Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Gotta go through this real fast since I have an meeting to meet in 45 mNs. But as I listen to Michael Hedges do All Along the Watchtower and before that a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and before that a Bruce Cockburn… oh, yes, that brings me full circle. It all started with Timothee playing a Dylan with his own personal and unique interpretation… and after that, Dan doing his Bruce Cockburn interpretation, which led me to Cockburn and then to the great and dynamic Michael Hedges.

So the accent last night at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic was for me INTERPRETATION. When I heard Timothee’s version of the Dylan song I had to ask him where he got it from … it was his. Bravo!

Then Dan did his Cockburn and as he is Canadian, Dan, when I heard that, it brought me back home.

But I started thinking about Interpretation again, and how we not only sing other people’s songs, we should do them OUR way, and interpret them, and try to make it as true to ourselves as possible – and hopefully it will be different from the original. That, in a nutshell, is what interpretation is. But as I said to Da, for me, what one might call my interpretation of other people’s songs I simply call my own inability to sing them the way THEY do. Some kind of accident, as it were, and incompetence as an impregnator.

All for now.