Nina Simone - Plain Gold Ring: youtube.com/watch?v=PuzkYOBtEWY
I read an interview with PJ Harvey, once, where she said that she used to go to the library and sit in the listening room listening to Harry Smith's Anthology of Folk Music, compulsively. Or at least I think I read this. I know I heard Natalie Merchant claim this activity hers, though; she would go to the library and do the same, same album, same compulsiveness. So, in my fourth year at university I took advantage of my student library card and holed myself into a cubicle on the top floor of the library with Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, for my favorites shared this secret and I needed it to be mine. I'd listen to songs and try to write out the lyrics as they came, would listen to songs over again writing them out by hand, would stare into the middle distance as I listened.
Then I moved to Toronto and found another library. I moved on from Harry Smith and would get Nina Simone albums, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen. The only time I listened to Nebraska was at a library in Toronto, sitting in a cubicle with headphones and the lyrics sheet in front of me. It was all so simple and beautiful.
It's a practice I've unfortunately lost in the past few years. And I miss it, in ways. It was nice to just spend a day by myself every so often, go to the biggest library I could find in a far off part of town and immerse myself in a history of modern popular music, not worry about relations and work and the worries of the default world. It was just music, words, story, all.
Of all those songs I heard, I think this is one of my favorites. It's delicate and wonderful and it surprised me with every new musical introduction, my eyes closed and head moving slow. And I don't listen to it so often, maybe because it is best in my mind from that one day.
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