To The Nines: On Broken Keys and Human Nature
(covers from Rosalie Sorrells, Steve Forbert, Alejandro Escovedo, +9 more!)
It’s always fascinated me how, as social animals who can both project future possibilities and mutate our environment to our benefit, we’re nonetheless driven to make peace with our own foibles, accommodate small stumbling blocks, and work around difficulties otherwise solvable and surmountable.
A case in point: the 9 key on my laptop keyboard has been broken since last winter, and - as removing the key cap to clean underneath it proved ineffective - I have been forced to conclude that there is something electronically awry here, somewhere in the circuitry. But instead of getting it fixed, I’ve spent months painstakingly cutting and pasting both the open parenthesis and the numeral nine into everything I write, here and elsewhere.
On the very face of it, this behavior is silly. A laptop is portable by definition; taking it to the Apple store to have the key pried up and the sensor beneath it fixed would surely have taken less time out of my life than the cumulative effort of working around the problem.
But as humans, we are wired to accept the now of a million small inconveniences as more favorable than the effort of repair. And the public embarrassment of taking the machine in to someone else to have it fixed, coupled with the vague dread of loss which accompanies even the most momentary hand-over of these external brains we call computers, has for far too long meant lost time, lost peace, and lost efficacy.
Today, then, a personal prompt, in order to force upon myself the impetus for change: an entire post of song titles which use the number 9*, followed in each case, as always, with cut-and-paste parenthetical note of both song origin and cover source. The diverse set features but a small sampling of the “9 songs” I’ve compiled over the years, from train wreck ballads to yearsongs; here’s hoping its design and compilation is as annoying as I suspect it will be, and that the very tedium of posting such a list will prompt me to change my short-term ways: to get off my ass, and get the damn thing fixed.
- Kevin Davis: 99 Red Balloons (orig. Nena)
(from The Jason Lamb Sessions, 2006)
- Steve Forbert: Blue Yodel #9 (orig. Jimmie Rodgers)
(from Any Old Time: Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, 2002) - Grisman and Garcia: Blue Yodel #9 (ibid.)
(from The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute, 1996)
- Alison Krauss: 9 to 5 (orig. Dolly Parton)
(from Just Because I’m A Woman: The Songs of Dolly Parton, 2003)
- Skillet Lickers: Wreck of the Old ‘97 (orig. Grayson and Whitter)
(from People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938)
- Rosalie Sorrels: The Wreck of the Old No. 9 (trad.)
(from Folksongs of Idaho and Utah, 1961)
- Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: 1913 Massacre (orig. Woody Guthrie)
- Cisco Houston: 900 Miles (trad.; arr. Guthrie)
(from The Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie, 1972/1988)
- Martin Simpson: Louisiana 1927 (orig. Randy Newman)
(from Prodigal Son, 2007) - Lelia Broussard: Louisiana 1927 (ibid.)
(from Hurricane Katrina Benefit Show [live CD;out of print], 2006)
- Jim Henry w/ Tracy Grammar: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning (orig. Richard Thompson)
(from King of Hearts, 2008)
- Alejandro Escovedo: 1968 (orig. Dave Alvin)
(from The Man Of Somebody’s Dreams: A Tribute To The Songs Of Chris Gaffney, 2009)
As always, folks, Cover Lay Down exists first and foremost to connect artists and fans, that both can thrive. Our newly-added play-as-you-listen functionality may make it easier to listen and move on, but if you like what you hear, please consider following artist and album links to purchase the music, direct from the source wherever possible. (That said: donations to defray the cost of fixing the no-longer-warrantied laptop which helps make that connection possible are also greatly appreciated.)
Oh, and bonus points to We’re About 9, a band whose name I have not been able to type for ages, for their covers of CSNY classic Helplessly Hoping and Richard Shindell’s Money for Floods.
*Note: due to the selection criteria for today’s post, songs which use the word nine in the title were deemed ineligible for inclusion. In the case of songs where multiple versions have been recorded under both the numeral and the word, I used the covering artist’s label listing for the song to determine eligibility.
Category: Uncategorized
September 30th, 2009 at 1:30 am
a good one is from the group “opanarise” track “nine”
September 30th, 2009 at 8:25 am
There was a punk band in The Uk in the 1980s called 999
They did covers of ‘Lil Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Indian Reservation’!!!
September 30th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Cool, Mr. P — I like Punk in small doses, I just don’t blog about it. Any other FOLK bands out there with the numeral 9 in their names?
September 30th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
@womp: thanks for the rec…but worth noting: we only do coversongs, and only cover folk music, here at Cover Lay Down!
September 30th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I thought this was going to be themed on that new movie 9. It looked good, I meant to see it.
Always glad to see someone spreading the Kevin Davis love! He’s a friend of mine. I trust you have that whole JL Sessions set?
September 30th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Haven’t got the whole Kevin Davis set, Just the one or two I’ve snagged over the years from you, Ray! It seems unreleased; got a pointer to it?