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Thursday, April 03, 2008
QIDRECHINNA (I AM DESTINED TO LOVE)
Abdel Gadir Salim
Blues in Khartoum
Institute Du Monde Afrique : 1999
[Buy It]
YA WANNA BUY A BUNNY?
Spike Jones and His City Slickers
1949
Available on : Greatest Hits!!!
RCA : 1999
[Buy It]
PINBALL WIZARD
Elton John
Tommy: The Soundtrack
Universal : 1975
[Buy It]
VALENTINE AND GARUDA
Frank Black and the Catholics
Black Letter Days
Spin Art : 2002
[Buy It]
YOU'RE THE REASON OUR KIDS ARE UGLY
Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn
1978
Available on : The Definitive Selection
MCA Nashville : 2005
[Buy It]
SEE THE BIG MAN CRY
Charlie Louvin
1965
Available on : Greatest Hits
Import : 2004
[Buy It]
When I was seven, I went through my parents' records and played all of them. It was a pretty standard mid-seventies set: Beatles, Beach Boys, Supremes, James Taylor, Carole King, West Side Story, maybe one or two Jimi Hendrix records. I remember sitting cross-legged in the living room and listening to Smokey Robinson.
I am using this memory as a shield against sentimentality.
Today is my older son's seventh birthday. Last week, my younger son turned four. My wife and I will throw them parties, take pictures, wish they had fewer toys: the usual. It's strange to have kids, especially kids who are becoming people, and it is also the most natural thing in the world.
I am using this truism as a shield against sentimentality.
There are few memories that still survive from 1973, when I turned four; even 1976, when I turned seven, is mostly a blur of Jimmy Carter's gigantic teeth and TV commercials celebrating the bicentennial, principally through low rates on car loans. Still, I remember clearly the first time I heard Jim Croce's "One Less Set of Footsteps," when I was the age of my younger son, and how frightened I was. I also remember hearing the Ohio Players' "Love Rollercoaster" in 1975, when it was all over the radio, and trying to get the blinds on one of the front windows to move in sync with the guitar part. So I don't want to underestimate the degree to which my sons, even if they're not identifying themselves by the music they like, are identifying music that they like. My younger son seems, so far, to favor soundtrack music and classical music, neither of which made a tremendous impression on my older son when he was that age. When we watch movies, my younger son will start humming the score and say, "I like this music." Later on, he will hum it again. My older son prefers songs with simple melodies and complicated lyrics. He repeats the lyrics to himself later. The earliest examples of this, which date from when he was two or even younger, are Ian Dury's "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll," Captain Beefheart's "Tropical Hot Dog Night," Frank Black's "Valentine and Garuda," and the Rolling Stones "Let It Bleed." I'd be playing them at home or in the car and he'd perk up, and ask me what they were, and smile, and laugh, and ask for them again. There are enough exceptions, of course, that these cease to be rules. The younger one got completely hooked on the Hives' "Tick Tick Boom." The older one loves Buddy Holly. The younger one has, for the last twenty nights in a row, forced me to put him to bed with a copy of "Born in the U.S.A." playing in an old cassette machine that is very similar to the one I had in 1976. The older one, at three, choreographed a modern dance set to Elton John's version of "Pinball Wizard." He later taught it to the younger one, who added a few flourishes of his own. Both of them worship Michael Jackson and AC/DC and Spike Jones, which only means that they are part of the human race. And both of them are obsessed to the point of joy with "Qidrechinna," a song by the Sudanese pop singer Abdel Gadir Salim.
Soon they will get older, will cease to experience that joy, or else they will conceal that joy from me and my wife. That day's not too far off. Until then, they're little, and their appetite for the world is large, and so I'm going to wish them a happy birthday by posting a quartet of songs that they love, and then a pair of songs that they don't know. Both are country songs, because it's a genre they don't particularly like, and I am a sadist. I am using sadism as a shield against sentimentality. One of them is Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty's "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly," which distills the chaos of domestic bliss into low comedy. Besides that, all of our kids took after your part of our family anyway.
Oh they did, huh? What about the one's that's bald?
Well, I guess you might say they took after me. I am using low comedy as a shield against sentimentality.
The other is Charlie Louvin's "See the Big Man Cry," in which a man spies on his estranged wife and the child who does not even know him. Many married men have imagined circumstances that would separate them from their wives--falling in love with others, losing the war of attrition against boredom and self-hatred. But being separated from children is an atrocity, and Louvin mines it for maximum horror: I followed them to the pet shop window the little boy stopped to see
He looked up at her said if I had a daddy he'd buy that puppy for me
See the big man cry mama that's what I heard him say
See the big man cry mama he looks like his heart will break I am using horror as a shield against sentimentality.
I am not, as you will notice, posting Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle," though I will admit that Verities and Balderdash, the album on which the song originally appeared, was one of the records in my parents' collection, and that I probably took it out and played it once or twice. I am not posting it because, well, I am still holding the shield against sentimentality, though it's quaking a little bit when I think of my sons, littler than I ever remember being, dancing around the living room to "Pinball Wizard."Labels: ben, country, rock
posted by Ben
LINK |
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
ALABAMA BOOGIE
John Lee
Federal : 1951
Available on: Rural Blues vol. 1 1934-1956
Document : 1995
[Buy It]
ALABAMA MAN
Earl Scott
Chascamp c. 1960 (?)
Available on: Nashville Rockabilly
Stomper Time : 2004
[Buy It]
THE STORY OF ALABAMA BOUND
Jelly Roll Morton & Alan Lomax
c. 1938
Available on: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings
Rounder : 2005
[Buy It]
Welcome, folks, to Alabama!
The great state of Alabam' is the 'bammiest state there is. Established in 1973, Alabama was desert until a creek run through, and didn't that desert turn verdant with pasture and slaves? These days, Alabama folk live peacefully and know there never was much to worry about.
ALABAMA
The Blue Sky Boys
RCA : 1949
Available on: The Blue Sky Boys
JSP : 2007
[Buy It]
ALABAMA LULLABY
The Delmore Brothers
Columbia : 1931
Available on: Classic Cuts: 1933-1941
JSP : 2004
[Buy It]
AUTOMOBILE RIDE THROUGH ALABAMA
Red Henderson
OKeh : 1928
Available on: The Roots of Rap
Yazoo : 1996
[Buy It]
Still, people is people, and Alabama people have stories to tell. Stories about apple trees, space men, bull frogs and the sometimes mistreatment of peoples. Up in Chicago, J.B. Lenoir had some mean things to say about the way white folks treated the black folks down in Alabama, and up in Chicago he wasn't afraid to sing about it -
ALABAMA
J. B. Lenoir
Alabama Blues
L& R : 1965
[Buy It]
and sing about it -
ALABAMA (LIVE)
J.B. Lenoir
Home Recording (with Willie Dixon) : 1962
Available on: One of These Mornings
JSP : 2003
[Buy It]
and sing about it some more -
 ALABAMA (LIVE)
('bout 7.5 minutes in)
Like Skip James' "Washington D. C. Hospital Center Blues," the song "Alabama," by J. B. Lenoir, is a last gasp of the old, acoustic country blues. But "Washington D. C. Hospital Center Blues" is a spider-web of a song; "Alabama" is a mighty gasp. Born in Mississippi, Lenoir recorded in and around Chicago for over a decade, but never broke through to a national audience. By 1967, he was working as a dishwasher a the U. of Illinois Champaign campus; he died of heart attack that year, at the age of thirty-eight. The last, unrecorded song he wrote went like this:Something got a hold of me
it must be the Lord
Something got a hold of me
it must be the Lord
Something got a hold of me
it must be the Lord
Something got a hold of me
it must be the Lord
I can't sing right, I can't play right
I can't walk right, I can't talk right
I can't eat right, I can't sleep right
I can't do nothing at all. According to the liner notes I'm looking at, "J.B.'s autopsy revealed that blood from his heart was backing up into his abdomen. His family settled a wrongful death suit against a driver who had hit his car from the rear [three weeks earlier] for $2250. After the lawyers and the court got paid, there was a little over $1,400 for the Lenoir family." Across the pond, in England, John Mayall recorded this eulogy for Lenoir; you can see more of Lenoir on YouTube here, here, and here.
But that's neither here nor there (big love to the Heart of Dixie!) except insofar as "Alabama" by J. B. Lenoir always did strike me as one of the more politically-minded records of the sixties; just a few years earlier, you could stick a microphone in front of any old bluesman, ask all about the hard times, and get no reference to any mistreatments whatsoever:
MONOLOGUE ON ACCIDENTS
Alan Lomax & Blind Willie McTell
The Library of Congress Recordings
c. 1940; first released in 1969
Document : 1995
[Buy It]
Given all this history, it's not surprising that some of the ways folks in Alabama get along is by drinkin':
I AIN'T A BIT DRUNK
George Roark
c. 1938
Availbale on: Kentucky Mountain Music
Yazoo : 2003
[Buy It]
Workin':
OLD ALABAMA
Artists Unknown (Recorded by Alan Lomax)
Negro Prison Blues and Songs
Legacy Intl. : 1994
[Buy It]
And singin' about movin' to Alabama:
GOING TO MOVE TO ALABAMA
Charley Patton
Paramount : 1930
Available on: Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues
Revenant : 2003
[Buy It]
If you're thinking of moving to Alabama, you'll want to print this handy map out. Keep it in your glove compartment. And those of you without a glove compartment, take heart: Alabama is also a fairyland where no one else can enter, and your every valuable is always safe:
STARS FELL ON ALABAMA
Billie Holiday
Verve : 1957
Available on: The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959
Polygram : 1993
[Buy It]
STARS FELL ON ALABAMA
Art Tatum
c. 1955
Available on: The Tatum Group Masterpieces vol. 4
Pablo : 1991
[Buy It]
STARS FELL ON ALABAMA
The Mountain Goats
Nine Black Poppies
3 Beads of Sweat : 1995
[Buy It]Labels: alex, blues, country, geography, jazz, old-timey
posted by Alex
LINK |
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
NORTH TO ALASKA
Johnny Horton
Columbia : 1960
Available on: Greatest Hits
Columbia : 1987
[Buy It]
WHEN IT'S SPRINGTIME IN ALASKA (IT'S 40 BELOW)
Johnny Cash
Personal File
Sony : 2006
[Buy It]
ROCKIN' LITTLE ESKIMO
Bobby Swanson
Igloo : 1959
Available on: Nashville Rockabilly
Stomper Tome : 2003
[Buy It]
THE MIGHTY QUINN
Solomon Burke
Bell : 1969 (Unreleased)
Available on: Proud Mary: The Bell Sessions
Sundazed : 2000
[Buy It]
STEPHANIE SAYS
The Velvet Underground
VU
Polydor : 1985
[Buy It]
THE MIGHTY QUINN
Hopeton Lewis, Henry Buckley & Dienne w/The Gaylettes
Available on: Trojan 60s Box Set
Sanctuary : 2004
[Buy It]
WHEN IT'S SPRINGTIME IN ALASKA (IT'S 40 BELOW)
Johnny Horton
Columbia : 1958
Available on: Greatest Hits
Columbia : 1987
[Buy It]
Readers of Moistworks!
On this, the twenty-third day of our millennium's eighth January it is cold as stone/ice/witch's teat/Kerouac's liver/someone who's digging for gold, and throwing away fortunes in feelings! But nowhere is it colder than in the United States Internets' 49th State of Alaska, which the following bullet points are intended to clear some pretty nasty preconceptions goings on about town about Alaska:
- People in Alaska arrive in Alaska by crossing over a land mass which covered the Bering Strait tens of thousands of years ago
- People in Alaska have a median income of 3.6
- People in Alaska are 5 years of age or older
- People in Alaska are not people in Alaska
- People in Alaska are polar bears
"My initial impression is that Alaska is very very big. And cold, too, sometimes." So writes a friend who's actually been to Alaska. But these, too, are misconceptions. In fact, visiting, or even reading or watching television about Alaska tells us very little about Alaska itself. For this, we must look to song.
The recording artist Jewel, who is from Alaska, and has never recorded a song about Alaska, but other, equally talented recording artists have. Our personal favorite? The Gaylette's "Quinn The Eskimo," which if this wasn't the theme song for Jamaica's bobsled team then, OMG/WTF/BFF/QWERTY/TGIF/UOK?
But, of course, "Quinn, The Eskimo" was written and recorded by Bob Dylan, who had this to say about it in his memoir:On the way back to the house I passed the local movie theater on Prytania Street, where "The Mighty Quinn" was showing. Years earlier I had written a song called "The Mighty Quinn" which was a hit in England, and I wondered what the movie was about. Eventually I'd sneak off and go there to see it. It was a mystery, suspense, thriller with Denzel Washington as the Mighty Xaveir Quinn a detective who solves crimes. Funny, that's just the way I imagined him when I wrote the song "The Mighty Quinn." And, of course, our other friend - let's call him Dan - has this to say about "The Mighty Quinn," the film, which he's actually seen, and which I saw him talking up just the other (equally cold) day, to yet another friend - let's call him Garnette - who is actually from Jamaica but not, to the best of my knowledge, a police detective or Eskimo:A-
Denzel Washington, the police chief Xavier Quinn, from The Mighty Quinn (1989). The general idea is mostly that he's chasing his childhood friend Maubee, who is accused of murder. Quinn considers his case with a lieutenant:
XAVIER: You think Maubee did it? Cut a man's head off?
JUMP: That fucker, he does that! That's why he's like that!
XAVIER: Try and make sense when you talk, Jump.
Denzel gets to do a vague West Indian accent, wear a white suit, and sing.
XAVIER: I had the blues
I had the blues so bad
It put my face in a permanent frown
But I'm feeling so much better, I could cakewalk into town . . .
and
I woke up
One morning
Felt so good I got back into bed
Put that big leg over me mama
I might not feel this good again . . .
Watch me cakewalk, y'all.
The black people in the movie sing "Quinn the Eskimo" at him a lot, and drink beer, and go to work; the white people in the movie lurk around being racists, attempt and fail to sleep with Denzel, and try to overthrow governments. Some of the black people try to sleep with Denzel, too, but that's neither here nor there. Overall it's a pretty accurate picture of the universe. There is no actual cakewalking, which, as I understand it, was a dance that took as the source of its name competitions held by slaveholders, with slices of hoecake as prizes for the best dancers.
A couple hundred people singing in an island juke joint sound like this:
Come all without,
Come all, within
You aint seen nothing like the Mighty Quinn.
No, actually, that's not what they sound like. So: We sincerely hope that clears up whatever mis-and-preconceptions you might have had about Alaska, and goes some way towards freeing your doubting mind/melting your cold cold heartsLabels: alex, country, geography, reggae, rock and roll, rockabilly, soul
posted by Alex
LINK |
Friday, August 10, 2007
BRAVE & STRONG
Sly and the Family Stone
There's a Riot Goin' On
Epic : 1971
[Buy it]
I'M NOT AFRAID TO DIE
Gillian Welch
Hell Among the Yearlings
Acony : 1998
[Buy it]
NOT AFRAID
Bizzy Bone
Alpha and Omega
Bungalo : 2004
[Buy it]
JEANNIE'S AFRAID OF THE DARK
Robbie Fulks
13 Hillbilly Giants
Bloodshot : 2001
[Buy it]
IS IT SCARY
Michael Jackson
Blood On The Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix
Sony : 1997
[Buy it]
THE FEAR
Pulp
This Is Hardcore
Island : 1998
[Buy it]
I was reading an article by Ron Paul recently, and that's the first time I have ever started a sentence like that. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. I might even do it again. I was reading an article by Ron Paul recently, and he was outlining his thoughts about fear:
While fear itself is not always the product of irrationality, once experienced it tends to lead away from reason, especially if the experience is extreme in duration or intensity. When people are fearful they tend to be willing to irrationally surrender their rights. As the end of these rather dense and prolix sentences--no political speechwriter would ever sign off on them, and that's part of their charm--he reveals the heart of his argument, which has to do with the way that fear can be used as a tool of political repression. Ron Paul's completely right about that, of course, and that's the first time I have ever started a sentence like that either. But if Ron Paul wasn't running for office, he'd be making a broader point, and a highly contentious one that that. Does fear lead away from reason, especially if the experience is extreme in duration or intensity, or does it lead to reason? Is fear irrational or is it the most rational aspect of humanity? I flipped a coin to find out. It landed on its edge.
Pop music is full of fear. Fear of Flying, Fear of a Black Planet, even Fear of Music. Songs that say they're about bravery, like Sly and the Family Stone's "Brave & Strong," are also about the absence of bravery:
Frightened faces to the wall
Can't you hear your mama call?
The brave and strong survive The big fear, of course, is the fear of death. This last week, it seemed to be everywhere. My wife has been planning her father's 85th birthday party, hoping that the Uninvited Guest doesn't show. A friend in her twenties was taken to the hospital, unexpectedly, for something that turned out to be nothing but had her family worried, briefly, that it might be everything. Another friend in her thirties told me, matter-of-factly, that she has been thinking of dying often. Or rather, she was thinking about dying once, often.
In all of these cases, I tried to kill off this fear of death. I told my wife that her father will be fine. I mean, who dies in their eighties? I sent cheery messages to my twentysomething friend. I told my thirtysomething friend that she can think of dying all she wants, so long as she's not afraid of it. "I'm not afraid of dying," I said, full of bluff. She said nothing. Her silence suggested that maybe claiming that you weren't afraid of death was in fact proof that you were afraid of death. It also suggested that the largest issues work by contraries. Silence just won't shut up sometimes. There are songs that also have something to say about this issue. In "I'm Not Afraid to Die," Gillian Welch finds solace in the inevitable:
Forget my sins upon the wind
My hobo soul will rise Bizzy Bone's "Not Afraid" takes a more nihilistic route to the same destination. So, two versions, one peaceful, one meaningless. What is there to fear? According to my thirtysomething friend, her fear involves being alone on her deathbed, with no company, no family, no solace. Oh, and caring about it, and not having any confidence that she'd go on to something better. That's bad.
It's strange that fear of death makes people feel so alone, because it's something shared by almost everyone. If you think thirty is young, what about "Jeannie's Afraid of the Dark," which Dolly Parton wrote and sang with Porter Wagoner on the 1968 duet album Just the Two Of Us. (The version here is a fairly faithful Robbie Fulks cover, though remaining fairly faithful involves preserving the almost unbearable five-hankie weepiness of the thing.) Jeannie's a little girl, afraid of the dark, and every night she runs to her parents' room so that she doesn't have to sleep alone. One day, her parents take her to the cemetery, and she makes a morbid (not to mention unhygienic) request -- that when she die she not be buried, because she won't be able to deal with the dark. Parents with kids this nervous should probably keep them away from the Paul Tillich books:
The first assertion about the nature of anxiety is this: anxiety is the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing. The same statement, in a shorter form, would read: anxiety is the existential awareness of nonbeing...It is not the realization of universal transitoriness, not even the experience of the death of others, but the impression of these events on the always latent awareness of our own having to die that produces anxiety. So how to deal with these anxieties? Well, one way, weirdly, is to feel fear -- fear, that is, of other things, things that don't involve annihilation. In fact, other fears are life-affirming, because they require being. So be afraid of snakes. Be afraid of clowns. Be afraid of ghosts. (That's why fear of the dark has a special status, I think -- it's easy to forget that you exist.)
The other night I did a reading at a bookstore in the city. Afterwards, at a bar, I was talking to another writer whose husband is a film scholar who specializes in horror movies. I was asking what counts as the minimum requirement for a horror movie, as opposed to a scary movie. Does someone have to die? Does more than half of the audience have to scream? Does the film have to be aware of the entertainment value of its own capacity for producing fear? "There are books written about that," she said. I went on, asking her if werewolf movies were all about masturbation and vampire movies all about sex (there are books written about that, too, as it turns out), but the basic question was the one that stuck. What makes something a horror movie rather than a scary movie?
I brought the question with me back to music. What's scary? Fantomas? Scott Walker? Nico? Is bleakness scary? Is Ice Cube scary? Is rage scary? Is truth scary? And if many of those artists have recorded scary songs, what's a horror song? I found two, I think: Michael Jackson's "Is It Scary," which is an unholier-than-Thriller piece of meta-horror in which he keeps testing your threshold for experiencing terror as entertainment, and Pulp's "The Fear," which does more or less the same thing, stacking misgivings like bricks in English bond. The effects in both songs are so outsized, so preposterous, that they shouldn't work at all, and yet both of them work scarily well at delivering their message. Existence may be terrible and scary, but it's life. it goes and goes again. And it has death beat by a mile:
Oh baby,
Here comes the fear again.
The end is near again.
A monkey's built a house on your back.
You can't get anyone to come in the sack
And here comes another panic attack
Oh here we go again. Labels: ben, country, rock, soul
posted by Ben
LINK |
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
GHOST IN MY HOUSE
Graham Parker
1986
Available on : Loose Monkeys
UpYours : 1999
[Buy It]
GONE
Ferlin Husky
1956
Available on : Greatest Hits
Curb : 1990
[Buy It]
MISS YOU SO
Lillian Offitt
1957
Available on : The Best of Excello Records
Excello : 1994
[Buy It]
HAVE YOU GONE
Mary Margaret O'Hara
Apartment Hunting
Outside : 2002
[Buy It]
MISSING YOU
Diana Ross
1984
Available on : The Definitive Collection
Motown : 2006
[Buy It]
PLANS I MAKE
Husker Du
New Day Rising
SST : 1985
[Buy It]
Recently I was vacationing with my family--my parents, my wife, my kids, nieces, nephews--and at the end of the first week, my wife, my younger son (he's three), and I left to come back to New York. My older son, who's six, stayed an extra week with my parents and his cousins. On the day we left, the three of us got onto a boat and waved at my older son, who was on the dock. "See you in seven days," he said, with a precision that betrayed his anxiety.
We came back to New York. For much of the next week, I went around the house in a fog. I had one kid there, but not both kids. The place was full of emptiness, haunted by it. I felt incompleted, and I tried to complete the picture. "So, are you homesick?" I said to my son when we spoke on the phone.
"Maybe a little," he said.
"Do you miss Brooklyn?"
"Yes." His voice wobbled slightly.
"Do you miss going to the park?"
"Yes." The wobbling increased.
At this point I was leading the witness. It wasn't that I wanted to break him down, exactly. But I did want to get a sense of what he was feeling about the separation. He's only six, of course, so I imagined that his feelings were more representative of some pure state, that he could admit them straightforwardly, without irony or defensiveness. Evidently I was wrong, because he recovered his composure. "Gotta go," he said. "There's a bat in the house."
During my son's week away, I had a number of other experiences of missing people, or maybe I was just tuned to that station. One friend of mine left for a long weekend in the Pacific Northwest with a friend of hers. They were having boring summers and thought that maybe the trip would reënergize them. Another old friend left to go abroad for the rest of the year. A third friend told me that he and his girlfriend were leaving New York for good. None of the departures was especially surprising. The friend in the first case always travels. The friend in the second case has spent a decent amount of her time out of the city--and some of that out of the country--for the last few years. The friend in the third case has discussed this move for the last six months. And yet, in every case, as soon as my friends told me about their trips, I began to miss them. It was difficult at first to understand why. For starters, it's not entirely appropriate to miss an adult friend. Or rather: you can miss anyone you want, but saying that you miss someone--or even acknowledging it to yourself--suggests a degree of emotional involvement that is, at least, sketchy. The world of pop music bears this out; the vast majority of songs about missing people are romantic songs. Take Graham Parker's excellent cover of R. Dean Taylor's "Ghost in My House," one of Motown's most durable rarities. There's a ghost in my house
The ghost of your memory
The ghost of the love you took from me
And it keeps haunting me
Keeps on reminding me For two lines, this is a generic song, human to human. The third line blows all that up. Let's try again, with Ferlin Husky:Since you've gone
The moon, the sun, the stars, and the sky
Know the reason why I cry
Love divine once was mine
Now you've gone For three lines, this might be platonic. I suppose you could be astronomically sad because your brother left Bakersfield. But it's not platonic. Lillian Offitt gets there even quicker, in the first word:Darling, how I miss you
Oh, darling how I miss you
You've been gone so long, baby, you done me wrong
I miss you. In all these cases, what's emphasized is powerlessness. The songs suggest that there is not only a separation, but an abandonment, that there is one party who has left, and another that has been left behind. This sentiment is broadly inapplicable to my situations: with my son, I was the only potential abandoner, and with my friends, no one abandoned anyone. Adults were just living their lives, a process that sometimes brings them closer together and sometimes takes them further apart. All these factors explained why I didn't say anything to my friends about anyone missing anyone else. "Have a good trip." That I said. "Fly safe." That I said. "I'm sure Texas will be great." That I said.
But then, left to my own devices, I thought about this situation and the other, wondered at the weight of a departure. During my son's week away, I looked in his room, looked at his toys and books, spent time imagining the moment when he'd return. If anything, it served to remind me how much I enjoy him when he's around. As for my friends, we'll continue to email during their time away, I'm sure, and since in at least two of these cases we don't see each other so often these days even when we're in the same city, I don't know why it makes any difference that they're in another city or on another continent. And yet, it makes a huge difference. In at least one of the cases, the sense of being without was almost physical at first, more than a twinge if not quite an ache. I think maybe Mary Margaret O'Hara, mostly writing one of her singularly weird love songs, catches a piece of it.I have no one to be anymore
You have no one to be anymore When someone is nearby, in matter or in mind, you come to depend on that other person's presence to know that you are present. When they go, a piece of you may go with them. Identity, a fragile thing, cannot always endure the sudden shifts. And while with a child there is ultimate control--I can tell my son when to come home, and in fact he depends upon that order--with another adult there is an ultimate absence of control. In "Missing You," which Diana Ross recorded as a tribute to Marvin Gaye after his death, this is very clear. Written by Lionel Richie and based on conversations Richie had with Ross about Gaye, it plays like a straightforward lovelorn song:Since you've been away
I've been down and lonely
Since you've been away
I've been thinking of you
Trying to understand
The reason you left me
What were you going through? Most lost-love songs at least hold out the faint hope of reunion. That's not the case here, even though the lyric won't admit it. There's a false optimism, both in the writing and in the lightness of the vocals, and this gives the song its bottomless sadness and a certain creepy beauty. It's a song of deep denial, more so than, say, "Wish You Were Here." And it's easy to understand why. People can walk toward you or away from you any time they want. They can come and they can go at will--at their will. But the person who goes always has more power than the one who remains, whether it's in friendship, in love, or in death. Movement is less sad than the observation of motion.
Toward the end of the week my son was away, I was watching TV. He's home now. It's been great. We took a long bike ride together. Movement is less sad than the observation of motion. Anyway, on TV, a man was leaving on a trip. A woman--maybe she was a girlfriend, maybe just a friend--took him to the airport. She dropped him off. She pulled away. She had to drive fast to escape the sense of being left behind.Labels: ben, country, rock, soul
posted by Ben
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Thursday, June 14, 2007
THE LAST LETTER
Hank Snow
1951
Available on : The Thesaurus Transcriptions
Bear Family : 1991
[Buy It]
LETTERS DON'T COUNT
The Nazz
Nazz Nazz
Screen Gems Columbia : 1969
[Buy It]
YOUR PICTURE SAYS REMEMBER, THO' YOUR LETTER SAYS FORGET
Frederic Rose
1908
Edison Gold Moulded Record
I used to send lots of letters. In college, I had a girlfriend who was at another college, and sometimes each of us would send three or four of them a day. We had no Internet then and we scooped food from stone bowls with our hands.
As soon as email came along, though, things really took off. The problem wasn't sending messages. It was finding someone who was willing to get those messages and give the same back at a clip. The problem was finding someone who corresponded to you.
It might seem that I'm writing about love letters. I'm not, although that's also a worthy topic for a post. It would include Hank Snow, and his eloquent, bitter, all-too-forthright communiqué that doesn't--as the last line tells us--hit its mark. It would include the Nazz, who turn a typically dopey Rundgren pun into a typically beautiful piece of Rundgren pop that goes nuts at the end with its aggressive backing vocals. It would include Frederic Rose, in 1908, warbling out a B-list song with a Grade-A title. It would not include Richard Thompson's "Tear Stained Letter," which, though fine, contains the lyric "The scars ain't never gonna mend in a hurry." (How can something "never mend in a hurry"? Isn't it either/or? He's better than that.)
I'm writing, I think, about songs about messages. Not message songs, like "For What It's Worth" or "Fortunate Son" or "(We Gotta) Bust Outta The Ghetto" or "1 Million Bottlebags," but songs about the equivocal process of trying to reach out and communicate with another person. And though there are probably a million places to start, there's really only one place to start.
I'VE GOTTA GET A MESSAGE TO YOU
The Bee Gees
Idea
Polydor : 1968
[Buy It]
GOT TO GET A MESSAGE TO YOU
Swamp Dogg
1970
Available on : Total Destruction to Your Mind/Rat On
Charly : 1991
[Buy It]
I GOTTA GET A MESSAGE TO YOU
Tim Rose
1970
Available on : Tim Rose/Love: A Kind of Hate Story
RPM : 2000
[Buy It]
I should start by saying that this song has a story. The main character is condemned to die, and he's desperate to tell his wife that he's sorry and that he loves her. We know this because Robin Gibb has said that's what the song is about, and he co-wrote it. This Death-Row-What-A-Brother-Gibb-Know plotline, though, is among the worst things about the song. For starters, it results in some laughably bad lyrics, which sometimes happens with the Gibbs.It's only her love that keeps me wearing this dirt. I like to think of it as something more epistolary and epistemological, a song about the urgency and imprecision of communication. Partly because this is because I have already seen "The Green Mile." Partly it's because there is something interesting about the syntax. The man in the song is not saying "I've got to get a message to her." He's saying "to you." This seems to be an internal monologue; he's talking to that part of her that is alive inside of him. The alternative is paradoxical. If his wife hears the song, or any part of it, then she has in fact received a message from him. In that case, he might as well say what he wants to say instead of just saying that he has a message. It's like sending a telegram that says, "I am trying to send you a telegram." And given his precarious state, even if she hears the song, she is certainly hearing it after his execution. There's an issue here not only of the man's death, but of his death as an author. I'm not saying that my logic is flawless, only that the song's logic is flawed.
So why is it so hard to get a message to, or through? Why is it so difficult to be heard, let alone understood? One of the problems is that most forms of expression are insufficient. There's the famous Flaubert passage in which he derides the impotence of language ("Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity"). I'm not sure that it's the bears that are dancing. I'd argue that just as often, it's the messenger -- people are afraid to say the things they mean to say, and so they hem, and they haw, and that's how more language gets born. This isn't to suggest that all writing is evasion, but most works would be shorter if the speeches, and the speech, were more direct. That kind of directness might result from an upjut of bravery, from painful impatience, or from another kind of urgency -- like, say, imminent execution, though we've already seen how circuitous a condemned man can be. If I always had to say just what I meant, things would be...well, different. There would be a little more lust, a little more anger, and fewer jokes. Much of what I'd say would involve my asking people to say things back to me: any things, really, just a conversation (with words, gestures, touch, whatever) so that I know I'm not dead. If I rewrote the Bee Gees' lyrics, they'd go like this:I've just gotta get a message to you
Which is that you've gotta get a message to me. No worse than Robin.
Of the three versions here, my tastes lean toward the Swamp Dogg cover, which is sung with a kind of abject ecstacy, and away from the original - chamber pop, no matter how tremulous, doesn't strike me as a particularly lonely genre. (Tim Rose, on the other hand, does. Rose, of course, was one of those semi-obscure Greenwich Village folk-rockers--the third Tim, behind Buckley and Hardin - and a King of Almosts. He almost had a hit with his slow arrangement of "Hey Joe," which inspired the monster hit by Jimi Hendrix. He almost recorded the headlong version of "With a Little Help From My Friends" that went to Joe Cocker instead. He almost replaced Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones. His life of ups and downs, marked by bouts of alcoholism, ended during a late-career comeback in 2002.)
It's fitting to end with a message song about the importance of messages.
COMMUNICATION
Bobby Womack
Communication
United Artists : 1972
[Buy It]Labels: ben, country, funk, oldies, power-pop, soul
posted by Ben
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Thursday, May 24, 2007
PARTY GIRL
Charlie Rich
The Complete Smash Sessions
Polygram : 1992
[Buy It]
Our friends at Minnesota Public Radio are putting together a segment on campaign songs, so MW & MPR are forming like organized crime to pose the au courant musical question: What campaign songs should America's most enterprising and indefatigable candidates adopt?
BAM BAM
Toots & The Maytals
Monkey Man
Berverly's : 1970
[Buy It]? UTAH MORMON BLUES
Phil Pavey
Available on: Jazzin' the Blues vol. 4 : 1929-1943
Document : 2000
[Buy It]? Readers of Moistworks - good news. We're opening the floor up to you! What do you think? We mean, really? We're interested. And, for once, we're talking big news: Obama, and McCain. Romney, Clinton, Edwards, and Hero Mayor Rudy G. - Important stuff!
OMG WTF LOL, right? But for serious - you're our BFF! So let us know, in the comments below. Ground rules?Surprise Us: TAKE ON ME [DEMO]
A-ha
[Unreleased]& Make Us Love You: NOBODY
Larry Williams and Johnny Watson with the Kaleidoscope
Okeh : 1967
Courtesy of [the newish & wonderful audioblog]: Office NapsTell The Truth, But Eschew The Obvious - RUN ON FOR A LONG TIME
Bill Landford & The Landfordaires
Columbia : 1949
Available on: There Will Be No Sweeter Sound : The Columbia/OKeh Post War Gospel Story 1947-1962
Legacy : 1998
[Buy It]& Off Point: BRENDA AND EDDIE
Billy Joel
Live : somewhere& Omit Those Words That You Find To Be Needless: ONCE
The Feelings
Dearling Darling
Darla Records : 1990
[Buy It]
Bonus points for riffing off something whichever candidate you're on about said, or did, within the past few news cycles - we paying enough attention to you to know you're paying attention to that sort of thing so: we'll post the best songs next week, and who knows - you might even end up famous here or on the radio! Either way, any idiot with with a suitcase nuke can tell you that the fate of this free world we're building rests squarely and securely on your shoulders.
NB: Speaking of same, Moistworks' Astoria Bureau would like to take this opportunity to endorse Mitt Romney - who believe you us, the last thing we want is to see our friends and readers committing Sodomites and catching GommorrheaLabels: alex, country, gospel music, indie, pop, radio, reggae, soul
posted by Alex
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Tuesday, September 06, 2005
SHEET METAL WORKERS
Brighter Than Life
Wharton Tiers Ensemble
Atavistic Records : 1997
[Buy It]
NINE TO FIVE
Nine to Five and Odd Jobs
Dolly Parton
RCA : 1980
[Buy It]
WORK
originally from No Matter How Long the Line Is at the Cafeteria, There's Always a Seat!
Big Boys
Enigma : 1985
[Buy It]
I AM A SCIENTIST
Guided By Voices
Bee Thousand
Scat Records : 1994
[Buy It]
It's a hard time in America, a lot is unknown. But for us lucky ones with dry homes, one thing is as sure as death and taxes this week. Back to school. Back to work. Even if you have nothing to do with school, or even if you've had very little vacation this summer, your job has probably gotten just a bit more or a whole lot more busy and pressured today. If you're like me, getting to sleep last night was hard. Typical Sunday night blues/insomnia times a million.
My most alternately lovely and painful memory of this time is the purple Caldor corduroys and heart-patterned turtleneck outfit I desperately wanted to wear for the first day of school. Even though it was doubtless still eighty degrees in early-September Massachusetts, I wore that shit, sweated it out, loaded down with a new backpack filled with a shiny plastic-covered Velcro-closing notebook (if anyone remembers the brand name, let me know; it's driving me crazy that I can't remember), and new Erasermate pens (what happened to that whole erasable ink idea, anyway?). I hated school, but there was always a little bit of hope each year, that this grade would be better than the last.
Now it's just all about work. Those people I've been exchanging emails with saying "after Labor Day," those phone messages I've been neglecting to return, it'll all come home to roost this week. No more pretending to be in the Hamptons or Croatia. No more free Tuesday evenings (therapy!).
So. Songs about work. Get to it friends, make your country and your parents proud. I counted (and believe me, I included Columbus Day, Veteran's Day, and Thanksgiving): it's only 75 work/school days till Christmas vacation.
P.S. I was looking for a Tuesday work song, googled "tuesday song," came up with this.Labels: country, holidays, indie, joanna, punk
posted by Joanna
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Wednesday, August 17, 2005
I MAY HATE MYSELF IN THE MORNING
Lee Ann Womack
Single
MCA Nashville : 2004
[Buy It]
Okay, so Brian posted a new country song yesterday and apologized for it. I'm going to skip past saying I'm sorry and get to the fact that this is the best booty-calling-an-ex song I've ever heard. I wish I could say I stumbled upon it myself, but no, another guy: Adrian Dannatt an Englishman I work with. He's a sometimes art critic, sometimes writer of obituaries and fiction, and has the best appreciation for truly American music of anyone I know. He's bad with computers and is incredibly cheap, so he occasionally comes into the office saying, "Can you do that thing you do with the music? We must hear this song." And this was one of them. I could do a whole series of Adrian requests, but for now, listen to Lee Ann. And then go get laid. You know the number.Labels: country, joanna
posted by Joanna
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Tuesday, July 26, 2005
OUTDOOR MINER
Wire
Chairs Missing
Harvest : 1978
[Buy It]
THEY DON'T KNOW ABOUT US
Tracey Ullman
You Broke My Heart in 17 Places
Repertoire : 1983
[Buy It]
HOLOCAUST
Big Star
Third/Sister Lovers
PVC : 1978
[Buy It]
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
Dolly Parton
Jolene
RCA : 1974
[Buy It]
I have been jumping up and down for months about the epidemic of New Yorkers shutting out of the sounds of the city, people not moving out of your way because they can't hear "excuse me," the ubiquitous white cord. This perfectly fit in with the other thing I like to jump up and down about: the uselessness of the generation behind me, the twentysomethings (except Brian Howe) who seem to not really be working or doing much of anything but shopping and fiddling with electronic items. I have worked since I was nine. Paper routes! Babysitting! Walgreen's! Never mind the fact that in MY twenties my friends and I began our path toward total world domination. What have these people been doing?
I had a Walkman. Walkwoman. I rode the bus with Wire and New Order. Later I skied to Mountain Song. I'm a great skier. The only sport I'm actually good at, aside from swimming, which always seemed less a sport and more something you do in order to enjoy the water and not die. Fucking hell, I took that far. I was a lifeguard. Never for oceans, I wasn't strong enough, but for pools and lakes. I saved small children by reaching out a hand. Adults by saying "stand up (the water is three feet deep)."
I love computers, I love Macs. And when they came out I was fully supportive of the endeavor. I even sort of wanted one. I just didn't have the money. And as it evolved I even went through the entire thought process about the amount of memory on the regular one versus the Mini and how stupid Mac was that the Minis were the cute ones in colors and for a feminine but tech-oriented person like me it was all just a huge conflict that left me feeling broke and tired. Color against space. This time around, I wanted a Shuffle. It's tiny, I'll wear it at the gym. But then it has no screen and hardly holds any songs and if you're going to spend $100 you might as well spend $200. Really? I think that's still twice as much.
But then the real rationalizations began. I'm feeling sad. Music makes me happy. Getting rid of my anti-iPod feelings will alleviate some of my day-to-day stress. I live in Williamsburg. It's a lot of work getting mad at the kids all day. I can use it in the car. I can use it for work to record interviews. Though I publish fiction and poetry and have never done an interview in my life. But the musician interviews I start doing for moistworks will take me places I've never dreamed of and of course pay back the $259 in minutes. I am on my way to becoming a new person, and there is only ONE WAY for the new Joanna to even begin to emerge.
YES! Please, yes, yes. A pink one.
I tried it this morning on my way to work, listening to Dolly Parton and Big Star. I was getting into it a little, making sure not to sing aloud. A woman across from me had hers on. She was about five years older than me, a little frumpy, but nice looking. She smiled. Women smile at me all the time. I smile back. It's something we do. Either about an outfit or shoes or good hair or just, "you look like a nice person." This woman may have been doing any of those things, yet all I could think was, she's smiling out of iCamaraderie, something I am in no way ready to participate in. I gently removed the buds and pulled out a magazine, making sure to make another eye-smile at her. There was no need for hostility.
-by Joanna YasLabels: country, indie, ipod, joanna, pop
posted by Alex
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