So I'm sitting here thinking about this question and all the sad songs in my music collection.  I have a huge music collection, and I spent many years in goth mode listening to nothing but sad songs.  Then I remembered "Our Town" by Iris Dement.  Every time I sing this song I get a catch in my throat.  And since I absolutely love bluegrass Iris Dement is often in my current listening list. 

This is the song they used for the final episode of "Northern Exposure".  I watched that entire series and paid no mind to this song in the last episode.  A few years later I was listening to Minnesota Public Radio and they played "When Love Was Young" by Iris Dement.  Now I have all her CDs as well as songs not on her CDs but on compilation CDs or bootlegged that I scoured the P2P services for.  I have a huge bluegrass collection, including a 4 CD box set of the Carter Family, and I've subjected my friends to that type of music for so long that they've actually started to like it too, lol.  I've dragged my best friend to quite a few bluegrass concerts at our state fair and I'm hoping one of these times we'll make it to the bluegrass festival they have here in the summer.  I would love to see Iris Dement play live, however, the closest she ever comes to Minnesota is Illinois.  I may just have to take a trip to Illinois someday.

Another song produced by Joe Meek. 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Have I The Right? was The Honeycombs debut single and biggest hit. It was composed by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who had discovered the Honeycombs (then known as The Sheratons) playing in the Mildmay Tavern in Islington. The group were due to audition for independent producer Joe Meek and they played the song for him. Meek decided to record it there and then. It was the last Top 10 UK hit produced by Joe Meek, who composed and produced "Telstar" for The Tornados, and reached #5 in the U.S. "Have I the Right?" was recorded in German as "Hab' Ich Das Recht?" b/w "Du sollst nicht traurig sein" (Deutsche Vogue, DV 14210).

"Have I The Right?" was covered by Petula Clark on her 1965 album, The International Hits. The song was also covered in 1977 by The Dead End Kids. Their version peaked at #6 in the UK pop charts. The song was covered by the Dead Kennedys on the 1979 live album, Live At The Deaf Club and by Les Fradkin on his 2006 album "Goin' Back". The single of Fradkin's version is at Apple iTunes.

Meek's legacy

Despite not being able to play a musical instrument or write notation, Meek displayed a remarkable facility for writing and producing successful commercial recordings. In writing songs he was reliant on musicians such as Dave Adams, Geoff Goddard or Charles Blackwell to transcribe melodies from his vocal "demos". He worked on 245 singles, of which 45 were major hits (top fifty).

He pioneered studio tools such as multiple over-dubbing on one- and two-track machines, close miking, direct input of bass guitars, the composer, and effects like echo and reverb, as well as sampling. Unlike other producers, his search was for the 'right' sound rather than for a catchy musical tune, and throughout his brief career he single-mindedly followed his quest to create a unique "sonic signature" for every record he produced.

At a time when many studio engineers were still wearing white coats and assiduously trying to maintain clarity and fidelity, Meek, the maverick, was producing everything on the three floors of his "home" studio and was never afraid to distort or manipulate the sound if it created the effect he was seeking.

Meek was one of the first producers to grasp and fully exploit the possibilities of the modern recording studio. His innovative techniques—physically separating instruments, treating instruments and voices with echo and reverb, processing the sound through his fabled home-made electronic devices, the combining of separately-recorded performances and segments into a painstakingly constructed composite recording—comprised a major breakthrough in sound production. Up to that time, the standard technique for pop, jazz and classical recordings alike was to record all the performers in one studio, playing together in real time, a legacy of the days before magentic tape, when performances were literally cut live, directly onto disc.

This is NOT my poem (I only wish!), it was sent in as a letter to the editor of Scientific American magazine by Emily Brown. 

I Love Your Mind

How I'd love to go walking
Through the orchard of your mind
Fertile neurons branching
Intricately evermore
Arboretum lushly laden with sweet serotonin

My fingers itch to dig up your
deep-rooted dopamine
My taste buds drown themselves
in craving
Your savory acetylcholine
I long to climb up your axon
And shake ripe neurotransmitters
From the delicate tips of your
dendritic branches

I ache to see your action potential
in action
To be blinded by the searing speed
of your electric signal
As it sparks from node to node
To behold the violent beauty of
vesicles fusing with your pre-
synaptic membrane-
Pouring their contents into your
synaptic cleft
How I wish to be your postsynaptic
cell
So that I may be flooded by your
molecules

Inhibitory, excitatory-it thrills
me to my core
I hyperpolarize every time you're
near me
Gripped by glycine
Transfixed, mesmerized
Living to be behind your eyes
Depolarize me anytime

I cannot stop laughing at this picture.  I should be sleeping.  I'm supposed to be going to the fair this morning at 7:30.  I've hardly had any sleep the last few days.  This is going to be an interesting day.

"You know what's wrong with you miss-whoever-you-are?  You're chicken.  You've got no guts.  You're afraid to stick out your chin and say "okay, life's a fact."  People do fall in love.  People do belong to each other.  Because that's the only real chance anybody's got for real happiness.  You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage.  Well baby, you're already in that cage, you built it yourself.  And it's not bounded in the West by Tulip, Texas, nor in the East by Somali land.  It's wherever you go, because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself."

~Breakfast at Tiffany's~

"The bird of vision is flying towards you with the wings of desire."

"All we have is this moment, right here, right now.  The future is just a fucking concept that we use to avoid being alive today.  So, be here now."

Brenda:  "And I wake up every day pretty much surprised that everything is still here."
Nate:  "Well, I don't understand how you can live like that."
Brenda:  "Well, I thought we all did."

"Love isn't something you feel, it's something you do."

Billy to Claire:  "There's always a fucked up power dynamic behind sex, isn't there?"

"May we all be wanted and loved just as we are...since anything else is Hell as we well know..."

David:  "Oh, good.  My Bougainvillea needs this.
Nate Sr:  "You were brave to face him."
David:  "Not really.  There was a guard."
Nate Sr:  "Doesn't matter. [Pause]  I'm proud of you."
David:  "I thought it would set me free but it...didn't change anything.  Except now I know he really is insane."
Nate Sr.:  "You're missing the point."
David:  "There is no point.  That's the point.  [Nate Sr. sighs]  Isn't it?"
Nate Sr:  Don't give me this phony existential bullshit.  I expect better from you.  The point's right in front of your face."
David:  "Well I'm sorry, but I don't see it."
Nate Sr:  "You're not even grateful, are you?"
David:  "Grateful?  For the worst fucking experience of my life?"
Nate Sr:  "You hang on to your pain like it means something.  Like it's worth something.  Well let me tell you, it's not worth shit.  Let it go.  [Talking into the air] Infinite possibilities and all he can do is whine."
David:  "Well what am I supposed to do?"
Nate Sr:  "What do you think?  You can do anything you lucky bastard, you're alive!  What's a little pain compared to that?"
David:  [Sigh] "It can't be so simple."
Nate Sr:  "What if it is?"

If I were a stone, I would be:  Amber
If I were a tree, I would be:  Weeping Willow 
If I were a bird, I would be:  Hawk
If I were a machine, I would be:  Computer
If I were a tool, I would be:  Lathe
If I were a flower, I would be:  Anemone
If I were a kind of weather, I would be:  Rainy
If I were a mythical creature, I would be:  Mermaid
If I were a musical instrument, I would be:  Violin
If I were an animal, I would be:  Tiger
If I were a color, I would be:  Orange
If I were an emotion, I would be:  Melancholy
If I were a vegetable, I would be:  Asparagus
If I were a sound, I would be:  Rain tapping on the window
If I were an element, I would be:  Water
If I were a car, I would be:  Compact
If I were a song, I would be:  Fields Of Gold
If I traded places with another person, it'd be:  No one
If I were a movie, I would be:  "Wings of Desire"
If I were a food, I would be:  Vanilla Bean Cheesecake
If I were a place, I would be:  South Africa
If I were a material, I would be:  Velvet
If I were a taste, I would be:  Spicy
If I were a scent, I would be:  Patchouli/Cinnamon mix
If I were a religion, I would be:  Not
If I were a word, I would be:  Groovy
If I were an object, I would be:  Candle
If I were a body part, I would be:  Hands
If I were a facial expression, I would be:  Quizzical
If I were a subject in school, I would be:  Creative Writing
If I were a cartoon character, I would be:  ?
If I were a shape, I would be:  Triangle
If I were a number, I would be:  4
If I were a month, I would be:  October
If I were a day of the week, I would be:  Tuesday
If I were a time of day, I would be:  Twilight
If I were a direction, I would be:  To the left and up a bit
If I were a piece of furniture, I would be:  Chaise lounge
If I were a sin, I would be:  Lust
If I were a historical figure, I would be:  Thomas Jefferson
If I were a liquid, I would be:  Guinness Extra Stout
If I were a method of death, I would be:  Guillotine