1976 Musical Memory for 2010
In 1976
and Peter Wood released a melodic song with a play time of over 6 minutes and that still managed to dominate the airwaves. Last Saturday, while mowing the lawn, my iPod shuffled to this song and lost in the magic of ear-bud land, I heard the lyrics as if for the first time. Some of them were familiar to me but as the music rolled on, I was smitten by their beauty. There is real poetry in this song, I tell you.
The simple interpretation of the song lyrics tell a story about a tourist who meets a hippie girl in an exotic market, stays the night with her, and thus misses his tour bus. The larger story is about how we can lose ourselves in someone else to the point that our intended destination is lost and the direction of our lives permanently altered.
Please accept my invitation to listen to or read some of the most romantic and enchanting lyrics from the 70's.
Hear the song here:
.
Lyrics below.
Year of the Cat - Al Stewart & Peter Wood
On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat
She doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There's a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat
Well, she looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea
She comes in incense and patchouli
So you take her, to find what's waiting inside
The year of the cat
Well, morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away the choice and lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
But for now you're going to stay
In the year of the cat.