Marat/Sade –

I Think It’s Going To Rain Today –

Alright, here’s another fairly new artist to me that I’ve really been enjoying recently.

In My Life (1968), Judy Collins. Initially released in 1966 with a slightly different cover, this is the stereo mix released two years later. It was pretty common in the late 60s to re-release albums in stereo as this was when stereo was beginning to overturn mono sound.

This album was important for not only Collins’ career, but also for another one of my favorite artists already featured on LP Mondays: Leonard Cohen. Collins’ cover of Cohen’s song “Suzanne” is often considered the first major introduction of Cohen to a much larger audience. This album was important to Collin because it established her more eclectic taste in music. She was a fairly popular folk singer, but this album saw her broadening her horizons in material she covered. From the Beatles title track to a Bob Dylan cover, from a pirate song to two Cohen songs. I’m really fond of musicians that pull from several musical backgrounds because I think it results in a richer musical experience ^^

There are several great songs on this album and I was hard pressed to pick only two. The two I finally chose though were “Marat/Sade” and “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today.” “Marat/Sade” is a melody of multiple songs from the German play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (known as Marat/Sade for short) which was later made into a movie of the same title. “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today” is a Randy Newman song that I find extremely beautiful lyrically and musically.