BuffyFest Five

Day five of my own personal Buffy Sainte-Marie festival to celebrate her birthday. It's been nice listening to the different styles of music over the years but the thing that seems to have been constant is her stance on war, personal freedom and love. I blogged about 'Moratorium' last year so I won't blog again, but a similar type of song is 'Song Of The French Partisan'.

Song Of The French Partisan

I don't know why Buffy recorded 'French Partisan', a song about the second world war but I imagine it's a metaphor for what happened to the native peoples of North America, with Europeans invading the land and gradually hunting down the native peoples. It's a very sad song, of bravery and loss, the soldier/warrior losing his family and losing his friends as one by one they're killed. It's an emotional black hole depending on how you choose to hear it.

Adam

From Buffy's experimental 1969 album, 'Illuminations', a song by Richie Havens that I don't pretend to understand but love the sound. On 'Illuminations' Buffy played around with the technology trying to find new sounds and 'Adam' is one of those songs that stands out for me, marrying a traditional song structure to a more radical sound. It works for me.

For Free

Buffy's version of a Joni Mitchell song on her 1973 album, 'Quiet Places'. I like this song, a tale of a busker playing for free on a street corner while Buffy (at least in theory) plays for 'a fortune' in a concert hall, a song about 'the biz'. Buffy was an early supporter of Joni and recorded a few of her songs early on.

My Baby Left Me

I'll finish with a song that Buffy recorded that was also recorded a few years later by SLADE, my other heroes. Of course, the sound is very different but the similarity is the pace of the song that does it for me every time. Buffy and SLADE link here ...

There you have it, dear reader, a selection of the Buffy songs I've listened to this week. There have been a lot more, of course, but this selection might help give you an idea of the range of music Buffy has recorded over the years. And continues to record, with a new album due shortly!