Click to hear song:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
I fell in love with your sound
Oh I love to sing along with you…

Babe we both had dry spells
Hard times in bad lands
I’m a good man – for ya
I’m a good man…

Last night there was a horse in the road
I was twisting in the hairpin
My hands held on my mind let go
And back to you my heart went skipping

I found the inside of the road
Thought about the first time that I met you
All those glances that we stole
Sometimes if you want them then you’ve got to…

You’re not a good shot but I’m worse
And there’s so much where we ain’t been yet
So swing up on this little horse
The only thing we’ll hit is sunset…

Babe we both had dry spells
Hard times in bad lands
I’m a good man for ya
I’m a good man

Editor’s Note: Whenever I hear Josh Ritter’s ‘Good Man,’
there are two men from the old West in my mind’s eye. In love.
Excerpted here is a selection from the lyrics that take me there.
Josh Ritter is a lovely singer and gifted lyricist.
I hope you’ll listen to the song. – kh

Text: Good Man, lyrics by Josh Ritter
Music: Music, lyrics and performance by Josh Ritter
Image: Late 19th century; sitters, photographer, unknown

Click for musical accompaniment:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

…I was stationed at Tinker Field in Oklahoma, and assigned a job in the command headquarters on the airbase. Evenings and weekends, I was now free to go into Oklahoma City, and when I was checking out the men’s room of one of the big movie houses downtown, I met two soldiers who were just hanging around in the lounge. They were show-offs, and when they saw me watching them, they both whipped powder puffs from their regulation shirt pockets and flamboyantly powdered their noses, which, considering that they were in uniform, I found hilarious. It was my first introduction to camp, though I still hadn’t learned the word…

…I also went out drinking at a tavern with with a bunch of regular army men from my barracks…

…One night, a master sergeant joined us from the next booth. A baby-faced youth with a southern accent who smoked cigars… Glenn, as it turned out, lived in one of the private rooms at the end of my barracks reserved for noncoms, and I began joining the bull sessions in his room, during which he tied trout fishing flies, his favorite hobby…

…I knew he liked me when he gave me one of his trout flies, which I pinned to my shirt. Sometimes we would walk around the base at night, he’d light a big cigar, and in the darkness I’d be moved by the brilliant desert sky to philosophize, which he would tolerate with grown up amusement, though he was only nineteen himself.

We soldiers were transported back and forth between the airbase and Oklahoma City in the backs of personnel carrier trucks, and it was always a dash to catch the last run around 11:30 P.M.  One night, after a double date with a couple of civilian girls we worked with at HQ, so many GIs piled into the truck that I had to sit on Glenn’s lap, and in the pitch blackness, hanging onto each other as the vehicle bounced over potholes, his lips nuzzled mine and buyddyhood turned into a love affair.

Text: Excerpt from Gay In the Army, by Edward Field (b. 1924),
from a longer excerpt which appears in Gay American Autobiography,
Edited by David Bergman
Image: Army Buddies, 1944, subjects/photographer unknown
via miss magnolia thunderpussy/ipernity
Music: My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time, 1945
music by Vic Mizzy, lyrics by Manny Curtis,
performed by the Les Brown Orchestra with vocals by Doris Day.

Thanks Stacy and Michele

Matt Alber

hide me in your hollows
taste the salt that clings to me
shipwrecked in your shadows
scented by the sea
hide me in the wisdom of your thighs
ride me like a wave

chart my secret places
navigate my shores
map the ocean’s traces
lick them from my pores
dry me with delusion and desire

ride me like a wave

cover me in spray

promise you will stay

Text: Ride Me Like a Wave, Janis Ian (excerpt)
Audio: Ride Me Like a Wave,
words, music, performance by Janis Ian
Image: Photographer, sitters, unknown,
via bobster855/creativecommons/flickr

Edith Piaf and Théo Sarapo, 1962
Words and music: Michel Emer

Click to hear song:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

The rain may fall, the wind may blow, it may get down to 20 below,
But I don’t mind ’cause I’m goin’ to the dance with you.

The rent’s unpaid, the cupboard’s bare, I don’t mind, I won’t despair
‘Cause I’m in love and goin’ to the dance with you.

And when the orchestra plays so sweet and low,
I’ll take your hand and hope you’ll know
How I wish the dance would never end, and how I’d give my love forever.

And I’d be yours, please be mine, you have made my world divine
I’m in love, goin’ to the dance with you.

Text: Goin’ to the Dance With You, excerpt, by Richard Dworsky
Audio: Goin’ to the Dance With You, Shawn Ryan
Image: 1920s, subjects unknown, via Varones/Flickr

Click to listen: [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

I watched you suffer a dull aching pain
Now you decided to show me the same
No sweeping exits or offstage lines
Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away

Song: Wild Horses, from Susan Boyle’s debut album I Dreamed a Dream,
due 23 November
Text: Wild Horses, excerpt, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, 1971
Image: 1930s, Bulgaria, via Miss Magnolia Thunderpussy/Flickr

Cumming offers up a whole romp of a night with songs from a wide range of genres. With them he shares the provenance of the songs’ importance to him. He talks openly and lovingly about his husband, Grant Shaffer. He tells of being invited to crash on the couch of John, a New York friend-of-a-friend who was lovely and generous and working on a new character at the time named Hedwig. Fast-forward to Cumming giving us a thrilling medley of the emotional highs and lows of John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch. And so goes the rest of the evening.

Mr. Cumming’s voice is smooth and powerful, it’s beautiful really, but indeed, it’s his ability to exude a natural authenticity that earns him the hearts of those in the audience. We feel an intimate connection with the artist.

You may know him from his Tony-award winning performance in Cabaret, or as Nightcrawler in X2 or from other films, or even his Sebastian Flight TV character from High Life — this man has worked constantly for nearly 30 years. Seeing Alan Cumming onstage as himself in this, his concert debut, is something altogether different.  It’s like the best proper first date you ever had. He talks to you with a lovely mixture of intimacy, flirtatiousness, humour, a well-exercised intellect and emotional honesty. Then there are all the love songs he croons your way. At the end of the night, you can’t wait to see him again.

Cumming is graced onstage and off by the talented Lance Horne who serves as musical director. Horne gorgeously arranged the show and wrote/co-wrote some of the material. His influence is obvious and appreciated. An eight-piece band of strapping young men brings verve to the instruments including strings, brass, drums and piano.

I Bought a Blue Car Today was previously performed at the Sydney Opera House and at New York’s Lincoln Center. It next moves to Costa Mesa, California and then back to New York, this time at the Highline Ballroom.

If you aren’t able to see the show in person, a CD of the same name will be released on September 22. Its 14 tracks don’t capture all of the songs of the show, nor, as a studio album, do they replicate the power and energy of Cumming singing to a live audience. A DVD would be a treat. But the album gives some insight into the vision for the show, the liner notes recount abbreviations of some of the stories and the voice is solid even if lacks some of the tones that sound so original onstage. It’s worth getting. Where else are you going to find a medley — a kick-ass medley — of Dolly Parton’s Here You Come Again and Mika’s Interpretation?