It pours, man, it pours

It's raining today, and the weather of late here has been very dreary. It's one of those days.

Come Wind, Come Rain - Vashti Bunyan
Have You Seen The Rain? - Creedence Clearwater Revival
It Never Rains in Southern California - Albert Hammond
Rainy Day People - Gordon Lightfoot
River Man - Nick Drake

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Cover and Original: Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

Have you ever gotten one of those songs stuck in your head, and just can't find it, and can't figure out where you heard it?

I've come across this problem recently when I was watching TV with GE's commercials touting their green initiatives - one of them, regarding water recycling, had a cover of CCR's Have You Seen The Rain? Great song, but I couldn't place the title.

Secondly, this was a really cool cover version, and only through a little searching did I find that it was performed by Juju Stulbach - a version that I still haven't been able to find anywhere, although someone said that it was due out on iTunes sometime next month, which I'll really be looking out for.

However, here's a couple other covers to tide you over. Teenage Fanclub's is okay, not great. It's a little too emo sounding. R.E.M. has a really good cover of it. Quality's not great here, but they do a good rendition. Hi Hopes's version is okay, while I really like the Bishop Allen version. None of these really take off from the original that much, but they're not the worst covers out there.

Have You Ever Seen The Rain (Creedence Clearwater Revival) - Teenage Fanclub
Have You Ever Seen The Rain (Creedence Clearwater Revival) - R.E.M.
Have You Ever Seen The Rain (Creedence Clearwater Revival) - Hi Hopes
Have You Ever Seen The Rain (Creedence Clearwater Revival) - Bishop Allen
Have You Ever Seen The Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival

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Military History

I went to a military college as a civilian, and now work at the school's graduate school, in the military history department. I'm liking the fact that I have a) just graduated and now have a regular job and b) get to work in the field that I majored in. It's pretty cool. Yesterday, we started our latest set of classes, and to commemorate this, a couple of songs about military history.

The War Was In Color is a fantastic Carbon Leaf song, really dark and a really moving story about the Second World War. Yankee Bayonet is a fantastic Decemberists song about the American Civil War. Third up is Fortunate Son, by Creedence Clearwater Revival, a Vietnam War era protest song about the military conscription. Bom Bom Bom is a song out of this current conflict by a band called Living Things, and really embodies the mentality of a typical 18 year old soldier going out to war in the Middle East, at least with Gulf War 1 or 2. And to end this list, Ashokan Farewell, which sounds like a period piece, but it was the main theme in the fantastic Ken Burns series, The Civil War, and is generally associated with the conflict. If you're interested at all in World War 2, I'd recommend checking out Ken Burn's upcoming documentary, called The War, which will be released later this month on PBS. If his earlier works have been any indication, this one's going to be fantastic.

Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) - The Decemberists
The War Was In Color - Carbon Leaf
Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Bom Bom Bom - Living Things
Ashokan Farewell - Jay Unger

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