‘Keeping Awake,’ The Innocence Mission
- ‘Coney Island,’ Good Old War
- ‘Margaritaville,’ Jimmy Buffett
- ‘Come Sail Away,’ Styx
- ‘Too Shy’, Kajagoogoo
- ‘One Night in Bangkok,’ Murray Head
- Falling Asleep to Kate Rusby
- ‘Mr. Harris,’ Aimee Mann
- ‘Praying for Time,’ George Michael
- ‘God Save the Queen’
- ‘Hey, Soul Sister’, Train
- ‘Northern Sky’, Nick Drake
- I Song I Want Played at my Funeral?
- ‘Near You,’ Teenage Fanclub
- ‘Washing of the Water,’ Peter Gabriel
- ‘From the Morning,’ Nick Drake
- ‘We Are the World’ – USA for Africa
- ‘Planet Telex’, Radiohead
- ‘B.O.S.T.O.N.’, Bleu
- ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ – Band Aid
- ‘St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)’ – John Parr
- ‘Saturday Night,’ The Bay City Rollers
- Least Favorite Band – The Black Eyed Peas
- Happiness on Steroids: ‘I Found Love’, The Free Design
- ‘The King Is Half Undressed,’ Jellyfish
- ‘Keeping Awake,’ The Innocence Mission
- ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’, R.E.M.
- A Song I Wanted to Play at My Wedding: ‘The Marriage Of Figaro’
- ‘For No One’, the Beatles
- ‘The Wing and the Wheel’ – Nanci Griffith
A Song From My Favorite Album
I remember sleeping on the sleeper sofa in my grandmother’s old rickety house, listening to the sound of people walking on the creaky floor, watching the old propane heater crackle and hearing my grandmother tell my mother all the gossip that had happened over the last few weeks. The voices were only two rooms away, but it was always a comfort hearing them in the background as I drifted off to sleep.
The same thing happens in the Innocence Mission’s “Keeping Awake,” from their phenomenal album Glow.
Hearing your voice in the blue light,
calming people in the house,
traveling upstairs –
good to be there
now, right now
Oh, I’m near to sleeping, I’m keeping awake.
hearing your voice in the house, in the house.
The musical accompaniment is perfect, beginning with Don Peris’s crystal clear electric guitar playing during the verses, echoing through the song. By the chorus, a light drum has kicked in, with Karen Peris accompanying her husband on an acoustic guitar. Her crystal clear, childlike voice lends to the nostalgia of warm beds, fighting sleep and comfort and security.
It’s a great opening to an album which doesn’t have a bad song on it. And “Keeping Awake” keeps you interested despite the delightful experiences that it brings back for almost everyone – trying to stay awake and be an adult while your childlike body takes over and takes you off to dreamland. “Keeping Awake” is dreamy and sweet, and it brings a smile to my face every time I hear it. It’s near perfection from a group at their creative peak.
