PS: I just now reread and now see that I was perhaps inadequately precise: when I said I had not checked out post-Endless Wire albums, I did not mean to state that I was unfamiliar with them. I meant that I had not looked in the credits to find out if they were recorded or mastered with the Aphex Aural Exciter box.

That because I had been aware that some late-1970s/early 1980s James Taylor albums and Linda Ronstadt albums had been Aurally Excited. A process that involved adding purportedly benign distortion.

I doubt that was the case, because the one digitally recorded Lightfoot LP I bought, I recall as being sonically threadbare, both in comparison to If You Could Read My Mind, and to Endless Wire.

Ciao,

jm

Thanks for reading and thanks for writing in.

I bought at least Dream Street Rose and Shadows on LP when they first came out. I thought that the title track of Dream Street Rose was not very good; sorry. A three-chord chorus with the lyrics being the title... for me, it was not a patch on Affair on 8th Avenue, which, while predating If You Could Read My Mind, was I think on the same level. It's really a monphonic Madrigal, if that makes sense to anyone.

I thought that the title track of the album Shadows was a much better effort than the song Dream Street Rose--it had the same literary depth and resonance of some of Lightfoot's best work. The rest of the album, however, I also think showed signs of creative exhaustion. Not to the flat-out awful nadir of Canary Yellow Canoe:

In my canary yellow canoe - my yellow canoe
I want to go tripping in my canary yellow canoe
The Eastmain, Coppermine, Back River too
In my canary yellow canoe

In my canary yellow canoe - yellow canoe
I want to run rivers in my canary yellow canoe
The Desmoines River, Rupert River, George River too
In my canary yellow canoe

In my canary yellow canoe - mellow yellow canoe
I want to go tripping in my canary yellow canoe
Chebugema, Peace River, Resolute too
In my canary yellow canoe

In my canary yellow canoe - my elephant too
I want to go tripping in my canary yellow canoe
Churchill, Yellowknife, Ross River too
In my canary yellow canoe

# # #

But the rest of the album Shadows, while nowhere near as horrible, still contained nothing that should get a new artist noticed. IMHO.

Perhaps because at some point I realized that when Lightfoot made the decision not to stop writing songs before he hit rock bottom with Canary Yellow Canoe, he would end up at Canary Yellow Canoe, I searched back to where the inflection point was, and rightly or wrongly, I decided that Endless Wire (the last track of which is, after all, a remake of one of his earliest United Artists songs) was it.

You are right and I agree that Shadows is a great song; but I think we will have to agree to disagree whether Shadows is a great album.

Thanks again for reading and writing; and I think that while Gordon Lightfoot is lucky to have passionate advocates such as yourself, he certainly has earned them and deserves them

ATB,

John Marks

But please, do yourself a favor and pick up 'Shadows' if nothing else. I believe you will see there was life still kicking in Gordon's music after the 70's - and his hits - came to a close.

BJR in SoCal