'm looking to times gone by
With something more and more like admiration
Here's to the dear departed past
The musty magazines
The sepia-tinted scenes
Of long-forgotten places
Here's to the dear departed past
The photographs you find
That seem to bring to mind
Familiar family faces
That's when every sky was bluer
Clouds seemed to disappear back then
That's when every friend was truer
Ah, but then again
Didn't they know you when?
The Dear Departed Past by Dave Frishberg
Dave Frishberg is one of my fave songwriters, he's a worthy pianist, and I love his voice (which I once heard perfectly described as “avuncular”). He's also one of few who can get me to really pay attention to lyrics, and this is probably my all-time fave piece of lyric writing. Not just for its message, but for its level of craft. His accomplished use of internal rhyme, his skill in keeping long sentences coherent, his ability to use words like antiquarian or disenfranchised in such a way that they flow smoothly and fit perfectly and draw almost no attention to their own rarity. A master.
Here are the first few lyrics from this song, recalled from memory as I heard them in his first recording of this song on his Live at Vine Street album:
Am I hopelessly old-fashioned
'Cause I'm harboring a passion for the olden days?
Is my sense of time so out of joint
It's starting to distort my point of view?
Does my antiquarian brain contain
Imaginary memories of golden days?
Can one feel a real nostalgia
For a time and place one never even knew?
I anticipate times to come
With something less than jubilation
And I'm looking to times gone by
With something more and more like admiration
Here's to the dear departed past
The musty magazines
The sepia-tinted scenes
Of long-forgotten places
Here's to the dear departed past
The photographs you find
That seem to bring to mind
Familiar family faces
That's when every sky was bluer
Clouds seemed to disappear back then
That's when every friend was truer
Ah, but then again
Didn't they know you when?
