Rainy Day Women #12 and #35 – This hasn’t worn all that well, the “must get stoned” punchline is kinda dumb, but the opening, a sorta st. louis funeral march which seems to stagger all over the place is allowed to take center stage.
Raining In My Heart – Buddy Holly – In which Holly grows up. The orchestration is a pure pop confection, and Holly, for all the hiccup and sigh, doesn’t seem quite sincere. It took the rest of the world years to catch up with this.
Rain – The Beatles – When macca goes swanking around saying he was the avant garde pop-artist of the Beatles while Lennon was not enjoying married bliss in suburbia with Cynthia, all you have to do is spin this B – Side to see exactly who was doing what. Lennon’s ode to a Krishnaism (everything is “just a state of mind”) is one step away from Jungism -where every reality is consensual.
It Never Rains In California – Albert Hammond – The Strokes kids papa had this one smasherino about failing to make it big on the West Coast. The punchline: “it pours”
Come Rain Or Come Shine – Judy Garland – Have you heard her wail through this one at the live At Carnegie Hall. You can’t help believe Judy and therein lies the tragedy.
Early Morning Rain – Gordon Lightfoot – Another travelling song. It sounds like how you feel when you are going back to boarding school from home and it is 530am in the morning and you feel a tug of nostalgia and a need to leave.
Who’ll Stop The Rain – Creedence Clearwater Revival – There is a reason John Fogerty is an asshole -it’s because he got screwed out of the royalties for writing songs like this, and then they stole his band name as well, and toured as CCR. The rain never stops… the title of this post comes from a song in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”