Pink Floyd - "Green is the Colour"

Happy Birthday Danette! 

Once again, I'm doing a song that makes me think of her, not really a song that likes.  In fact, I only recently shared this song with her (I don't think she knew of it previously), and explained the story of how I connected it to her.

Part of our evening routine is that I make chamomile tea for us and prepare our evening pills (because we're old, pills. are a big part of our day).  She takes sweetener in her tea and I do not, so I have to keep our tea cups separate.  I do this by "assigning" us tea cups that only one of us uses.  They don't always get washed every day, so I have primary and secondary pairs assigned; even a tertiary pair in case things are especially hectic. 

One of the pairs is otherwise matching, except the colors are orange and green.  Danette always gets the green one, because of the Pink Floyd song "Green is the Colour".  It is from one of my favorite early Pink Floyd LPs, their 1969 soundtrack for the film "More", which has two of the best Pink Floyd songs  that you've probably never heard: "Cymbaline" and "Green is the Colour". 

As with many of her birthdays songs, the association is not strictly literal. Instead, the song evokes a sense of tenderness, longing, wonder, adoration, and simultaneous familiarity and mystery, so it is only natural that I associate it with Danette:  

Heavy hung the canopy of blue

Shade my eyes and I can see you

White was the light

That shines through the dress that you wore

She lay in the shadow of a wave

Hazy were the visions overplayed

Sunshine in her eyes

But moonshine made her cry every time

Green is the colour of her kind

Quickness of the eye

Deceives the mind

Envy is the bond between

The hopeful and the damned

The studio version on the LP is good, but the contemporary live versions are both more raw, simple, and evocative, especially David Gilmour's achingly beautiful playing -- is there another guitarist who "says" more with so few notes? Let's also pause to mourn the loss of the David Gilmour and Roger Waters partnership: Roger writing and David singing is a winning combination, one that they failed to replicate without each other.  

"Green is the Colour" studio, live 1970 for KQED

Previous birthday songs:

2025: Sonic Youth - "I Love Her All the Time"

2024: Devo - "Uncontrollable Urge"

2023: Brandi Carlile - "The Story" 
2022: Plastic Bertrand - "Ça plane pour moi" 
2021: Adam and the Ants - "Christian D'or" 
2020: Walk Off The Earth - "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall"
2019: Nicki Minaj - "Monster"
2018: Bear Hands - "Giants" 
2017: Alvvays - "Archie, Marry Me" 
2016: Molly Hatchet - "Flirtin' With Disaster" 
2015: Avett Brothers - "Kick Drum Heart"
2014: Ani DiFranco - "32 Flavors" 
2013: The Green Pajamas - "Kim the Waitress"
2012: The Cure - "High"
2011: Blink 182 - "Josie"
2010:  Dead Milkmen - "Punk Rock Girl"  

Dolly Parton - "Love is Like a Butterfly"

Dolly Parton passed three weeks ago.  She is an icon, a legend, one of the few universally revered artists, and her death marks the ends an era of popular music.  We had hoped to see her in Vegas in December, 2025, but that was postponed until September of 2026, and then in May 2026 it was cancelled.  

I grew up with country music in the house, so there are many of her songs that I know by heart, and could choose to mark her passing.  Look at the all-star line up that performed "Jolene" in 2022 at her induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  And one can't not mention Whitney Houston's 1992 blockbuster cover of "I Will Always Love You", which reintroduced Dolly to a whole new audience.  Honorable mention to 1989's upbeat "Why'd You Come In Here".  

Instead, I'm choosing 1974's "Love is Like a Butterfly", which became a personal favorite for Danette's and mine, when she performed this with Stephen Colbert in 2012 on the Colbert Report.  Stephen becomes self-conscious that he's performing with a legend, and his various errors and false-starts are endearing. 

Comedy Central pulled all of the Colbert Reports from the web, presumably when he went to CBS, so the original URL no longer works, and while the page is archived in the Wayback Machine, the embedded video is not.  Fortunately, the Internet Archive has more than just the Wayback Machine, and the broadcast is saved in a completely different collection.*

Dolly is gone, and that makes the world a less kind place.  We are deeply saddened at her passing, and regret that we never got to see her.  

"He's just scared. You calm down now, we'll get through this thing."

Dolly Parton - "Love is Like a Butterfly" (1974 studio, 1976 TV show)

* A serendipitous confluence of my research and entertainment interests.