Prompted by shuffle play on the long commute home:
- John Hiatt's "All the Liliacs in Ohio" really ought to be covered by Boiled in Lead, or a reunited Cats Laughing with Robin Anders guesting. Also, it's fun to sing along with—I think it's all the round "O"s in the chorus. (5MB MP3 to pimp the goodness, up for a limited time only.)
- The first time I ever heard of Richard Thompson was in Emma Bull's Finder. This gives songs like "When I Get to the Border" (lyrics) and "1952 Black Vincent Lightning" (lyrics) a somewhat different and more specific connotation that Thompson probably intended.
- In the Pogues song, is Sally Maclennane a person? Because somehow I have the impression that that's not the case.
(In a demonstration of the weird way my brain works, you know what I always associate with this bit, "We walked them to the station in the rain / and we kissed them as we put them on the train / and we sang them a song, of times long gone / though we knew that we'd be seeing them again"? Rilla of Ingleside. Bad brain, no biscuit.)
- I never would have guessed that Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" was a Motown cover, but now that I know that, I can kind of hear it.