unclehud
(now 50 feet above the planet in Boston) | | Posted: May 31, 2013 - 09:07 | |
ambrebalte wrote:Thank you Lazarus and Unclehud ! My pleasure! This song goes straight to my heart. As a father of two grown sons, I miss the times I held them in my arms while they dreamed their childhood dreams. They still love me, I know; and I love them as much as I ever did, but those times are gone and will never return. ---+--- sniff, sniff ---+--- |
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ambrebalte
(Wolxheim (France) - Beijing, Beijing again, soon) | | Posted: May 15, 2013 - 02:23 | |
Thank you Lazarus and Unclehud !
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Lazarus
(Bethany) | | Posted: Apr 23, 2013 - 19:14 | |
unclehud wrote:A little Wikipedia insight on Anne Sexton:
"Her play Mercy Street, starring Marian Seldes, was produced in 1969, after several years of revisions. Within twelve years of writing her first sonnet, she was one of the most honored poets in America: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the first female member of the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa."
Good post...this is on Wikipedia, too — 45 Mercy Street (1976; posthumous) — it is a poem she wrote...
and here is an interesting blog I just found that was posted back in November of last year that has a copy of the Anne Sexton poem — Anne Sexton’s Original Poem “45 Mercy Street”: The Genesis of Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Street” — here's a quote from the blog—
Both poems seethe with a boiling darkness just under the surface. There is plenty of sexual suggestion (warm velvet box), as well as allusions to the unconscious (the sea, darkness, the unseen). The priest in Gabriel’s song is also a father figure, and biographers know that Anne had a difficult relationship with her own father. Another religious allusion: kissing Mary’s lips, rhyming with “tremble in the hips”, makes it that much more powerful. Sexton spent eight years in psychotherapy. She was uneasy with success and winning such honors as the Pulitzer Prize; it didn’t take the dark visions away from her powerful, confessional verse. In an interview over a year before her death, she explained she had written the first drafts of The Awful Rowing Toward God in twenty days with “two days out for despair and three days out in a mental hospital.” She went on to say that she would not allow the poems to be published before her death (Wikipedia entry). This posthumous title might have inspired Gabriel’s last line of his dark, haunting song. Anne Sexton committed suicide, her 5th attempt successful, in 1974, twelve years before Gabriel’s album was released.
this really is a brilliant song by Peter Gabriel... this whole album is incredible...
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unclehud
(now 50 feet above the planet in Boston) | | Posted: Apr 13, 2013 - 20:16 | |
A little Wikipedia insight on Anne Sexton:
"Her play Mercy Street, starring Marian Seldes, was produced in 1969, after several years of revisions. Within twelve years of writing her first sonnet, she was one of the most honored poets in America: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the first female member of the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa."
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Lazarus
(Bethany) | | Posted: Apr 13, 2013 - 19:43 | |
josephrlarsen wrote:Top drawer. Beautiful tribute to Sexton. I agree... as good as a song gets... it is from a truly magnificent album...
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chrisbyerly
(Mechanicsburg, PA) | | Posted: Mar 29, 2013 - 11:50 | |
gigikent wrote:I really can't stand the guy's voice, I thought voting was a purely subjective exercise?! And I also think there's too much Peter Gabriel on RP.
Stingray wrote:33 very poor souls voted this song "1" (no kidding)! Freedom of taste or the terror of idiocy? I agree that there is way too much Peter Gabriel on RP. |
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josephrlarsen
| | Posted: Mar 29, 2013 - 11:48 | |
Top drawer. Beautiful tribute to Sexton.
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Lazarus
(Bethany) | | Posted: Mar 29, 2013 - 11:48 | |
This is as good as music gets... and poetry also...
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unclehud
(now 50 feet above the planet in Boston) | | Posted: Mar 13, 2013 - 09:13 | |
Peter Gabriel owns a male voice in a (good) class by itself. This type song is perhaps its strongest setting: slow tempo, spare orchestration, deeply emotional lyrics, and — of course — the usual wierdo assorted background noises that many equate with "world music".
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Sloggydog
(UK) | | Posted: Mar 09, 2013 - 00:25 | |
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Lazarus
(Bethany) | | Posted: Feb 26, 2013 - 01:04 | |
Peter Gabriel's song "Mercy Street" is a wonderful poem about Anne Sexton, with beautiful music to match it... “The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters |
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Lazarus
(Bethany) | | Posted: Feb 19, 2013 - 21:24 | |
brilliant poetry and great music... love it... (this song is from a really incredible album...)
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*HVB*
| | Posted: Feb 12, 2013 - 06:49 | |
Completely unique voice he sounds at times like an organ pipe.
The vocal cords are at breaking point but miraculously keeps the tone even live
Has written 5-6 songs that is in master class one of my favorite musicians |
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Lazarus
(Bethany) | | Posted: Feb 05, 2013 - 16:44 | |
apd wrote:what's this from? Good question...love this profound song... |
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buddy
| | Posted: Jan 25, 2013 - 17:44 | |
Dreaming for mercy you'll never, ever receive.
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Lazarus
(Bethany) | | Posted: Jan 11, 2013 - 22:00 | |
absolutely incredible song... as good as it gets...
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gresua
(Paradise, California) | | Posted: Jan 05, 2013 - 08:17 | |
This is a classic! Support radioparadise.com! click here |
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acupunk
(West Hartford) | | Posted: Dec 25, 2012 - 09:38 | |
One of his more haunting songs. Love it.
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gigikent
| | Posted: Dec 19, 2012 - 05:03 | |
I really can't stand the guy's voice, I thought voting was a purely subjective exercise?! And I also think there's too much Peter Gabriel on RP.
Stingray wrote:33 very poor souls voted this song "1" (no kidding)! Freedom of taste or the terror of idiocy? |
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cShaggy
(..in the general vicinity..) | | Posted: Nov 24, 2012 - 01:14 | |
(former member) wrote:
This song is about Anne Sexton, who wrote confessional poetry... she wrote about child abuse from her father...
"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." —Anne Sexton
..^ bump..
..& courtesy lyricsmode.com: ..
For anne sexton
Looking down on empty streets, all she can see
Are the dreams all made solid
Are the dreams all made real
All of the buildings, all of those cars
Were once just a dream
In somebody's head
She pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam
She pictures a soul
With no leak at the seam
Lets take the boat out
Wait until darkness
Let's take the boat out
Wait until darkness comes
Nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey
Nowhere in the suburbs
In the cold light of day
There in the midst of it so alive and alone
Words support like bone
Dreaming of mercy st.
Wear your inside out
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy('s arms again
Dreaming of mercy st.
'swear they moved that sign
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy's arms
Pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth
Tugging at the darkness, word upon word
Confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box
To the priest-he's the doctor
He can handle the shocks
Dreaming of the tenderness-the tremble in the hips
Of kissing Mary's lips
Dreaming of mercy st.
Wear your insides out
Dreaming of mercy
In your daddy's arms again
Dreaming of mercy st.
'swear they moved that sign
Looking for mercy
In your daddy's arms
Mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
Mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
Anne, with her father is out in the boat
Riding the water
Riding the waves on the sea |
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joelbb
| | Posted: Nov 24, 2012 - 01:11 | |
I came very late to an appreciation of this man. The more I hear the more I understand what a genuine talent he is.
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apd
(Toronto, On) | | Posted: Nov 17, 2012 - 20:20 | |
fantastic segue from Snow Patrol — The Lightning Strike
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asilbuch
| | Posted: Nov 17, 2012 - 20:20 | |
apd wrote:
beautiful words
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sssterling
| | Posted: Nov 17, 2012 - 20:20 | |
Tippster wrote:Dreaming of the tenderness,
the tremble in the hips.
Of kissing Mary's lips. The only song that ever captured the particular feeling of the tremble in the hips. I didn't know anyone else had that 'til I heard this song. |
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apd
(Toronto, On) | | Posted: Nov 17, 2012 - 20:18 | |
bump:
Trustocity wrote:Every corporate drone in America with a used car and a mortgage was once a teenager staying out too late on a Tuesday night with a group of friends speeding down their town's main strip with the windows open and the radio loud, and when I was that teenager, "So" was the album in the tape deck. I sat in the passenger's seat with my right foot dangling out the window as my best friend drove. The girl he pined for sat in the back with the boy she was dating, my other best friend, and it felt more like a romantic triangle among true comrades from a French movie than the angst-riddled tripe you see on "One Tree Hill." When you love the guy your girl is dating as much as you love the girl, it's the definition of "bittersweet." Whenever "Mercy Street" started trickling through the speakers of that old Grand Am, with its tender, discordant synths followed by the triangle, the atmosphere in the car was hushed. My pal turned the stereo up so loud we couldn't even hear the wind rushing through four open windows. Today, reinhabiting the boy I was, my heart swells like a sponge cake in my chest to remember how happy and at peace I was. We all knew the words by heart, had all read Anne Sexton just to better understand the song, and the unfiltered sadness we experienced from the beginning to the end of that song made us feel magnificently alive and vulnerable, and connected to each other. What I'm trying to say is, I'm never going to finish this report my boss wants by 4:30. Not with "Mercy Street" playing... |
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sssterling
| | Posted: Nov 17, 2012 - 20:16 | |
Singing this song in an almost empty parking structure with my niece - both of us arcing sopranos and able to harmonize like only relatives can. Then, from some other level we hear a lone man shouting "Bravissima" and clapping. Wonderful!
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On_The_Beach
(The Blue Planet) | | Posted: Nov 03, 2012 - 15:15 | |
stunix wrote:The only bad thing about this track is the hours I spent working in a HIFI shop catering for the masses wanting listening tests with this. they were always in the "sweet spot" and I was always in the corner where Lenvins fretless would reverberate around me causing involuntary bowel movements.  |
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clwguy
| | Posted: Nov 03, 2012 - 15:14 | |
9 > 10 (as this song deserves to be)
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stunix
(Narrowboat nr Caen Locks) | | Posted: Oct 17, 2012 - 11:42 | |
The only bad thing about this track is the hours I spent working in a HIFI shop catering for the masses wanting listening tests with this. they were always in the "sweet spot" and I was always in the corner where Lenvins fretless would reverberate around me causing involuntary bowel movements.
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h8rhater
| | Posted: Oct 17, 2012 - 11:37 | |
Stingray wrote:A very conservative - and in my view - stupid statement! Sounds like grand-father is dreaming in his rocket-chair of "good ol' USA". Your word "ole" gives your statement a frikkin bad taste - as if you were the last person with the right to judge this song, as if the song were nothing but a fading "ol' " memory, nothing but a product that supersedes plastic! Three simple, unconspicious letters can make all the difference, I say, turning a seemingly correct statement into something that leaves a bad taste! I do not believe Gabriel's music means anything to you - not really! "Great ole album" - paahhh!!! WTF?!?? Back on the meds Stingray. |
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