Breathe

Nearly worked my way through the pile of music-oriented material acquired over the holidays: biography of Lenny Breau, David Byrne's "How Music Works", Ken Caillat's "Making Rumours" and finally a riotous and often hilarious, exuberant "I'm With The Band", via Pamela Des Barres.  After trying to find a source to buy it was delighted to find the Big Star documentary "Nothing Can Hurt Me" appearing on Netflix, which I finally found time to watch.  The whole thing was great but the last scene before credits rolled just killed me, John Fry at the board pulling up faders on what soon became apparent was "September Gurls", and the look on his face said it all.  I was in tears..... paraphrasing something I think that came from a set of Rhino compilation liner notes (from "Poptopia, the 70s" ??), "what's that sound... oh yeah, it's the breaking of my heart....."   

Speaking of tears, was jamming with the boyz the other weekend and hit on what I thought of as the verse to "Breathe" (Pink Floyd) as a vamp thing, but then we realized trying to sing along it also fit the verse to "Down by the River" (Neil Young).  Checked on it later and sure enough they are pretty much the same, but looking closer at "Breathe" was just devastating.  Backing up a bit - I don't focus a lot on lyrics ordinarily, but you would think I would at least have ingrained those to a song I have heard a million times and that I have integrated into my rock n' roll DNA??  Apparently not.  It's just an offshoot of what you could call the "Auld Lang Syne" syndrome though I suppose.  The four lines of the first chorus really shook me up:

For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be

Uh huh.