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Hi As promised in a previous post, here are the relevant dates.

National Guitar day Feb 11th 2024

World Guitar day October 18th 2024

Is 'National Guitar Day' an opportunity for players of dobro-style resonator guitars?

Thanks for that Ray. Just confirms the fact I am old and stupid.

Norman

I expect that most listeners to Paul Simon's track Graceland don't get the reference to
Mississippi river, shining like a National guitar

RayL wrote:I expect that most listeners to Paul Simon's track Graceland don't get the reference to
Mississippi river, shining like a National guitar

You can't see the Mississippi from Graceland (in the very aptly named "Elvis Presley Boulevard"!).

I finished watching a recent BBC showing of "The Graduate" this afternoon. One of the best movies of all time - there's always something new you hadn't noticed on previous viewings.

But...

That music...

No matter what Paul Simon has done since the split, it is nowhere near the quality of those albums with Art Garfunkel, especially the ones containing the music used in "The Graduate". Something, I'd say, about the total being more than the sum of the parts.

As a pure aside, I was watching with subtitles enabled purely in order to make out the words of the songs. There are lyrics in there I never knew existed, particularly in the composite Scarborough Fair / Canticle (and I bought the soundtrack EP over fifty years ago!).

JimN wrote:

RayL wrote:I expect that most listeners to Paul Simon's track Graceland don't get the reference to
Mississippi river, shining like a National guitar

You can't see the Mississippi from Graceland (in the very aptly named "Elvis Presley Boulevard"!)..

Pedantic of Carshalton here
In Paul's lyrics (which I got wrong (above), he sings Mississippi Delta shining like a National guitar
I am following the river, down the highway, to the cradle of the civil war
I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tenessee

He's driving, and has not reached Graceland, so is not describing the river from Graceland.

Haha!

Über pedant here...

If he is already in a position to see the Mississippi delta (abutting the Gulf of Mexico in the Louisiana / Alabama borderlands) he has already followed the river for just about as far as it goes. And Memphis is a good four hundred miles back...

A similar geographical oddity occurs in the "new" verse of Move it, written in the 1990s by Ian Samwell:

Well it's all over town, there's a brand new beat
And it′s hangin′ in the air like the Mississippi heat

Feel the fireflies in the night and bullfrogs croakin'
Here comes the train and boy, is she smokin′?
Headed out from New Orleans and clear to L.A.



So the locus is Mississippi, but the train has headed out from New Orleans (ie, it has gone east). And it's headed for L.A. (ie, well to the west).

That's a weird way to go from NOLA to LA...