Gotta do what you can

"Running on Empty" is a song written and performed by introspective American rock music singer, songwriter, guitarist, pianist, and poster boy of the 1970s Southern California confessional singer-songwriter movement, Jackson Browne. The title track to his 1977 live album Running on Empty, the song was recorded at a concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland on August 27, 1977 and was later ranked #492 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

Recorded onstage, backstage, in three different hotel rooms, and on a Continental Silver Eagle tour bus during a cross-country tour in 1977, "Running on Empty" is a paean to life on the road. It describes the rigors of a musician's day-to-day life on the road and its effect on his life as a whole, the song connects with the themes of much of the album itself and was Browne's third-biggest hit single in his career (trailing only "Doctor My Eyes" and "Somebody's Baby"), reaching #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in spring 1978 and subsequently becoming his most-played song on classic rock radio formats.

The song famously appeared in the 1994 Academy Award-winning film Forrest Gump, and particularly featured in the scene where Forrest was running across the United States. As a result, this song has become a popular addition to the iPod catalogues of many avid distance runners. Naturally.

See you backstage this Wednesday at Tuck Shop from 9.00 pm.

BRB

No shows this week. The Quiet Set with Jon will be back at Tuck Shop next week on Wednesday, 23 April.

And you can really understand

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"Don't Let It Bring You Down" is a song written by Canadian singer-songwriter and the original American Idol, Neil Young, and is the seventh track on his 1970 album After the Gold Rush. The song also appears on the 1971 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young live album Four Way Street as well as Young's 2007 album Live at Massey Hall 1971, which was recorded in 1971.

While some have said that the song is about the cold hearted attitude of a city (New York) and the unwillingness of people to listen to someone who they see as inferior, others see it as a commentary on urban decay, the decline of a society, and of emotional isolation, with Neil seeing the end of the American empire on the horizon but urging the listener to stay hopeful regardless.

Whatever the critics say, it ultimately stands as a beautiful song where Young reminds the listener (as he does in many of his songs) of how things we which expect in life and hold true don't turn out as planned, but everything is OK and it is no reason to give up hope, etc:

Old man lying
By the side of the road
With the lorries rolling by,
Blue moon sinking
From the weight of the load
And the building scrape the sky,
Cold wind ripping
Down the allay at dawn
And the morning paper flies,
Dead man lying
By the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes.

Blind man running
Through the light
Of the night
With an answer in his hand,
Come on down
To the river of sight
And you can really understand,
Red lights flashing
Through the window
In the rain,
Can you hear the sirens moan?
White cane lying
In a gutter in the lane,
If you're walking home alone.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

Not only was the song covered by Last Exit – better known as the early-70’s British jazz fusion band which gave us tantric bass-man Sting of The Police – as part of their 1974 Impulse Studio Demos, other notable recordings of the song include one by Academy Award-winning Scottish musician, vocalist, songwriter, lead singer of the musical duo Eurythmics, Annie Lennox, on her 1995 Medusa album and which also appears in the 1999 movie American Beauty, as well as a memorable performance by British soul singer Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel, or, as we know him, Mr Seal Heidi Klum.

See you backstage at Tuck Shop this Wednesday at 9.00 pm as The Bandits introduce Redneck Friends, an evening of 70s folk-country-rockabilly tunes on vinyl. No show on Thursday (10 April).

People talking without speaking

“The Sound of Silence" is a song written and first recorded by 1960s American popular-folk music duo, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, or Simon & Garfunkel, as they are collectively known, on their 1966 album Sounds of Silence. Written by Simon in the aftermath of the JFK assassination, the song was primarily conceived as a way of capturing the emotional trauma felt by many Americans at the time.

The song was subsequently aptly used in The Graduate, the 1967 film directed by American multi-award-winning television, stage and film director, writer, and producer Mike Nichols, and which starred Academy Award-winning method actors Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, with both the song and film capturing the generalized historical context and prominent themes of the 1960s.

The song propelled Simon & Garfunkel to stardom and help ensure the duo's fame eventually. In 1999, BMI named "The Sound of Silence" as the 18th-most performed song of the 20th century, and was ranked in 2004 as #156 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

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See you at Tuck Shop this Wednesday from 9.00 pm for the Quiet Set with Jon. No show on Thursday 3 April 08.

Look back in Anchor

'We Are The Bandits' celebrates its 1st anniversary this month. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for you support, well wishes and donations during the past year. Here's to more of the old stuff! Please enjoy.

See you backstage at Tuck Shop this Wednesday from 9.00 pm. The Quiet Set with Jon is on Thursday.

What it is ain't exactly clear

"For What It's Worth" is a song written by Stephen Stills, American guitarist, singer-songwriter and member of the folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and first recorded by Buffalo Springfield – the short-lived but influential folk rock group that served as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young and Stills – and released as a single in January 1967, peaking at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In 2004, this song was voted #63 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

As the song's title appears nowhere in its lyrics, most casual listeners know it better by the first line of chorus: "Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down."

While the song has come to symbolize worldwide turbulence and confrontational feelings arising from events during the 1960s, particularly the Vietnam War, Stills reportedly wrote the song in response to the escalating unrest in the Sunset Strip curfew riots, also known as the "hippie riots," which were a series of clashes that took place between police and young club-goers on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California, beginning in the mid-1960s and continuing through 1969.

"For What It's Worth" has been covered countless times, as well as sampled, referenced, and used in film and other media. One notable reference was in the1998 song "He Got Game" by Long Island, NY, hip hop music group Public Enemy which not only samples "For What It's Worth", but also features Stephen Stills re-performing the bridge especially for that track. Others contend that the most popular version was that which was performed on a 1978 episode of The Muppet Show, which re-writes the song with animals singing slightly altered anti-hunting lyrics and contains a musical interlude filled with hunters wildly shooting their guns while animals (from Emmett Otter’s Jug Band) hide and take-cover. Yeah, the symbolism is heavy, dig it.

See you backstage at Tuck Shop for the Quiet Set this Wednesday and Thursday from 9.00 pm.

Don't anyone wake me, if it's just a dream

Known for his unique guitar-on-lap playing style and blues-oriented vocals, blind Canadian jazz and blues-rock guitarist and vocalist, Jeff Healey (25 March 1966 – 2 March 2008) began as a teenage musical prodigy – though known primarily as a guitarist, Healey also played trumpet and clarinet during live performances – but later rightly rose to stardom as the leader of the Jeff Healey Band, a rock-oriented trio that gained international acclaim and platinum record sales with the 1988 album "See the Light” which included the hit single "Angel Eyes."

Refusing to be hampered by his blindness, a young Healey taught himself to play guitar by laying the instrument across his lap, and subsequently shared the stage regularly with guitar greats such as the late George Harrison and Stevie Ray Vaughan – who discovered him in the late 1980s –, as well as legendary bluesmen Mark Knopfler and B.B. King.

See you at The Quiet Set at Tuck Shop on Wednesday and Thursday from 9.00 pm.