I hear footsteps.

Feist, My Moon My Man:

Listening to this song the other day, I was thinking that one of the things I really liked about it was the sound of footsteps at the end of it. It made it more interesting and every time I hear it I try to imagine what they are about.

That reminded me of an old Rolling Stones' song, We Love You, which opens with the sound of footsteps and a cell door slamming. We Love You wa sn’t available for many years on any albums. I remember it because I had it at one time on a 45 (long since gone).

So what is it with those sound effects?

Here is what I came up with:

Leslie Feist is a Juno award winning Canadian singer - songwriter. The song, My Moon My Man is on her third album, The Reminder. (Verizon Wireless has used it in one of their commercials.)

Feist used her own field recordings of footsteps, doors closing and birds as a connective thread between My Moon My Man and The Park.

“It’s really chapter one and chapter two of the same story in a way,” she explains. “It has me ditching my man and running outside and being alone.”

It's one of my favorite songs right now.

Next,

The Rolling Stones, We Love You:

We Love You and B-side Dandelion were released as a single in the late 1960’s.

We Love You begins with the sound of a prison warden’s footsteps, followed by the sound of a cell door slamming shut. This was around the time Mick and Keith were arrested on drug charges.

The Beatles, The Who and The London Times supported them because of the supposedly draconian nature of the sentences that were handed down to them. They were eventually overturned (see link).

The song’s lyric We Love You is seemingly an echo of the Beatle’s All You Need is Love.

The Who, trying to help The Stones’ by keeping their music alive while they were going through court and prison difficulties, released a double A side version of The Stones’ The Last Time and Under My Thumb. (At the time it might have seemed they needed help to keep their music alive though 40 years later I think they did okay by themselves.)

My Moon My Man

My moon, my man's a changeable land
Such a loveable land to me
My care, my co-lead barber I know
There's nowhere to go but on

How honestly my beggar should be
The song's out of key again
My fools, my things
We're digging the things
If the candlelit page again

Take it slow
Take it easy on me
Shed some light
Shed some light on things
Take it slow
Take it easy on me
Shed some light
Shed some light on things

My moon and me
Not skirty swift bean
It's the dirtiest clean I know
My care, my co-lead barber I know
There's nowhere to go
There's nowhere to go

Take it slow
Take it easy on me
Shed some light
Shed some light on things
Take it slow
Take it easy on me
Shed some light
Shed some light on it please

My moon
The moon my man
My moon
The moon my man...

We Love You

We don't care if you only love "we"
We don't care if you only love "we"
We love you. We love you, and we hope
that you will love "we" too
We love "they". We love "they", and
we want you to love "they" too
Ah

We don't care if you hound "we" and
love is all around "we"
Love can't get our minds off
We love you, we love you

You will never win "we"
Your uniforms don't fit "we"
We forget the place we're in
'Cause we love you
We love you. Of course, we do

I love you. I love you
And I hope that you won't prove wrong
too
We love you. We do. We love you. We
do. Ah...