Cockburn (pronounced “Co-burn”) has a career that spans five decades as a folkie activist to a guitarist extraordinaire delving into fusion. His lyrics always speak out on a range of issues: native rights, land mines, human rights, war atrocities, and the atrocities of love. This is two promotional discs of a 9 disc box set that accompanies the release of his written memoirs. Disc 7 has his trademark electric sound, folkie but tinged with a prog, almost King Crimson sound. Disc 8 sounds older, more folkie/acoustic,more of the Leo Kotke/Takoma school that I believe he was part of in the 60’s. Can’t describe the beauty of some of these songs in words so I suggest you just play them. Really glad we got this. Start with disc 8 track 10, “all the beautiful creatures are going away” or disc 7 track 4 “you’ve never seen everything”(yikes, so dark).

Disc 7: Mostly electric stuff.

1) (6:17) midpaced sway, pretty, lush instrumentation, vague lyrics
2)* (6:18) trickle down: upbeat border jazz prog about big business, greed, corporations
3)* (6:57) spoken styled vocs over a nice mindful rock, heavy topics, war in SE Asia, excellent with pretty sung chorus
4)* (9:16) intense spoken word over slow dreamlike music, "you've never seen everything", creepy disturbing
5) (4:37) almost upbeat with female backups in the chorus, commentary on city life, pleasant
6) (5:03) nice looping guitar, music, very Adrian Belew in chorus, good catchy music
7) (5:17) FCC shit, slower with piano, anti war, gulf/Iraq, subtle though
8) (6:23) pretty with 12 string guitar, about Baghdad atrocities the USA has brought
9) (5:52) simple nursery rhyme structure, nice
10)* (5:11) drop dead beautiful, heart wrenching about animals going extinct, Slow acoustic, dark, PLAY
11) (6:52) full band pop feel

Disc 8: More folky simple ss folk songs, less electric band. Bruce Springsteen Nebraska

1) (1:21) acoustic brief national anthem like
2) (5:41) slight African David Byrne music feel, love song?
3) (4:21) alone w 12 string guitar, folky singer writer slight blues 12 bar love song
4)* (7:25) sing song with guitar and violin, social commentary "use it wisely", beautiful song for sure
5) (3:32) guit vocs only, simple nice folk
6) (3:52) twangy full band, acoustic driven, "the whole night sky", really nice, very Bruce
7)* (5:47) solo acoustic guitar, a little dissonant, almost Nick Drake dark
8)* (4:11) killer tape treated pretty echoey guitar with drone, simple melody vocs overlaid
9) (6:07) acoustic guitar urgent, is there an electric version on other disc?, just good songwriting
10) (1:24) cool instrumental guitar excursion
11) (3:25) pretty sad toned song, guitar and weepy cello, loneliness?
12)* (3:30) baritone guitar, sad song about heartbreak, breakup, ouch
13) (3:55) swampy Louisiana bluesy w trombone, whimsical feeling