Discography - Week 6

It's very cool that we're already in Week 6 of our Discography discussion, and we already have songs lined up for weeks to come.  I'm excited that my great friend, titular little sister and most excellent travelling companion Cyndi Brandenburg joined us this week - and I like her selection quite a bit.  Great commentary this week, and I especially like Miranda's point about how we are influenced by what we experienced first as compared to what was produced first chronologically, which really gets out the intensely personal and subjective nature of music.

Gary Beatrice

Outkast, Hey Ya

I was delighted by our group submitting two Nirvana covers in the same week. For one thing, I didn't know two Nirvana covers existed.

Nirvana was always a touchstone for me. I had always prided myself as somebody who had a firm grasp at what was going on in popular music, both on the charts and around the edges where the cool folks flourished. I even fancied myself as somebody who gravitated towards music a bit before it became popular and introduced it to others. And I loved the occasions when it felt like everybody who was anybody was listening to something really cool and we all listened together. But when Curt Cobain shot himself, besides grieving the obvious heartbreaking loss of his life and talent, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was old, at least at it applied to music. I would never again have an appreciation for much on the charts. I wouldn't have any idea what the cool people listened to, and if I heard popular music, chances are I had no interest in it.

But for one glorious summer it happened again. Everybody who had any serious interest in music was jamming to OutKast and their hits The Way You Move, Roses, and my personal favorite Hey Ya. I can't claim that I discovered them or introduced them to anybody, and as a rap act I am embarrassed to say I wouldn't even have given OutKast a listen if Hey Ya weren't so instantly damn catchy. But my dear Lord what a soulful, funky fun slice of pop heaven.

Cyndi Brandenburg

Cowboy Junkies, Musical Key 

I have been thinking a lot about this whole “motherhood” thing lately.  Eighteen years ago when Sarah and Maria were born, we had no clue what we were doing, but I was pretty determined to figure it out and get it right.  Such high stakes, so much God-awful responsibility--yet deep down, I always suspected that contrary to popular belief, I was pretty powerless in terms of making much of a difference.  In the end, we just live every day the best we can, cross our fingers, and hope it all works out for the best.  When my daughters were barely toddlers, before Joey was born, I would often spend our long hours home alone by doing the one thing that seemed to soothe us all.  I’d play CDs, take turns holding them, and sway to the sounds.  Certain songs became staples, and “Musical Key” by the Cowboy Junkies is oddly one of the ones that I remember most.  The only song on the Lay It Down album co-written by Michael Timmins and Margo Timmons, it’s actually rather monotonous, with a permeating soulful melancholy that mirrors the often lonely boredom of everyday life, despite being an homage to a strong supportive family.   Being a mom gives me great joy, but it also comes with a dose of sadness and loss that I am not sure I can fully describe or explain.  In retrospect, one thing I have come to realize is that the monotonous day-in and day-out blur of life really is what ends up mattering the most.  

Gary Scudder

Buddy Guy, Done Got Old

This selection, much like this song, is somewhere between self-pitying and ironic.  It is a song off the extraordinary Buddy Guy album Sweet Tea.  In the song Guy is lamenting the things he can no longer do, but at the same time he fills the entire album with incendiary guitar work that puts the efforts of much younger musicians to shame.  A decade ago I played the entire CD for my son as we were travelling cross-country and he could not begin to believe that it was recorded by a man in his 70s.  Over the last year I've noticed how I'm increasingly being treated as an out of touch, if not outright embarrassing, remnant of a past age, the intellectual equivalent of a vestigial limb.  The thing is, it's not my students (who are actually oddly appreciative of my desire to make them read the Ramayana or to watch Swan Lake) or administrators (who can never quite reconcile my passion/petulance with their desire for untroubled calm), but rather my much younger colleagues who wish that I would simply go away.

Miranda Tavares

Social Distortion, Story of My Life 

As most of you are aware, I am the youngest member of this most amazing ongoing discussion. I say that to put this pick in perspective. Social D is the equivalent of The Clash for me. Yes, I understand The Clash was first, and was a major influence for Social D. But I was born in 1980, and I believe people are generally influenced by what they experienced first, not what occurred first chronologically. As criminal as it may seem, I was obsessing over Mike Ness before I knew there was a Joe Strummer. I knew all the words to Ball and Chain before I even heard Train in Vain. Social D defined my sense of self during my formative years. 

This pick is more about the band than the particular song. I was raised on Springsteen and The Beatles, exposed to the one hit wonder-type top 40 music of the '80s, then bombarded with the crap that was early '90's (Wilson Phillips, Milli Vanilli, New Kids on the Block) and I was starving for something meaningful, and something mine. I was a white, suburban, northern female brainwashed by MTV coming of age in the 1990's. Social D was my destiny.

In my view, the 1990's offered two options for a vaguely angst-filled teen bucking the mainstream: punk and grunge. Nirvana was integral. It captured the anger and confusion of growing up, questioning the reality presented to us, throwing away the norms. All of those feelings were inside me, but...I was a suburban kid. I had an ok life. Things were only as dramatic as I made them. Nirvana expressed things with a strength that I really did not feel. Social Distortion filled the void. They embodied the mundane sadness, dissatisfaction and banality that was the epitome of teenage life in middle america at that time. 

I picked Story of my Life because it is representative of what Social D means to me. It's catchy. Pop-py. Simple. But... there's an edge. In Ness's matter-of-fact vocals, in the meandering rhythm guitar, in the drum beat that is somehow a touch faster than the laid-back tone of the song would seem to warrant, there's an undercurrent of someone who might break. It's not imminent or anything, but it's there. And, really, when you cut it all dawn to the quick, that's the story of anyone's life.

Nate Bell

Concrete Blonde,  Bloodletting 

For a change of pace, I am NOT picking a song with great symbolic depth or meaning, and also one that is not numbingly depressing commentary on the travails of the human plight.  So. Vampires...

Concrete Blonde (who, contrary to some opinions expressed previously--NOT a one-hit wonder) wrote this little ditty that is so perfectly 90's.  It's self involved, attempts to be introspective and deep (it's not), and edges into the quickly developing "goth" sensibilities of the time.  Yes, it's "moody" and about vampires.  Specifically, it's a very obvious homage to Anne Rice's first (best?) vampire book--Interview with the Vampire.  It is catchy, slightly hair-band metal in sound, with a dour mood, but at the same time fast tempo and strident in its vocals and screeching guitar.  It tries so hard to capture so much, but in the end, it's a catchy 90's pop song that just sits just inside one of the well-defined musical margins.  I actually like this song, despite the way I describe it, and the combination makes it quite fun, with a faux-ominous tone and a few very nice images in the lyrics.  Every time I stumble across it again, I can't stop singing the chorus, it's very infectious--though it has never made me want to dress in black and wear eye makeup:

I've got the ways and means

to New Orleans

I'm going down by the river where it's warm and green

I'm gonna have a drink, and walk around

I have a lot to think about...

add a nice little walking guitar riff, and it makes for a very enjoyable listen.  

Dave Kelley

The Hold Steady, Sequestered in Memphis 

Lineup changes have greatly reduced the quality of music being made by The Hold Steady, but damn, when they were good they were great.  By far my favorite record of theirs is "Stay Positive."  My selection this week is off that record.  It is just a fun fantastic rock song about a one night stand gone horribly wrong.

"It started when we were dancing.
It got heavy when we got to the bathroom.
We didn't go back to her place
We went to some place where she cat sits
She said I know I look tired
but everything is fried here in Memphis

In bar light, she looked alright
In daylight,she looked desperate
That's alright, I was desperate too.

Subpoenaed in Texas, sequestered in Memphis

The song features strong work on guitar and piano and impassioned yet humorous vocals. Dave Wallace introduced me to The Hold Steady. Several minutes into the first show I saw,I was hooked.  The love they had for what they were doing was evident.  Pick up Stay Positive.  It will make you happier than a fat kid with a bag of donuts.

One of my favorite comedic riffs in the movie Clerks is when Dante repeats "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" every time another bad thing happens at the convenience store where he works.  In a similar vein, the singer in my week six selection repeats the line "I just came here on business" in a plaintive fashion as the song ends.  True that, but you follow one questionable piece of ass to the house where she cat sits, and you are "subpoenaed in Texas, sequestered in Memphis." 

Dave Mills

Flobots, Handlebars

OK, I got myself started down the path of nerdy hip-hop with last week's entry (a long and winding rabbit hole, for sure). I used to use this song in my classes, to introduce discussions of the Scientific Revolution, Renaissance, Modern Philosophy, etc. It unpacks the ways in which the good basic human impulses to be self-sufficient and autonomous, to take risks, to push boundaries, etc. can lead to disasters. In much the same way, the impulse that motivates scientific discovery and philosophical innovation, while engendering much good in the world, can also create monsters. OK, lecture over. It's also just a catchy song, and includes a violin and a trumpet, which is cool. The youtube video is the band's own indie music video for the song. Later, after they signed a record deal, the label produced a new video for the song. I prefer the band's original vision, but if you want to see the label's version, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/HLUX0y4EptA

Dave Wallace

Warren Zevon, French Inhaler 

Warren Zevon's self-titled debut is essentially a perfect album.  A brutal look at the seedy underside of Los Angeles, there's not a bad song on the album, and a number of them are classics (Poor Poor Pitiful Me, Hasten Down the Wind, Mohammed's Radio, Carmelita, Desperados Under the Eaves).  Yet this song, one of the lesser-known cuts on the album, usually impacts me the most.  I always thought that it was about a relationship between the narrator and a prostitute but, according to Warren Zevon Wiki, Zevon actually wrote it as an angry kiss-off to an ex-girlfriend.  (I like my version better.)  Lonely, self-loathing, and wasted, both narrator and paramour are lost by the song's end.

You said you were an actress

Yes, I believe you are

I thought you'd be a star

So I drank up all the money,

Yes, I drank up all the money,

With these phonies in this Hollywood bar,

These friends of mine in this Hollywood bar

Loneliness and frustration

We both came down with an acute case

And when the lights came up at two

I caught a glimpse of you

And your face looked like something

Death brought with him in his suitcase

Your pretty face

It looked so wasted

Another pretty face

Devastated