This in response to my friend Steve's question about what, if anything, differentiates American Punk from British Punk. I'm not sure I answered his question, but I thought this was blog worthy anyway:
---------
CBGB was indeed an NY establishment. In fact, it's sad to say it closed down this year. I like to think of it as more famously the home of post-punk bands like Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith than as punk bands like the Ramones and New York Dolls. I don't personally consider the Ramones to be a true punk band. Their music sounds like punk but the underlying intent of the band is to be partying rock stars and didn't reflect the true punk ethos. And the New York Dolls, whose music I love, were still a bit of a holdover from the 70's glam music of David Bowie and Roxy Music and the like. Though, I should add that Iggy Pop, despite being associated with all of these, was actually a punk rocker.
For me, the West Coast punk movement of the early 80's, with bands like the Germs and Black Flag, was a lot more indicative of the original intent. The straight edge punk movement of the late 80's and 90's in DC is even more true to the anti-establishment roots of punk. These people eschewed drugs, alcohol, and even promoted sexual abstinence in pursuit of ideals over lifestyle. Not that I would ever consider myself in this camp, just that the music that came out of it was so full of emotion and social consciousness.
In the following band name association game, maybe you can see my point:
The Sex Pistols - not punk
The Clash - punk (and so much more)
The Buzzcocks - not punk (though not bad)
Joy Division - punk in spirit
The Stranglers - not punk
Stiff Little Fingers - punk punk punk
Billy Idol - not punk
Generation X (Idol's old band) - punk
The Go-Go's - not punk
X - punk
Blondie - not punk
The Plasmatics - punk
Social Distortion - not punk
Minor Threat - punk
Green Day - not punk
Dead Kennedys - punk
(This brings up an interesting point, which is that all the modern punk bands are not punk, in fact, of them, Green Day is the most punk)
Soundgarden - not punk
Nirvana - punk
Violent Femmes - not (quite) punk
Husker Du - punk punk punk punk punk
So for me the classification of punk falls more along the lines of aesthetic sensibility than whether the band had spikey hair, screamed lyrics, or simple 3-chord style. And I think the American brand is even more widely differentiated and interesting than the original British version.
Lost and Found Music
Monday, December 05, 2005
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Classic Gift
My mother recently found a paper I wrote about 10 years ago to accompany a gift of 5 or 6 classical music CDs I gave my parents for Christmas. I thought it would make for embarrassing reading but it’s not that bad. I thought since it is about music it would make for a good post. Hope it’s not too long for you guys.
----------------
I thought I would give you a little historical perspective on the music I'm giving you. I've always found it interesting to know more about the composers of the music and the eras in which they composed. Since I'm doing this chronologically, the first composer I should talk about is Johann Sebastian Bach.
The disc I've given you is a collection of organ pieces including one of his most famous works - Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Bach's birth and death dates (1685-1750) span the Baroque era and his death is generally considered the end of that period. An important compositional technique associated with music of the Baroque era is the fugue style. In the fugue style, a melody line is played, and then echoed by the player in other registers, entering at different moments and creating contrast to the original melody. Sometimes the melody is played in its original form, sometimes up-side down or even backwards. This technique forms the basis of much Baroque musical composition including the masses for chorus and orchestra Bach composed. The only difference with choral works is that you would have each voice part (SATB) singing the original melody, but entering at different times in the music to create interesting harmonic relationships. For his experimentation in musical theory and for developing a systematic treatment of tonality (key signatures), Bach is considered the father of western music.
Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), a contemporary of Bach, was himself a major figure in the Baroque era. The two led quite different musical lives, however. Bach composed most of his music for Lutheran church services in Germany, whereas Handel began his career in Italy learning to write opera - a secular form. Most of Handel's life was spent writing Italian opera for audiences in London in the early 1700's. During this time, Italian opera was popular everywhere in Europe. Around the 1730's, however, it lost its popularity in England due to a new religious conservatism as well as a wave of cultural nationalism. English audiences wanted a new vocal music form, the borrowed style of the Italians having lost its appeal. So in 1741 Handel composed Messiah, and in doing so ushered in a new era - that of the sacred oratorio style.
Oratorio is similar to opera in that it features virtuoso soloists supported by a full chorus and orchestra, but unlike opera in that there is no action on stage. In light of the new religious conservatism, the texts for the oratorios were generally taken from or inspired by the Bible, and in order to please English speaking audiences, Handel set them in English. In composition, Handel continued to employ the same techniques he had used to compose opera, complete with grand choruses and aria-like melodies, some of which he borrowed directly from his failed operas. The result - a vocal music form that would become a tradition among English composers, and with Messiah a work of such tremendous popularity in the English speaking world as to warrant widespread annual performances of the work even today.
A close runner-up to the Messiah among the most popular choral works of all time is of course the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth symphony - the Ode to Joy. The Ninth Symphony, which sets itself apart from other symphonic works by including a chorus in its final movement, is the flagship of the German Romantic movement in music. The text of the fourth movement is taken from a poem by Heinrich Schiller, a contemporary of Beethoven, and is a testimony to universal love and brotherhood. The Ninth is considered Beethoven's crowning achievement - a heroic expression of the passions which move mankind.
Beethoven's birth and death dates (1770-1827) encompass the early to mid Romantic era, and his appearance marks the beginning of that era, due to the dramatic departure of his style from Classic period works. I didn't buy you anything from the Classic period, but just to keep things straight, it started around 1750 (remember Bach's death and the end of the Baroque period), and ended roughly around 1800. The Classic period included the short but brilliant career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as well as the prosperous and consistently impressive career (all 104 symphonies worth) of Franz Joseph Haydn.
Beethoven had the fortunate opportunity to study with both men early in his career, and thus developed a symphonic style strongly entrenched in Classic period form. But from this basis Beethoven would expand his style and become an innovator not only in the length of his symphonies (his Ninth is 76 minutes long compared to the average length of 20 minutes for a Mozart symphony), but in their dramatic impact as well. No longer would the symphony be a mere delightful excursion in rounded forms with the promise to be finished soon so as not to bore the aristocracy. With the rise of the middle class in many European countries (via such events as the French revolution in 1783), Beethoven was no longer required to baby his audience, but rather could hit them full in the face with a brick.
His symphonies display an intensity of emotion unprecedented in the instrumental music of or preceding his time. Who even now would fail to recognize the powerful opening of his Fifth Symphony - Da Da Da Daaaa...Da Da Da Daaaa! Beethoven also expanded the instrumentation of the orchestra to include dominant roles for horns, thus lending a unique quality to his sound, one which makes his work instantly distinguishable from his predecessors. His music has influenced nearly two centuries of composers, and its impact will likely be felt for generations to come.
Beethoven's contemporaries include such famous composers as Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, all tremendously talented in their own right and representing the impelling force behind the German Romantic movement in music. Later romantic composers include Richard Wagner, composer of many large scale operas (e.g: Tannhauser and The Valkyrie) and Gustav Mahler, who wrote symphonies even longer than Beethoven's. One of the many late romantic composers in Russia was Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). Rachmaninoff's career extends into the Twentieth Century, but much of his music, including the Piano Concerto Number Two on your disc, represents an extension of the Romantic period style. His piano music is renowned for it percussive intensity and colorist qualities, revealing a wide spectrum of mood while exploring fantastic aural realms. Rachmaninoff was also part of a neoclassicist movement (a return to classicism) in the early twentieth century, in which he revived Russian liturgical choral music. Included in this segment of his oeuvre are some of the Russian Pieces we performed in the Grinnell Singers over the past few years.
A contemporary of Rachmaninoff, but representing a completely different cultural background and musical style is George Gershwin (1898-1937). Gershwin’s work is emblematic of the roaring twenties in America. He began as a songwriter, teaming with older brother and lyricist Ira on such works as Porgy and Bess. A master tunesmith, Gershwin was at his best writing song melodies, but in the second half of his relatively short life, Gershwin would turn to the orchestra as a large scale medium through which he could more fully realize his impressions of the Jazz Age. After receiving tutelage in orchestration from French composer Maurice Ravel (of Bolero fame), Gershwin in 1924 composed Rhapsody in Blue, a work which still stands today as one of the most representative and beloved works early twentieth century America. This, as well as other successful orchestral works such as American in Paris and his piano concertos helped establish Gershwin as a premiere American composer.
So there you have it, a rough background of composers who lives span nearly 300 years, and whose music I hope you'll enjoy.
----------------
I thought I would give you a little historical perspective on the music I'm giving you. I've always found it interesting to know more about the composers of the music and the eras in which they composed. Since I'm doing this chronologically, the first composer I should talk about is Johann Sebastian Bach.
The disc I've given you is a collection of organ pieces including one of his most famous works - Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Bach's birth and death dates (1685-1750) span the Baroque era and his death is generally considered the end of that period. An important compositional technique associated with music of the Baroque era is the fugue style. In the fugue style, a melody line is played, and then echoed by the player in other registers, entering at different moments and creating contrast to the original melody. Sometimes the melody is played in its original form, sometimes up-side down or even backwards. This technique forms the basis of much Baroque musical composition including the masses for chorus and orchestra Bach composed. The only difference with choral works is that you would have each voice part (SATB) singing the original melody, but entering at different times in the music to create interesting harmonic relationships. For his experimentation in musical theory and for developing a systematic treatment of tonality (key signatures), Bach is considered the father of western music.
Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), a contemporary of Bach, was himself a major figure in the Baroque era. The two led quite different musical lives, however. Bach composed most of his music for Lutheran church services in Germany, whereas Handel began his career in Italy learning to write opera - a secular form. Most of Handel's life was spent writing Italian opera for audiences in London in the early 1700's. During this time, Italian opera was popular everywhere in Europe. Around the 1730's, however, it lost its popularity in England due to a new religious conservatism as well as a wave of cultural nationalism. English audiences wanted a new vocal music form, the borrowed style of the Italians having lost its appeal. So in 1741 Handel composed Messiah, and in doing so ushered in a new era - that of the sacred oratorio style.
Oratorio is similar to opera in that it features virtuoso soloists supported by a full chorus and orchestra, but unlike opera in that there is no action on stage. In light of the new religious conservatism, the texts for the oratorios were generally taken from or inspired by the Bible, and in order to please English speaking audiences, Handel set them in English. In composition, Handel continued to employ the same techniques he had used to compose opera, complete with grand choruses and aria-like melodies, some of which he borrowed directly from his failed operas. The result - a vocal music form that would become a tradition among English composers, and with Messiah a work of such tremendous popularity in the English speaking world as to warrant widespread annual performances of the work even today.
A close runner-up to the Messiah among the most popular choral works of all time is of course the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth symphony - the Ode to Joy. The Ninth Symphony, which sets itself apart from other symphonic works by including a chorus in its final movement, is the flagship of the German Romantic movement in music. The text of the fourth movement is taken from a poem by Heinrich Schiller, a contemporary of Beethoven, and is a testimony to universal love and brotherhood. The Ninth is considered Beethoven's crowning achievement - a heroic expression of the passions which move mankind.
Beethoven's birth and death dates (1770-1827) encompass the early to mid Romantic era, and his appearance marks the beginning of that era, due to the dramatic departure of his style from Classic period works. I didn't buy you anything from the Classic period, but just to keep things straight, it started around 1750 (remember Bach's death and the end of the Baroque period), and ended roughly around 1800. The Classic period included the short but brilliant career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as well as the prosperous and consistently impressive career (all 104 symphonies worth) of Franz Joseph Haydn.
Beethoven had the fortunate opportunity to study with both men early in his career, and thus developed a symphonic style strongly entrenched in Classic period form. But from this basis Beethoven would expand his style and become an innovator not only in the length of his symphonies (his Ninth is 76 minutes long compared to the average length of 20 minutes for a Mozart symphony), but in their dramatic impact as well. No longer would the symphony be a mere delightful excursion in rounded forms with the promise to be finished soon so as not to bore the aristocracy. With the rise of the middle class in many European countries (via such events as the French revolution in 1783), Beethoven was no longer required to baby his audience, but rather could hit them full in the face with a brick.
His symphonies display an intensity of emotion unprecedented in the instrumental music of or preceding his time. Who even now would fail to recognize the powerful opening of his Fifth Symphony - Da Da Da Daaaa...Da Da Da Daaaa! Beethoven also expanded the instrumentation of the orchestra to include dominant roles for horns, thus lending a unique quality to his sound, one which makes his work instantly distinguishable from his predecessors. His music has influenced nearly two centuries of composers, and its impact will likely be felt for generations to come.
Beethoven's contemporaries include such famous composers as Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, all tremendously talented in their own right and representing the impelling force behind the German Romantic movement in music. Later romantic composers include Richard Wagner, composer of many large scale operas (e.g: Tannhauser and The Valkyrie) and Gustav Mahler, who wrote symphonies even longer than Beethoven's. One of the many late romantic composers in Russia was Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). Rachmaninoff's career extends into the Twentieth Century, but much of his music, including the Piano Concerto Number Two on your disc, represents an extension of the Romantic period style. His piano music is renowned for it percussive intensity and colorist qualities, revealing a wide spectrum of mood while exploring fantastic aural realms. Rachmaninoff was also part of a neoclassicist movement (a return to classicism) in the early twentieth century, in which he revived Russian liturgical choral music. Included in this segment of his oeuvre are some of the Russian Pieces we performed in the Grinnell Singers over the past few years.
A contemporary of Rachmaninoff, but representing a completely different cultural background and musical style is George Gershwin (1898-1937). Gershwin’s work is emblematic of the roaring twenties in America. He began as a songwriter, teaming with older brother and lyricist Ira on such works as Porgy and Bess. A master tunesmith, Gershwin was at his best writing song melodies, but in the second half of his relatively short life, Gershwin would turn to the orchestra as a large scale medium through which he could more fully realize his impressions of the Jazz Age. After receiving tutelage in orchestration from French composer Maurice Ravel (of Bolero fame), Gershwin in 1924 composed Rhapsody in Blue, a work which still stands today as one of the most representative and beloved works early twentieth century America. This, as well as other successful orchestral works such as American in Paris and his piano concertos helped establish Gershwin as a premiere American composer.
So there you have it, a rough background of composers who lives span nearly 300 years, and whose music I hope you'll enjoy.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Prolonging the Agony
You know that sinking feeling you get when you realize an artist has gone the wrong direction with their music? I was reminded of this last week when my friend Steve asked me if the Strokes second album was any good, to which I replied it had been very disappointing. Somehow they got all wrapped up in the drugs and the girls and forgot what made them so interesting in the first place – their music. It happens a lot, and to a great many more talented bands than the Strokes. Often, they never recover.
It’s not just music either. There’s an axiom that states that every great talented x has a primetime during when they have their best production. It happens with basketball players and theoretical physicists, so it shoudn’t surprise us when it happens to musicians. Of course for some musicians primetime is a single song. In the case of Men Without Hats or Big Country, mercifully so.
The best move is to die before a slide can occur, ala Mozart, the only problem being that you no longer produce anything and your catalog becomes stale. On the other hand, you can lead a long productive life as a musician and eventually it will still seem stale, e.g. Haydn. Not that Haydn was a bad composer but when you start numbering your symphonies in the hundreds maybe it’s time to hang up the quill. I mean, how many versions of the “The Clock” symphony can you hear and still view it as fresh?
For mediocre musicians there’s an even greater risk of not knowing when to quit. This leads to what I call prolonging the agony. We don’t tend to view the composers of antiquity as having needed to stop sooner, otherwise they wouldn’t be great enough to be remembered in the first place, but what about Weezer? They just need to end the suffering already. Pop music is rife with examples. For instance I might say the top 10 artists on the charts should definitely all quit, and that’s without even knowing who any of them are.
Ah, but without the chaff could there be any wheat? Probably not. It’s only by the mediocrity of the many that we recognize the excellence of the few. How would we view Roy Orbison if not for Bobby Darin, The Stooges if not for Grand Funk Railroad, or Patti Smith if not for Patty Smyth? There’s much to be thankful for in this regard, not the least of which is that while most people are busy idolizing some pop phenom they can leave me and my esoteric music tastes the fuck alone.
There is another path to prolonging the agony, by which musicians who were brilliant together decide to go solo, often with disastrous results. The only band to have any success whatsoever with this were the Beatles, and I only grudgingly concede that. Though Lennon and McCartney were both brilliant songwriters, once they split we were forced to listen to their wives sing, so I’d call it a wash.
Worse examples abound. Peter Gabriel had a reasonable solo career, but Genesis’ break-up meant we had to endure Phil Collins. Music karma will never forgive that bastard for the damage he’s inflicted. Snoop Dogg was never as good without Dr. Dre, Perry Ferrell without Dave Navarro, and Peaches without Herb. Just kidding on that last one.
The only thing worse than bad solo albums is when they all tank but the band members still hate each other. This leads to that ultimate musical Frankenstein monster - the supergroup. Only the brilliant mind of a record company executive could come up with the likes of Mike & the Mechanics, Power Station, or the Traveling Wilburys. It’s not that supergroups always suck, it’s just that it’s really hard to capture the original magic.
If this doesn’t work out I suppose there’s always the reunion tour. Of course I’m long tuned out by then. I just don’t understand how anyone can get excited about paying over $100 to go see a geriatric Mick Jagger prance about on stage. Maybe it was cool the first three reunion tours, but they should have a little self respect and hang it up already. There are a lot worse things than being rich and old. You could just be old like the rest of us.
It’s not just music either. There’s an axiom that states that every great talented x has a primetime during when they have their best production. It happens with basketball players and theoretical physicists, so it shoudn’t surprise us when it happens to musicians. Of course for some musicians primetime is a single song. In the case of Men Without Hats or Big Country, mercifully so.
The best move is to die before a slide can occur, ala Mozart, the only problem being that you no longer produce anything and your catalog becomes stale. On the other hand, you can lead a long productive life as a musician and eventually it will still seem stale, e.g. Haydn. Not that Haydn was a bad composer but when you start numbering your symphonies in the hundreds maybe it’s time to hang up the quill. I mean, how many versions of the “The Clock” symphony can you hear and still view it as fresh?
For mediocre musicians there’s an even greater risk of not knowing when to quit. This leads to what I call prolonging the agony. We don’t tend to view the composers of antiquity as having needed to stop sooner, otherwise they wouldn’t be great enough to be remembered in the first place, but what about Weezer? They just need to end the suffering already. Pop music is rife with examples. For instance I might say the top 10 artists on the charts should definitely all quit, and that’s without even knowing who any of them are.
Ah, but without the chaff could there be any wheat? Probably not. It’s only by the mediocrity of the many that we recognize the excellence of the few. How would we view Roy Orbison if not for Bobby Darin, The Stooges if not for Grand Funk Railroad, or Patti Smith if not for Patty Smyth? There’s much to be thankful for in this regard, not the least of which is that while most people are busy idolizing some pop phenom they can leave me and my esoteric music tastes the fuck alone.
There is another path to prolonging the agony, by which musicians who were brilliant together decide to go solo, often with disastrous results. The only band to have any success whatsoever with this were the Beatles, and I only grudgingly concede that. Though Lennon and McCartney were both brilliant songwriters, once they split we were forced to listen to their wives sing, so I’d call it a wash.
Worse examples abound. Peter Gabriel had a reasonable solo career, but Genesis’ break-up meant we had to endure Phil Collins. Music karma will never forgive that bastard for the damage he’s inflicted. Snoop Dogg was never as good without Dr. Dre, Perry Ferrell without Dave Navarro, and Peaches without Herb. Just kidding on that last one.
The only thing worse than bad solo albums is when they all tank but the band members still hate each other. This leads to that ultimate musical Frankenstein monster - the supergroup. Only the brilliant mind of a record company executive could come up with the likes of Mike & the Mechanics, Power Station, or the Traveling Wilburys. It’s not that supergroups always suck, it’s just that it’s really hard to capture the original magic.
If this doesn’t work out I suppose there’s always the reunion tour. Of course I’m long tuned out by then. I just don’t understand how anyone can get excited about paying over $100 to go see a geriatric Mick Jagger prance about on stage. Maybe it was cool the first three reunion tours, but they should have a little self respect and hang it up already. There are a lot worse things than being rich and old. You could just be old like the rest of us.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Oh I, I’m Still Alive
As counterpoint to last week’s article about musicians gone too soon, I thought I would talk this week about living musicians that inspire me. The use of a Pearl Jam lyric as a title is a bit ironic, however, given that I now wish Eddie Vedder was dead. In fact I long ago sold my copy of Ten, and if I hear “Jeremy” on the radio it makes me want to puke. Oh well.
These are musicians whose talents I view with such reverance that I often find myself daydreaming about being close friends with them. Like, we would just hang out, you know, and talk about stuff because we view the world in the same way. This except for the inevitable restraining order that would follow an episode or two of overzealous fanboy antics. It’s probably better this way, though, because I can gush freely about them in this blog.
Maynard James Keenan – lead singer of Tool and A Perfect Circle. Maynard is the author of so many good lyrics that it’s hard to know where to start. Most of these have come from his work with Tool, who to me define the term anti-establishment rock band. That they continue to record albums is a minor miracle in light of the shameless overpromotion of talentless bands that is the American music industry today. Their fan base is completely grass roots, and so devoted that their last album Lateralus (2001) sold several hundred thousand copies it’s first week despite a near complete lack of promotion.
Maynard often uses the songs as vehicles to critique the largesse of American society. He paints us ultimately as what we are - consumed by consumption. This is particularly well voiced in the song “Hooker With a Penis” off of Aenima:
All you read and wear or see and
Hear on TV is a product
Begging for your fatass dirty dollar
So ... shut up and buy my new record
This may seem a little self-serving but you have to hear how he sings it to realize how brilliant it is. Maynard’s voice is so powerful that all things superficial are simply laid to waste in it’s path. It simultaneously expresses the burden and obligation of our materialistic culture and his efforts to best cope with it.
Ian MacKaye – lead singer of Fugazi. This is a man with so much integrity that even after all these years, he still records and distributes Fugazi’s records himself through his D.C. based independent label. If you look on the cd, it will say something like “This recording available directly from Dischord records for $6 postage paid.” This is MacKaye’s mechanism to subvert any attempts by record stores to charge more for the albums than he originally intended. You can also still see the band live for around $5 and usually at a club that’s all ages. His vision was simply to allow people to experience music without the commercial intermediary.
As for the music it’s as much activist as it is hard core punk. Fugazi songs are more than mere anthems of alienation. They often deal directly with hot-button political issues such as war or the plight of the disenfranchised. The band’s proximity to the nation’s capital gives the message even greater weight. One of my favorites is song called Reclamation, a song about reproductive rights off of the album Steady Diet of Nothing:
These are our demands:
We want control of our bodies.
Decisions will now be ours.
You can carry out your noble actions,
We will carry our noble scars.
Again, the written lyrics alone do not convey the full impact. As with Tool it is the method of delivery which is most profound. There are probably many people in the audience who don’t realize the gravity of the subject matter but enjoy the music anyway. It’s the fact that he never felt the need to abandon the message and sell out that makes MacKaye such a hero of mine.
Thom Yorke – lead singer of Radiohead. I know it seems like I only ever talk about the lead singers of bands. Maybe it’s because they are the literal as well as figurative voice of the band, and hence I tend to ascribe much of the band’s personality to them. Or maybe it’s because I was once the lead singer of a band and am an insufferable egotist. Of course I realize it is a collaborative effort, but people will always remember John Lennon over Ringo Starr, so maybe it’s justified.
At any rate, Thom Yorke is the reason that one out of every 6,000 songs on the radio is worth listening to. When Radiohead first arrived on the scene with the “Creep” in 1993, I thought it might be a short-lived Weezer-like existence for them. Instead they went on to reinvent themselves 3 or 4 times, and though they have alternately endeared and alienated their fan base with consecutive releases, they have always remained true to their artistic sensibilities. They are lucky that the popularity of songs off of early albums now makes the playing of more recent (and more challenging) material compulsory for most alternative rock stations, but this does nothing to diminish the height of their craft.
Unlike others I have mentioned in this article, Yorke’s lyrics tend to deal with abstract themes over real-life issues. It seems appropriate in the modern age that the mere proper expression of alienation is a relief, particularly when it is done so poorly by other bands (System of a Down comes to mind.) Yorke’s melodic sensibility helps a lot, as is evident from the song Let Down from OK Computer:
Transport, motorways and tramlines,
starting and then stopping,
taking off and landing,
the emptiest of feelings,
disappointed people, clinging on to bottles,
and when it comes it's so, so, disappointing.
Let down and hanging around,
crushed like a bug in the ground.
Let down and hanging around.
This would seem to be a total downer of a song, and yet the melody makes it feel light and airy, almost optimistic. It gets back to something I’ve expressed before. Good lyrics may not hide the jagged edges of reality but that doesn’t preclude the music from being beautiful. Thom Yorke makes it feel good to feel bad.
OK enough with these lists, I promise next time I’ll talk about something more esoteric like the link between on-stage transvestitism and homosexual liberation in the glam rock period of the seventies. In the meantime, to learn more about the bands I've mentioned, please follow the links below:
http://www.toolband.com/
http://www.dischord.com/bands/fugazi.shtml
http://www.radiohead.com/
These are musicians whose talents I view with such reverance that I often find myself daydreaming about being close friends with them. Like, we would just hang out, you know, and talk about stuff because we view the world in the same way. This except for the inevitable restraining order that would follow an episode or two of overzealous fanboy antics. It’s probably better this way, though, because I can gush freely about them in this blog.
Maynard James Keenan – lead singer of Tool and A Perfect Circle. Maynard is the author of so many good lyrics that it’s hard to know where to start. Most of these have come from his work with Tool, who to me define the term anti-establishment rock band. That they continue to record albums is a minor miracle in light of the shameless overpromotion of talentless bands that is the American music industry today. Their fan base is completely grass roots, and so devoted that their last album Lateralus (2001) sold several hundred thousand copies it’s first week despite a near complete lack of promotion.
Maynard often uses the songs as vehicles to critique the largesse of American society. He paints us ultimately as what we are - consumed by consumption. This is particularly well voiced in the song “Hooker With a Penis” off of Aenima:
All you read and wear or see and
Hear on TV is a product
Begging for your fatass dirty dollar
So ... shut up and buy my new record
This may seem a little self-serving but you have to hear how he sings it to realize how brilliant it is. Maynard’s voice is so powerful that all things superficial are simply laid to waste in it’s path. It simultaneously expresses the burden and obligation of our materialistic culture and his efforts to best cope with it.
Ian MacKaye – lead singer of Fugazi. This is a man with so much integrity that even after all these years, he still records and distributes Fugazi’s records himself through his D.C. based independent label. If you look on the cd, it will say something like “This recording available directly from Dischord records for $6 postage paid.” This is MacKaye’s mechanism to subvert any attempts by record stores to charge more for the albums than he originally intended. You can also still see the band live for around $5 and usually at a club that’s all ages. His vision was simply to allow people to experience music without the commercial intermediary.
As for the music it’s as much activist as it is hard core punk. Fugazi songs are more than mere anthems of alienation. They often deal directly with hot-button political issues such as war or the plight of the disenfranchised. The band’s proximity to the nation’s capital gives the message even greater weight. One of my favorites is song called Reclamation, a song about reproductive rights off of the album Steady Diet of Nothing:
These are our demands:
We want control of our bodies.
Decisions will now be ours.
You can carry out your noble actions,
We will carry our noble scars.
Again, the written lyrics alone do not convey the full impact. As with Tool it is the method of delivery which is most profound. There are probably many people in the audience who don’t realize the gravity of the subject matter but enjoy the music anyway. It’s the fact that he never felt the need to abandon the message and sell out that makes MacKaye such a hero of mine.
Thom Yorke – lead singer of Radiohead. I know it seems like I only ever talk about the lead singers of bands. Maybe it’s because they are the literal as well as figurative voice of the band, and hence I tend to ascribe much of the band’s personality to them. Or maybe it’s because I was once the lead singer of a band and am an insufferable egotist. Of course I realize it is a collaborative effort, but people will always remember John Lennon over Ringo Starr, so maybe it’s justified.
At any rate, Thom Yorke is the reason that one out of every 6,000 songs on the radio is worth listening to. When Radiohead first arrived on the scene with the “Creep” in 1993, I thought it might be a short-lived Weezer-like existence for them. Instead they went on to reinvent themselves 3 or 4 times, and though they have alternately endeared and alienated their fan base with consecutive releases, they have always remained true to their artistic sensibilities. They are lucky that the popularity of songs off of early albums now makes the playing of more recent (and more challenging) material compulsory for most alternative rock stations, but this does nothing to diminish the height of their craft.
Unlike others I have mentioned in this article, Yorke’s lyrics tend to deal with abstract themes over real-life issues. It seems appropriate in the modern age that the mere proper expression of alienation is a relief, particularly when it is done so poorly by other bands (System of a Down comes to mind.) Yorke’s melodic sensibility helps a lot, as is evident from the song Let Down from OK Computer:
Transport, motorways and tramlines,
starting and then stopping,
taking off and landing,
the emptiest of feelings,
disappointed people, clinging on to bottles,
and when it comes it's so, so, disappointing.
Let down and hanging around,
crushed like a bug in the ground.
Let down and hanging around.
This would seem to be a total downer of a song, and yet the melody makes it feel light and airy, almost optimistic. It gets back to something I’ve expressed before. Good lyrics may not hide the jagged edges of reality but that doesn’t preclude the music from being beautiful. Thom Yorke makes it feel good to feel bad.
OK enough with these lists, I promise next time I’ll talk about something more esoteric like the link between on-stage transvestitism and homosexual liberation in the glam rock period of the seventies. In the meantime, to learn more about the bands I've mentioned, please follow the links below:
http://www.toolband.com/
http://www.dischord.com/bands/fugazi.shtml
http://www.radiohead.com/
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
With The Lights Out
Everytime I listen to Nirvana I can’t help but feeling sad, not over the anguish Kurt Cobain must have felt during his life, but over the tremendous promise wasted when he killed himself. I was listening to a random iPod mix recently when this track came on that blew me away. It was an infectious riff from a warmly overdriven and saturated guitar accompanied only by highhat and bass drum – no vocals. The melody is so simple that you are forced to concentrate purely on the sound of the distortion, which despite the repetitive ohm-like nature of the tune, varies widely with the progression of the song and is rich with the bleeding overtones of modern high-gain.
I have my iPod hooked up directly to my car’s stereo and placed in my glovebox so that I am not tempted to look at the screen while driving. The whole way home from work I was wondering which of the multitude of new artists I’ve recently loaded it could be. Of course it ended up being a demo track called "Grey Goose" off of With The Lights Out, the Nirvana box-set released last year. It’s moments like these when I sigh the heaviest. The idea that this remarkable light of musical creativity has gone out of the world forever depresses me to no end. I’ve actually started to think the only way I can truly love an artist is if I find out that they’ve committed suicide.
Not that I blame them. I have been there and know the void they stare into, though thankfully I can see enough positives in life to outweigh the gloom. Plus I am not so unfortunate as to be burdened with the prodigious talent that dooms musical genius to an average life expectancy of 32.7 years, seemingly the going rate these days. Kurt Cobain is not the first time this has happened to me, the following artists reveal a pattern of devotion which should be disturbing to any psychiatrist.
Ian Curtis – lead singer of Joy Division – by hanging. Nothing is more haunting to me that the sound of Curtis’ voice, it eats deeper into my soul with each gloomy verse. Joy Division is the one band whose every song I love. It sounds depressing to say that they have written the soundtrack to my life, because I couldn’t be that goth, but it’s closer than anything else has come. One of the most moving songs is "Atmosphere", whose lyrics underscore the general theme of alienation which runs throughout Curtis’ verse:
People like you find it easy
Aching to see, walking on air
Hunted by the rivers, through the streets
Every corner, abandoned too soon
I could go on, typing from memory the lyrics to nearly all of their songs with a footnote on how each made me feel the first time I heard them.
Jeff Buckley – muse of God – accidental drowning. Well at least his death wasn’t intentional – or people don’t tend to think so. There was nothing in his personality to indicate such a self destructive tendency. Instead his death is described as a fanciful dip into a tributary of the Mississipi, though perhaps ill-advised given he was fully clothed at the time. Jeff’s dreamy spirit in life probably most contributed to his death.
Given that it was an accident you would think I would be less burdened by his early demise except for the fact that he was one of the most brutally talented musicians in the history of modern music. I’ll never forget when my friend Marie first lent me his Grace cd to listen to on my way home. As I was parking my car on the street, the song “So Real” came on and I couldn’t move. When the song finished I turned my car off and began sobbing.
I just couldn’t believe that someone could be so talented, that after hearing just one of his songs I could so closely identify with him, and that he was (again!) already dead. Worse still was later when my friend Steven gave me a live DVD of him performing in Chicago in ’95 - it was at the same small venue down the block from my apartment where I had seen Sonic Youth that fall. Had I known about him I could have seen him perform just 6 months prior to that fateful swim in the Wolf River.
Elliott Smith – acoustic balladeer – self inflicted stab wound in the heart. Rounding out this quartet of melancholy is the artist most recent to pass, this time definitely by his own hand and in a manner which expresses the innate creativity of his being – even his suicide was a metaphor. He is actually someone who’s music I listened to more closely after I found out he had killed himself.
There it was, right in the middle of my cd collection, his eponymous album staring me in the face. I had no excuse for why I hadn’t listened to it much, and I felt guilty about just now tuning in. I mean, what if it was bad? Perhaps his death would affect me only as much as those of the lead singers of INXS, The Gin Blossoms, and Blind Melon (in descending order of apathy.) But it wasn’t bad, it was fucking good, and I was suddenly ashamed of myself. From “Needle in the Hay” to “Clementine” to “St. Ides Heaven” – each lyric more perfect than the last.
Only later when watching Good Will Hunting would I recognize his lasting contribution to the success of that pseudo-indie film with the lyrics to “Between the Bars”:
Drink up baby, stay up all night
The things you could do, you won’t but you might
The reflection you’ll see, that you’ll never be
The promises you’ll only make
The fact that most every song he has written has to do with drug or alcohol abuse may be a subtle clue as to what led him down his eventual path. I can only judge myself, however, for not taking the opportunity to see him at the Fillmore when he played there in 2001.
And so the pattern continues. It makes me want to scare up some Arcade Fire tickets. You know, just in case.
I have my iPod hooked up directly to my car’s stereo and placed in my glovebox so that I am not tempted to look at the screen while driving. The whole way home from work I was wondering which of the multitude of new artists I’ve recently loaded it could be. Of course it ended up being a demo track called "Grey Goose" off of With The Lights Out, the Nirvana box-set released last year. It’s moments like these when I sigh the heaviest. The idea that this remarkable light of musical creativity has gone out of the world forever depresses me to no end. I’ve actually started to think the only way I can truly love an artist is if I find out that they’ve committed suicide.
Not that I blame them. I have been there and know the void they stare into, though thankfully I can see enough positives in life to outweigh the gloom. Plus I am not so unfortunate as to be burdened with the prodigious talent that dooms musical genius to an average life expectancy of 32.7 years, seemingly the going rate these days. Kurt Cobain is not the first time this has happened to me, the following artists reveal a pattern of devotion which should be disturbing to any psychiatrist.
Ian Curtis – lead singer of Joy Division – by hanging. Nothing is more haunting to me that the sound of Curtis’ voice, it eats deeper into my soul with each gloomy verse. Joy Division is the one band whose every song I love. It sounds depressing to say that they have written the soundtrack to my life, because I couldn’t be that goth, but it’s closer than anything else has come. One of the most moving songs is "Atmosphere", whose lyrics underscore the general theme of alienation which runs throughout Curtis’ verse:
People like you find it easy
Aching to see, walking on air
Hunted by the rivers, through the streets
Every corner, abandoned too soon
I could go on, typing from memory the lyrics to nearly all of their songs with a footnote on how each made me feel the first time I heard them.
Jeff Buckley – muse of God – accidental drowning. Well at least his death wasn’t intentional – or people don’t tend to think so. There was nothing in his personality to indicate such a self destructive tendency. Instead his death is described as a fanciful dip into a tributary of the Mississipi, though perhaps ill-advised given he was fully clothed at the time. Jeff’s dreamy spirit in life probably most contributed to his death.
Given that it was an accident you would think I would be less burdened by his early demise except for the fact that he was one of the most brutally talented musicians in the history of modern music. I’ll never forget when my friend Marie first lent me his Grace cd to listen to on my way home. As I was parking my car on the street, the song “So Real” came on and I couldn’t move. When the song finished I turned my car off and began sobbing.
I just couldn’t believe that someone could be so talented, that after hearing just one of his songs I could so closely identify with him, and that he was (again!) already dead. Worse still was later when my friend Steven gave me a live DVD of him performing in Chicago in ’95 - it was at the same small venue down the block from my apartment where I had seen Sonic Youth that fall. Had I known about him I could have seen him perform just 6 months prior to that fateful swim in the Wolf River.
Elliott Smith – acoustic balladeer – self inflicted stab wound in the heart. Rounding out this quartet of melancholy is the artist most recent to pass, this time definitely by his own hand and in a manner which expresses the innate creativity of his being – even his suicide was a metaphor. He is actually someone who’s music I listened to more closely after I found out he had killed himself.
There it was, right in the middle of my cd collection, his eponymous album staring me in the face. I had no excuse for why I hadn’t listened to it much, and I felt guilty about just now tuning in. I mean, what if it was bad? Perhaps his death would affect me only as much as those of the lead singers of INXS, The Gin Blossoms, and Blind Melon (in descending order of apathy.) But it wasn’t bad, it was fucking good, and I was suddenly ashamed of myself. From “Needle in the Hay” to “Clementine” to “St. Ides Heaven” – each lyric more perfect than the last.
Only later when watching Good Will Hunting would I recognize his lasting contribution to the success of that pseudo-indie film with the lyrics to “Between the Bars”:
Drink up baby, stay up all night
The things you could do, you won’t but you might
The reflection you’ll see, that you’ll never be
The promises you’ll only make
The fact that most every song he has written has to do with drug or alcohol abuse may be a subtle clue as to what led him down his eventual path. I can only judge myself, however, for not taking the opportunity to see him at the Fillmore when he played there in 2001.
And so the pattern continues. It makes me want to scare up some Arcade Fire tickets. You know, just in case.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
An Everflowing Font
I have always learned first about good music from my brother Brian. Sometimes I forget the impact he has had on my musical taste growing up. It all started early – probably when I was 7 or 8. I remember at school everyone was listening to Shaun Cassidy. I was getting ready to buy my first album and had decided on a scratched copy of Kiss Alive mainly due to it’s bargain price of 50 cents and the fact that some friends at school were into them. I brought it home, and was excited to show Brian, who had a great collection of albums. He could tell I was excited and wanted to encourage my musical growth but I could see the disappointment in his eyes.
After listening to this craptacular assembly of primordial hair metal for a week, I decided in the end it would be best to melt the album in the burn barrel in our back yard. Then to further show my distaste I hung it on a nail on my wall. I wanted to prove to my brother that I understood now what he had said in a moment with his eyes – that you know good music when you hear it, and that most people don’t even try to differentiate.
It was that Christmas that he bought me The Who Live at Leeds double album. I remember holding the yellow foldout in my hands and thinking wow this must be some heavy shit. I ran upstairs to listen to it. I heard “My Generation” for the first time and felt a connection with the music even though I knew I was too young to understand what Roger Daltrey was really singing about. When I tried to tell my friends at school that I was listening to The Who they just didn’t get it. Funny enough Brian recently sent me the album in mp3 format and it instantaneously found its way to my iPod – “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me…” I still love that stuff.
Thus began the journey. The next moment musicaux I remember was when he brought home Pink Floyd The Wall one day. There is one part on that album where there is this intense sound of bottles breaking against a wall. Brian took special care to point it out to me and I was instantly fascinated by the intersection of music and performance art. We listened to that album pretty much non-stop for the next two months.
Then one morning I was watching The Today Show and Gene Shalit had the nerve to try and review it. He must have been under pressure as it had become a sensation and he probably wanted to appear hip enough to have heard of it. At any rate he panned it for just some of the most retarded reasons ever, including the use of ambient sounds between tracks, saying they were distracting and often too violent. Thanks to my brother’s tutelage, I saw through this whole charade at the tender age of 10. The album has since gone platinum 23 times over.
But these two examples are more mainstream than most of what my brother listened to as we were growing up. He listened to not just Frank Zappa, but Captain Beefheart, whose was the much, much weirder one, and of course Little Feat. He had a whole bunch of punk music, including the Plasmatics, Stiff Little Fingers, and this awesome album called Black and White by the Stranglers.
Actually Stiff Little Fingers’ “State of Emergency” off of Inflammable Material had a guitar riff which haunted me for 25 years until I figured out who it was again after hearing one of their songs in the movie High Fidelity. I recently returned the iPod favor by sending Brian both Black and White and Inflammable Material on mp3. BTW, if the RIAA is reading this I want them to know that these are personal copies from licensed source material and were sent to my brother for sampling purposes only so that he may go out and buy the albums himself if he so desires. :>)
Later, when I was in college, I would first hear Joy Division, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth from my brother’s collection. If I only knew at the time the impact that these three bands would have on me later in life, I might have started speaking in tongues. But like everything else, I had to grow into them because they were really much deeper in substance than what I was listening to then. I like to think I’m the one who tipped Brian off to Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing's Shocking, which I think he thought was a little too intense at first. We both needed to connect with our ur-punker to really start understanding the heavy guitar sounds of the 90s.
One of those summers we would see Tool at Lollpalooza in Des Moines together. They were on the second stage, and man did it make an impression on me. I’ll never forget a head-shaven, shirtless, and ripped Maynard James Keenan jerking epileptically back and forth for an intense 45 minute set, only to be followed by some perverted puppet show.
Primus also played at that concert and I vividly remember Brian kept yelling between songs “Play Tommy the Cat!” I don’t think they ever played it but it was damned funny anyway. Around that time we also saw Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. All three of these bands have since betrayed me, but at the time they were awesome and hadn’t yet gotten so full of themselves.
And the story continues today. With the advent of the iPod and the internet our mutual exploration of great music has only accelerated. Brian’s recent recommendations have including the following amazing bands: Arcade Fire, Spiderbait, Death From Above 1979, The Futureheads, Deerhoof, Fiery Furnaces, Red Red Meat, Can, Le Tigre, TV on the Radio, Smoosh and The Kills. For my part, I hope I introduced him to The Shins, The Dandy Warhols, The Libertines and Elliott Smith.
BTW, if you haven’t heard of any of these bands, don’t fret. It’s just the evil music establishment suppressing the unique talents of the world with their mass-produced pap. If not for my brother, I would never have heard of them either, and all I can say is, thank God for him, because otherwise I would have lost all faith in music today. Good music lives on as always, still underground, but worth the trouble of looking for it, along the path my brother first led me down oh those many years ago.
After listening to this craptacular assembly of primordial hair metal for a week, I decided in the end it would be best to melt the album in the burn barrel in our back yard. Then to further show my distaste I hung it on a nail on my wall. I wanted to prove to my brother that I understood now what he had said in a moment with his eyes – that you know good music when you hear it, and that most people don’t even try to differentiate.
It was that Christmas that he bought me The Who Live at Leeds double album. I remember holding the yellow foldout in my hands and thinking wow this must be some heavy shit. I ran upstairs to listen to it. I heard “My Generation” for the first time and felt a connection with the music even though I knew I was too young to understand what Roger Daltrey was really singing about. When I tried to tell my friends at school that I was listening to The Who they just didn’t get it. Funny enough Brian recently sent me the album in mp3 format and it instantaneously found its way to my iPod – “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me…” I still love that stuff.
Thus began the journey. The next moment musicaux I remember was when he brought home Pink Floyd The Wall one day. There is one part on that album where there is this intense sound of bottles breaking against a wall. Brian took special care to point it out to me and I was instantly fascinated by the intersection of music and performance art. We listened to that album pretty much non-stop for the next two months.
Then one morning I was watching The Today Show and Gene Shalit had the nerve to try and review it. He must have been under pressure as it had become a sensation and he probably wanted to appear hip enough to have heard of it. At any rate he panned it for just some of the most retarded reasons ever, including the use of ambient sounds between tracks, saying they were distracting and often too violent. Thanks to my brother’s tutelage, I saw through this whole charade at the tender age of 10. The album has since gone platinum 23 times over.
But these two examples are more mainstream than most of what my brother listened to as we were growing up. He listened to not just Frank Zappa, but Captain Beefheart, whose was the much, much weirder one, and of course Little Feat. He had a whole bunch of punk music, including the Plasmatics, Stiff Little Fingers, and this awesome album called Black and White by the Stranglers.
Actually Stiff Little Fingers’ “State of Emergency” off of Inflammable Material had a guitar riff which haunted me for 25 years until I figured out who it was again after hearing one of their songs in the movie High Fidelity. I recently returned the iPod favor by sending Brian both Black and White and Inflammable Material on mp3. BTW, if the RIAA is reading this I want them to know that these are personal copies from licensed source material and were sent to my brother for sampling purposes only so that he may go out and buy the albums himself if he so desires. :>)
Later, when I was in college, I would first hear Joy Division, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth from my brother’s collection. If I only knew at the time the impact that these three bands would have on me later in life, I might have started speaking in tongues. But like everything else, I had to grow into them because they were really much deeper in substance than what I was listening to then. I like to think I’m the one who tipped Brian off to Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing's Shocking, which I think he thought was a little too intense at first. We both needed to connect with our ur-punker to really start understanding the heavy guitar sounds of the 90s.
One of those summers we would see Tool at Lollpalooza in Des Moines together. They were on the second stage, and man did it make an impression on me. I’ll never forget a head-shaven, shirtless, and ripped Maynard James Keenan jerking epileptically back and forth for an intense 45 minute set, only to be followed by some perverted puppet show.
Primus also played at that concert and I vividly remember Brian kept yelling between songs “Play Tommy the Cat!” I don’t think they ever played it but it was damned funny anyway. Around that time we also saw Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. All three of these bands have since betrayed me, but at the time they were awesome and hadn’t yet gotten so full of themselves.
And the story continues today. With the advent of the iPod and the internet our mutual exploration of great music has only accelerated. Brian’s recent recommendations have including the following amazing bands: Arcade Fire, Spiderbait, Death From Above 1979, The Futureheads, Deerhoof, Fiery Furnaces, Red Red Meat, Can, Le Tigre, TV on the Radio, Smoosh and The Kills. For my part, I hope I introduced him to The Shins, The Dandy Warhols, The Libertines and Elliott Smith.
BTW, if you haven’t heard of any of these bands, don’t fret. It’s just the evil music establishment suppressing the unique talents of the world with their mass-produced pap. If not for my brother, I would never have heard of them either, and all I can say is, thank God for him, because otherwise I would have lost all faith in music today. Good music lives on as always, still underground, but worth the trouble of looking for it, along the path my brother first led me down oh those many years ago.
Friday, June 10, 2005
A Baking Powder?
Kenny Rogers made the song “Oh Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” a popular hit in 1968. It is a wonderful song for many reasons - it has a nice melody, a solid verse-chorus-verse structure, and suits Roger’s voice well. This is back when country was still country instead of the pop crap it is today. What I love about it most though is the tuneful melody that belies the downright shocking subject matter of the song.
The song is about a Vietnam War vet “whose legs are bent and paralyzed” and whose wife has taken to running around on him. He isn’t just some down-on-his-luck fella who is unlucky in love, he’s actually physically incapable of satisfying his wife.
The wife, for her part, may be one of the most rotten people ever portrayed in a country song, for she seems to feel no remorse for her actions. She “paints up her lips, rolls and curls her tinted hair”, and “contemplates going out somewhere”. Poor guy, we think, isn’t love a bitch? But in the final verse we get this:
She's leaving now cause
I just heard the slamming of the door
The way I know I've heard it
Some 100 times before
And if I could move I'd get my gun
And put her in the ground
Oh Ruby
Don't take your love to town
Wait a minute! What was that last part? Right before the chorus? Jesus Christ! I thought I was listening to a little ditty about a lovelorn broken-down man, but this is turning into a scene from Full Metal Jacket.
I love it though, because it doesn’t try to candy-coat reality. This is what art should do, convey genuine emotion within the realm of the accepted forms of expression. Kind of like putting an aspirin into a lil’ smokey and feeding it to your dog. The fact that Kenny Rogers is singing it just blasts it off the charts in my book.
Another fine example exists with the song “Goodnight Irene”, a folk song performed by many but made famous by Leadbelly in a 1950 rendition. At first blush, it appears to be about a man who is infatuated with a young girl. When he can’t have her in the real world, he decides he can at least “get you in my dreams.”
This all seems innocuous enough, though there are some definite overtones of a Lolita complex. It’s the next stanza, however we learn that his inability to have her has led to some desperate thoughts:
Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in the town
Sometimes I have a great notion
To jump into the river and drown
This sounds like a verse written by someone with a depressive illness. Still it appears he may be merely prone to exaggeration, as many of us can be in love, and the chorus is still pretty:
Irene Goodnight, Irene Goodnight
Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene
I get you in my dreams.
In the third verse we find out that man is actually married, and he is advised to go home to his family instead of spending all of his time out drinking and gambling. This is already pretty dark territory for a folk song, but it’s the final verse that caps it off:
I love Irene God knows I do
Love her till the sea run dry
And if Irene turns her back on me
I’m gonna take morphine and die
Now this was a popular song, mind you. It probably sold tens of thousands of records, and yet it is about a married man, with children, whose is so infatuated with a young girl that he is suicidal, and furthermore wouldn’t mind indulging in his morphine habit to finish himself off. I don’t know about you, but the first time I actually understood the lyrics this became one of the greatest songs ever.
The last song I want to talk about deals with a subject matter lighter in tone, though still heavier that what the music implies. The song is “Do you know the way to San Jose?” written by Burt Bacharach and sung by Dionne Warwick. This is one of the happiest melodies ever - almost saccharine to the point where you can’t possibly like the song. But listen to the lyrics, and you realize she’s not just directionally challenged about her home town so much as she’s royally ragging on Los Angeles:
L.A. is a great big freeway
Put a hundred down and buy a car
In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star
Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass
And all the stars that never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas
Bum bum bum-bum bum bum bum-bum bum bahhhh! A little bitter here, not that I blame her. In the second verse she sings about how nice San Jose is by comparison and how she can find “piece of mind” there. Then in the third verse we get this:
Fame and fortune is a magnet
It can pull you far away from home
With a dream in your heart you're never alone
Dreams turn into dust and blow away
And there you are without a friend
You pack your car and ride away
Basically the song is saying “Fuck LA, the people are assholes, everyone thinks they’re talented but most of them suck, I’d much rather go back home where at least people know me.” If she only knew the dystopian nightmare post Silicon Valley era San Jose has become. Just kidding, San Jose.
BTW, Dionne, if you’re reading this, from San Francisco you can just take 101 South about 50 miles.
The song is about a Vietnam War vet “whose legs are bent and paralyzed” and whose wife has taken to running around on him. He isn’t just some down-on-his-luck fella who is unlucky in love, he’s actually physically incapable of satisfying his wife.
The wife, for her part, may be one of the most rotten people ever portrayed in a country song, for she seems to feel no remorse for her actions. She “paints up her lips, rolls and curls her tinted hair”, and “contemplates going out somewhere”. Poor guy, we think, isn’t love a bitch? But in the final verse we get this:
She's leaving now cause
I just heard the slamming of the door
The way I know I've heard it
Some 100 times before
And if I could move I'd get my gun
And put her in the ground
Oh Ruby
Don't take your love to town
Wait a minute! What was that last part? Right before the chorus? Jesus Christ! I thought I was listening to a little ditty about a lovelorn broken-down man, but this is turning into a scene from Full Metal Jacket.
I love it though, because it doesn’t try to candy-coat reality. This is what art should do, convey genuine emotion within the realm of the accepted forms of expression. Kind of like putting an aspirin into a lil’ smokey and feeding it to your dog. The fact that Kenny Rogers is singing it just blasts it off the charts in my book.
Another fine example exists with the song “Goodnight Irene”, a folk song performed by many but made famous by Leadbelly in a 1950 rendition. At first blush, it appears to be about a man who is infatuated with a young girl. When he can’t have her in the real world, he decides he can at least “get you in my dreams.”
This all seems innocuous enough, though there are some definite overtones of a Lolita complex. It’s the next stanza, however we learn that his inability to have her has led to some desperate thoughts:
Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in the town
Sometimes I have a great notion
To jump into the river and drown
This sounds like a verse written by someone with a depressive illness. Still it appears he may be merely prone to exaggeration, as many of us can be in love, and the chorus is still pretty:
Irene Goodnight, Irene Goodnight
Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene
I get you in my dreams.
In the third verse we find out that man is actually married, and he is advised to go home to his family instead of spending all of his time out drinking and gambling. This is already pretty dark territory for a folk song, but it’s the final verse that caps it off:
I love Irene God knows I do
Love her till the sea run dry
And if Irene turns her back on me
I’m gonna take morphine and die
Now this was a popular song, mind you. It probably sold tens of thousands of records, and yet it is about a married man, with children, whose is so infatuated with a young girl that he is suicidal, and furthermore wouldn’t mind indulging in his morphine habit to finish himself off. I don’t know about you, but the first time I actually understood the lyrics this became one of the greatest songs ever.
The last song I want to talk about deals with a subject matter lighter in tone, though still heavier that what the music implies. The song is “Do you know the way to San Jose?” written by Burt Bacharach and sung by Dionne Warwick. This is one of the happiest melodies ever - almost saccharine to the point where you can’t possibly like the song. But listen to the lyrics, and you realize she’s not just directionally challenged about her home town so much as she’s royally ragging on Los Angeles:
L.A. is a great big freeway
Put a hundred down and buy a car
In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star
Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass
And all the stars that never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas
Bum bum bum-bum bum bum bum-bum bum bahhhh! A little bitter here, not that I blame her. In the second verse she sings about how nice San Jose is by comparison and how she can find “piece of mind” there. Then in the third verse we get this:
Fame and fortune is a magnet
It can pull you far away from home
With a dream in your heart you're never alone
Dreams turn into dust and blow away
And there you are without a friend
You pack your car and ride away
Basically the song is saying “Fuck LA, the people are assholes, everyone thinks they’re talented but most of them suck, I’d much rather go back home where at least people know me.” If she only knew the dystopian nightmare post Silicon Valley era San Jose has become. Just kidding, San Jose.
BTW, Dionne, if you’re reading this, from San Francisco you can just take 101 South about 50 miles.
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