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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 16250
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 12:23am | IP Logged | 1
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QUOTE:
| The song's vibe does make it sound like it happened long ago instead of when I was already walking the earth. |
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I was alive but not yet walking! Don't think I ever heard the song before I moved to Canada (around 13 years ago).
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3813
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 2:50am | IP Logged | 2
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It’s definitely on the list of songs that always make me teary, but at least it does so masterfully.
Other entries on that list are (of course) “The Cat’s in the Cradle” and “The Gunner’s Dream”.
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Jim Lynch
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 August 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 654
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 11:45am | IP Logged | 3
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Dave Kopperman, yes, The Gunner’s Dream is absolutely heart-wrenching. I just about wore out my original LP listening to that one over and over.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 135257
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | 4
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Just read a short article listing the liberties Lightfoot took in writing his shanty. Having the Fitzgerald sailing FROM the wrong place, TO the wrong place, for instance. And the 26,000 tons of ore she was carrying sounds like a lot, but it was not a full load. The port for which she was (actually) heading was quite shallow, and fully loaded the ship would have scraped the bottom. Examples of the not uncommon triumph of rhyme over history!
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3813
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | 5
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He apparently revised lyrics when new information became available, such as the 'hatch blowing in' line. Though the actual ports feels like a liberty knowingly taken.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 135257
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | 6
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One of the elements that has bugged me from the start is Lightfoot’s use of events and dialogue for which there were no surviving witnesses. This is very common in historical drama of course, but it still troubles me.
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Brandon Frye
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 November 2004
Posts: 1324
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | 7
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QUOTE:
| It’s definitely on the list of songs that always make me teary, but at least it does so masterfully.
Other entries on that list are (of course) “The Cat’s in the Cradle” and “The Gunner’s Dream”. |
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A big one for me is Don McLean's American Pie, even though I was born long after that ill-fated plane went down.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 135257
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | 8
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We’re allowed to be emotional about things that happened before we were born. I often get misty standing before the framed Lincoln letter hanging in my entrance foyer. I think of all that was lost to this Nation by the firing of that single bullet.
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3813
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | 9
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You never know exactly what's going to hit you. "Cat's in the Cradle" works for me because even though my own dad was a really strong and stable presence for me, he didn't have his own dad around from the age of 12 on. But great art will always find a way to connect with you even if you don't have a personal experience to give you an in.
Obviously "The Gunner's Dream" is also (partly) about the father/son relationship, and I think "Father and Son" hits me about the same way - there's such a paucity of great art about that particular relationship that I'm grateful that a number of top tier songwriters had it as a subject.
Father/daughter songs don't have the same impact on me, and when they're poorly done they just come off icky. "Butterfly Kisses" makes me want to throw myself down a flight of stairs ear-first onto hot metal skewers.
Edited by Dave Kopperman on 12 November 2025 at 6:52pm
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Joseph Gauthier
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 March 2009
Posts: 1430
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| Posted: 12 November 2025 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | 10
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As a child, I erroneously believed that the wreck was in Lake Michigan--there's a Milwaukee suburb named Whitefish Bay not far from where I grew up.I had a sort of "head slap" moment as a teen after listening more closely to the rest of the lyrics.
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Brian Floyd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 8792
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| Posted: 13 November 2025 at 1:04am | IP Logged | 11
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Regarding tearjerker songs, I cannot listen to Tracy Lawrence's Time Marches On, and have not been able to listen to Mike & The Mechanics' The Living Years since my father passed away in late 2020.
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