Something 4 The Weekend # 172

Blitzen Trapper: Destroyer Of The Void: "Sadie" [mp3]

I was listening to the new Blitzen Trapper album this past week, and they're a band that evokes (for me) an era forty years gone...Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Grateful Dead, Lennon & McCartney, Bob Dylan..."Sadie" is the last song on the album, a sweet piano ballad that I can imagine Richard Manuel working out with The Band in some empty afternoon saloon, circa 1969. That's kinda what it sounds like to me. Maybe even a splash of Elton John from way back when. It's all good - the song, the album, the band...

Bob Dylan: Self-Portrait: "Little Sadie" [mp3]

Speaking of Bob Dylan, here he is doing his version of a trad song, "Little Sadie", which you might/should recognize as a variation of "Cocaine Blues" as made famous by Johnny Cash. Both songs were born of, and usurped, an old '20's song called "Bad Lee Brown", about a dude who kills his woman with a .44 which he hides beneath his head when he sleeps that night... The next day Bad Lee Brown gets caught in rhyming places like Jericho or Juarez, Mexico...Anyways...

I love Cash's "Cocaine Blues" as recorded at Folsom Prison because he spits the song out with such fervor, a song of drugs and murder and judges and jail, and the inmates at Folsom cheer like a fucking choir. Nothing beats that, not even this song by Dylan, which is a damn fine version from a strange and interesting album in his catalog, an album that's a small, overlooked gem in it's way, and if nothing else, an album with stories and theories around it...

The Beatles: The Beatles: "Sexy Sadie" [mp3]

"Sexy Sadie" is the third song about a woman named Sadie that I am aware of, or should I say the third song in my MP3 folders? And the thing of it is - this particular song is supposed to be called "Maharishi" to begin with, a stinging indictment of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whom the Beatles had visited in India , and who was accused of making improper and unwanted sexual advances towards one of the young woman in Fab Four's entourage. Harrison (and McCartney)thought the allegations were bullshit, and convinced Lennon to change the title and lyrics...Viola..."Sexy Sadie". "You made a fool of everyone..."

I am well into my 40's, and I cannot recall ever knowing a girl named Sadie. Not once, not ever, not even in passing.

Hotcha! Hank