City Lights
Sheldon Kahan
Kick back, relax, and enjoy the music of Sheldon Kahan, and be sure to listen to "Warm Loving Eyes" with a friend ;)
Click on either the "Windows Media" or "MP3" link to hear the song, then click on the "Lyric Sheet" link to see the words
City Lights
Co-written with David Cohen. The slide guitar was played by David Day, the producer. The back up singers also did a wonderful job and if I can ever remember their names I'll post it here. We liked the song so much we put it first on the album and made it the title track. Enjoy!
What's Going On
I duhno...You tell me! This song asks the age old question: "What the f...?!". Actually, the song has some mild social and political overtones and has a great ride out with the only harp playing I do on the album. For more harp listen to the seven song demo on the Boogie Man page.
Warm Lovin' Eyes
This song was an instrumental, and one that I always played whenever I picked up the guitar, for a good ten years before I put words to it. The first words that came to me were "Strawberry Eyes", probably because "Raspberry Beret" was popular at the time, but "strawberry eyes " brought up an image of bloodshot eyes! Then "warm loving eyes" came to me and then I had a vision of waking up to see two warm loving eyes gazing at me. With that vision in mind the rest of the song came in about ten minutes. This song has been my most requested song almost from the first day I sang it publicly. Hope you like it.
Sweet Melinda Dance
I wanted to make a song about dancing, that sounded like Neil Diamond, one of my main influences. The first word that came was "Dance!". Then I thought I'd borrow the name from Neil's song "Solitary Man". Then I got a vision of Melinda dancing for the fellahs in some cantina south of the border. The rest of the song came line by line in a few short minutes as I just described the vision.
Love's Around The Corner
One of the few songs I actually wrote for someone. She was living in the same communal house as I in Berkeley. Her room had a balcony overlooking the back yard, and I lived in a large shed on the other side of the yard. The problem was, she had a boyfriend. In fact it was her boyfriend's room! I did my best Romeo impression and wrote this song singing it loud enough for her to hear. After recording the first version of the song, I realized, much to my surprise, that the song was not about physical love, but God's love. You can't see it because it's around the corner, but it's still right there.
Keep On Dreamin'
A fellow song writer once told me, after hearing me play this song, that It seemed to her that every song writer, somewhere in their catalogue, has a song about dreaming. Here's mine.
Brown Eyes
Another song written to an actual person and, as usual it couldn't be consummated because not only did she have a boyfriend, dagnabbit, I had a girlfriend! Talk about poor timing! The song fantasizes an encounter. In real life I was inches away but couldn't bring myself to do it. Sigh.
Go On Your Way
Written in Paris when I was visiting my Dad. It was summer in a hotel room in the Left Bank and the song just kind of rolled out line by line without any honing. I even threw in a French word in the last verse. The song gave me a memory that I never had! N'est pas?
Help Me If You Please
Another I duhno song! Hey, couldn't we all use all the help we can get? Puhleese?! It's a fun song.
Oh Cindy
I also wrote this one in Paris. I went for a hair cut, but unlike barber shops in the States, where you read Good Housekeeping and Reader's Digest and the like while you're waiting, here they had girly magazines! Well, when in Rome and all...I picked one up and was absolutely captivated by one of the models featured within. When I left the shop I immediately bought my own copy to take home. After gazing a while, the skeptic in me said, "If she was here right now you wouldn't know what to say to her anyway!" With that challenge I picked up the guitar and this song came blurting out.
