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Smugly, I can name all three "Diamond" songs and think this is the second best. Burke's version does show the absolute quality of Tom's writing too. I saw Burke sing this at The Manchester Academy 2 many years ago and he really did preach it like we were his congregation.

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I wonder if Burke dug into the history of Zerelda? She was Jesse James' mother; I could imagine her never having prayed, before or after the Pinkerton raid. She was pretty awful.

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Where oh where has my hit of Tom gone? Sundays have become bleaker than November time.

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I just posted this under All the World is Green, but I’ll post it here, too:

I saw Woyzeck at BAM. It was one of Wilson’s shorter works (90 minutes?) from the Buchner play about a military man who goes under cruel experiments and becomes a killer. The original was a hyperealist play but would become one of a handful of works that inspired German Expressionism. True inheritors of Buchner include Kroetz, whose choppy, episodic play Farmyard is brutal.

I enjoyed the Wilson-Waits Woyzeck but much prefer The Black Rider.

The night I saw Woyzeck, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Jack Black were seated in front of me. As Black and I were dressed the same (black with black leather coat), and were of similar weight and beard, we exchanged an all-knowing nod at each other.

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