Discography - Week 13

This is Week 13 in the Discography discussion, and even my clumsy Hoosier quantitative literacy skills informs me that we're already a fourth of the way through our year's adventure.  Great choices this week, per usual.  I really like Bob's reflections on Christ Knight.

Gary Beatrice

Tom Waits, Picture in a Frame


I am a sucker for a great love song, a song that unapologetically exposes the character's passion  in no uncertain terms. When the love song is sung by one of popular music's most unique vocalists, Tom Waits, who at times sings with naked, raw emotion, the results are transcendent.

Frankly, Picture In A Frame, is an incredibly simple song with only a few lyrics, but as you'd expect from Waits, those few lyrics present love in a unique but universally understandable way. The character takes the brazen step of framing the photo of his love interest and suddenly the world is different. The world is better, even the sunrise has changed.

I simply can't listen to this song without responding emotionally.

Dave Wallace

Steve Wynn, There Will Come a Day

Wynn's had a very interesting career going back to Dream Syndicate, and I'm always surprised that more people don't know about him.  He has a number of terrific albums, both as a solo artist and with various side projects.  This revenge fantasy is one of his best.  I'm a little embarrassed by how often I have related to the sentiments in this song but, hey!, it's cathartic. With a catchy chorus masking the ugliness of the underlying emotions, he unapologetically wishes pain and pestilence on "all who have done me wrong,"  Wynn allows us to wallow in a feeling that we've probably all shared at one time or another.  

Miranda Tavares

ZZ Top, Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell

I am not a ZZ Top fan, but this song is pretty incredible. It's a fairly typical blues song as far as lyrics go: his baby left him for another man. Read the lyrics and it sounds as though the singer is mourning his loss. And this song is mournful, don't get me wrong. But the slow and deliberate guitar, the gentle drum beat, the murmuring bass - those come together in this song like a gentle, cleansing rain. I never feel sad listening to this song; I feel...tranquil. There is a lot of movement inherent in the melody, as though you are on a river flowing away from the source of your heartbreak, your loss, whatever ails you. Despite the title, despite the lyrics, the music feels like this song is about being at peace with the past, and allowing yourself to move on. 

Nate Bell

Good Size, The Pineapple Song

Just returning from a subtropical vacation, and I can't think of a better song than the pineapple song.  I can't say anything profound about the musical complexity or the arrangement, but I love this song.  It is impossible to hear it and not "move your waistline", even if you are no longer sure where your waistline is.  I also like the idea that pineapple wine can cure a broke leg, a broke back, or migraines.  I have yet to locate this magic vintage, but in the meantime, the song itself has this middle aged white guy with no Latin blood grooving and chair dancing whenever I hear it.  If someone locates the pineapple wine, call up the group and it's sure to be a dance party (albeit a sad and possibly rhythmically challenged one).  Turn round and let me see yas!

Cyndi Brandenburg

Lucinda Williams, Hot Blood

Earlier this week, as I cleaned out my car, I stumbled across the Sweet Old World CD that Gary Scudder lent me three years ago just as he was heading off to the Middle East.  Before then, I never really listened to much Lucinda Williams, but somehow he knew this particular album would resonate with me a lot.  Since then, I have definitely become a fan.

There are so many good songs to choose from, but given the blood-boiling heat of the past week, this one seemed most appropriate. I love cold-weather. So when the temperatures rise and summer hits, I just do what I can to make it through.  This song, best listened to when covered with an uncomfortable layer of sticky sweat, clearly belongs on my list of coping mechanisms.  What I like about it most is how her lyrics capture the super evocative moments hidden within the mundane routines of everyday life, with both an authentic passion and an ironic sense of humor.  It's not the words in and of themselves, but the way she sings them that makes this song so great.  "Well I saw you in the grocery store buying tomatoes for a casserole...."  Seriously? How could anyone listen to her sing that line and not smile, suddenly convinced that the supermarket produce aisle may in fact be one of the hottest places on earth?

I had actually forgotten about this song until rather recently. I was having a conversation about music with Scudder (who else) and my beloved office mate Kelly.  Ever the instigator, he suggested we listen to Hot Blood.   Suddenly, our mundane office space became the site of a surprisingly evocative moment and I felt extra happy for the rest of the day.  That Lucinda--she just gets it.  Sometimes it's best to get out of our heads and admit to all the good stuff we actually feel (comfortable or not). There is no need to put overly romantic place constraints or any age-related expiration dates on that.

(By the way, Gary actually lent me two CDs three years ago; the second one was Kathleen Edwards’ Back to Me, and I’m now a fan of hers too. Thanks, Scudder, for having such a positive influence on my life in so many ways.  Now, if I could just convince you to eat more kale….)

Bob Craigmile

Chris Knight - the thinking man’s hillbilly

You may not know of him; he’s from my neck of the woods, a town called Slaughters, KY.  He went to college and became a mine inspector for a while, but he heard too much Steve Earle and picked up a guitar and recorded some demos.  

Knight writes about the comfort and despair of small town life:

“I grew up near what they call the flats

Ain't too many people knows where it’s at

Can’t hear the highway can’t see a way out

I guarantee it ain't nothin' worth cryin' about.

Daddy left us all back in 91

Left us wondering what it was we’d done.

I’d stand in the yard and stare down the road

I guess I must have missed how I just don't know”

--Heart of Stone

I have family who live this lifestyle in the hills of Southeastern Indiana.  They don’t have a lot of options but aren’t necessarily miserable.

“I got the Honda 125 runnin’

Took the back roads to the store.

About 35 degrees but it sure feels good

Not to be walkin’ anymore.

I got some milk and bread and baloney;

Some Little Debbies and some Mountain Dew.

One of these days when I ain’t got the groceries,

I’m gonna see what this thing’ll do.”

--LittleVictories

Family dramas fill his mind:

Well I got drunk with daddy just the other night

He said "he was glad to see I turned out alright"

I hear people sayin' "like father like son"

Don't think about it much but I worry bout it some”

--Heart of Stone

Shit.  Nailed it.  So what can a poor boy do?  

Well I work for the city in the town where I grew up.

Some days I run a backhoe some days I run a dump.

If I had other plans on my graduation day,

Then several years ago I guess I hauled ‘em all away.

Yeah I hauled ‘em all away.

…

But I’m thankful for the things I have,

And all the things I don’t.

And I’ve got dreams that will come true,

I got some that won’t.

Most the time I just walk the line, wherever it goes

‘Cuz you can’t hang yourself if you ain’t got enough rope.

--Enough Rope

Knight gets me thinking about chance and plans and life’s tough realities, which could have been tougher.  I got somewhat lucky in fleeing my hometown since I never fit in there.  But there is a price to be paid for such choices.  In 1981 I was offered a job at the local post office. I could have retired five years ago.  Maybe I’d be less happy, maybe more.  It’s moot now.  The more we go on the more wistful we get.  Visiting “home” just makes it worse.

“I built a fire up on the hill; I sat in the woods and drank my fill

Talked to God all night, took another shot at setting me right

Then I just walked away, ain’t nothin here I want to remember anyway

Least not today”

“I’d go back but I can’t go home.”

-Rural Route.

The scene in the movie Magnolia continues to haunt me.  “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us”.  I guess if it was there wouldn’t be any art.

Dave Mills

The Kinks, This Time Tomorrow 

In honor of the fact that my daughter just this morning boarded a plane bound for India, where she'll be traveling for the next three weeks, I've selected a 1970 track from The Kinks which was included on the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. My daughter is currently "on a spaceship somewhere sailing across an empty sea" on the way to Mumbai. After a semester abroad in Spain, another three weeks backpacking across Europe this summer, and now her trip to India, I think she can definitely say, along with the lyrics to this song, "seven miles below me I can see the world and it ain't so big at all." Globe-trotting Scudder knows well the ways in which global travel can change us, and I've been able to watch some of those changes take root in my daughter this summer. As I do so, I also wonder what the hell I was doing with my life when I was her age.

Dave Kelley

My Morning Jacket , One Big Holiday

I love a lot of the music that My Morning Jacket makes, and I appreciate the diverse styles in which they work even though I don't like everything that they do.  Unlike most of my favorite artists, I generally have no idea and no interest in what the lyrics are.  I also find them to be better live than on record which to me is more praise than criticism.  All of the band members can play the hell out of their instruments, and Jim James is especially frenetic and weirdly charismatic on stage.  Since it is much more difficult to write about the sounds of music than the lyrics, I won't say too much more.  (Severe travel fatigue also has something to do with it.)

Attached is a live performance of the song from the David Letterman Show.  He was a huge fan and had MMJ appear on one of his last shows.  From the Candy's Room like cymbals at the beginning of the song through the frenetic climax, I just love everything about One Big Holiday.

Gary Scudder

Ryan Adams, This House is Not for Sale

I think every period of your life has an official song, and for my 50s it's This House is Not for Sale.  First off, I think it's just a fantastic song, with a great guitar riff and some insightful lyrics, and it seems like it's been on a constant loop on my iPod for years now.  However, in this case the reason why this has become this decade's song for me is that I think it's a song about refusing to surrender.  The house is not for sale, and you're trying to remember how you got to this point.  In many ways I've lived more in the half-decade after I turned fifty than I did in the previous five decades put together, and it's mainly because I just refuse to give in (although, as my good friends know, it also means that I will not age gracefully, and not simply because I look so damn old).  I think that Love is Hell is a great rock album.