Friday, August 22, 2014

There's No Accounting For It...

     She's best known for the anti-suburban anthem Little Boxes. I kinda like Malvina Reynolds' songs, though I'd be hard pressed to say why.  Politically, we couldn't be farther apart on most issues, other than a certain suspicion that too few people have too much power (though I do share her chortling glee when the underdog strikes back, as in The Battle of Maxton).

     On the other hand, there's no hidden agenda with Reynolds; she was who she was and never shied away from it.  (Sometimes she was decades ahead of her times, in a most disconcerting way: she was denied a high school diploma because of her parents public opposition to U. S. involvement in the war -- World War One, that is).  Reynolds was, indeed,  a "Social Justice Warrior," but with her, it was no fuzzy, comforting groupthink: like her lyrics, it went right to the bone.  I respect someone like that, even while disagreeing.

     More songwriter than songbird, most of her work was written and performed while in her 60s, an age when most people's singing voices have picked up an excess of "character;" her songs are better known in cover versions and perhaps none more than Little Boxes, of which I am happy to link to Sammy Rae's fun and graceful version.

5 comments:

skidmark said...

linkee no workee

"The web address you entered could not be found[more information]
You were trying to go to http://http//youtu.be/jgdN3CY0BPE "

stay safe.

Roberta X said...

I have fixed the link!

Michael said...

Thank you Roberta! I grew up in Richmond County just perhaps 35 miles from Maxton and remember that incident well. The music contains an earworm which goes on forever. I thought I had stilled the "Ticky Tacky Thing" but I guess not. Thanks for awakening that part of my brain! :)

Drang said...

Had a cassette tape of some concert to raise money for cons, or ex-cons, bought it because it had several recordings by folk singers whose work I enjoyed. It has her singing "Little Boxes"; in the intro she speaks of who people who told her that she was "singing it wrong", because she didn't do Pete Segar's version...

Adrian K said...

Nice. Reminds me of Sixto Rodriguez. Few people had heard of him until the Searching for Sugarman documentary was released, but you won't find a more unvarnished bit of urban poetry. I recommend the movie as well. Interesting bit of Apartheid-era history.