Carpenter Song Quotes

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day — at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

You begin to suspect, as you gaze through this you-shaped hole of insight and fire, that though it is the most important thing you own — never deny that for an instant — it has not shielded you from anything terribly important. The only consolation is that though one could have thrown it away at any time, morning or night, one didn't. One chose to endure. Without any assurance of immortality, or even competence, one only knows one has not been cheated out of the consolation of carpenters, accountants, doctors, ditch-diggers, the ordinary people who must do useful things to be happy. Meander along, then, half blind and a little mad, wondering when you actually learned — was it before you began? — the terrifying fact that had you thrown it away, your wound would have been no more likely to heal: indeed, in an affluent society such as this, you might even have gone on making songs, poems, pictures, and getting paid. The only difference would have been — and you learned it listening to all those brutally unhappy people who did throw away theirs — and they do, after all, comprise the vast and terrifying majority — that without it, there plainly and starkly would have been nothing there; no, nothing at all.

Well, how do you usually meet women?” “They have a way of suddenly appearing. Like the birds in that song.” She had to think about that for a minute. “You mean ‘Close to You’ by the Carpenters?

A familiar melody suddenly drifts through the little living room. It makes me freeze, and I don't know why. And then I hear the silky, sweet sound of Karen Carpenter's voice. "'Rainy Days and Mondays,'" Alex says. I can't find my voice. I just stare ahead, fighting back the tears. Alex sits down beside me. I know he senses that something's wrong. "I'm sorry," he says quickly. "If you don't like it, I'll turn it off." "No," I say. "No. Please don't." I wipe a tear from my eye, just as another spills onto my cheek. "My husband loved this song." I smile. "Which made him the only straight man on earth to love the Carpenters." Alex grins. "The only two straight men on earth." I smile again. For some reason, I feel someone has lifted a great weight from my shoulders, just for a moment. "James died on a Monday," I say. We sit there for a moment listening to the song together, each alone in our own thoughts, until Alex reaches over and takes my hand in his. I don't let go.

with walls of bare black stone and four tall narrow windows that looked out to the four points of the compass. In the center of the chamber was the great table from which it took its name, a massive slab of carved wood fashioned at the command of Aegon Targaryen in the days before the Conquest. The Painted Table was more than fifty feet long, perhaps half that wide at its widest point, but less than four feet across at its narrowest. Aegon’s carpenters had shaped it after the land of Westeros, sawing out each bay and peninsula until the table nowhere ran straight. On its surface, darkened by near three hundred years of varnish, were painted the Seven Kingdoms as they had been in Aegon’s day; rivers and mountains, castles and cities, lakes and forests.

I have never known a boy who did not love the Warrior. I am old, though, and being old, I love the Smith. Without his labor, what would the Warrior defend? Every town has a smith, and every castle. They make the plows we need to plant our crops, the nails we use to build our ships, iron shoes to save the hooves of our faithful horses, the bright swords of our lords. No one could doubt the value of a smith, and so we name one of the Seven in his honor, but we might as easily have called him the Farmer or the Fisherman, the Carpenter or the Cobbler. What he works at makes no matter. What matters is, he works. The Father rules, the Warrior fights, the Smith labors, and together they perform all that is rightful for a man. Just as the Smith is one aspect of the godhead, the Cobbler is one aspect of the Smith. It was he who heard my prayer and healed my feet.

Denny Cordell and Leon Russell ran a record company much the way Russell put together Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which was basically a hippie commune on wheels. The Mad Dogs and Englishmen experience would stand as a kind of summit of seventies excess, with three drummers and a choir and endless hangers-on. But Russell’s and Cordell’s careers started well before that. Leon Russell had been a member of the Wrecking Crew, playing on Phil Spector records, Beach Boys and Byrds records, Monkees and Paul Revere and the Raiders records. He’d been a member of the Shindogs, the house band on television’s Shindig! He’d had his own hits and seen his songs become hits for other artists, from Gary Lewis and the Playboys to the Carpenters. When George Harrison organized the Bangladesh concert, he called Russell, who helped put the band together. At those shows, Russell stood out like the natural star he was. Denny

Back then he'd hammered out rags as rough as the planks that made up that schoolhouse stage. Over the years he's taken a saw and rasp to those tunes and smoothed them at the edges, sanded them slowly over time with finer and finer grit paper, and applied a polish to them. The songs are comfortable now. People can take their shoes off to dance without fear of a spike in the foot; they can lie back on that smooth and waxed wood to take a nap in the afternoon or make love all night long. Oliver sees himself as a carpenter, a craftsman putting notes and melodies together, fitting them when they will, stepping back to rest and reconsider when they won't.

Getting to the end of a song is not the goal of singing.

Our Kotex commercial airs the same week the article is released. We were hired to design something “pad-centric” when "Nashville Combat" was in postproduction and we were subsisting on lentils and six-packs of PBR. We were instructed to steal some thunder from tampon usage with a “fun, light-hearted spot” showcasing the company’s new Super Light Close-to-You sanitary napkin. “Isn’t that a Carpenters song?” Mel said after they approached us.

Casual affairs never interested him. Every girl he met was gauged as a potential life partner, a soul mate, an undying love, as though every relationship should be a Carpenters song.

In this world you've a soul for a compass and a heart for a pair of wings/There's a star in the far horizon, shining bright in an azure sky/For the rest of the time that you're given, why walk when you can fly

I Hear America Singing I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Ballad of a Carpenter" "Jesus was a working man And a hero you will hear Born in the town of Bethlehem At the turning of the year At the turning of the year When Jesus was a little lad Streets rang with his name For he argued with the older men And he put them all to shame He put them all to shame He became a wandering journeyman And he traveled far and wide And he noticed how wealth and poverty Live always side by side Live always side by side So he said, "Come all you working men, You farmers and weavers too If you would only stand as one This world belongs to you This world belongs to you When the rich men heard what the carpenter had done To the Roman troops he ran Saying put this rebel Jesus down He's a menace to God and man He's a menace to God and man The commander of the occupying troops He laughed and then he said There's a cross to spare on Calvary's hill By the weekend he'll be dead By the weekend he'll be dead Now Jesus walked among the poor For the poor were his own kind And they'd never let them get near enough To take him from behind To take him front behind So they hired one of the traitors trade And an informer was he And he sold his brothers to the butcher's men For a fistful of silver money For a fistful of silver money And Jesus sat in the prison cell And they beat him and offered him bribes To desert the cause of his fellow men And work for the rich men's tribe To work for the rich men's tribe And the sweat stood out in Jesus' brow And the blood was in his eye When they nailed his body to the Roman cross And they laughed as they watched him die They laughed as they watched him die 2,000 years have passed and gone And many a hero too, But the dream of this poor carpenter Remains in the hands of you Remains in the hands of you