Discography - Week 19

The summer draws to a close and the school year begins, which to a goodly number of us is our de facto New Year.  I've often thought that one of the reasons why the actual New Year's Eve has meant so little to me is that I've never been out of a school environment, so that end of the year elegiac reflection period always falls in late August.  There are some wonderful songs and compelling commentaries this week, and all I'm going to say is that I think Miranda is in the wrong line of work.  I think our unofficial theme this week is pain.

Gary Beatrice

James Brown, Sex Machine

Any serious music fan recognizes James Brown's brilliance and his influence. I can't imagine what soul or R&B would sound like without Brown, and his influence on rap and hip hop is obvious by the frequency in which his music is sampled. People my age who were young adults when Prince and Michael Jackson were dominating the air waves, surely recognized that JB not only influenced the two of them musically but visually as well.

James Brown is not underrated by any means. But I find it odd that people don't play his music today.

To my ears the best of his studio recordings aren't dated in the least and still sound phenomenal. Songs like Sex Machine would fit right into urban, classic rock, and even roots/NPR formats. I suspect that Brown is remembered as such a visual musician that his studio recordings are roundly ignored or forgotten, which is why I intentionally included a non-video You Tube clip of this song. You can't possibly listen to this without seriously elevating your mood. And you only need your ears although I suspect your entire body will react.

Dave Wallace

Van Morrison, St. Dominic's Preview

Has anyone ever had a better run than Van Morrison in the late 60s/early 70s?  Astral Weeks, Moondance, His Band and the Street Choir, Tupelo Honey, and St. Dominic's Preview.  Wow!  Just one great album after another.  I'm not sure that the title track for that last album is his best song from that run, but it's my favorite.  And I'm not sure that I can even say why.  The lyrics are vague, but there's something about the searching, questing nature of the song that has always spoken to me.  I find the thought of gazing out on St. Dominic's Preview to be incredibly soothing.  Plus the song wears its gospel influences proudly, and I'm always a sucker for that.  

Miranda Tavares

500 Miles to Memphis, Cows to the Slaughter

So, not for the first, and I'm sure not for the last, time on this blog, I had a post all written in my head and then real life had to go and intervene. Cincinnati has made the national news for its heroin problem. In a 48 hour period, we had 70 heroin overdoses. Most of them were able to be brought back via Narcan. For some, all hope is lost. Literally. I am a child of the '80's, who came of age in the '90's, and I am no stranger to the idea and effects of heroin. I lost many an idol to heroin. But most of my musical interests created songs influenced by heroin as users. Nirvana is a screaming example, but there have been so many on this blog who have posted songs representative of the struggle of addiction, and the initial hopelessness that drives a person to experiment with such a drug in the first place. And all of that is poignant, and heartbreaking...and also makes for some amazing music. But there is a whole group of people who is underrepresented in the heroin-influenced group of music: those left behind. 

I am fortunate to have never lost a loved one to heroin. I have lost acquaintances, and, although I feel terrible for them, the reality is that they are gone. I feel most for the family, the friends, the ones who are left wondering what happened, what went wrong, what they could have fixed. They are the ones who continue to feel the pain the heroins users escaped. I cannot imagine the guilt, the anger, and above all, the utter confusion and disbelief that must haunt them throughout even the happiest moments of their lives following such a tragedy. 

I had in mind that I would use this blog to learn about new musicians, and in turn introduce people to musicians that they would not have otherwise heard, and therefore I had a personal covenant that I would not post about a band that someone else has already posted about. Nate has already introduced everyone to 500 Miles to  Memphis, and they are a great band, and I hope everyone listens to literally every song available online. However, today, right now, this song deserves special mention. And I have no indication that this song that I have selected is about heroin. However, I saw them live tonight, following the recent events that have plagued the news, and I was moved to tears when they played this song.

" What did this world do, to you that made you, turn out the way you did? You and the others, like cows to the slaughter, lined up and marched away." 

Show me a parent, a spouse, a relative, a friend, of an overdose who hasn't felt this exact sentiment, and I will show you a person with no soul. 

"You were like a picture, of everything that life could be." 

Isn't this all of us? We are all born with such potential. Even if we don't realize it to its full extent, none of us here have thrown it all away. My heart aches for those who have, and aches even more for those left behind to make sense of the senselessness. 

Nate Bell

Well. I'm intimidated by my wife's post for this week, but I'm going to try anyway:

The Young Dubliners, Follow me up to Carlow.

It's unusual that a song primarily featuring a whistle and a violin can get my blood up the same way the Rage Against the Machine's "Bulls on Parade" can.

Follow me up to Carlow memorializes the Battle of Glemalure, where the poorly armed and outnumbered Irish soldiers handed a superior force of English soldiers their own asses.  The cause was eventually lost, as one can surmise, but the sentiment still has stirred the blood of Irish for centuries hence.

The setting for the battle was 1580 during the second Desmond Rebellion.  Names and dates aside, this conflict was between the conquering English Tudor dynasty and native Irish...which later broiled into the rebellions of the O'Neils of Ulster and continued at a slow boil for remaining centuries all the way into the late 1990s as "The Troubles".

The conflict is often simplified into Catholics vs. Protestants.  That is technically true, but what started in the late 1500s was much more sinister and dire for my ancestors.  Ireland had been invaded since the early 700s by vikings, later by Normans.  Earlier invaders were absorbed and enculturated.  Nothing prior was like the invasion by the Tudors.  Henry the VIII, and his daughter Elizabeth, HATED the native Irish and Scots.  It wasn't simply a matter of religion.  During the late 1500s, the Tudors instigated a concentrated campaign to wipe out the entire culture of the Irish and Scots.  They outlawed the language--yes Irish used to be a separate language--they outlawed the clothing typical of the Irish, they even went so far as to outlaw hairstyles typical of native Irish.  They forbid schooling of the Irish and outlawed their entire brand of Catholicism.  The aim was to crush the identity and lives of a people.

So, it's no surprise that a good fighting song can fire the blood of an exiled son, even on a different continent, and centuries later.  The whistle and fiddle set a lively air that belies the anger underneath a rising wrath against a true oppression with an explicit aim to exterminate an entire people and way of life

"See the swords of Glen Imayle, they're flashing o'er the English Pale
See all the children of the Gael, beneath O'Byrne's banners
Rooster of a fighting stock, would you let a Saxon cock
Crow out upon an Irish rock? Fly up and teach him manners!"

From Saggart to Clonmore, there flows a stream of Saxon gore
O, great is Rory Óg O'More, at sending the loons to Hades.
White is sick and Grey (The English commanders--note Nate's) is fled, now for black Fitzwilliam's head
We'll send it over dripping red, to Queen Liza and her ladies.

I can rarely listen to this song without the desire to raise my sword and fling myself at the encroaching forces, no matter how desperate the cause.  " Up with halberd out with sword
On we'll go for by the Lord
Fiach MacHugh has given the word,
Follow me up to Carlow'

One could do far worse for a battle hymn.  Kern tested and approved.

Mike Kelly

Sturgill Simpson, Time After All 

The academic set amongst us is back to work this week and everyone is a combination of excited and pissy.  We’re reminded of the colleagues who are a McSweeney’s caricature, the annoying shadow work that’s endemic to white-collar working life in 2016 America and the abrupt change in life’s pace.  We’re all complicit with the swinging pendulums of existence in ways that are so obvious that we barely see much less talk about them in ways that go beyond hallway small talk.    

Fortunately, this is where Sturgill comes in.  This song is Percocet for the soul.   He reminds us to “roll off the tempo, lay back…” because there’s not a lot we can do about a whole lot of stuff that happens in our small little corner of the cosmos.  

Here’s the catch though.  The song is not making an argument to resign ourselves to this fact and doesn’t ask us to completely give away our agency. 

“They say that life can decide in the blink of eye
if our silly little dreams will ever come true
But the dreams in my mind all go by so slow
What the hell else can I do”   

Consistent with the spirit and excitement that comes from another year and another round of changes, instead we’re asked to savor the agency and the dreams that we have and linger in quest to see them through.  All we’re asked to do is be a little more patient than we often allow ourselves to be.  

Happy New Year, everyone.  

Dave Kelly

So once again I am somewhat cheating and listing more than one song.  At least my three selections this week are linked together thematically.  Think of it as damaged women producing great art.

Amy Winehouse, Tears Dry On Their Own

I agree with Gary B. that Winehouse was on her way to becoming an iconic artist before she died at such a young age.  Of all of the great songs on "Back in Black", this is the one that has always been my favorite.  Her horrible self esteem results in lines like "I'll be some next man's other woman soon."

Written soon after her lover and future husband (and all around piece of shit) left her to return to his wife, the song is not exactly a positive look at relationships.  The opening lines will never grace a Hallmark card.

"All I can ever be to you

Is a darkness that we knew

and this regret I had to get accustomed to"

Later on she sings:

"I shouldn't play myself again

I should just be my own best friend

not fuck myself in the head with stupid men."

Backed by the awesomely tight Dap Kings and powered by Amy's tremendous voice, I find this song to be a modern classic. 

Amy Winehouse has always reminded me of another amazing but tragic singer from long ago.  Billie Holiday

"Strange Fruit"  Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit

Alcoholic, a heroin and cocaine addict, a working prostitute by the age of 12.  Holiday's life makes Winehouse's look like an episode of the Muppets.  Throw in the racism with which she had to struggle, and you have the making of a gothic horror novel.

There really isn't much to add to "Strange Fruit" besides listening to it.  Written in the thirties when lynching was still relatively common in the South and inspired by a photograph of two black men hanging from a tree, the song is just devastating.

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

My third choice is Bettye LaVette, Talking Old Soldiers

While not near the tragic figure of Holiday or Winehouse, LaVette has lived a hard life and for some reason never achieved the popularity of many of her R&B contemporaries.  Several years ago she did a record backed by of all people The Drive By Truckers.  The music gives no indication that they are playing behind her.  "Talking Old Soldiers" is a cover of an Elton John song from the early seventies.  Some of the lyrics are changed to account for the fact that it is a woman and not a man singing it.  The singer is basically sitting in a bar drinking and pouring her pain and regrets out to a younger man kind enough to talk to her.  "How the hell do they know what it is like to have a graveyard for a friend" is representational of the lyrics.  I find her vocal performance beyond amazing.  You almost feel like you are at the bar right next to her.

I promise to limit myself to one song next week.

Gary Scudder

Patty Griffin, Sweet Lorraine

I wish I could say that I'm a long-time fan of Patty Griffin, but, sadly, my knowledge of her only goes back as far as Dave Kelley and then Bob Craigmile sending around the fifty best alt-country albums link a few weeks ago.  I downloaded several of the albums that I didn't already own, but the one that I've been playing non-stop is Griffin's Living With Ghosts.  I think she's passed through Burlington a couple times the last few years and I'm now kicking myself for not seeing her.  I have no doubt that I'll be posting a couple of her songs before our year has run its course, but the one that I'm fixated on at the moment is Sweet Lorraine.

It's one of those songs where the artist introduces you to an entire world by focusing on one character.  Like most things, I guess, sometimes this works and sometimes it fails (I keep coming back to Young's Greendale album which is such a mess).  In this case I think it comes together brilliantly.

"Sweet Lorraine the fiery haired brown eyed schemer
Who came from a long line of drinkers and dreamers
Who knew that sunshine don't hold back the dark
Whose businesses fail, who sleep in the park."

And Lorraine is one of the characters who gets caught up in the shrapnel of a life like that, but who "spoke of paintings in Paris and outlandish things to her family just to scare us."

The passage that really gets me is this one:

"Her daddy called her a slut and a whore
On the night before her wedding day
Very next morning at the church
Her daddy gave Lorraine away . . ."

Not only is the opening line heartbreaking, but the way that she delivers it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  She may be a little waif of a girl but she can wail.

For some reason I keep coming back to Miranda and Dave's great posts from above, and I think it's all related.  Somewhere along the way Jason Isbell's Relatively Easy becomes the Drive-By Truckers Puttin' People on the Moon.

"In the battle of time, in the battle of will
It's only hope and your heart that gets killed
And it gets harder and harder, Lorraine, to believe in magic
When what came before you is so very tragic."