Like many of those who have posted, I grew up on the radio-friendly 70's songs like "Sundown" and "If You Could Read My Mind". My wife (she and I are in our late-20's) had more exposure to album material through her mother, but it was all from that same era. Once she got me exposed to songs like "Summer Side of Life" and "Circle of Steel", my list of favorites grew, but I hadn't found that transcendent song to serve as my "favorite" song.
That is until last year, when I found a double-CD set entitled "The United Artists Collection" that had four albums worth of material that I had largely not heard. For those few not familiar, GL re-recorded a few of the songs from this time ("Steel Rail Blues" and Canadian Railroad Trilogy" were probably my favorites that appeared in this collection) in his later work. But I was exposed to great songs like "Boss Man", "Marie Christine", "The Gypsy" and "Black Day in July". For all of that, none of those is my favorite, either.
I gotta go with one I haven't seen mentioned much, that being "The Way I Feel" (Version 2, the double-tracked vocal and percussion-laden track). Haunting, the rare kind of song I can listen to several times in a row. One of my favorite songs ever.
To me, GL is one in a trio of Anglo-folk artists who stand at the pinnacle of their craft, each of whom represents the 60s-70s time differently, but equally well. For America, of course, we have Bob Dylan. Canada gave us GL. England's best, in my opinion, is Nick Drake. Keep your ears and your mind open, and see you around the listening bars of your local record store.
Chris
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