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Dance Band on the Titanic

Harry Chapin - Dance Band on the Titanic Audio CD

A fair review of the Harry Chapin "Dance Band on the Titanic" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Harry Chapin reviews here, or go back to the Harry Chapin tabs.

Band: Harry Chapin
Title: Dance Band on the Titanic
Rating:

Release Date: 1993-06-29
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Dance Band on the Titanic 2: Why Should People Stay the Same 3: My Old Lady 4: We Grew up a Little Bit 5: Bluesman 6: Country Dreams 7: I Do It for You, Jane 8: I Wonder What Happened to Him 9: Paint a Picture of Yourself (Michael) 10: Mismatch 11: Mercenaries 12: Manhood 13: One Light in a Dark Valley (An Imitation Spiritual) 14: There Only Was One Choice

Memories
Now my sons can dance with me. As a child I danced with my mom to Dance Band.

Some of Harry's best
You'll thank yourself, especially if you love stories; fun, moving stories about real people facing real challenges. Buy this album, do. Some of these songs are among Harry's best, the kind that make the hair stand up on the back of your neck when you listen closely to the lyrics. I think Country Dreams (about a young couple whose bucolic dreams are put on hold by business success) is as touching a story song as he ever wrote. Bluesman (about "the last of the steet corner singers paying his final years of dues" and a young college kid), Dance Band (about the role of entertainers to distract the world from the iceberg on the starboard bow), Mismatch (a true story of young love), I Wonder What Happened to Him (about your lover's ex, "but where there's still shining/ a faint glow from a light/ it makes me wonder where he is/ tonight"), I Do it For You Jane (about the challenge of living an idealized love in the real world), all vintage inspiring Harry Chapin songs about flawed people finding the grace and courage to overcome life's disappointments in a compelling and meaningful way. I've always loved the song Mercenaries which I once heard Harry introduce in concert as a song about the world's two oldest professions ("you've used up your booty/ the girls done her duty/ the turnstile has turned and you learn you are done/ you're back on the street/ joining fresh marching feet/ you see more soldiers coming and your girl chooses one"). I doubt another song exists with the sheer number of lyrics as There Only Was One Choice. This is a great tribute to the soldiers out to play the music game who strive to keep music real ("And he's got Guthrie running in his bones/ he's the hobo kid who left his home/ and his Beatles records and the Rolling Stones/ this boy is staying acoustic"), and it climaxes, or anticlimaxes, with the singer passing on his love of music to his son ("and as I wander with my music/ through the jungles of despair/ my kid will learn guitar and find his street corner somewhere/ there he'll make the silence listen/ to the dream behind the voice/ and show his minstrel hamlet daddy/ that there only was one choice"). Buy this album and get to know the songs and the characters in Harry's world.

Harry's Best
He is, in my opinion, the best storyteller-songwriter of the past half century. I am a huge Harry Chapin fan. With that being said, DBOTT is my favorite Chapin album. It has three qualities that, in my mind, distinguish it from "Verities & Balderdash", "Short Stories", "Portrait Gallery", etc.

1) DBOTT is diverse- It contains a variety of tunes in different styles with very different storylines. Its characters range from a guitarist on the Titaic to a Poconos property salesman to Chapin himself in the wonderful closing track "There Only Was One Choice". It is the most varied of Chapin's albums, which is definitely a positive.

2) It is also cohesive- even thoughit is so varied, every time I listen to DBOTT it seems as if each song is working towards making the album into a greater whole. This is further reinforced by the inclusion of the chorus to the title track in the last minutes of "One Choice"- it seems as if the album has gone full-circle.

3) It is often overlooked. Chapin is known for his two big hits ("Cat's In the Cradel" and "Taxi"), but few non-Chapin fans are aware of DBOTT. This gives it the quality of the "overlooked gem" which makes it seem special for fans of Chapin.

In short, this is an album well worth purchasing. It has some of the best story songs Harry has ever written, and is his best album as a whole.

Unsinkable

Like most of his albums, this was largely ignored on its initial release (although it did make #58 - quite a high chart placing for a Chapin album), which isn't really a surprise. Anybody who feels the need for some Harry Chapin in their collection beyond a compilation or "Greatest Stories Live" should look to this CD - quite possibly THE Chapin masterpiece. There is not a song on it that would have been a hit single even at the heights of the singer/songwriter period of the early 70s, let alone in 1977 during 'disco fever'. But Chapin fans don't want hit singles anyway.

What they DO want is here in abundance - heartfelt and insightful lyrics, with just the right amount of wit, lovingly accompanied by his 'travelling band' under the assured guidance of 'little brother' Steve - probably the only of Harry's producers to have truly understood him. Several tracks deal with the difficulties in keeping relationships 'fresh', and the truth of these songs, in particular, demonstrates just how well Chapin understood human weakness.

And it all ends with the 14 minute wonder "There Only Was One Choice", a glorious epic, slightly overshadowed by the line "I fantasise some tragedy soon curtailing me" which, of course, became reality a few short years later.

The best line of the album though, comes with this observation in the encounter between the soldier and the whore in "Merceneries": "You watch as she fakes it and, of course, you just take it - she's better than others you never paid your money for". Classic stuff.

Recommended to anybody who actually LISTENS to music.

4.5 stars is more like it
"There Only Was One Choice" has to be one of the greatest songs Harry ever wrote. there are enough odd little tunes on here that I'd skip over to keep it from being 5 stars, but this is still a fantastic work. It contains some of my favorite Chapin lyrics of all.

Many of the best songs are available on the Gold Medal Collection and the Story of a Life box set, but there is enough not on them to justify buying this disc.

You can see a complete list of all Harry Chapin discography, or go back to the Harry Chapin tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.