Day 22 – The 30 Day Song Challenge – A Song that you listen to when you’re sad...

Song 22 – A song that you listen to when you’re sad...  – ‘Dead Flowers’– Caitlin Rose

Caitlin Rose

I’ve not picked many ‘classic’ songs in my list so this is a good time to introduce one.  Dead Flowers is a Rolling Stones song, although I’m going for the Caitlin Rose version from last year.  It’s a fine song and her straight country version really suits it.  I can't find the studio version on Youtube so here's a live version.  She starts a little shaky bit picks it up from there.

Caitlin Rose - Dead Flowers (live)

I don’t think it’s a particularly sad song as it seems to be more about moving on and moving forward rather than dwelling on some past hurt.  It’s always good advice.  Not always easy to do of course.

Country and Western, as I suppose you could call this, has a truly terrible reputation.  While it’s true that the mainstream of country seems to produce some hugely schmaltzy songs and some politically very questionable ones, it’s important to remember that this genre came from folk music.  It’s therefore got some really sound roots, even if it’s often grown beyond recognition.  In recent years alt.country (how the alt. prefix is dated – it’s so 1990s newsgroupy!) or ‘Americana’ has appeared, which has in turn sparked a new folk revival in Britain.  People like The Low Anthem, Wilco, Ryan Adams, Gillian Welch and Drive By Truckers have produced music that’s very heavily influenced by country, if not out and out country.   There’s far too much to be said to fit into this post on that huge subject so I’ll stop there and maybe return to it in a later blog.

Caitlin Rose - Shanghai Cigarettes

Another of Caitlin's songs, this time rocking a little more.

David Millington

22^nd April 2011

Nottingham