Steve Forbert: Strange Names and New Sensations

I’ve had Strange Names and New Sensations for six weeks or so now, and I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. There are some cracking songs on it – Seaside Brown-Eyed Girl and Thirty More Years (“objects in the mirror may be just as they appear”) stand out for me – and two or three amusing side-tracks – Middle Age and Strange Names (North New Jersey’s Got ‘Em. The trouble is, there’s not very much to it.

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Steve Forbert – Oil Song lyrics

Someone wanted to know the lyrics to The Oil Song by Steve Forbert. This is my interpretation of the version on The Best of. Unfortunately, it’s one of those songs that keeps getting verses added to live – please let me know if you hear any others. I heard one that had the punchline “The Exxon Valdez wrecked itself, I suppose” and another about Palestine’s oil reserves being bombed and the “Mediterranean tourism buzz” being “not what it wuz”.

“Oh, the engine’s gone dead!” cried the men who were there
As she passed up the dock on the wide Delaware

Steve Forbert, Turning Point Cafe, Piermont NY, May 25th 2007

Dogs chase cars, men chase dreams
The dogs are the more practical, it seems

Steve Forbert is a slightly unlikely folk hero.He’s too big, for one thing, and isn’t anywhere scruffy enough. He jerks his head back and forth as he sings, perhaps the reason behind the title of his Rocking Horse Head CD. He’s a folk hero… but he rocks.

The Turning Point is about the most intimate – read cramped – venue I’ve seen anyone play in. According to the sign on the wall, it seats a maximum of 69 people; it seems a few short of that number, but is still cosy. Uncomfortably so, given the lack of respect for personal space shown by the nearby New Yorkers who have obviously come to have a crummy time. The voice of a nearby folkie carries along the table: he too appears to be hoping for a poor show so he can say he wasn’t as good as when he saw him at the Gaslight in 1978, or something along those lines.