Commentary – Song by Song

By Howard Gladstone and Tony Quarrington (co-producer, and co-writer on 5 tunes)

Show A Little Love (For Free/Part Two)

Minor key swinging jazzy tune with sax

Howard: Joni Mitchell wrote “For Free”, and the musical landscape has shifted to make it even harder now for musicians to be heard and properly compensated. Leonard Cohen brought the Tower of Song into view, and he resides on the 27th floor. This song is a reflection on art and commerce in the streaming age, the motivation to create art, and a nod to these songwriting greats.

Tony: The recording opens with a sombre, yet swinging, meditation on music and the business of music. It’s called ‘Show A Little Love/ For Free (Part Two)’, referencing the Joni Mitchell song of 1970 about a street musician who ‘played real good for free’. In that perhaps more golden time, someone could play just for the love of playing, and find a rewarding place doing it.

Crazy Talk

A light-hearted good-natured ramble

Howard: A light-hearted co-write with Tony Quarrington, this song subtly pays tribute to Patsy Cline, the Beatles, Robbie Robertson. It also points out that Crazy Talk may not always be so crazy.

Tony: ‘Crazy Talk’ is a loping, good-natured ramble through various topics: country music, love, revolution, and lots besides. ‘It’s crazy talk – crazy talk- crazy I hear from you/ But then again, I’m crazy too’.

Rider At the Gate

folk/rock apocalyptic warning

Howard: Does a song with a theme like this do any good? Is anybody listening? Nobody wants to hear that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. However, writing topical songs is firmly entrenched in the job description of the songwriter raised in the shadow of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and their successors such as Steve Earle.

Tony: ‘Rider at the Gate’ is a foreboding, apocalyptic warning, with nods to Dylan, Hendrix, Dire Straits, and the Prophets of the Bible. ‘Carbon’s past the tipping point/It will swamp your ship of state’. Mysterious, searing guitars blossom in the spaces of this song.

Chasm of Divide

folk/jazz in an unsettling haunting hybrid tune

Howard: Divisions at all levels – personal, societal, global – are widening. Tolerance and understanding are waning. Exasperation, disappointment, anger, demonization of the “other” once again becomes acceptable and is amplified by misuse of technology and social media.

Tony: In the cryptic, unsettling ‘Chasm of Divide’, the personal, poetic, and political are all muddled and muddied, where ‘rage and lost love collide’.

Sea of Sorrow

poignant waltz with string quartet

Howard: A death of someone close is devastating, even when it is expected. As sailors on seas of sorrow, we are born to endure.

Tony: Perhaps the loveliest song here is the waltz ‘Sea Of Sorrow’, which floats along on an ocean of bowed strings.

Little Bird

Gentle anthem in Latin/World vein with inspiring flute

Howard: I wrote a group of children’s songs, to be released eventually under the GladTones name. This is a song at one level about growing up in a healthy and nurturing environment and gaining freedom and independence. At another level it seems to be about not quite getting free.

Tony: ‘Little Bird’ is a sweet, gentle anthem in a sort of Latin/World Music vein. Jacob Gorzhaltsan’s inspiring flute floats bird-like over everything.

Inheritance of Junk

Quirky waltz with wonky clarinet

Howard: We inherit tangible property as well as intangibles such as religion, culture, science, and history. Disinheriting what we identify as “junk” is sometimes not so easy.

Tony: ‘Inheritance of Junk’ is a wonky, quirky waltz, as if from some post-Apocalyptic Vienna.

Oh, The Waters

folk hymn to the element water, with rich vocal harmonies

Howard: Water is vital for the health and survival of each of us and our planet. This song is at once a psalm, a prayer, and a plea. Water can heal us, but water itself is in danger from human activity.

Tony: ‘Oh, The Waters’ is an elemental hymn – to the element Water. There is a beautiful confluence of vocal harmonies and plucked strings.

Irish Rain

A rollicking literary Irish drinking song

Howard: I travelled through Ireland ending up in Dublin for the Bloomsday festivities, celebrated each June 16. This is the day that the narrative of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” unfolds.

Tony: ‘Irish Rain’ is a jolly, frolicking narrative of love – in Dublin, on Bloomsday, in the rain.

The Man Who Ran

Americana Revisited and turned on its head

Howard: The cheating wife in the song “Long Black Veil” is idealized as a faithful, mysterious woman who “walks these hills in a long black veil”. In this song, the real murderer steps forward, remorseful about the death of an innocent man.

Tony: ‘The Man Who Ran’ is a sequel/response to the classic country murder ballad ‘Long Black Veil’.

Bodies in Motion

Bouncy space age song

Howard: A slightly troubled love affair set in the world of Astrophysics. This song name checks notables in the field from Hawking, Newton, Einstein, Feynman to Higgs.

Tony: The very entertaining, space-age track ‘Bodies in Motion’ is (to my knowledge) the first popular song to allude to the Higgs Boson, or ‘God particle’.