Saturday, February 11, 2023

GB Discography - Mid-Winter 2023

Someday, inshallah, we will return to a more regular rotation of the Gary Beatrice Discography (it will give Alice something to focus other than her beautiful wife and insane, snow-loving dog), but in the meantime we occasionally pop in for a One Off Discography. As you know, with these there is always a theme, and the theme for this one is, per the directives of the above-referenced Alice, is anti-depressant songs; that is, songs that always make you happy, whether you queue them up because you have the blues or they pop un unbidden and immediately put you in a better mood. I was initially going to suggest songs that you can't help singing along to, which somehow merged as we discussed it. 


Sheila Liming

Tacocat, “Meet Me at La Palma” (2019)

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQpmT220M-0


Topping the category of “antidepressant” songs that require one to sing along, for me, is “Meet Me at La Palma,” by the Seattle-based pop-punk band Tacocat. It comes from their 2019 album This Mess is a Place, the entirety of which fuses Go-Go’s-style pop shenanigans with some of the earthier punk vibes (and guitar feedback) that characterized the band’s earlier albums. But what I especially love about this song are the island vibes, which are a credit to the subject matter. The song is about a beloved Seattle institution: La Palma. It’s a shitty Mexican restaurant that commands, as the song’s lyrics put it, a “breathtaking view of the freeway.” It’s also a great place to day-drink, forget your troubles, and drown your winter blues in “seven-dollar margaritas / that are bigger than your head,” all amidst a hodgepodge of confusingly antidepressant imagery: palm tree murals, mariachi figurines, golden lizards climbing the walls, fake floral arrangements, wagon wheel chandeliers, and framed photos of Mount Rainier. On “Meet Me at La Palma,” Tacocat opts for overt nods to some of their feminist-inspired influences, including Blondie; the song’s island-kitch aesthetic will remind listeners of “The Tide is High.” But for me, the song mostly serves as a reminder of what Seattle, the city of my birth, was like back before it got all Amazon-ed to hell. Much like its namesake restaurant, “Meet Me at La Palma” is a monument to lassitude, indulgence, and questionable taste—just the combination one requires to endure a gray winter’s day in Seattle (or Vermont, for that matter). And if the song strikes the right note for you, check out the music video for Tacocat’s other number, “Bridge to Hawaii,” which stays on permanent rotation (literally, as in vinyl) during Tiki February, as it's called in my house.   

 

Lynette Vought

Billy a Dick

For the Boys

Bette Midler

 

    I really like this prompt because it made me realize how many songs make me happy. It’s quite a list.

    Bette Midler’s bouncy version of  Billy a Dick  was one of the first I thought of.  Everything about it makes me smile. I love how both the score and the lyrics are precisely percussive, how they are expressed with the tightly arranged vocals, and I’m a sucker for stories about soldiers. I even like saying Billy a Dick.  This is a bit of the film version from For the Boys. The film is damaged, but it is fun to see the singers perform.


Pedro Carmolli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chFE3kZTMec

 The song:  You Make Me Feel So Free by Van Morrison.  He probably feels so free because of his lack of faith in science and disbelief in the severity of Covid.  Who knows?  I chose this over the scientifically chosen September by Earth Wind and Fire(https://www.npr.org/2014/09/19/349621429/the-song-that-never-ends-why-earth-wind-fires-september-sustains) because it is rarely heard on the radio so when it does come up it is an instant joy for me.

So endeth my submission



Alice Neiley

Well, just to prove my point to Scudder about sad songs bringing happiness (not that he even argued with me about it, more that I solid evidence is necessary in most conversations with him), I had a list all set from which to choose a song for my own post: Renee Fleming singing Puccini’s "O Mio Babbino Caro," Prine/Raitt singing "Angels from Montgomery", James Taylor’s version of "Wichita Lineman", just to name 3 out of the 10…in any case, it was going to be a very difficult choice. Then, just today, Burt Bacharach died, my heart broke, and the whole plan to give Scudder something to puzzle over for a while disappeared. The thing is, I know Bacharach was old, and probably a jerk, but when someone like him (or Aretha, or Sondheim, or Bill Withers) dies, you can almost feel a thread of sparkly genius slipping from the world, air moving against your elbow through the hole in the fabric. Yeah, his music will still be around, but the potential that he might wake up one more and write another ‘Raindrops are Fallin’ on My Head’ is gone. I’ll feel this even more acutely when Joni Mitchell passes, and Stevie Wonder, but Bacharach is bad enough. I made a whole Bacharach themed playlist on Spotify this afternoon, but in keeping with the theme for this one-off, the track that always makes my stomach flip with joy at the very first chord after the drum roll intro is the Naked Eyes version of “Always Something There to Remind Me.” Funnily enough, I heard the tune first when the Dartmouth Dodecaphonics acapella group covered it on their 1993 album Carpe Dodecs that our family listened to on road trips until the disc broke. A woman sang it, alto voice, and it was spectacular. I only got around to hearing the Naked Eyes version in college, and only found out about 10 years ago that Burt Bacharach wrote it. Dion Warwick recorded the demo back in the 60s, then 20 years later, BOOM, Naked Eyes takes it to the US top 10 in 1983 because…well…it turns out even 80s synth is at its best in a Bacharach song, clanging like bells that way, and those DRUMS, driving the song forward in almost a desperate search for something. Not to mention the lyrics “shadows fall/I pass the small café where we used to dance at night” then calling back to it later with “If you find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share/Just go back to the places where we used to go and I’ll be there.” Swoon. In general, it’s upbeat, intense, and jolts me out of any funk I might be in. Interestingly…it’s also about breakups and loneliness and regret…quite a sad song. Looks like I proved my point after all 😉

 

Bob Craigmile

 

https://youtu.be/Ti6qhk3tX2s

The Numbers. (2/5ths of Radiohead).

 

I can't sing along with it because I don't know the words. I don't even listen to the words. The only words I hear or remember are: "and you may pour us away like soup". I don't know what that (or the song) is about. Class warfare? Interpersonal conflict? 

It holds us like a phantom

 

But my god what a vibe. Such a moody, broody song. Why does it make me happy?  It sure sounds like a sad song. 

The touch is like a breeze

 

Instead, maybe it makes me less sad.

What is a sad song? Is it the key? The lyrics? The aforementioned "vibe"? 

It shines its understanding
See the moon smiling

 

As Alice points out, sad songs can make us happy. Is that what "the blues" are about? *shrugs*.

We call upon the people
People have this power

 

My son sent me this song two or three years ago. I've listened to it dozens of times. Sometimes it makes me happy; sometimes sadder than I was.

We'll take back what is ours
Take back what is ours

 

Maybe the lyrics have crept into my brain without me noticing. Maybe it gives me hope, this sad little interplay of guitars. 

 

Thom Yorke is an underrated player. His guitar here is in a nonstandard tuning; the counterpoint delivered by Jonny's Telecaster is, sonically, simply amazing to me. Their dance, winding in and out of each other while the drum machine pitters indifferently to their magic, completely enlivens my mood.

The river running dry
The wings of a butterfly

 

So, is this white guy blues? I don't know. It can't be known. It is beyond blues. It is an angelic supernova.

We are of the earth
To her we do return

Whoa.

 

DO NOT LISTEN TO THE ALBUM VERSION OF THIS SONG. You have been warned.

The numbers don't decide
Your system is a lie

 

Philip Seiler

Because I live in a world that seems determined to pretend the ongoing pandemic has ended, I decided to add the additional restriction that my song choice needed to be something discovered during COVID that otherwise fits the bill. And as luck would have it, I found two.

 

IDER "Bored"

John Craigie "Laurie Rolled Me a J"

 

Worlds apart for many reasons and yet thematically, both fill the bill for the prompt. IDER is a duo out of London who explore many genres in their songwriting: electronic pop, alternative, synth pop. Lily Somerville and Megan Markwick layer vocals together in their tracks with subtle yet engaging harmonies. Thoroughly modern in their sensibilities and unapologetic in their views, their lyrics capture the age of COVID on the psyche of the young generations to perfection as they rifle through a litany of things that bore them: the trainers you wear on your feet, your day job, the way you speak, the gaslighting, my phone, the music, and on and on. But it reaches beautiful insights in that stream of apathetic rage. "Bored of pretending not to be weak/ I'm bored of no one admitting defeat/ Won't you fail with me? Won't you fail with me" What a gorgeous sentiment for a pop song chorus in this age of hopelessness and despair.

 

John Craigie, on the other hand, is a singer songwriter from CA firmly rooted in the troubadour tradition and left coast politics. I've only briefly explored his other music and get the impression that my featured track is less representative of his body of work but it is too good not to share here. An opening, catchy blues riff and you have a good idea what you are in for. Then the first vocals drop: "I got my wings clipped/ I got my Trump check/ Supposed to last me through the apocalypse/ I spent it all on some leftist shit/ as a fuck you to him and Mike Pence" Amen, brother. Sometimes you just need a solid blues riff and some straight ahead lyrics to get you out of that funk. That organ kicking in doesn't hurt, either. If you can listen to this and not bop your head along involuntarily, I am not sure we can be friends. "Track me on my couch, track me in my bed/ Track me texting you, track me left on read/ Track me in the yard puffing my life away/ Gone like smoke Laurie rolled me a J" 

 

Gary Scudder

As I stated above, when Alice and I started bouncing around ideas for another One Off of the GBD I was considering songs that you could not NOT sing along to on the radio. On first blush I thought that this stood in opposition to Alice's suggestions, but she convinced me that they could happily live together, and she won me over. I guess I was initially skeptical because so many of the songs I find myself singing along to (keeping in mind that I have a terrible voice and hate to sing - and thus I only sing along when I'm alone in the car, and there aren't any cars within five miles) are, at least on the surface, pretty grim songs. For example: Uncle Tupelo's Moonshiner or Lucinda Williams's Jackson or Neil Young's Cowgirl in the Sand or the Drive-By Truckers' Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife or Kathleen Edwards's Pink Emerson Radio or Rose Cousins's One New York Ago or . . . well, you get the point. That said, maybe they are actually, in the end, redemptive because they are all songs about journeys (although, I suppose, all songs are songs about journeys). Plus, I can't think of a truly bubbly happy song that I sing along to or even like. Maybe I just don't trust them because they are misleading; as we are reminded, April is the cruelest month.

Now, having said all that, maybe all of this is actually not that complicated. Haruki Murakami (and all my friends have suffered through my man crush on Murakami), when talking about how music impacted his writing, talked about the songs he puts in his novels and short stories (he did have a novel called Norwegian Wood) - sometimes the songs are foregrounded and sometimes they're simply playing in the background (or sometimes the protagonist is just running a jazz club). However, he said the single biggest thing that music taught him about writing was the importance of rhythm and pacing, which helped bring about the appropriate feel of a novel. On a side note, maybe this is why it's easy to feel let down at the end of a Murakami novel; we're waiting for something magical to tie everything together, and that wasn't the point anyway. Anyway, maybe we're drawn to certain songs less because of the lyrics - the happiness or sadness - and instead just the feel. I remember our dearly departed friend GB who said that he loved Bob Dylan songs as much for their feel as anything.



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