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The Real Sloop John B

4

September 25, 2009 by louie

okkervil
John Allyn Smith Sails by Okkervil River (download here)
John Allyn Smith is the real name of poet John Berryman. As a kid, his father killed himself outside Berryman’s bedroom window, and Berryman grew up a walking brain-damage case, inept at everything, a teacher too drunk to teach and a poet too drunk to read. He threw himself off a bridge in the winter of ‘72: missed the water and smothered to death on the frozen shoreline (story). That said, this is a great song that at 2:30 in becomes a rewritten “Sloop John B” rewire. If you get that far, you’ll become addicted


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