Season 479 - Destination Known

lizbrinker

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Season 479 - Destination Known

Welcome to Season 479 - Destination Known

I welcome all songs, covers and originals, that mention places you've actually been: any city name, state or province name, country name, county name, street name, continent name, but...you have to have actually been there. The proper name can be in the title or the lyrics, or both. No imaginary places, please. If you have, by chance, been to the moon, it is fair game, too. If you have not been to the moon, please, no moon songs. In your forum post, please tell us your connection to the place mentioned in the song, whether you have lived there, visited there, landed in it's airport, passed through on the highway, etc. Be specific. I will be checking your backstory. Or, not. But please do try to convince me that you've been to the place named in the song. I am especially encouraging original songs about places that have formed you. Also, I love an odd-sounding town name. So, if you know one, write me something.

Usual rules apply. New recordings only, fresh for season 479, please label the video as such in some way, either in the video information on YouTube, or visually on the video, or audibly in the video, simple production is fine, complicated production is fine, bring me what you like to do, originals are strongly encouraged, collaborations would be lovely to see, please start posting after midnight, Hawaii time, tonight, April 17th, 2021 and cease and desist exactly 8 days later, no song limit this week, but, bear in mind, this is my first time as the gatekeeper, so have some mercy. I'm thinking about prizes. Most likely, IF there are prizes, they will go to my favorite original, my favorite cover and most odd-sounding place name(real place, please)

Here is one to get us started:


PLAYLIST here [video]https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTDxXjnFum5bkMlv9NIVaZAxXDdz62U4K[/video]
 
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I've been waiting to cover Toto's "Africa"!

But darnnit... I've never been there!
 
Me and my wife made a trip by Train trough Ireland two years ago, and we visited a few great places, we started in Dingle (which is in the south and beautiful), then went to Dublin, then on to Portrush (also beautiful but in the North), and then on to Belfast. It was a great trip, when we where going to Dingle, we talked to some Irish people in the train, and when we said we where going to Dublin, after we left Dingle, they asked us why. They where definitely not City people, because we loved Dublin, but I agree with them, it does not have the beauty of Dingle. Anyway, this is a song by Prefabs Sprout called Dublin.
 
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This should be a real fun theme Liz. Thanks for that. I've been to a lot of strange places but this isn't one of them. This is one of the most visited places on earth. I had a holiday in Italy one winter with my girlfriend at the time. Venice was supposed to be a romantic highlight but by then things were not going so well between us. I think there were a couple of days of no talkies. I do remember the light snow in the square being quite beautiful. Although our romance crashed and burned she is still a good friend many years later.
Here's an original inspired by that long ago holiday. I think the poor man's jazz stylings are more suited to Venice than say my canoe trip up the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

When the snow falls in Venice
It gets cold on a heart
In this stubborn old theatre
We both play our part
You blamed me for the fall of Rome
But that was last week’s news
Now love’s labor’s gone and lost
And The Doge has got the blues
When the snow falls in Venice
There’s no one left in the square
Just one drunken sailor
Who’s not sure why he’s there
Even Saint Mark has packed his bags
And left for the south of France
And Life the Lazy Pickpocket
Stole the last of our romance
When the snow fall in Venice
I’m all Bridge of Sighs
I think that I’m clever
But you’re all Bridge of Rolled Eyes
Remember the fun we had
In that little village by the coast
But that was in a different time and place
Before we became each other’s ghost.
 
Thanks for hosting this one Liz x I don't travel anywhere that takes longer than 4hrs (I just can't sit still long enough) so I've pretty much only ever been around Europe but as a Londoner I will kick off with a borough of London that I've both worked in and visited many times over the years . (One of my nephews Is based in an office that overlooks Waterloo Bridge today)

 
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Last year i went on holiday to Silesia in Poland ... i flew into Katowice and went to Gliwice, both mentioned in the song ...

 
Dance Hall Girls by Allen Fraser

Fraser & DeBolt were a Canadian folk duo, active in the late '60s and early '70s.
Allen wrote Dance Hall Girls, which has the tag line, "Is that the way it always is here in Baltimore?"
When he played in Cobourg, Allen said that people often assumed that this line referred to Baltimore, Maryland. In fact, he based it on Baltimore, Ontario, a village about 5 minutes north of Cobourg. While he had never spent any time in Baltimore, he saw the sign on the 401 Highway every time he drove from Montreal to Toronto and liked the sound of the name.
I lived for about a decade in Baltimore and my sons spent the first 5 years of their lives in Baltimore. I built two banjos and a dulcimer in my Baltimore workshop. I proposed to my darlin', lovely wife in Baltimore.
Allen Fraser.jpgAllen Daisy DeBolt.jpgDaisy Fraser & DeBolt LP.jpgFirst Fraser & DeBolt LP Baltimore, On.jpgWelcome to Baltimore
 
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Good morning, Seasonistas! I woke up to what I consider a wonderful start to the season, fantastic cover songs about Dublin, London and Silesia, from Wim, Mark C and Charley, in that order, and a stellar original work about Venice and a waning romance from John down under. Please treat yourself and go have a look! I am loving the back stories, so please include those for me. Happy gatekeeper, here. Jim Yates slipped in a gem about a Baltimore I didn't know just as I was writing this. Thank you, Jim, and I love the photos you post!
 
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Hello, Liz ... thanks for the week! Hope you will enjoy your first week of hosting. Have to admit that your theme temporarily took me aback and I suddenly couldn't remember one place I'd actually visited! Since you are asking for strict honesty here, I shall have to forego my desire to tell you about my most exciting visit to Mars and stick to more mundane and earthly locations. When our boys were young, we had a few package holidays ... well, a total of four, I think, actually (my husband doesn't like being organised by other people!) Anyway, two of those holidays were to the Balearics - an archipeligo of eastern Spain; one to Minorca and the other to Ibiza, which included a visit which we won to the hippie island of Formentera, where Bob Dylan once had a home. This song has become a sort of anthem for all Spanish holidaymakers, and, indeed, for Spain itself ...

 
Hey Liz! Great theme.

Here's a song by a band from Liverpool (been twice), named after an animal from Australia (lived there) with a title that refers to one of my favourite cities I was honoured to visit twice in 2007 and 2008 (I prefer Kyoto though tbf but dont know many song about it).

 
Streets Of Baltimore (Maryland) by Tompall Glaser & Harland Howard

SOTU 479- Destination Known
I don't have a strong connection to Baltimore, Maryland. We did stop there for an hour or two on the way to Washington, but I don't have a strong memory of it. I have spent time in Tennessee though, which is also mentioned in the song.
I do like this song a lot. I was reminded of it partly by my last song about Baltimore, Ontario, and partly by the Sunday Zoom jam discussion of the Joshua Tree and Gram Parsons' cremation.
I learned this song from a rendition by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.

 
Wonderful first day, thank you all! I received additional entries from Val, Ryan, Alan and Jim Yates on Spain, Tokyo, Texas and the Baltimore I do know through the day. I think I like this hosting gig... You are all so talented and lovely. I'm hoping there is some writing going on out there...you know who you are. Looking forward to what tomorrow may bring. Signing off from Rockville, Maryland, USA, Liz
 
A ukulele cover of Jonathan Wilson's "Trafalgar Square", for banjo ukulele with singing; overdubs of Ashbory Ubass, Stylophone-controlled synthesizer, whistling, and secondary vocal.

My father was a mycologist whose full time job was as a lecturer/researcher at the Pennsylvania State University. Several times during my youth, he was also contracted to work in Switzerland at the Hauser Champignon commercial mushroom facility, where he was helping to perfect the “growing medium”. These sabbaticals were a wonderful experience for my family, as they gave us a home base from which we were able to travel to many parts of Europa.

In August of 1969 when I was 7 years old we traveled to the UK, and spent several days in Londinium. I realize now that we were there while the Beatles were recording Abbey Road!

One of our stops was of course Trafalgar Square, where I bought a bag (it was probably more than “tuppence”) to feed the birds, in my attempt to reenact the famous scene from “Mary Poppins” (see photo at end of vid). I do not remember sitting on the lions, though I must have done.




Thanks for hosting what I hope is the first of many seasons, Liz!
 
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Indian Queens (population approx 500) is a place I have passed through quite a few times, on the way to/from Cornwall. In fact for such a small place, it gets a lot of mentions on the radio, mostly in travel bulletins in July & August, as two major roads in and out of Cornwall converge there.

The origin of the name is the subject of much debate, but it seems as if the entire village took its name from a nearby wayside inn, which was named The Indian Queen Inn, possibly after a Portuguese princess stayed there on her way from Falmouth to London. Locals assumed she was Indian, and the name stuck.

Anyway, Nick Lowe liked it so much, he wrote a song about it.

 
Staying in Japan briefly, as I mentioned I prefer Kyoto to Tokyo. The main reason for that is a place called Kinkakuji, the most tranquil place I've ever been privileged to visit.

So I wrote a very simple Haiku in Japanese about it. Would have liked to have put in a few more verses but I exhausted my knowledge a little bit. I'm pleased with the melody though! Lyrics and translation in the description, although the translation is not accurate line for line because of the differences in how English and Japanese are structured, and trying to fit the Japanese lyrics into the haiku format.

 
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