looking glass

Song Lyric Sunday — Looking Glass

Fandango15 Comments

I’m substituting for Jim Adams for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday. But Jim selected this week’s theme based upon a suggestion from Amy (aka E.M. Kingston) to focus on One-Hit Wonders, where an artist or a group had a song that reached the top without any follow-up successes. Have you ever heard of the group Looking Glass? I thought not. But you might be familiar with their song “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).”

“Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” was a 1972 song by American pop rock band Looking Glass from their debut album, Looking Glass. It was written by Looking Glass lead guitarist and co-vocalist Elliot Lurie. The single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and was ranked by Billboard as the number 12 song for 1972.

“Brandy” was based on the name of Lurie’s high school sweetheart, Randy. It tells the story of a musician torn between his love for a life at sea and his love for a barmaid in a busy seaport harbor town that serves “a hundred ships a day.” Though lonely sailors flirt with her, she pines for one who has long since left her because he claimed his life, his love, and his lady, was “the sea.”

Looking Glass never came close to matching the success of “Brandy,” and by 1973, Lurie had left the group for a solo career.

Here are the lyrics to “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).

There's a port on a western bay
And it serves a hundred ships a day
Lonely sailors pass the time away
And talk about their homes

And there's a girl in this harbor town
And she works layin' whiskey down
They say, Brandy, fetch another round
She serves them whiskey and wine

The sailors say: "Brandy, you're a fine girl" (you're a fine girl)
"What a good wife you would be" (such a fine girl)
"Yeah, your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea"

Brandy wears a braided chain
Made of finest silver from the North of Spain
A locket that bears the name
Of the man that Brandy loved

He came on a summer's day
Bringin' gifts from far away
But he made it clear he couldn't stay
No harbor was his home

The sailors say: "Brandy, you're a fine girl" (you're a fine girl)
"What a good wife you would be" (such a fine girl)
"But my life, my lover, my lady is the sea"

Yeah, Brandy used to watch his eyes
When he told his sailor stories
She could feel the ocean fall and rise
She saw its ragin' glory
But he had always told the truth, Lord, he was an honest man
And Brandy does her best to understand

At night when the bars close down
Brandy walks through a silent town
And loves a man who's not around
She still can hear him say

She hears him say "Brandy, you're a fine girl" (you're a fine girl)
"What a good wife you would be" (such a fine girl)
"But my life, my lover, my lady is the sea"
It is, yes it is,
He said, "Brandy, you're a fine girl" (you're a fine girl)
"What a good wife you would be" (such a fine girl)
"But my life, my lover, my lady is the sea"

Song Lyric Sunday — No Lyrics

Fandango14 Comments

My choice of song for Helen Vahdati’s Song Lyric Sunday prompt is, well, unusual. It may also set me up for a bit of ridicule from some of my fellow bloggers. Why? Well, first of all, the song I chose for Helen’s theme, which is “glass,” has no lyrics. WHAT? Second, the song is from Yanni. Yes, Yanni, the New Age music artist.

I was really into New Age music, sometimes referred to as “jazz fusion” or “smooth jazz,” from the mid 80s to maybe the early 2000s. And I will freely admit that Yanni was one of my favorite New Age artists.

Anyway, the song I selected is “Looking Glass.” It’s from Yanni’s second studio album, Keys to Imagination, which was released in 1986. Yanni’s music, which is predominantly instrumental, is a blend of jazz, classical, soft rock, and world music.

Since there are no lyrics to include in this post, I figure I’ll just go ahead and post the song “Looking Glass.” If you listen, close your eyes and let yourself be transported. You might even be surprised by how much you enjoy it.

Through the Looking Glass

Fandango9 Comments

3C35E73F-D488-430A-8E90-C1519D8E577C“I think that Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success,” Donald Trump claimed of the job he and his administration did last year after the island was hit by a devastating hurricane. He also claimed that, “in a certain way, the best job we did was Puerto Rico, but nobody would understand that. I mean, it’s harder to understand.”

Earlier this month, Puerto Rico’s governor formally raised the death toll from Hurricane Maria to an estimated 2,975 from 64 following a study conducted by researchers at The George Washington University.

But of course, looking through whatever prism it is that he uses to view the world, Trump refutes the report and denies that nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico died as a result of Hurricane Maria. This morning he tweeted:

“3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000…

“…..This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!”

The current President of the United States is, as his former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson allegedly said, a fucking moron.

Written for today’s Fandango’s One-Word Challenge, “prism.”