I’ve done Gordon Lightfoot before for Morning Music, Don Quixote. In that one, I mostly complained that Lightfoot clearly had never read Don Quixote. But my mother was a big fan of Lightfoot, and I remember that she loved the song “Sundown” off the album of the same name. It’s a song about a troubled relationship — something my mother knew a lot about.
What I never knew was that the song is most likely about Lightfoot’s ex-girlfriend Cathy Smith. You may know her for having given John Belushi the speedball (heroin and cocaine mixture) that killed him. For that, she spent 15 months in a California state prison. Personally, I think if Belushi hadn’t allowed his health to get so bad, he wouldn’t have died. Regardless, I hate this habit we have of blaming (mostly) women for getting (mostly) men drugs that end up killing them. They made their choices.
Anyway, it’s a good song:
The rad fem in me says that we mostly blame women for everything every chance we get.
Which is why it is Hillary Clinton’s fault to this day that Bill Clinton strayed.
Which is why Martha Stewart went to jail for insider trading when bigger fish swam free.
And on and on and on and on…
But you are right, that is a pretty song. I have it on my iPod.
I heard that about Clinton a lot in the 90s. But I don’t think the Stewart thing was sexism; I think it was the screwed up judicial system; we see that kind of random “justice” all the time. But I think what she did was right (that is: what I would have done): just get the jail time over with so she could get on with her life. Otherwise she would have had it hanging over her head for years trying to fight it. But it was a total BS charge. That’s true tyranny: selective enforcement of laws. Meanwhile, the Bundy clan thinks it is tyranny when they are asked to pay their bills. I’m getting sidetracked.