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Gordon McLean's avatar

I lived the experience described by the Stan Rogers song and loved the song for that reason. I benefited greatly by the experience of working for a large energy company in Western Canada. There was no subjugation as described by the added verse which project the Marxist ideology obviously held dear by the later verse writer.

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MovingHold's avatar

Very thought provoking. But I come from a jazz/swing music background where changing songs is very common, and a feature of the musical culture. Artists like Frank Sinatra will not only change the lyrics to an old song for their new recording, they'll change the lyrics from performance to performance, extemporizing on the spot.

And, of course, this is even more true for the music. It would be strange if the norm was to record a song with all the same instruments performing all the same parts every time, out of respect for the composer. Updating the orchestration is not only accepted, it's expected, even though that is also rewritting another artists' work without consulting them.

I love your substack by the way! A definite improvement over the blogspot website, and I loved that too.

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