Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

This fight is for everything.

You are here: Home / Music / Happy Birthday, John Prine

Happy Birthday, John Prine

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It’s this master of the American song’s 71st today. Meant to post earlier, but Prine’s good for a couple of lullabyes too.

I’ve seen him live only once, decades ago. A great time then.  His music has only grown on me.  His songs appear simple, and some of them actually are; they’re all reach deep.

Here are a couple of favorites; add your own below.

 

And, of course:

I could go on, but no need. Fill in the many gaps I’ve left…

I wish we lived in a better led, better spirited time and place. Listening to this helps me believe that might yet come to us all.

Open thread, all.

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  10. 10.

    Mike E

    Saw him with Tom Rush and LWIII… didn’t know we shared a b’day! (Thelonious Monk, David Lee Roth too)

  13. 13.

    No One of Consequence

    My favorite, although “fish and a whistle, whistle and a fish” is a thing of beauty that probably was never said before he penned it…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmvPve3pXpE

    Mexican Home

    for what actually *is* my favorite John Prine line:

    … the air was still as the throttle on a funeral train…

    Happy Birthday Mr. Prine, and thanks for all the fish (and whistles).

    – NOoC

  14. 14.

    Major Major Major Major

    Lake Marie
    (Here’s a writeup of the story behind the song.)

    Many years ago along the Illinois-Wisconsin Border
    There was this Indian tribe
    They found two babies in the woods
    White babies
    One of them was named Elizabeth
    She was the fairer of the two
    While the smaller and more fragile one was named Marie
    Having never seen white girls before
    And living on the two lakes known as the Twin Lakes
    They named the larger and more beautiful Lake, Lake Elizabeth
    And thus the smaller lake that was hidden from the highway
    Became known forever as Lake Marie

    Although the verse that always sticks in my mind, because of the way he says is, is

    The dogs were barking as the cars were parking
    The loan sharks were sharking the narcs were narcing
    Practically everyone was there
    In the parking lot by the forest preserve
    The police had found two bodies
    Nay, naked bodies
    Their faces had been horribly disfigured by some sharp object

  15. 15.

    Major Major Major Major

    Well now what the hell put me in moderation?

    I saw Prine at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass one year. Post-cancer, so his voice was suboptimal, but the heart was still there.

    ETA: And of course there’s his anti-war classic, always appropriate, Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.

  16. 16.

    Davebo

    I’ve always loved Prine and if it hasn’t been mentioned “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get you into Heaven Anymore”.

    Steve Goodman is the bomb too! Such a sad loss.

  17. 17.

    Honus

    The water tastes funny when you’re far from your home
    But it’s only the thirsty that hunger to roam.
    -Rocky Mountain Time

  21. 21.

    Davebo

    Just a note to folks. You can embed links to YouTube and include a song title so we aren’t blindly following links to see what they are.

    Fucking users… What are you gonna do?

  25. 25.

    satby

    I was a lucky kid, because I was twenty-one years old and an Old Town folkie fan who saw Steve Goodman and John Prine almost every week end at Earl’s, either as the headliners or just sitting in when someone else was playing. The first video brought me right back, though it’s from years later when they both got more famous.
    Happiest of Birthdays To You, John! You gave us all such great poetry.

  29. 29.

    J R in WV

    Paradise…

    Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
    Down by the Green river, where Paradise lay?
    I’m sorry my son, but you’re tool late in asking,
    Mr Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.

    Pretty sad itself. And after learning all the words and singing it with friends around campfires at parties for years, I was driving west into far western Kentucky some years back, and we crossed into Muhlenberg County. It was flat. Really flat. I didn’t really know it was a real Kentucky place til then, duh.

    The hills were removed to get to the coal, which was carried away on Peabody’s coal trains, leaving flat ground covered in sparse brush. Peabody coal was one of the biggest coal companies in the country, now bankrupted in order to escape from all the liabilities, reclamation, pensions, all gone after corporate bankruptcy.

    Funny how that works out, huh? PROFIT!!! And fuck all the people owed a living, and the land raped away. Bankrupt! Hurray!! We’re rich!!!!

    Mr Prine writes reality, no matter how harsh. A great creative person. I’ve never seen him, though we have lots of his albums. I agree about “Angel from Montgomery” too, a great song no matter who does it.

  32. 32.

    joel hanes

    Saw him, straight acoustic, in a tiny student union lounge at Grinnell College in 1972.

    I was sporting an illegal smile, and I still like that one.
    Glad Tom remembered “Hello In There”.

    I still sing Flag Decal, with gusto, when sufficiently irked by jingoist “patriots”.

  36. 36.

    joel hanes

    But dreaming just comes natural
    Like the first breath from a baby,
    Like sunshine feeding daisies,
    Like the love hidden deep in your heart
    — (from “Donald and Lydia”)

  41. 41.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Davebo: Do you know how condescending it is to mock people for not being experts on the communication means, when the substance they were trying to express may have mattered? “Heh, Lincoln knew fuck all about Morse code. Fuck that talk at Gettysburg.”

  43. 43.

    Davebo

    @Omnes Omnibus: It was snark. We almost never see that here on BJ! Get over yourself a bit. And truly, if you’ve posted a thousand times here or lots more as most have it’s not that difficult to learn to take advantage of the great tools Alain has provided.

    Click the link button, paste in the link address, type a short description and click the link button again.

    Not saying everyone must but it would be nice, especially from front pagers.

  46. 46.

    way2blue

    I saw John Prine live once. Just serendipity. My daughter had just taken the MCATs, and we wanted to celebrate by seeing a ballet in the city. But it wasn’t ballet season, so I found a show at the Mtn Winery featuring Merle Haggard & Kris Kristofferson. Might have been 2010. We had a picnic dinner on the ridge overlooking the south bay before the show. Then John Prine & Joan Baez joined Merle & Kris on stage. Serendipity…

  55. 55.

    jl

    After Eminem we need to cooler. Josh Marshall and I seem to have had a mind meld. He tweetered an excerpt from Grant’s memoirs a few days ago. I hadn’t read it in a very long time so I went to Project Gutenberg and dived in, also Sherman’s. Looks like Marshall is decided to do the same unbeknownst to me, but now he is tweeting out excerpts from Grant. So, this is a different passage than Marshall has tweeted. It’s Grant’s prognosis for the slave South, had they won the Civil War. I think there is a lot of truth to it.

    I think a some of the analysis would hold for a United States that was run by the Trumpsters for any length of time (i optimistically assume it would take more than 4 years).

    ” There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming degraded, and those who did were denominated “poor white trash.” The system of labor would have soon exhausted the soil and left the people poor. The non-slaveholders would have left the country, and the small slaveholder must have sold out to his more fortunate neighbor. Soon the slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them. The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost.

    http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4367/pg4367.txt

  57. 57.

    jl

    Towards the end of his memoirs, Grant also has a very astute analysis of the damage an unfit president inhis case Andrew Johnson, did to the ability of the nation to solve its problems through effective policy. I think Grant was too optimistic about prospects of social and race progress in the South had Lincoln not died when he did. But still, unsettling to read the destructive political dynamic that an unfit president like Johnson started. And Trump seems worse.

  58. 58.

    jl

    @Petorado: Really? Does he notice that kind of thing? Trump hasn’t noticed Prophets of Rage yet.
    I suppose GOP Congresscritters will be asked to give their opinions on Trump’s ideas for a Rapper Tax next.

    Edit: OTOH, what Eminem did was so angry and in your face, even Trump will get it. A lot of Prophets of Rage stuff on Trump probably goes way over his head.

  59. 59.

    Anotherlurker

    @Petorado: Dear Abby is one of the first songs I learned on Guitar.
    I first heard it performed by Tom Rush, in Binghanton, NY. , sometime before the last Ice Age.
    Good times!

  60. 60.

    burnspbesq

    @Davebo:

    Mentioning DL Roth in the same sentence with John Prine and Thelonious Monk is a felony in 21 states.

    And ought to be in the other 29.

  63. 63.

    Petorado

    There have been a large number of times when “you are what you are and you ain’t what you ain’t” has been my philosophy of the moment for reasons good and bad.

    But I’ve also seen that great line from “Please don’t bury me” come home to roost in modern politics when he sang, “Give my knees to the needy – don’t pull that stuff on me.”

  70. 70.

    Origuy

    I used to see John Prine and Steve Goodman when they played together in Champaign every year. One year, Earl Scruggs (or was it Lester Flatt) joined them. The last time I saw Prine was opening for kd lang in Lake Tahoe.

    Steve Goodman singing a capella The Ballad of Penny Evans. Try not to cry.

  72. 72.

    SFAW

    First: A belated Happy Birthday, Mr. Prine, and many more I hope. (Not the belated part, of course.)
    Second: Thanks, Tom, for this post. I generally shun country or quasi-country music, but I love Prine.
    Third: while showing off how fucking smart and capable one is by embedding the link into the actual title of the song (or vice versa) is wicked impressive and all that, who really gives enough of a rat’s ass to amp up the sanctimony on that shit? Oh, wait, we have that answer.

  73. 73.

    SFAW

    @Origuy:

    :

    Steve Goodman and Hillary Rodham were high school classmates.

    Maybe Trey “Yet Another Evil Fuck Trying to Hurt Hillary” Gowdy will launch an investigation, to see whether she killed him herself, or had Bill do it for her.

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