Discography Year Two - Week 22

And time continues to fly along unchecked and heedless  of logic or even basic rules of propriety.  In a month the esteemed Cyndi and I will be heading off to Jordan with sixteen students (or fifteen, depending upon passport issues) and soon thereafter Kevin and I will be heading to the Natti for the Irrational League draft (that is, if I ever get around to deciding on a plane flight [KA, thanks for your patience]).  We've come to the end of Dave Kelley's White Men Suck month, although, sadly, not the end of white men sucking. The mystery of why Alice never hangs around for karaoke night at the St. John's Club has now been revealed.  Next week is, thankfully, another Second Saturday soiree at the truly excellent Seilers.  Soon we will be half-way through the second year of the Discography.  Stupid Time.

The details of next week's Theme Week, selected by the truly excellent Alice Neiley:

* * * * * THEME WEEK ANNOUNCEMENT * * * * *

From the Excellent Alice Neiley

For Week 23

Hello Music Enthusiasts! 

Because I know artistic appreciation runs through all our veins, I likely don't have to explain, or even express, the value of good T.V. and movies. Contrary to some of my writing/intellectual colleagues, I LOVE television and film, especially when it's good, but even sometimes when it's 'bad', whatever that really means. Like any piece of art, however, the quality of a good movie scene or television scene is complex. There's the acting, the script, the cinematography and...of course...there's the soundtrack--that specific, PERFECT song chosen to highlight a specific emotional moment. 

A few months ago, I discovered one of my favorite shows (either good or 'bad', depending on your affinity for nostalgia) was on Netflix: The Wonder Years. Back when I was in college and needed some warm and fuzzy TV support, it wasn't even on DVD, and in desperation I bought an illegal bootleg copy of entire series. Anyway, I digress. The Wonder Years appearing on Netflix was really exciting. Until it wasn't. 

Unfortunately, probably due to copyright issues, the soundtrack on Netflix is not the original! FOR SHAME. Without the original soundtrack, Netflix shouldn't have agreed to air the show. Now, the songs chosen to replace the original ones are objectively just fine, but once you know the perfection of the initial choices, those songs that highlight specific emotional moments the way no others can, anything else is a little nauseating...which brings me to the theme for Week 23. 

Choose a song that, without which, a movie or television scene would have been RUINED (or at least completely different). Choose a song that made a TV or film scene, made it exact in its truth, its humanness, its excitement...whatever. Then...knock yourselves out with the commentary. 

I already know which show holds the song (and scene) I'm choosing...take a wild guess. ;)

[editor's note: Cyndi Brandenburg is responsible for choosing the next theme week]

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Dave Wallace

Waxahatchee - No Question

 Katie Crutchfield is Waxahatchee and, last year, she released her fourth album, Out in the Storm.  All of her albums are terrific, but I think that the most recent is my favorite.  It has a bunch of great songs and, for the blog, I've chosen No Question which is one of her best.

Dave Kelley

"A Change is Gonna Come"  Otis Redding

This is my attempt to be hopeful about how our ongoing national nightmare will play out over the next few years.  Sam Cooke does an amazing version of this song, but I barely prefer Redding's take.  Either he or Marvin Gaye have my favorite voice of all time.  The fact that Redding's life was ended at such an early age deprived the world of so much fantastic music.  The live performance he put on at the Monterey Pop Festival is an absolute must see.

I do believe that America will eventually pull out of the nose dive in which we find ourselves, but it ain't gonna be pretty.  As long as access to the voting booth is not severely curtailed, these rancid fuckers cannot win.  On Jason Isbell's last record he sang "there can't be more of them than us."  I agree.  I can't wait to come out on the other side.

P.S. Fuck McConnell  I wish he and the rest of these ass clowns a long life so that they can see their agenda, their reputations, and their twisted ideology ground into a fine powder.

Phillip Seiler

Death

Politicians in my eyes

The white washing of history and culture is, of course, rampant in our country. From jazz to rock to pop to rap, a white face seems required by our society to push a style into the mainstream. A lesser known example is that of one of the earliest if not the first punk bands: Death. Formed by the brothers Hackney in Detroit in the early 70s, Death was far ahead of their time and never really caught much of an audience. As you can hear on this week's song, that is a shame as their music is really good, sophisticated, and accessible. Founder David's insistence that the band not change their name seems to be the primary reason they never received exposure. But as time has passed, their reputation has grown and their influence on the punk scene has been noted. Eventually, there was even a documentary about the band in 2013 "A Band Called Death".

In an odd bit of serendipity, there is also a connection to the Yankee Hellhole as the Hackney brothers eventually settled in Burlington, VT and still make music. They are now known as Rough Francis minus brother David who passed away from lung cancer in 2000. (Fuck cancer.) 

Also, politicians suck. Fuck them too.

Kathy Seiler

Jill Scott – Talk to Me 

She: “What are you thinking about?”

He: “Nothing. Everything.”

She: “Want to talk about it?”

He: “No.”

Sound familiar?

Jill Scott’s Talk to Me is all about this very scenario, but she cleverly uses both the lyrics and the music to reflect how a woman tries to navigate such a situation.

The song starts off with an R&B vibe, setting the stage. Her man comes home from work, plops onto the couch, grabs the remote and disappears into himself. She tries to get him to talk about what’s on his mind, because he seems down. He refuses to talk and she starts getting upset about it, which then, of course, makes him upset, and they start to fight. So she tries again. The music changes to cool vocal jazz and she tries to get him to talk to her by being sultry and subtler with her asking, offering him various things to get him to open up.

Nothing.

The song ends back in a stronger jazz style, louder, more emotional, because she’s frustrated this approach hasn’t worked either. The final lyrics describe her trying to explain why it upsets her so much when he doesn’t talk to her, then the song ends abruptly. Just like conversations like this often do.

Her story is of a such a common thing in relationships between men and women, whether they be partners, friends, or family. Her lyrics are perfectly worded from the “she” point of view, and so accurate about a common outcome in this dynamic. Now what I’d really like to see is the “he” version of this song. If you know of one, I hope you will share it.

Alice Neiley

Midnight Train to Georgia—Gladys Knight and the Pips

 Well, so many conversations and stories at work yesterday could have inspired song choices—I had a VERY hard time choosing. As often happens, though, the inspiration came as I settled into my car for the drive to Ottawa. We’d been talking about karaoke at the end of the day yesterday, because I made the grave mistake of mentioning I was a vocal studies major in undergrad. Karaoke has always made me nervous, not because I don’t like to sing in public, but because of the spontaneity. What if they don’t have the songs I like?!?! Anyway, I digress. 

Karaoke also inevitably reminds me of the a capella group I sang with in college (shut up), because we would spontaneously break into song all the time. Mostly 70s R&B, which is what the group sang at orientation my first year, and 100% why I auditioned. So, in honor of them, and to make up for all terrible karaoke selections everywhere, here’s one of the most delicious, cravable songs of all time: 

Gary Scudder

Akron/Family, Don't Be Afraid, You're Already Dead

Is it more surprising that 1) I chose this song; truthfully, it sounds like more of a Dave Wallace or Phillip Seiler or Dave Mills selection, or that 2) I discovered it because it was prominently featured on the first episode of season five of the British series Skins?  It's a very simple song, almost ridiculously so, but I go through stretches where I can't get it out of my head.  What is more, I think it hints at something far more profound.  I recently returned from a trip to Africa and I was (although I've seen it before, and I see it more and more all the time) stunned by the timidity of our students.  On the one hand that's OK because it makes them easier to corral, but also disappointing in other ways.  It may be, on one level, a distinctive CC phenomenon, although in that case I think it's just a matter of degree (foreshadowing) than uniqueness.  I mean, aren't students at twenty years of age supposed to be recklessly fearless while professors at fifty-eight supposed to be cautious bordering on cowardly? When we talk about faith in class, and since I occasionally teach a class on Islam it's hard to avoid that topic, I will often joke that students at twenty, naturally and logically, have no faith because they're essentially immortal, whereas someone of my impressive vintage should be getting right with the gods because Death stalks me at every turn. That said, going back to the point above, when we head overseas it's the immortal students who are struggling with the new and unique and the ancient professor who is rolling with it.  Part of that is clearly just experience, and part of it relates to the fact that every succeeding generation is smothered more and more by their parents and alleged education "experts" until they are essentially infantilized, but I think there's more going on. Is there a certain point where you find yourself saying, "Wow, this has been a pretty cool life, in fact, inexplicably excellent, and if I shuffled off this mortal coil right now that wouldn't be terrible"? It's not that you want to go, but you realize that you've had a pretty nice run, all things considered.  However, I think it's even more than that.  In my Concepts of the Self class we often talk about the fact that sexuality or gender are not easily compartmentalized, but instead exist on a continuum.  To me, life and death, or maybe it would be better to say existence, exists on a similar sliding scale.  We're not either alive or dead, but instead perpetually in the process of becoming or transitioning into one or the other.  OK, and you can clearly then imagine the conversation I had with our previous Imam at the ISVT when he asked me why I wanted to convert, and I told him I was really drawn to the Sufis (and he smiled, kindly, and said, "yeah, and about that . . .").  Anyway, I guess the point is that we oddly can become more courageous, or foolhardy, as we grow older not simply because we understand more fully the inevitability of death but also, to paraphrase Kundera, the unbearable lightness of non-being.