Dan Fogelberg
While I was for holidays, I was mooching a car from some family and there was a Dan Fogelberg greatest hits cd in the player (I have family from Peoria, where Fogelberg grew up … in fact, the car I was driving belongs to a guy who bummed around with one of Fogelberg’s brother, … but this is not a six-degrees of Kevin Bacon thing … I digress).
Anyway, it was great to get reacquainted with his music. “Same Auld Lang Syne” still strikes me as among his best songs (which reminds me, songwriter
Little things can be so effective. That brass quartet that punctuates “Leader of the Band” serves as a kind of musical honor guard, an arranger’s lark that helps keep the song from becoming funereal, and the echo of a family band, all at once.
Or the way he rhymes the word “primeval” … gracefully.
There are plenty of reasons to mourn Fogelberg in his own right as an artist, but he also exemplifies an era of singer-songwriter music that has largely been killed off by overpopulation, by way too many wannabes and hacks with a guitar and a knapsack full of some grimy lead sheets to songs nobody wants to hear, much less record. So RIP, Dan Fogelberg, and the music of a moment you came to embody.
Daniel J. Mount wrote:
I had to Google him to be sure you meant that he’d died. I suspected maybe with the “RIP,” but it wasn’t clear.
Posted 09 Jan 2008 at 2:26 am ¶
pk wrote:
“Same Auld Lang Syne” is one of my all time favorite songs in life. He died of prostrate cancer I believe…such a sadness when I heard he had passed. He was one of my favorites…
Posted 09 Jan 2008 at 9:49 am ¶
Grave Digger wrote:
in regards to #1 . . .
Where’s Lewis Grizzard when you need him? To nearly quote Lewis:
“****, brother, I don’t believe I’da told that!”
RIP, Lewis!
Posted 09 Jan 2008 at 6:31 pm ¶
Tombstone Furnisher wrote:
And the “Here’s Your Sign Award” goes to……..
(drum roll please)
Posted 09 Jan 2008 at 10:46 pm ¶
thom wrote:
hey DJM - maybe he meant “RIP TAYLOR” from the old Hollywood Squares.
Posted 11 Jan 2008 at 2:00 am ¶
JM wrote:
During the early 80’s, I and my wife began to go to DF’s concerts and buy a great deal of his music. While I suspect that his sympathies were not simpactio with evangelical Christainity, there is much in DF’s music to be valued. If you can find his two-album set entitled “The Innocent Age”, give a listen to a song entitled “The Reach”. In summation and as a tribute to a wonderfully sensitive writer, please note these words…
“And the morning will blow away, as the waves crash and fall, And the Reach like a siren sings as she beckons and calls, As the coastline recedes from view and the seas swell and roll, I will take from the Reach, all that she has to teach, to the depths of my soul.”
I’ve often sat upon the beach, looking out to the horizon and thinking about those powerful words. My interpretation leans more toward a metaphorical replacement of God with the Reach; sort of makes my beach walks seem more like a walk with God. Even his music in “the Reach” has a sacred sound to it. Highly recommended!
Posted 11 Jan 2008 at 6:50 pm ¶