Saturday Night at the Oldies: Solitary, Alone, Lonely, Lonesome

Neil Diamond, Solitary Man.  Johnny Cash does it better.  Nothing better than the sound of an acoustic guitar, well-made, well-played, steel-stringed, with fresh strings. This one goes out to Dave Bagwill.

Calexico, Alone Again Or. 

Original (1967) by Love, an underrated '60s psychedelic band.

Roy Orbison, Only the Lonely

Bob Dylan, I am a Lonesome Hobo

Stay free from petty jealousy
Live by no man's code
Save your judgment for yourself
Lest you wind up on this road.

Bob Dylan, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.  Whatever happened to William Zantzinger?  Well, he died at 69 in 2009.  NYT obituary here.

A couple of bonus cuts for a NYC friend:

Lovin' Spoonful, Summer in the City. Great song, great video.

Barrett Strong, Money (1959)

 A curious rendition by The Flying Lizards

Comments

[Joe Odegaard]

" . . . and one more block, the engine talks, whispers 'home at last,' it whispers 'home at last,' whispers 'home at last' . . . "

( To cap off all this loneliness, here is a song about where we grew up, brother Bill: Diamonds on my Windshield," by Tom Waits. )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONYNMU527D0

[BV]

Bro Joe,

That's one of my favorites too. One of the great truck-drivin' songs.

It's a tough job driving a steel train through the rain and potholes of all those LaLaLand interchanges, more so now than it was in the '70s when this song came out, but there is a romance to the road that makes the truck driver a sort of latter-day cowboy. What will these good ole boys do when trucks drive themselves? Learn to write code?

Be glad, Joe, that we are old men. We've had one hell of a good run. After us, the deluge. A perfect crapstorm is on the horizon . . .

"Hey look here, Jack" signals Waits' status as a latter-day Kerouac. Old Jack -- may the Lord have mercy on him and his excesses -- would be proud. It is a curious fact that Carolyn Cassady had a low opinion of Tom Waits. But that is a story for another time. If you are intrigued, find yourself a copy of Carolyn Cassady, OFF THE ROAD. I read it in the late '80 not long before I returned to the West.

[Dave Bagwill]

Thanks Bill, a good tune from Johnny Cash. And tasty acoustic guitar!

Speaking of guitar, I'm close to finishing one for my friend Herman Arendsen in Holland. He is a world-class builder and sent me a lovely cutaway 000 as a gift that plays and sounds very nice. Only fair that I try to overcome it!

Blessings to you and your wife.
Dave