Discography - Week 52

June 18th 1993 was my happiest day.  It was the first time I ever took my son to Six Flags Over Georgia, and we had an absolutely perfect day, made possible by the fact that we were the perfect age for a father and a son.  At age five his natural inclination was still to hold my hand, and all the sturm und drang that eats away at the relationship between fathers and sons, if even temporarily, was lurking a decade in the future.  As it grew dark I began to sob, because the day was drawing to a close and I realized with completely certainty that it was my happiest day.  Certainly part of my response was caused by happiness, but there was also the stabbing pain caused by the fact that I knew I would never be that happy again (and for once I was a prophet).  However, parts of the tears were caused by the fact that I felt so remarkably blessed to realize, not twenty years down the road, but right then, at that precise moment, that it was my happiest moment.  When I returned home I tried to explain to my wife Brenda what had happened, which led to another crying jag.  She wasn't surprised, either at my tears or at that realization in the Georgia gloaming.  She always felt that I had a better sense of what a moment meant, what it entailed, and what was required of it than anyone she ever met - and it was one of the reasons why I had been successful.  I've thought about her words a lot over the years because I am constantly surrounded by friends and colleagues who are better educated than me or smarter than me or, increasingly, both, but somehow I muddle through, mainly because I may just have a better sense of what the moment requires than most folks.  And what's the point of that memory and that reflection?  Well, we've reached the end of our year-long Discography music discussion, at least through round one.  To be brutally honest, I've been dreading this moment.  I've enjoyed this year's celebration of music and friendship more than I can say, and I'm actively mourning its passing.

There will always be other moments, but I doubt it they'll be as sweet as the ones that made up this last year; and surely there will be ones as bittersweet as this one.  As Chet Baker reminds us, "There will be many other nights like this/ and I'll be standing here with someone new/ there will be other songs to sing/ another fall, another spring" but it's difficult to imagine such an absolutely perfect group of friends united in such a joyous endeavor.  However, reflecting back on June 18th 1993, I also feel blessed to have had this time with all of you, and also to realize what it has meant, and what it will continue to mean.

Gary Beatrice

Warren Zevon, Keep Me In Your Heart

My mother is a fantastic artist. When I was in my late teens she took up painting and she was outstanding. All of the Beatrice homes have her paintings. About 30 years ago she took up sculpture, and without any doubt that was her calling. She used all type of wood and stone and would frequently spend upwards of six months on a single piece. She sold a few, was commissioned to make more, and won sculpture competitions from New York to Phoenix.

Sadly I did not inherit her artistic skills. If I had I would have used them to write a song. I would have written a beautiful good-bye song to my wife, Margie. It would not have been a sad song, although death and separation are certainly sad. The song would be about love and friendship and be gently hopeful.

Since I can't write or sing a song I am steeling Warren Zevon's good-bye song and dedicating it to my wife and children:

Hold me in your thoughts
Take me in your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view.
When the winter comes
Keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you.

Sometimes when you're doing simple things around the house
Maybe you'll think of me and smile.
You know I'm tied to you like the buttons on your blouse
Keep me in your heart for a while.

Dave Wallace

Valerie June - Got Soul

I don't think that I've posted a newer song before on this blog because I had such a backlog of older songs that I loved and wanted to share.  But, for my last entry, it seems appropriate to pick something recent.  I liked Valerie June's debut album, but her recently-released second album, The Order of Time, is a leap forward.  I encourage all of you to check it out.  My favorite thing is the album closer, Got Soul.  I couldn't find the studio version on Youtube, but I've linked to a very good (and faithful) live version.

Cyndi Brandenburg

Okay, here's the thing.  Choosing the ultimate song to share as my
last post on a year of Discography is impossible. And I suspect others
will dig deep and share frighteningly smart and/or crushingly profound
reflections that are impossible to match.  So, I am defaulting to a
knee jerk upbeat homage to my blogger co-authors, and I hope you will
take the time to humor me by reading my sentimental musings before
actually listening to this fun song.

Last Saturday night I laughed so hard that I cried more than once, and
I felt totally confident and comfortable living in a space that might
have rightly been dubbed "sloppy seconds."  I woke up the next morning
with this ear worm in my head, and I listened to it before even
bothering to get about of bed.  Cheesy as it is, misnamed as it was
(um, WHITE wine--duh),  it reminded me well of a prior night of
glorious joy with friends, many of whom appear here. Wine, poured all
over. Embarrassingly, it's increasingly what we are known for.

But it reminded me of other important things about the all of you too.
Your brilliance (done your research, also what you smart people are
known for), your force (like water), and the fact that maybe we can
happily and comfortably be stupid and superficial together before
pendulum-swinging back into an equally compelling intellectual space.
We've got a lot here. I'm coming over again (assuming someone invites
me), and all the steps I take are gonna lead there --but definitely
not in the love-song-gone-wrong sense. Keep listening, keep writing,
keep sharing. Scudder, we all know you have something crazy and
irresistible up your sleeve to help us along.  Love you, champions.

The New Pornographers, Champions of Red Wine

Can you add this to the end of my sappy blog post please?  Thanks.
__________________

And if you are not yet convinced of the merits of this band, try these
other songs before you decide for sure. I particularly love the first
one, with Neko Case--and those lyrics....

Adventures in Solitude 

But this one is fun too, for a different pace, off their new album.

Avalanche Alley (off their newly released record) 

I read this today, which I loved not just because Debbie Harry apparently shares my affinity for Chardonnay, but because of this exact quote:

"Since all rock stars need at least one tour vice, Harry always likes to keep a bottle of Chardonnay on hand. But how wild can things get with white wine? You'd be surprised."

Feel free to add it to the blog if it feels right.

Phillip Seiler

Thomas Dolby, I Love You, Goodbye

There are a number of underrated artists from the 80s that continued making interesting music behind their synth-pop beginnings. Thomas Dolby, now a professor at Johns Hopkins, is certainly one of them. This is one of my favorite songs ever and seems appropriate for our final week. I also love the tie in with Scudder and his tales of New Orleans and traveling. It has been a joy discovering music both new and old, familiar and not and I thank Gary for inviting us to participate. In the scariest days of my time on earth, music has provided a solace and for that I celebrate you all for sharing. But I will leave Dolby's words as my final thought for this journey.

The saddest words I know

I love you, goodbye.

Dave Kelley

"but til then . . . . ."

"Born to Run"  Bruce Springsteen

Bruce is my favorite artist, and this is his greatest song.  Even though there are five to ten of his songs that I personally like more than "Born to Run", this is the best thing he has ever written and recorded. 

 It was written by a young man who had no ambition to be anything other than a professional musician.  Little Steven has said that this is what set Bruce apart from all of the other musicians he knew.  Bruce literally had no plan B from the time he was 14.  He was going to play music for a living be it in sold out arenas or small clubs on the Jersey Shore.  For a guy who champions the working man, Bruce admits he has never worked a real job for more than a few weeks. 

At the time he wrote "Born to Run", Springsteen had released two albums that sold poorly.  Despite being hugely popular as a live act in the Northeast and something of a critical darling, Springsteen was in great danger of being released by his record company.  Instead of playing it safe, he poured everything he knew into a song that was too long to be released as a single and contained most of the instruments known to mankind.  The result is so amazing that there is really no need to discuss it at length.  But of course, I will.

To me, the lyrics and the performance combine strength and vulnerability and hope tinged with pessimism.  After writing his autobiography, Springsteen came to the realization for the first time that in some ways the song was about his parents.  He had an optimistic mother who came from a family of means.  His father was a mentally ill blue collar worker who drank too much and obsessed about how few of his dreams he was fulfilling.  Despite these issues they stayed together.  His dad impulsively moved his wife and his youngest child to California when Bruce was a teenager.

Joe Posnanski in writing about the song a few years ago made a point that has stuck with me ever since.  Despite all of the great imagery in the lyrics, the key line in the song is really "but till then."  Isn't that where we live our lives for the most part?  We have goals and dreams that we want to accomplish, "but till then."  We have dream jobs, dream relationships to which we aspire, "but till then."  We are gonna get to that place where we really wanna go, "but till then".  Is there anyone who is so happy and content with every aspect of their life that he or she does not largely live in the "till then"? 

I think we live and die in the "but till then" zone, and that is OK.  I have always agreed with the cliché that life is about the journey and not the destination.

Thanks everyone for fifty two great weeks.  I look forward to the resumption of the blog down the line, "but till then" good health and Godspeed to all of you.

Gary Scudder

Bill Evans, Detour Ahead and Some Other Time

I've never been this late getting the weekly Discography posting out, and while I can blame a very busy week in the end I think I just didn't want this to end.  Often I, like Dave Wallace, write up my blog posts weeks in advance, but this week I could never finish, although I engineered many false starts.  I wrote five or six complete posts with several different artists and an array of songs, but ended up erasing every one of them.  As the Cure tell us in Untitled:

Never know how I wanted to feel
Never quite said what I wanted to say to you
Never quite managed the words I wanted to say to you
Never quite knew how to make them believable
And now the time has gone
Another time undone

In the end I found myself being drawn back to jazz and specifically to Bill Evans, an artist I love more every year.  I suppose I should have learned something from attending Neil Young and Drive-By Truckers concerts in the last year and blown it out on the last week, but instead I'm going to end softly like the 4th movement of Tschaikovsky's 6th Symphony or the last song of most Lucinda Williams albums.  And of course the irony - or the pristine logic - is that I don't know what to say, and so I'm finishing with songs with no words.

We are facing a detour ahead, politically and societally in our country,  but also emotionally and personally in our little group.  After Gary's beautiful words that opened this week I was really hesitant to respond because I felt that I would doing a disservice to the courage and honesty with which he's faced his illness.  It is hard to believe, but there was a time when he was just a friend of a friend (Dave Kelley is the world navel of all friendships), but he became more than that and has been one of my closest friends for almost thirty years now.  The time we've spent together has been a blessing, and Gary, you are the man I would be if I were a better man.  I love you, brother.

If you happened to stumble into my blog on off-days, which I hope you didn't because it's the equivalent of a seedy Midwestern town after the nice folks have gone home for the night, you'd know that I've spent the last year and a half grinding my way through Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.  Purists have always complained that the more appropriate translation would be In Search of Lost Time. What I just discovered this week is that Proust's most famous translator, Moncrieff, chose Remembrance of Things Past as an homage of Shakespeare's 30th Sonnet, and that in some ways the entire work plays out along the lines of the sonnet.  If I had known that I could have saved myself 3200 pages of Proust describing why he's not in love.

     When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
     I summon up remembrance of things past,
     I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
     And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
     Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
     For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
     And weep afresh love's song since cancell'd night,
     And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
     Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
     And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
     The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
     Which I new pay as if not paid before.
     But if the while I think of thee, dear friend,
     All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

So, I guess in the end Shakespeare was right again, "But if the while I think of thee, dear friend/ All losses are restor'd and sorrows end."  My sorrows end when I think of you.

With that I'll leave you with one last song from Bill Evans, his painfully beautiful Peace Piece from Everybody Digs Bill Evans.

Salaam.