Saturday Night at the Oldies: Purgation of Memory and the Waters of Oblivion

So many of our memories should be allowed to sink forever beneath the waters of oblivion. But not all. Let's recall some songs about forgetting and water.

Bob Dylan and the Band, Too Much of Nothing

Say Hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivian
Give them all my salary
On the waters of oblivion.

Doors, Soul Kitchen. "Learn to forget, learn to forget."

Bobby Rydell, Forget Him

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, Moon River

Henry Mancini, Moon River.  Video with shots of Rita Hayworth. YouTuber comment: indimenticabile Rita, stupenda Rita, vivi nei nostri ricordi, vivi nei nostri cuori. This was Jack Kerouac's favorite song.  Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324:

One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & leases broken."  Huck's philosophy of life was: "Better a wise madness than a foolish sanity."  They drove to a friend's house in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and on the way, Jack sang "Moon River," calling it his favorite song.  Composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, "Moon River" was the theme song of the popular Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Sobbed by a harmonica, later swelling with strings and chorus, the plaintive tune's gentle but epic-like lyrics describe a dreamer and roamer not unlike Kerouac.

Indeed they do.  A restless dreamer, a lonesome traveller, a dharma seeker, a desolation angel passing through this vale of mist, a drifter on the river of samsara hoping one day to cross to the Far Shore. 

Chase Webster, Moody River

Comments

[DaveB]

An old recording of PP&M singing "Too Much of Nothing".
I had all their albums on vinyl at one time. I remember the tunes sounding much better on a turntable and a Marantz amp and Klitsch speakers than it does on the 'net.
https://youtu.be/I3W1-Pco9Uk

[BV]

Dave,

The PP & M version is a wonderful 'sanitized' version of the original. Think of the hundreds and hundreds of covers as so many easy-to-travel roads back to the Dylan originals.

One that is clearly not inferiro to the original is this bad boy: https://youtu.be/HV7qIwzVyVY

[BV]

You got rid of your vinyls? What's wrong with you, boy? I got all o' mine, and in mint condition. Do I hear $750,000.00?