Kate McGarrigle R.I.P

One of the websites that I frequent for "recordings of independent origin" has half a dozen Kate and Anna McGarrigle live recordings this morning. It turns out that Kate has lost her battle with cancer of the last few years. Really sad news. I forget where I first heard her music but by the early 1980s I had several albums and "Dancer with Bruised Knees" and the "French Album" have been among my all time favourites for years. I saw them once or twice in concert - sometime in the 1980s and then a show a few years ago (2006?).

As I write this I am listening to "Blanche comme la neige / Perrine etait servante", my favourite songs of theirs, and it is snowing lightly outside. The world is a worse place for her absence


Anna and Kate McGarrigle

A day spent listening to various McGarrigle recordings has thrown out a track that I hadn't heard before but which has made quite an impact on me today - "I eat dinner" from a 1991 live recording. Some very sad lyrics there. I was particularly taken with the lines - I eat dinner / at the kitchen table / with my daughter / who is thirteen / we eat leftovers / with mashed potato / no more candlelight / no more romance / no more smalltalk / when the plate is clean