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
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
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.
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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