VEGANGELICA

Hehe, BADFASTBUSA, yes, I agree there is at least one John Denver song that gives me the creeps. I managed to survive listening to it as a child, but some of the subjects in the song weren't so lucky! Even as a kid, before I attained my current state of Veggiedom, "Grandma's Feather Bed" seemed a macabre celebration of animal slaughter and chilling childhood acceptance of it, since the tykes are completely unperturbed by the death upon which they feast and sleep, as John Denver describes when he pines away for those times when...

"We'd have chicken pie and country ham,
homemade butter on the bread.
But the best darn thing about Grandma's house
was her great big feather bed.
It was nine feet wide, and six feet high, soft as a downy chick
It was made from the feathers of forty-eleven geese."

Now, I don't know about others, but I never felt particularly lulled to sleep as a child by knowing that I was resting on the feathers plucked from forty-eleven corpses! As an adult I find this callous ode to country butchery even more disturbing.

Also, doesn't it strike anyone as just a teensy bit odd that the kids are dragging into bed a cute "piggy we stole from the shed" whom they will probably soon feast upon as a "country ham?" I have never understood how people could claim to enjoy an animal's presence and then, betraying whatever trust she must have had in them, turn around and kill and eat her as a table treat! Even as a child I realized through songs such as John Denver's "Grandma's Feather Bed" that I was a sheep living in a human wolf pack. Probably understandably, I was quite shy as a child due to this.
--Erica

Flower Child

Very original, he is. A sound that was all his own. It just makes me feel good about life after listening to his music, and I really think that's what he wanted his music to do. So much skill with his acoustic guitar. I admired how he did it all himself too, just his voice and an acoustic guitar, and thats all you want to hear.

I did a review over "Rocky Mountain High" in my Member's Journal.

VEGANGELICA

Hi, Flower Child,
Yes, I agree that his songs do make me feel better about life after listening to them...even "Grandma's Feather Bed" (despite my aforementioned complaint about aspects of this song, it's basic idea of appreciating one's family and simple, happy times is lovely).
--Erica

T-Bomb

yeah - this song is really big in Europe for some reason. I play covers in pubs in Berlin and it is a standard. All the pub owners insist that we play it. I heard a rumour that John Denver is german. Anyone know if it is true?

VEGANGELICA

Hi, T-Bomb,
How funny that "Grandma's Feather Bed" is popular in Germany right now. Do the pub owners insist you play other country/folk songs, too? What do you think is the lure of John Denver in Germany right now? Is it a sort of "return to simpler times," go out hiking in the woods thing? I recall that going out on family hikes was very popular when I lived in West Berlin for a year not long before the wall came down.

I looked up John Denver's life info on Wikipedia to verify that no, he was not German, although he had German ancestry. Wikipedia states:

"Denver was born in Roswell, New Mexico, to Erma Louise Swope and Henry John Deutschendorf, Sr., an Air Force officer and flight instructor of German ancestry. In his autobiography Take Me Home, Denver described his life as the eldest son of a family shaped by a stern father who could never show his love for his children. Denver's mother's family was Scots-Irish and German Catholic, and it was they who imbued Denver with a love of music. His maternal grandmother gave him his first guitar when he was seven."

--Erica

E5I5O

Enough chit-chat. Time for music. I love this song by John.

Plankton

Apparently there was a tribute album that came out in 2013 if anyone want's to hear other people's interpretations of his work by some contemporary artists of the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mu...to_John_Denver

This was what brought it to my attention from a friend who writes/performs folk tunes:
https://soundcloud.com/ato_records/s...s-are-diamonds

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Mindfulness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es-Q9_eG7e4
this is so hard

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Lisnaholic

Wow! That's quite a thread-bump, Mindfulness. Thanks.

Not really a fan of John Denver, but he went up in my estimation the day I learned that he had written my favourite Peter Paul and Mary song, Leaving On A Jet Plane.. This performance by JD + Mama Cass is top quality too:-



(Bonus points to Cass Elliot for promoting voter registration.)

I've often used the PP&M version of the song in my English classes, because it has so much in its favour: clearly ennunciated lyrics sung at a gentle pace, great job of setting a scene with easy vocabulary, a sentiment and story the whole world can understand, and to top it off, a haunting melody.

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Mindfulness

That's a nice song^ I always jammed to a few of his famous songs but that remix I bumped with just had been on repeat.

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