Can't Hear It On The Radio

It's almost impossible to sum up how important R.E.M. once was, as opposed to the nostalgia show/alternative muzik While-U-Shop thing they are now. Long ago, back when Michael Stipe had hair, didn't look like Moby, didn't whine, for fuck's sake.

I'm talking about the entire period that is eulogized in the song "Nightswimming": I don't think all these people un-der-stannnd...Hell, even that sounded whiny, but it was referring to a specific time and place. He was talking about that dim and distant time when no reasonable radio programmer outside of the college radio ghetto would even think of putting The Only Band That Mutters on their playlist. That long ago and far away place where all these people who would, not long after, become quite famous played for small crowds of their friends and their friends friends in each others' basements, later -drunk!- goin' swimmin' in the Georgia night.

I need to say a little something about all that too. Just the music, though. That's all I can really take on here. That, and two of the greatest albums of the 1980's, which both happen to be by the formerly greatest band in Alterna-America, R.E.M.

It is a matter of some debate as to when they sold out. Many said it was 'Green' (true purists had said it was 'Document'), I personally date it to 'Out of Time'. Despite the great and wistful "Shiny Happy People" and the underrated "Near Wild Heaven", it was the album where they clearly did that thing successful bands do: they note what has worked well in the past, and determine to do it over and over again ad infinitum for the rest of their career.
What had started this process though, was 'Life's Rich Pageant'. It was the first album where they literally sang in a voice clear enough to be understood. I finally started to get it, young as I was. I hadn't really been able to get it before.

So that's just it; they sold out, which is to say the music had become explicable to young teenagers like myself. This is the paradox that we who dwell in the bargain basement of hometown heroes and Special Children get to live with: craft your message, you're pandering. Fail to be cohesive, you're engaging in willful obscurantism, and therefore can be dismissed.

What then might be those two best albums I was crowing about a minute ago? That would be R.E.M.'s 'Reckoning'(1984), which was their second full length album, and 'Life's Rich Pageant'(1986). Somewhere in those two years, they went from those people we knew, liked and wanted to see do well to those bastards who signed with a major label.
Way more importantly, they went from a weirdly organic, strongly personal point of narrative to a broader type of appeal that sounded not unlike a call to arms.

'Reckoning' is muddy where 'Life's Rich Pageant' is clear, strictly in terms of production values. Besides, Michael Stipe literally mutters throughout the damn thing, but that actually makes you want to pay more attention. The music is the sort of thing that infuriated classic rock enthusiasts back in the day, and now that seems so fucking silly. It's strongly anchored in the basic American rock idiom: it sounds like country rock, but several steps forward.

The lyrical point of view is rooted in the personal mythology of someone who is asking you to step inside and check it out with them. What's a "Harborcoat"? Well, you'd know if you owned one..."Don't Go Back To Rockville" is what Tom Petty would write if he was much smarter and ten times more original. "South Central Rain" is a parenthetical story you keep writing in your head, but never get down on paper. Its first line is, But you never called...

(Actually, the folks at songlyrics.com give that as being,
Did you never call? I waited for your call
These rivers of suggestion are driving me away
Which is maybe the better line, but here we get from the private dreams of the narrator into the private interpretations of -and connections drawn by- the listener.)

Pretty much all of these songs are sing-alongs, which is weird for an album where you can't clearly make out most of the lyrics. There's this certain ritualized nature at work here in these songs of love and confusion: Here we are...Here we are...Here we aaaaarrre...
But beyond that, there's these quasi-political statements, ala
The biggest wagon is the empty wagon is the noisiest
the Conestoga horse
Jefferson, I think we lost
Which could be or mean lots of things, I guess. Might not mean a damn thing, too.

(And again, I maintain that online song lyric sites are mondegreen generators. They give that line above as 'the consul, a horse', which it certainly might be, but when you're muttering for a living, it has lots more to do with what some teenager somewhere thinks it is, and I believe you're giving up interpretation to that.)

The music is restrained, yet earthy. The lyrics have to do with the editorial You and Me that the majority of rock n' roll is about. It namechecks Chinese folk tales, and the final song is an incoherent edit from what sounds like the middle of a jam they got into, but never quite made a song out of. It sounds like it was recorded in one of Athens, Ga.'s finer basements.

'Life's Rich Pageant', by complete contrast, even begins loud and clear. "Begin The Begin" is the first song by them I noticed that rocked. It is dealing in the subjective still, but also...
Well, it's like they signed with a major record label and decided that this implied a certain duty. If we're going to be making more money and reaching more people, this means we have to talk about the world at large, and encourage right action, good behaviors.

At least that's the way I interpret it:

Bir-die in the hand
for life's rich demand
the insurgency began
and you missed it...

and

Silence means security
silence means approval
I seen it on the teevee
tiger run around the tree
follow the leader
run and turn into butter

The '80's, as the legend goes, was a great time for activism. This tends to be the revisionist view of pretty much any decade where the prevailing norm was restraint and control. So in the sense of, "well, there was a lot to protest about," yes, it was. And the case could be made that, after the lazy '70's, people woke back up again.

The music reflects this. "These Days" is the second song off of 'Life's Rich Pageant', and is a stirring anthem that could easily apply to pretty much any cause you wanted to append it to:

All the people gather...
Fly to carry each his burden
we are young despite the years
we are concerned
we have hope despite the times...


I wanted to tell Howard Dean to adopt that as his song, once. The obliqueness of difficulty, danger and life is addressed in "Fall On Me", which basically is a big long prayer to ask the sky not to fall on one. But in the video, and the liner notes, the phrase "bury magnets" keeps popping up.
The next song is another barn burner. "Cuyahoga" is the name of one of those rivers that was so polluted it actually caught fire (the Willamette being another, natch), and it was also the name of a tribe. The lyrical conceit here is...If we were that tribe, and looking at the world as it is now, what would our reaction be?

Let's put our heads together
and start a new country up
the father's father's father tried
erased the part he didn't like...

and, ominously

This land is the land of ours
this river runs red over it
we are not your allies
we can not defend...

So maybe it's time we stopped behaving stupidly with the earth, too, huh? This was a newer idea in political discourse at the time.

"Hyena" is kind of a throwaway song, but it rocks, and it always makes me glad to hear it. Same goes for the largely instrumental "Underneath The Bunker", which is a kitschy faux-middle-eastern spy theme.

"The Flowers of Guatemala" is the resident tearjerker of the album. But it comes at it sideways. It doesn't write itself a nice easy anti-death-squad rant, it instead is all about setting the scene for what potentially is lost.
And by the time the chorus of flow-ers co-ver everything...You hear it as both 'this is a beautiful place' and 'flowers are blood'...It's awesome, and a perfect blending of R.E.M. classic and R.E.M. the sell out years.

But musically, I like the anthems here better. "I Believe" is exactly what it sounds like: a statement of of basic belief.

Trust in your calling, make sure your calling's true
Think of others, the others think of you
Silly rule golden words make, practice, practice makes perfect,
Perfect is a fault, and fault lines change

and

I believe in example
I believe my throat hurts
Example is the checker to the key

I believe my humor's wearing thin
And I believe the poles are shifting

I believe my shirt is wearing thin
And change is what I believe in

Right? Seems naive now, don't it? Or does it? Seems to me that someone recently got elected President promising something as simple and vague as 'change'.

"What If We Give It Away" sounds like a pretty straightforward song; no mistaking what something so simply named is about, right? Well, wrong. I have no idea what the fucking thing is trying to say.
Although I do occasionally say, here's the trailer, Tom for no really good reason.

Another anthem. "Just A Touch" was, I thought, about the new world openin' up for your small quirky bands, and how one day they might just change the face of popular music, including the iconic phrase, can't hear it on the radio...
But a look at what some guy on some lyrics website has to say puts me in doubt. For one thing, apparently it's 'Kevin heard it on the radio'...Which I doubt, and...

Well what in the world? Women in black
Don't you remember, Sonny's, Tyrone's, packed, packed
A day in the life well nobody laughed
Look to the days how long can this last

I can't see where to worship Popeye, love Al Green,
I can't see, I'm so young, I'm so god damn young

Um, yeah. And it isn't 'set it off, just a touch', either. Good lord, I'm confused.

"Swan Swan H" is a nice little ditty that would work well with some knowingly anachronistic band like The Decembrists playing it. I like the fact that the word 'hummingbird' is chopped down to 'H' in the title, like it's part of an old sign on the side of a building that is partially obscured by plaster and decades of grime.

Swan, swan hummingbird
hurrah, we're all free now
what noisy cats are we...

and

A pistol hot cup of rhyme
The whiskey is water, the water is wine
Marching feet, Johnny Reb, what's the price of heroes?

(I maintain that that's actually 'cup of brine', by the way.)

They end off with "Superman", which is a cover of a minor hit by an obscure '60's band called The Clique. I'm not sure why they did it, but I'm glad they did.

(By the way, for fans of lingering questions, that speeded-up tape thing at the beginning? RetroWeb.com gives it as:
(Godzilla doll opens in Japanese with "This is a special news report. Godzilla has been sighted in Tokyo Bay. The attack on it by the Self-Defense Force has been useless. He is heading towards the city. AAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!!")

Which is nice. Anyway, I love 'em both, that's why they're here, these two albums, in a tie, which is rare for the Periodic Table.
One couldn't be without the other, I suppose?

The Singing Bull

Rise of the Common Woodpile (1991) -Caroliner

Caroliner is also known as Caroliner Rainbow, and adds little apellations to their name for each album. Hence, on the album “Banknotes, Dreams and Signatures”, their name becomes Caroliner Rainbow Scrambled Egg Taken For A Wife. On this one, they call themselves Caroliner Rainbow Open Sore Chorale. They are also known as The Singing Bull of the 1800's.

The 1800's loom darkly over all of their work. The songs seem to be the testimony of long-dead pioneers and settlers, complete with primitive god-fear, deep distrust of nature and yes- abject stupidity. Of course, the fear is mixed with awe.

On the all-important lyric sheet, the album describes itself as 'A Hymnal, comprising songs made Popular by Caroliner, the Singing Bull.' Then, at the bottom: 'Mendota, 1860'.

Mendota is the old Wisconsin state mental hospital, and this serves as your first clue as to what this album is really about. The book Wisconsin Death Trip, by Michael Lesy, is the literary inspiration and companion piece to this album.

The book is a collection of grim pictures from the Wisconsin frontier of the early 1800's, mixed with case files from Mendota, newspaper clippings and anecdotes. Unlike most histories, this one accurately portrays what life was really like for people in that time, including the botched abortions, suicides, incendiary compulsions, mayhem, religious manias and outright fear that gripped our forebears. So the album could be accurately described as what's going on inside the head of each lunatic at Mendota.

The only other album I've heard dig so deeply into the nightmare of the American psyche is Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle, or maybe Tom Waits' Bone Machine. The only other band I know of that makes music so brutal and dark is Coil, or maybe Current 93.

In fact, short of Coil's Gold Is The Metal (which also is on the Periodic Table), I can think of few albums that go so far out of their way to be unpleasant and sound exactly like what people largely do not want to hear. This is not necessarily a recommendation on my part; it's an attempt to explain something I like for some goddamn reason.

** ** **

With the creaking of an old wooden door, and the clanking of various metal objects, side one begins with “Hazel Wet Lap”. It's about the revenge fantasies of a bunch of grade school children against their teacher: “Hazel held grudges/ like you wouldn't believe/ she'd spank children until they'd piss or bleed...” and the chorus, shrieking now as loudly as had been deadly guttural growling before, is simply-”OWWIE OWWIE OWWIE OW! OWW-WOW OWWIE OW!” It's fucking terrifying.

You are introduced in this song to two things: the two narrative voices Caroliner speaks in; the screaming child/Kali death goddess shriek, and the so-low-it's-barely-discernible of long-dead rotted and gone back to dirt pioneer/cow. Also, you get a little picture of how these people talk (here and in interviews); archaic/surreal/poetic. “The children envisioned a teacher-fountain/ with a knife in her vein...”

The final line is enigmatic, and all the more threatening for it: “If children are shown what makes you griiinnn (this is delivered in a leering, bloodthirsty groan)/ enjoyment will be contagious/ a lesson somewhere therein.”

“Child Heart o' Dirt Pump” is next. It is a revival/hoedown song, replete with out-of-tune organ. In short, it is about a child who eats dirt uncontrollably, and shits out perfect soil for planting. He becomes a sacred rural dying god figure/ coveted posession: “Nailed that child up with Spirit/ in the shed of Farm Equipment”. The proud daddy sticks his hat on his crucified son's head, but evil is afoot: “One mornin' out for How's My Boy/ open the doors, he's not hanging there/ Tell-tale hammer; Someone's took him/ I'll never see my favorite hat again”. It's all like this; hilarious mixed with scary mixed with confusing mixed with grim, grim, grim.

I'm not really certain what the next song, “Beetown” is about. Even after owning and liking this album for years, studying these lyrics closely, I can't tell you. Every verse is about something different and undefined. Here's one I like: “Listen ye people -you can not cry or laugh/ when we sell star jewelry, the North of America we'll own half.” Manifest Destiny? Westward the Course of Empire Makes Its Way?

“Empty Halo”, the song following, wouldn't make a half-bad cover tune for a straightforward bluegrass band. The shrieking death voice of Kali and this new voice, that of a dirt-dumb back country yokel, trade verses.:

KALI: “Be-caause in dea-th I griiinned!”

YOKEL: “I grinned the widest when ah when ah sinned.”

KALI: “Grinning more than ever now!”

YOKEL: “My face is gone!”

The narrarator of this song is dead. There's no other way to put it. “Pleasant smiling cold white skull with a thoughtful sinning song.” More great lines abound: “Accidents do happen, and I'm the man who makes them.” It's about learning to be bad in the world and make it pay, just to die anyway and sit thinking about it for eternity.

“Burdensome Blood” is the next song. It is a pleasant melody, matching sitar and banjo, quietly sung verse with shrieking death voice chorus. After a few verses, it becomes clear that this song is told from the perspective of someone who abducts children, cuts off their legs so it can have more to walk around on.

“Children wonder they fold legs, frown/ grabbing arms and legs, holding down...” (and people worry about the deleterious effects of listening to gangsta rap) “Children can't let loose of my leg/ they got big idea; plead and cry, beg/ OK now walk on two legs more/ lift my torso up, walking on four!” Frightenin', frightenin'.

And now the title track. Throughout the album, there are intimations freely given that nature is trying to take our (that is to say humans') place. “Long since gone; family left the hill/ long left, a woodpile sitting under roof, smiling still.” The worms and the woodpile begin to learn: “Taking up loose by-and-bys/ Knowledge collecting/ From good-deeded minds, worm and mankind/ round them up and one listened to my old banjo/ setting them down, it thanked this old fellow.”

And the chorus goes, “Rise, rise up and take the instruments of man/ put them to use in better use than we can/ Rise, rise up and take the instruments of man/ RISE, RISE, RISE!” It soon falls out of its

groove, into chaos. At the end, all you hear is this dead mechanical spinning.

Ending off the first side is “Gut”, a song about a man who “stuck out his neck/ and that cost both eyy-es”, but gains solace from the many sounds he hears in each of the 1,000 cupboards in his house. Like most Caroliner records, the song is cut off by the needle picking up.

The second side (they only make records; no tapes or CDs. They recorded one of their albums on an Edison-era wire spool that still had ghostly bits of turn-of-the-last-century music on it) starts off with “Recorrupting Checkerfield”. It is a surreal American history lesson: “Change at a glance/ wood to wire fence...For every History describes a lone philosophy.” If I understand you correctly sir, you're saying that history is told by humans, each doomed to see things only as they see them?

With the fences changing, so too is God: “Only ones stuck by river/ knew no Beaded Curtain Wearer/ Taking Checkerfield asleep instead/ submerged world in counterfeit.”

The music is three different genres; fast bass-driven rave-up, free jazz chaos, breaks of deliberately sloppy bluegrass. Actually, within this structure there are also breaks of pure, threatening machine noise. Large and foreboding like the very hills are coming to get you.

The last line- “Origins! History unrevealed! Recorrupting Checkerfield!” History is a bloody lie in America.

“Brittleback” comes next. The new world of trains and gambling halls. The music has changed in response to this leap ahead in history; more organ, but with trombone, dance hall ambiance. As the old man gambles on the newfangled train, his geneology remains with him -he's still the rustic ghoul his parents were. “Brittleback hard straw arm/ Brittleback straw hard leg/ Lop-horned Mom birthed him all along; Stove pipe's making back frame.” This is wandering into Tom Waits territory, but much harder to follow.

Our next hymn begins with the sound of a needle scratching on an old record, then the drunken horn band begins. What sounds like an extraordinarily drunk old Irishman begins to sing: “Being a part of God's Kingdom/ our blessed house is a holy diadem...Pulling family away from sin/ accepting Bible as friend.” Behind this, an oddly lovely clarinet melody is competing with tuba and trombone. This is “Climbing Jacob's Ladder Through the Fireplace”.

The story unfolds; one night whilst in holy contemplation before the fire, a golden ladder appears to a man, going right up his chimney. Of course he and his family start climbing, “to climb on up and meet God's Son.” But about halfway up, they catch fire: “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! My finger's wounded/ and Wife's nose ugly-rounded/ Kid boy cried for a year/ Bible wrong; falsely founded fear!” Now he no longer believes: God's let him down. “Hair is not working on parts of me...Couldn't read the Bible anyway/ now in compost it decays/ I durst not want to ever pray/ Even tho I'll speak again one day.”

We go back to the land again briefly for the next tune, “Sullivan's Lower Trunk”. It is banjo and that crazy dumb yokel again. The song is about the necessity of dowsing; divining water where “the only bath that a man could take was by wiping knee blood off the ground.” But the song is also a parable, sort of. It's not Thom Sullivan who was the best diviner of water: “Thom strained his face, loosening pants; out came young brother Pride.” Pride is a whole other set of legs growing out of Thom's lower trunk. Better still, it finds water (and 'could smoke a cigar with no mouth').

It approaches the level of a folk tale when people (or vestigial appendages) have names like Pride, but usually there is some sort of discernible message. Here, there is just a crazed tale told as if it were perfectly normal, because to the narrarator, it is.

The final song, “Victory Arm Force”, reminds me of something a friend said to me once; “No wonder our asylums are so full. Once every generation, we send our young men off to fight some war they can never understand.” In the case of this song, it's unclear what war is under discussion here, but it hardly matters: there's always a war.

“That War was a real puncher/ red dirt all the summer/ I saw Hell in the arm of a chair/ pillow your blown hand there.” As everyone around him begins dying, he begins to see that the earth is indeed a living organism. First, he sees a fence made of human arms: “A fence, strung together and darned/ the armposts go slack and angle/ companion them with leeches to wiggle,” and then he sees- “Why the ground is a Body complete! Each blade of grass-hair sweet!”

The strange, metal-like music accompanying gets louder and more screamy. Summer is replaced by rain- “lay face on ground Forever/ until I woke up later, circling/ to find a glass-stored Summer.” He's dead, and he's part of the earth now. The earth continues to swallow all, and it becomes clear that the real war is between man and nature.

Then, as the song seems to be screaming to a close, it goes into this barbed lull. Very low, someone is

growling through their teeth: “Buried in the ground/ entire American legs/ fingers coarse-mouthing/ tugging at Blood in vain.” And it all begins again; we take up with our narrarator as he is now- after going through wind and tearing up the clouds; “The War has changed me new/ Mountained me this summer/ 100 arms, 10 legs and long green-haired.” Yup, the hills really were coming to get you.

I needn't belabor the obvious point of this record; that we shit on the earth and it shits back. One of the big images these guys use is that of a bull's head atop a Victorian dress-ed lady's body. In the midst of this surreal history lesson, it's easy to miss the point. Also, you notice that the way they put things is unique indeed; I don't know of any other band with a lyric voice so entirely its own.

I once saw them in the basement of a house in Olympia. Old-timey posters asked ten cents for admission. They were every bit as insane yet lucid in person, which is a very large compliment. They were all dressed in rotted Victorian finery, splattered with Day-Glo paint. At one point, a Floozy joins the crowd. She is dressed in tattered petticoats and skirts, sprayed Day-Glo as well. As she holds on to her enormous hat, she commences to stamp the floor like this here's a good old hoedown. Perfect. At one point, the singer runs upstairs and finds the drunkest guy in the house, gets down on the floor -on all fours- and rides him like a pony.

They stopped recording and touring some years ago. It was said that the entire band was financed by the state-assistance money that the two brothers who formed the nucleus of the band received for being crazy, and they lost it. The funding, that is.

** ** **

The main body of this review was written ten years ago. I just found their MySpace page, and it's a doozy. I particularly recommend that you read "The Most Callous of Pacific Northwest Tours". It seems to suggest that they're touring again (and they're definitely still making records), since they reference Portland's own Someday Lounge (which in Caroliner speak becomes 'Somewhat Lounge').

Other web content I've found on this exceedingly strange band includes a Wikipedia entry, of course. It includes the line, "lyrical vantage points so convolutedly arcane to make comprehending them impossible," I wonder about that. Am I reading wayyy more into this album than is necessary? Possible. The Wiki entry also includes one of the band members citing "buckets of nails being kicked down the stairs,"as an influence.

Where Music Comes From

I really try not to write too much about those albums where most of the critical community has already decided they are classic. As much as I agree that the Stones' Exile On Main Street is probably the best album rock n' roll has produced yet, I'm not in a big hurry to simply add my voice to that chorus. Same with Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back; it was a game changer, both musically and politically. But do I want to be the millionth-and-one to say that?

However, there are those cases where everybody seems to have the same admiration for the album, but it'd take too long to examine why. Case in point; The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, from 1999.
It merits inclusion in the canon of the truly great rock n' roll records -somewhere near The Who's Tommy, I'd wager- because it wants to be so many different things and actually pulls it off. It could be viewed as an attempt to write an entire new set of torch song standards, a basis for what could certainly be the greatest musical ever written, an earnest attempt to explore every aspect of both love and love songs, at times a celebration of music itself, and finally, one of the best musical in-jokes I've heard.

Trouble is, it really is sixty-nine songs long (they wanted it to be a hundred, and I believe they actually recorded that many), and takes up three CDs. To review it is like reviewing a David Lean epic motion picture. This may very well be why so many record reviewers at the time chose to more or less say "I like it! I really, really like it!", and move on.
Also, the damn thing comes with a pretty lengthy booklet that attempts to explain itself in the form of an interview with the sole songwriter, Stephen Meritt. Generally I would be against such things, but he's just so damn funny and smart, he gets a pass.

(Kudos too for trying to do something new with what is easily the most written-about topic in the entire history of music.)

"Don't fall in love with me," the first song begins, abruptly. Over a riot of music that on further listening turns out to be a ukelele backed with a loop of that testing tone that used to appear at the beginning and end of all cassette tapes, 'Absolutely Cuckoo' is sung as a round:

"Don't fall in love with me yet/ we only recently met/ true I'm in love with you/ but you might decide that I'm a nut/ give me a week or two/ to go absolutely cuckoo/ then, when you see your error/ then, you can flee in terror/ like everybody else does/ I'm only telling you this 'cause/ I'm easy to get rid of/ but not if you fall in love/ Know now that I'm on the make/ and if you make a mistake/ my heart will certainly break/ I'll have to jump in a lake/ and all my friends will blame you/ there's no telling what they'll do/ It's only fair to tell you/ I'm absolutely cuckoo"

Then it repeats. It's the kind of thing you wish that people would actually say to each other, and then you remember: sometimes they do. Also, the childlike rhyming makes it palatable and charming rather than menacing. Already the album establishes itself as being realistic, but arch and wry, able to laugh at itself.

That same ability comes in handy on the next one, 'I Don't Believe In The Sun'. It is every bit the adolescent, wayyy over dramatic, self-pitying song that the title suggests. But remember: you've felt this way too, and not just when you were a teenager.
In fact, since so many love songs are about the loss of love rather than just plain old love, it requires a certain touch to try to redefine the genre. This particular song is devastatingly plain about how bad the author feels, but also with that fantastic gallows humor that all of us develop, after a while:
"The only stars/ there really are/ were shining in your eyes
There is no sun/ except the one/ that never shone on other guys
The moon to whom/ the poets croon/ has given up/ and died
Astronomy/ will have to be/ revised"

A quick look over the track listings presents a classification system, for those seeking a taxonomy of the Sixty-Nine:

Tracks specifically making fun of other musical genres: 'Punk Love', 'Experimental Music Love', 'World Love' and 'Love Is Like Jazz'

Tracks either poking fun or offering homage to other genres or groups: 'Sweet Lovin' Man' could easily be a song by somebody like Sheryl Crow. 'Long Forgotten Fairytale' could be Human League. 'The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing' pretty much is a Depeche Mode song. 'Abigail, Belle of Kilronan' is a spot-on satire of that maudlin Irish folk song that insists on mixing love with warfare and suffering. 'Wi Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget' goes even deeper into Irish folk. 'Yeah! Oh Yeah!' sounds like something Phil Spector produced. 'For We Are the King of the Boudoir' has a harpsichord as its chief instrument, and could easily be a madrigal. 'Acoustic Guitar' sounds like someone's way too earnest effort at a coffeehouse open mike.

Tracks from the version of the album back when they were considering making it alphabetical (and presumably, shorter): 'Underwear', 'Xylophone Track', 'Zebra', others.

Tracks that could easily be turned into country songs: almost all of them, but especially 'The One You Really Love', which could be a Carter Family song, with very little alteration.

Again, if I sit here and break down each song piece by piece, we'll be here all month. I almost want to do it though, since Stephen Merritt is just that good, and raises so many feelings in so many ways. He's the Cole Porter of his generation, and I'm not just saying that because he's gay: He holds a title in my book that no one else is even in competition for.

Line by line? Is that the way to do it?
"You are a splendid butterfly/ it is your wings that make you beautiful
and I could make you fly away/ but I could never make you stay..." -'All My Little Words'

"We don't have to be stars exploding in the night
or electric eels under the covers
we don't have to be anything quite so unreal
let's just be lovers" -'A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off'

"Or I could make a career of being blue/ I could dress in black and read Camus
smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth/ like I was seventeen/ that would be a scream" -'I Don't Want to Get Over You'

"When you betray me, betray me with a kiss/ Damn you, I've never stayed up as late as this"- 'Come Back from San Francisco'

"The book of love has music in it/ in fact that's where music comes from/ some of it is just transcendental/ some of it is just really dumb" -'The Book of Love'

And that's leaving out the songs that are so damn good as a whole that to take one line out of them simply won't do, like the insane wordplay of 'Reno Dakota', the out of control punning of 'Fido, Your Leash is Too Long', the overwhelming double entendres of 'Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits', the spare bitterness accompanied by finger snapping of 'How Fucking Romantic', the tear-jerkingly beautiful imagery of 'Nothing Matters When We're Dancing'. It ends off with the spare banjo and piano of 'The Things We Did and Didn't Do', which might be the greatest song about regret I've ever heard. All I've just covered there is on Disc One alone.

There is a song -'My Only Friend'- that is a Billie Holliday tribute. Busby Berkeley turns up twice, in 'The Way You Say Goodnight' and 'Busby Berkeley Dreams'. The Brill Building makes an appearance in 'Epitaph for My Heart', and the songwriting team of Holland-Dozier shows up in 'The Death of Ferdinand DeSaussure'...Because it rhymes, and show-biz jokes abound here.

But there's a larger message at work in all of these songs. By being so abysmally depressed that someone else's singing is the only thing that can save your life, you take your place in a very long historical line, keeping company with many, many people. The same is true of being happy and content. Having a sense of humor about it too puts you in some fantastic company indeed.

And mixing pretentious in-jokes about obscure and long-dead Swiss linguists with Seussian word play at its finest makes you the kind of poet that people will actually listen to:
"I met Ferdinand DeSaussure/ on a night like this/ on love, he said I'm not so sure/ I even understand what it is/ No understanding, no closure/ it is a nemesis/ You don't use a bulldozer/ to study orchids, he said"

Musical cliches are turned nicely on their ear, like in the album-stopping 'Papa Was a Rodeo':
"Papa was a rodeo/ mama was a rock n' roll band/ I could play guitar and rope a steer/ before I learned to stand/ home was anywhere with diesel gas/ love was a trucker's hand/ never hung around long enough for a one-night stand..."

It could be any country song, but at first it sounds like a conversation between two men in a redneck bar who are discreetly discussing leaving together:
"I like your twisted point of view, Mike/ I like your questioning eyebrows/ you've made it pretty clear what you like/ it's only fair to tell you now/ that I leave early in the morning/ and I won't be back 'til next year/ I see that kiss-me pucker forming/ but maybe you should plug it/ with a beer"

And we can't resist the urge to go a little existential here, because we're not stupid people, and even when we're picking each other up in bars, we are still thinking about things:
"The light reflecting off the mirror ball/ looks like a thousand swirling eyes/ they make think I shouldn't be here at all/ you know, every minute someone dies/ what are we doing in this dive bar?/ How can you live in a place like this?/ Why don't you just get into my car/ and I'll take you away, I'll take that/ kiss now"

But:
"And now it's fifty-five years later/ we've had the romance of a century/ after all these years wrestlin' gators/ I still feel like cryin' when I think of what you said to me:"
And then Claudia Gonson steps in and sings the chorus again. She is the one who has been the narrarator the entire time, not Stephen Merritt. This is exactly the kind of bait-and-switch that a country song writer would use: you thought they were gay, didn't you?

A Bo Diddley barnburner like 'I'm Sorry I Love You' still has, amidst its bluster, the weird sort of overthinking that you do when you're confused and in love-or-something:
"A simple rose in your garden dwells
like any rose, it's not itself
it is my love, in your garden grows
but let's pretend it's just a rose"

There's a couple of songs that more or less make their points while also really showcasing how much fun he's having just writing songs. 'Love Is Like A Bottle of Gin' is basically a riddle:
"It's very small, and made of glass/ and grossly over-advertised/ it turns a genius to an ass/ and makes a fool think he is wise"
that only gets around to explaining itself in the final verse:
"You just get out what they put in/ and they never put in enough/ love is like a bottle of gin/ but a bottle of gin is not like love"

And love is also like jazz (as in the song 'Love Is Like Jazz'):
"You make it up as you go along/ and you act as if you know the song
but you don't, and you ne-ver willl..."
and:
"It's divine, it's asinine, it's depressing/ And it's almost entirely/ window dressing
(incredibly long pause) But it'll do"

From 'A Pretty Girl is Like...':
"A pretty girl is like a violent crime/ if you do it wrong, you could do time
but when you do it right, it is sublime/ I'm
So in love with you girl, it's like I'm on the moon
I can't really breathe, but I feel lighter..."
But ultimately he is forced to concede:
"A melody is like a pretty girl/ who cares if it's the dumbest in the world?
it's all about the way that it unfurls/ a pretty girl is like/ a pretty girl"


And like love, like life, there is not only an amazing undercurrent of bitterness but also a fair amount of open nastiness. In the oddly Stevie Nicks-esque song 'No One Will Ever Love You', the observation is made that, "No one will ever love you honestly/ no one will ever love you for your honesty". True.

The wall-of-sound song 'Yeah! Oh Yeah!' features a duet between Claudia and Stephen, and concludes this way:
STEPHEN: I've enjoyed making you miserable for years. Found peace of mind in playing on your fears. How I loved to catch your gold and silver tears, but now my dear...

CLAUDIA: What a dark and dreary life. Are you reaching for a knife? Would you really kill your wife?

STEPHEN: Yeah! Oh yeah!

CLAUDIA: Oh I die, I die, I die. So it's over, you and I? Was my whole life just a lie?

STEPHEN: Yeah! Oh yeah!

And 'The One You Really Love', which is a pretty hard song anyway, ends off by reminding the unheard second party in the room that by pining for a dead lover, that means "you're dreaming of/ the corpse you really love"

The very to-the-point 'How Fucking Romantic' has the guest vocalist Dudley Klute admonishing his boyfriend about how stereotypically gay their relationship has become. But really the problem is the relationship itself:
"Love you obviously/ like you really care/ even though you treat me/ like a dancing bear/ toss your bear goldfish/ as it cycles by/ don't forget to feed your bear, or it'll die"

He does a later song that is about being in a relationship with a guy that beats you, and your associated self-delusions, called 'Long Forgotten Fairytale'.

In the song 'Meaningless', he is forced to admit that a recently ended thing was entirely without point, but at the same time, it is:
"deliciously meaningless/ effervescently meaningless/ beautifully meaningless/ profoundly meaningless/ definitively meaningless/ comprehensively meaningless/ magnificently meaningless/ incredibly meaningless/ unprecedentedly meaningless/ mind-blowingly meaningless/" With all of those being separated by a bunch of 'yes yes yes (es)'.

Finally, credit goes above all else to the songs that remind you that there is good things and fun to be had in this whole enterprise of lovin', livin' n' dyin':

"This too shall pass, so raise your glass to change and chance/ and freedom is the only law, shall we dance?"- 'World Love'

"Maybe it's you/ you know, your eyes are awful blue/ maybe it's more/ maybe you're all I ever waited for/ after all the sleepless nights/ when I wished I could still cry/"-'The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing'

"Washington, D.C./ it's the greatest place to be/ it's not the cherries everywhere in bloom/ it's not the way they put folks on the moon/ no no no/ it's not the spectacle and pageantry/ the thousand things you've got to see/ it's just that's where my baby waits for me"- 'Washington, D.C.'

"My girl is the queen of the jungle folk/ you should see the things we see when we smoke/ we think all of life is a funny joke/ she's sharp as a tack/ I don't care if I never get back"- 'Queen of the Savages'

There are songs about the little pleasures of watching your lover asleep, and just appreciating how they say goodnight (as well as grudgingly appreciating how well they say goodbye), the pleasure of fucking, and of dancing, a song about the pleasures of anonymous sex, the mixed feelings generated by semi-anonymous sex that results in pregnancy:
"No rose conveyed your sentiments/ not even a petunia/ but you've got vague presentiments/ and I've got little junior"- 'The Night You Can't Remember'

They manage to get away with the line "I love it when you give me things" (in 'The Book of Love') because you know what they mean, and more importantly what they don't mean.

And again, the last song is called 'Zebra', because he thought the whole thing should end with a 'z'. It's a screamingly funny little song about a spoiled rich lady who already has everything asking her husband for, ultimately, another zebra, because, "Zelda looks lonely".

Like I said, trying to review the damn thing is like reviewing an encyclopedia: the wise do not attempt it. Or like critiquing a life; you can't, really. By my count, there's twenty-four songs that I didn't even get into, and a couple of them are my favorites. Really, just had to say this: I like it. I really, really like it.

Nearly A Laugh, But Really A Cry

(I actually wrote this back in the late '90's for The Antagonist, but it never saw print, and I'm just in the mood to put something here, as I've been working my ass off lately, and haven't had time to blog.)

PERIODIC TABLE OF MY FAVORITE ALBUMS: "Animals" - Pink Floyd

The concept album. It unfortunately conjures up images of Yes, or Emerson, Lake and Palmer. But a lot of good bands did them (The Kinks, in particular). If you buy the story that the 'White Album' by the Beatles is actually them merely making fun of everyone else currently active in music at the time, that also means that one of their best albums is a concept album, sort of. In any case, it's an idea that could see some reviving, in competent hands.

Toward the end, Pink Floyd did almost nothing but concept albums. This one I'm reviewing in particular just happens to be the most dark, cynical pondering on the state of humanity that I've ever heard.

You know the concept, right? The human race is basically broken down into three subgroups; dogs, pigs and sheep. It begins with this little calm-before-the-storm number called "Pigs on the Wing (part 1)". Just acoustic guitar and Roger Waters' voice. It sort of sets you up with what this album might really be about: what if no one really gave a good grey shit about anyone else?

And we roll into "Dogs". It begins really quietly, building as the lyrics begin: "You've got to be crazy/ Gotta have a real need..." To be a dog in this world is to be vicious and mercenary. On one hand, they're speaking of gangsters and thugs, but it soon becomes clear that they're talking about stockbrokers and businessmen, too. "You've got to be trusted/ by the people that you lie to/ so that when they turn their backs on you/ you'll get the chance to put the knife in..."
But they're also literally talking about dogs. It gets into what the end is like for you, as a dog. After all is done, and you've done as many people that've stood in your way, you cease to be useful, and are to be hunted down and destroyed. You flee, cancer eating your guts, knowing full well that one one of these days, they're gonna put you in a bag and throw you in the river.

The last verse is a list of everything that has happened to you in your dog life (or dog-man life) that took you to where you are now -drowning.
"who was given a pat on the back
who was breaking away from the pack
who was only a stranger at home
who was dragged down in the end
who was drownd-ed all alone
who was dragged down by the stone..."

The music is thick, richly produced. You can hear every dog recorded clearly, like it's in your backyard. The music is so slick, it's almost dull. It's a lot less musically adventurous than a lot of their albums, but a lot more menacing. It gives you even more of an impression that all of this is inevitable.
For whatever it's worth, it's also sort of clear that old Rog considered himself a dog.

Then a pig grunts, and "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" begins. It is a sweaty, nightmarish funk thing. It, of course, is about the folks set above us all by society.
The first two are merely rich people. People who are able to believe they are safe. This delusion lends a bit of piety to itself; "And when your hand is on your heart...You're nearly a good laugh/ almost a joker..." But as with all of them, "You're nearly a laugh, but you're really a cry..."
The final pig is different; not just rich but powerful. "Hey you White House...You house-proud town mouse..." And this pig too feels that all is right in this world that has given it so much, yet cannot help but feel that breath on their necks that suggests otherwise: "You're really a real treat/ all tight lips and cold feet...And do you feel abused? You've got to stem the evil tide/ but keep it over the hillside..." Even the rich and powerful are terrified and hunted.

But the scariest track here has to be "Sheep". That's you n' me he's talking about there. "Harmlessly passing your time in the grasslands away/ only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air..." Wm. Burroughs said that dogs are the lynch mob animal. But no- who is most easily led, through their fear? That's you n' me he's talking about there!
"Meek and beleagured you follow the leader down well-trodden corridors into the valley of steel..." Yes, we sheep can be counted upon to shovel a couple generations worth of us into the fiery maw of hell if we're sufficiently convinced that we're in danger. And if the fear of the dogs won't do it, there's always God.

This twisted version of the Twenty-Third Psalm slithers into the middle of the song:
"The lord is my shepard, I shall not want...
With bright knives he releaseth my soul
he maketh me to hang on hooks in high places
He converteth me to lamb cutlets...
Lo, we shall rise up,
and then we'll make the buggers' eyes water..."

Religion is all you have as a sheep; the possibility of revenge. "Bleating and babbling I fell on his neck with a scream...Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream..." And when the foe is smited? "You'd better stay home, do as you're told/ stay out of the road, if you want to grow old..." Then one of those great leads that Dave Gilmour pulls out of his ass roars onto the scene, repeated over and over until the song fades back out. It's no mistake that there is so much repetition on this album. Everyone's stuck in their category until death. Eternally at war and bewildered.

You feel like you've been through a storm. And right on cue comes the calm after the storm, "Pigs on the Wing (part 2)". It's fragile, and cautious. It knows that too much has already been said. It sort of tenuously says, well, at least you n' me care about each other, right? And that counts for something, right? Well, maybe; no conclusions are drawn there.
Above all else, this album has led me to question why so many suburban American teenagers listen to Pink Floyd on acid. You'd have to ignore the lyrics. But on the other hand, this album makes me oddly exhilarated, usually in that nice-to-know-someone-else-is-thinking-this-too sort of way, but it's there.
The Floyd album to trip to, by the way, is "Ummagumma".

Periodic Table of My Favorite Albums: "Sabotage", by Black Sabbath

The year is 1975. Black Sabbath, once seemingly overflowing with good ideas, has just released a real stinker of an album. It was called “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, and despite a shredding title tune, it lacked impact and worse yet, it appeared that Ozzy's songwriting had gotten far, far worse. It contained the appropriately titled 'Fluff', another one of those acoustic guitar workouts that alienated metal fans so much in those days. The doom was still there, as were the open exhortations to get fucked up, and the bad Jesus Hippy shit that marred the second and third albums was for the most part gone. But the music just wasn't very exciting.
Personally, had I not been in pre-school at the time and therefore couldn't have given a shit, I'd wager that a quick reinvention of Black Sabbath was not on the wise. (Their worst album, however, was still ahead of them. “Technical Ecstasy” would be an embarrassment to any band.)

It now remained to be seen whether or not Sab could integrate their hellish need to rock out with their curiosity about pseudo-classical arrangements and childlike love of effects. The answer was “Sabotage”.

It is an album loaded down with weird little jokes and puzzling evidence that really messed with my junior high-aged brain when I discovered it. Before the first song, someone very far off yells, “Attaa-ck!” (I think). The you hear Geezer turn on his bass amp, the countdown is heard, and then the air is filled with death boogie. “Hole In The Sky” is one of the better state-of-the-artist songs I've heard. You know; that first song on the album, wherein rock star lets you in on just where their head's been lately.
It would seem that he was still meditating on the stunning downward trend of the world, but from a more detached perspective than before. He wasn't singing little songs about satanic generals destroying the earth and God coming to punish wrongdoers everywhere. But everything remains fucked. The song is abruptly cut off, as if the world just ended, and segues immediately into a brief, beautiful classical guitar piece titled, 'Don't Start (Too Late)'.

'Don't Start' peters out, and is immediately replaced by this very proto-punk guitar riff. This is 'Symptom of the Universe', perhaps the greatest heavy metal love anthem of them all (uncrowded though that field may be). It jams along rapidly, unashamed of its pretty damn stupid lyrics (possibly because they are meant sincerely, or was Ozzy in on the joke too?). The guitar solo comes, and Tony has discovered phaser pedals, it would appear. This solo gets progressively more glam psychedelic, and just when it would normally peter out and return to verse, it transforms, somehow.
Here comes the acoustic guitars, whooshes and claves, ferchrissake, that spell Groovy Love Anthem. “Woman child of love's creation, come and step inside my dree-eams...” Ozzy is declaiming nearby. It is done: yer girlfriend is the Goddess, dude. The overall effect isn't nearly as cheesy as you might think. It's actually kind of sweet.

Next comes 'Megalomania', which gives away the actual theme of the album: the famous person complains about being famous, twenty years before Smashing Pumpkins. The song itself is a slobbery mess of loops and echo, with our narrarator beating his brow about how he “sold my soul to be the human machine,” which again is cheesy, but honest, I think.
The chorus pulls it all back together. It rides high on soaring power chords, and would be catchy for quite a few rock songs, I feel: “Whyy don-cha just get out-ta my life, yeah/ Whyy don-cha just get out-ta my life, now/ Why doesn't evry-bodah leave me alone?/ Why doesn't EEEvry-bodah leave me alone, yeahhh?” Beyond there, it descends into the proto-Motley Crue riff, with cartoony lyrics about impending insanity and revenge scenarioes (he even yells, “Suck meeee!”, which is funny, perhaps not intentionally so). The guitar work, as on a lot of the album, is so phased and flanged that it almostwanders out of rhythm. Before it gets a chance to do that, Side One ends.

It's hard to do this album justice. Like a lot of albums in this genre, the lyrics are the work of a person who isn't terribly bright, but he feels them so profoundly, it effects you. Some of the lines here work only if you suspend your cynicism (hard, I know), others because they're clumsy-but-true, and others because they actually work.
The music, on the other hand, is underrated-ly good. Tony Iommi could always be counted upon to be one or two innovations ahead of the rock guitar idiom of his time, and yet he will always be known as a savage basher-out of primal, simple doom-rock chords. It's kind of a shame. Even much later, after Ozzy, after Dio-on the one album they did with Ian Gillian, he still rises above the muck and wreckage with truly forward-thinking guitar work. I wonder if that continued to be true after I stopped listening to these guys.

Side Two starts out with 'The Thrill of It All'. In this, Ozzy is observing that he really has no more idea than anyone else what the hell is up with the universe. This is tacitly given as a good reason no to look to his word as gospel, and he also says, “If my songs become my freedom/ and my freedom turns to gold/ then I ask the final question/ is the answer bought and sold?”
Well, I like it.

'Supertzar' is the name of the next song. It is the sort of song that inspires parodies like Spinal Tap, in that it far overreaches whatever goal it had set for itself, and for all its pretense, you're never quite clear on what the point actually was. It sounds like the work of your average heavy metal fan who (for some reason) has been called upon to provide the music for a documentary on Russian history.
It has no lyrics, but there is a chorus of overwhelmed and surprised-sounding men and women emoting about something. The overall effect is hilarious, but on some level, it works. It's so damn weird, it redeems itself.

The next song, 'Am I Going Insane (Radio)' is already familiar to the legions of us who grew up listening to “We Sold Our Souls to Rock n' Roll”. A late attempt, I think, at another radio hit by Sab (note that hopeful parenthetical; even though there isn't a non-radio version anywhere I've ever seen).
It's okay, but I've never felt any real attachment to it. It's more in the pedigree of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, with its 'ooh, I'm so damn scary 'cuz I'm so damn ca-rayy-zyy!' feel, but again, entirely different guitar work that saves it in a weirdly speeded-up solo. It fades out into the cartoony laughter that siginifies 'insanity' in pop music.

But then something happens. As the laughter fades away, it is gradually replaced by this truly ugly howling. The laughing continues, but the miserable wailing of somebody is overtaking it. A dark, menacing bassline begins percolating. It's clear that they're building up to something big.
When the first note of 'The Writ' jumps out, it hits you really, really hard. They wanted to make you jump. It is the final song, and the most damning anti-fame number on the album. But it goes beyond that.

It's self-dramatizing, of course, but it's also a return to Ozzy the Crusader of earlier albums. Fame is Satan, or the Famous Person is. Or the World. Or the Eternally Ungrateful Audience. The fucker just keeps plunging on, punishing everything in its path. Ozzy seems mad. “All of the promises that never came true/ you're gonna get what is coming to you,” he fairly spits, and it's unclear who he's talking to. The Voice of Satan effect, also used in 'Megalomania', returns: Ozzy sings with a slowed-down backing track of his own voice.
Here, instead of speeding up, it heads into this fairyland full of chimes and ringing acoustic guitars.

He's trying to convince himself, unsuccessfully: “But evry-thing is gonna work out fiiine, yeah/ if it don't, I think I'll lose my mind...” There is a third movement of steadily churning guitar mixed with pseudo-inspirational lyricizing. It sort of grinds itself down while fading out, and you think, that can't be it...

Then, very quietly, you hear someone start playing a piano with a lot of delay on it. A slowed-down voice sings, “Bl-ow in a jug/ evah-body's doin' it/ bl-ow in a jug/ be like me and bl-ow in a jug/ I want you to/ bl-ow in a jug/ evah-body's gotta bl-ow in a jug...”
And it fades out. It's the most subtle that Sabbath ever got, and it's funny too. After laying on that fame=evil message so heavy for most of the album, it occurs to them that maybe a lot of that audience wasn't bright enough to get it, even then. So they might as well make a little joke about the whole thing; a joke about how the central premise of the whole star/audience thing is so fucked up, it's surprising that everybody doesn't just go start their own band.

And of course, punk rock was right around the corner, and everybody did start their own band, presaging the end of dinosaurs like Black Sabbath, kind of.

The Unfaithful Servant

It is of note to me that the character actor George Grizzard has died. He is known for a lot of characters, mostly second fiddle, in lots of (mostly) television, though he did once play John Adams. Lately, it had been lots of 'Law and Order' for him, and I don't really know what he died of, but his role, generally, was that of 'asshole'.

He is known to me, for the most part, since he was on several 'Twilight Zone' episodes, and I love that show. In the episode "In His Image", he plays the dual role of both an artificial life form as well as the man who created it. When the not-exactly-robot character finally meets a man who looks just like him, he is deeply confused and angry. The man that ultimately turns out to be his creator is drunk ("A little!") and amused.
Before long, it becomes clear that the creator is mostly a failure, a pathetic fuckup who has decided to make new life largely because his own has been such a colossal bummer. He is unable to achieve anything in his own flawed form, and decided that he should instead live vicariously through his creations, who unfortunately turn out to be psychopaths.

A better metaphor for the creation myth, I don't believe I've seen. Funny thing is, I often play host to those on their way to the afterlife, in my dream world. My dreams are, many have noted, very well appointed with lots of rich detail and weird allegories. Plenty of just random shit, too.
This morning, a man who strongly resembled George Grizzard was sitting beside me on a hillside. Also with us was this weirdo co-worker of mine who is actually a composite of several different people.
I believe it was either a song or a movie that we were discussing. "I think I loved that one," the man said. My co-worker, producing a small box with writing on it, immediately launched into an explanation that that very phrase proved that the Grizzard figure was one of two types in the universe, one of the enchanted ones.

The printed material on the box confirmed this. Those who held the phrase 'I think I loved that one' were actually of extraterrestrial origin, as opposed to those boring people like me, who channel their energy into things like...Well, the rest of the dream was a message for me, and I don't really wanna get into it.
But; the reason I have been thinking about him so much lately is due to what he says to his creation when it finally comes back to him. He speaks at length of all his hopes for his alter-image, but concludes sadly, a little drunk, "But then, nothin' ever goes right for me," with this air of what oddly feels like menace.


The Band by The Band, may very well be my favorite album. It could have very easily been titled Nothing Ever Goes Right For Me, but that would have been the title had this been released thirty years later, and The Band had called itself by one of the proposed names for this band: The Honkies.
It is, I think, the greatest American rock n' roll album of all, despite the fact that all but their drummer were Canadian. It dares to deal with aging, of all things, as a theme, which is pretty much verboten in the retarded world of The Popular Music There. It might very well be the closest thing to a personal statement made by a bunch of dudes who truly were born to fail and/or die by their own hands.
Many rockers wish to make that sort of statement. It is entirely another to have that statement be entirely honest. It calls for a stunning amount of both innocence and cunning on the part of the artist.

"Standin' by your window, in pain...Pistol in your hand..." begins the first tune, "Across the Great Divide". Even within the first minute of this damn album, your girlfriend is already threatening to shoot you. But you can pull it out, right? You're a scammer from way back, and clearly you've been here before: "And I beg you, dear Mollie, girl...Try and understand your man, the best you can..."
Which is to say; please don't shoot me, on one hand, but also: we men folk are damaged and stupid and we just don't fucking know what we're doing. Please be nice to me.
This forms an interesting theme that runs throughout the album, by the by: the idea that all this bravado that we menfolk run around with all the time is, we know, what we use to attract, as well as to cover up the pain that we suspect we're not allowed to share. The whole album, in fact, goes back and forth between what would be known as 'boasters', were we Jamaican and from the 1930's, and heart-rendingly honest songs where it's-if anything-a little too damn honest.
"I had a goal in my younger days...I nearly wrote my will..." That sums up the mood of the entire album, by the way. A joke. A weird joke, and you're not sure why it's a joke. Yup: I'm boasting, here! A Big Man! However, also a smart man- though also a self-destructive man, which is where smart men go when they realize that there's no real place for them in the overarching power structure of menfolk: "But I changed my mind for the better...I'm at the still, had my fill, and I'm fit to kill..."
Now, does that mean that you are only good for killing, or that you are done with it all, and are bent on murder? No answers? Well, let's talk about gittin' laid.

"Rag Mama Rag" begins with what is probably the best fiddle line in rock n' roll history. It also propels us headlong into the 1969 study of American popular and folk music that this album really is. It drags us past several references that show up in numerous other songs by artists long forgotten, at least in name:
"I'm goin' to the railroa' tracks, let the 4:19 scratcha mah baaaack..." Again with the suicide. These guys just won't quit.
Well, and Richard Manuel, who wrote that/stole it from much older songs, did indeed hang himself in some shitty hotel room shower in...'89 or so I believe. But here, he is young, dumb, fulla cum, and aware of all the above. Still human, and needing what humans need, making his case in the only way he knows how:
"Hailstones beatin' on the roof...The bourbon is a hundred proof...It's you and me and the telephone...Our destiny is quite well known..."

And for such a strange album, being equal parts barnburner rock and quiet bluegrass-y, it did have two giant hits, and the third song is one of them.
"Virgil Caine is my name, and I served on the Danville train..." It's just too damn familiar. Too many other people have done it...And it's still such a fucking wonderful song. Like I said...Oh, what did I say, not all that long ago?

"Regardless of where you are, the Fourth of July is an endless reminder that to be American is to be complicated, when not merely being vindictive and childish. The local radio station in Remote Mountain Village spent much of the day playing the music of true rebellion: Sixties shit.
I love them for it: they played "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", by that greatest of all American bands (though all but one of them was from Canada): The Band. A reminder, again: nothing but conflict, and things to talk about. There are people who view The Brother's War (my favorite name for it yet: 'Deadwood' again) as a personal matter to this day."

Yeah, we just can't get over it. But most of your personal Civil War narratives don't swerve to the entirely personal as much as this one does. Robbie Robertson wrote it specifically for Levon Helm to sing, and it sounds just like a true son of Dixie is speaking.
And again, most of the song concerns the life of Virgil Caine, with the war only occasionally seeping in around the edges. It is, after all, just another aspect of his life, which is pretty shitty anyway. There's loss, and things that will never be resolved, but above all else: nothing ever goes right for this guy.
The song is part hymn, part anthem, part dirge, all quite beautiful.

Then the song "When You Awake": perhaps the only truly mystical moment of the album. The wonderfully beat-to-shit voice of Rick Danko (another one who died by his own hand/stupidity, only a couple years ago) begins a little tale of how someone named Ole (in the Scandahoovian pronunciation; O-lee) told him he was a fool, and how it made him feel so bad that he walked on down to his Grampa's place, where he is sung this evil little nursery rhyme:

"When you awake, you will remember everything
you will be hangin' on a string, though no wind, you believe
you will relieve your only soul
that you were born but to grow old and never know..."

He receives further pieces of not exactly fantastic advice from Ole ("Careful where you step and watch what you eat. Sleep with the light and you got it beat."), returning to the creepy refrain again and again. It becomes clear that a comment is being made on the subject of folk wisdom, and conventional belief.
Like what? Well, maybe that the homilies that people hold dearest are the worst, though easiest, and that's why they persist. Also that the ultimate truth, whenever we catch even an edge of it, doesn't seem especially rosy, but whatcha gonna do?
The song ends in a long bridge, mostly populated by cliches from old blues and folk tunes. It fades out.

"Up On Cripple Creek" is the other big hit, and I've found that whenever I go sing the damn thing in karaoke, people just love it. It's a song of celebration, but early in my experience with this band, a friend stopped me and pointed out exactly how sad this song really is.
Or is it? I mean, yeah, it's a song from the viewpoint of an alcoholic who has made up his mind that this is just the way it's going to be, and at very least he's lucky that he found someone else who sees his point of view. "A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one," indeed.
There's also plenty of that random shit one finds in The Band's songs...The line about Spike Jones...I dunno. You've probably heard this song millions of times.

"Whispering Pines" is the one song on the album I don't one hundred per cent love, and therefore haven't studied its lyrics very closely. It's one of the openly sad ones; dirgy piano, and...The two dead ones duetting about what sort of sounds to me like being in love with someone who is dead.
I'm still not sure. I'm making dinner right now (pork chops done in apple cider vinegar and beer), and only sorta caught the words. But the overwhelming impression I'm left with is that these guys were far too young to be singing with such an amazing amount of not just world-weariness but a palpable sense of defeat.

Side two kicks off with "Jemima Surrender". This is another boaster, the fragile male ego on display for all to see. It has one of the best damn guitar solos in classic rock.
This is good time music. The whole album encapsulates the lives of many people I've known and loved: brawlers, drinkers, hard-luck types and above all else; people who were lonely as hell and just wanted to be loved.
"You can change your name, you can find a new walk
you can change your lock, it's all the same.
You don't have to give out, if you only give in.
You can jump and shout, but can't you see girl
that I'm bound to win?"
He don't mean it. He knows he's bound to lose, and that she can see through all that swagger as well as anyone.

"Rocking Chair" is a song about knowing that you're done. You've sailed the seas, and it was all worth it, but on the other hand, be realistic, man...
"Hear the sound, Willy boy
the Flyin' Dutchman's on the reef
It's my belief we've used up all of our time
this hill's too steep to climb
and the days that remain ain't worth a dime..."
Time to grow up, just in time to confront the reality of mortality and age.

The same friend who really walked me around this band also had this to say about "Look Out Cleveland", the next song, "What is that song actually about?"
For the life of me, I don't know. It bears a great deal in common with many songs like it in the idiom, in which you are asked to be afraid of/prepare for some unnamed something that is coming your way. It could be viewed as rock n' roll in its ascendancy, telling mainstream America that it won't be going away. Maybe that's it.

"Jawbone" is another sad song with a lazy, relaxed boogie beat that just might distract you from the desperation inherent in the story. It mostly concerns the observations of the community about why you-Jawbone-might just want to quit the criminal life. And what do you have as your rejoinder?
"I'm a thief, and I dig it", sounding increasingly desperate each time you say it, almost whining. Knowing that you should change, and you can't. Knowing that the odds are against anyone growing old as a professional thief, and it sucks...

That damn mournful piano again. "The Unfaithful Servant" begins.
"Unfaithful servant, I hear you're leaving soon in the morning
what did you do to the lady that she says she's gonna have to send you away?"

The human cost of all your runnin' and thievin' and a-drinkin' surrounds you finally, as people who genuinely love you nonetheless must let you go. Everybody knows you still for the essentially good person you are, but your presence here is poisonous.
"Like a stranger, you turned your back
left your key, and gone to pack
Bear in mind who's to blame for all the shame
She really cared, the time she spared
and the home you shared..."
Matter of fact, people are kind of glad to see you go:
"Let us not bow our heads
for we won't be complainin'
life has been good to us all
even when that sky is rainin'"

At this point, it's not the community talking, it's You:
"To take it with a grain of salt
is all I can do; it's no one's fault
Makes no difference if we fade away
It's just as it was; much too cold for me to stay..."

It's not like you didn't try, but your true nature did indeed rear its head:
"Goodbye to that country home
so long, lady I have known
farewell to my other side
I guess I'll just take it in stride..."

Curiously, the narrative goes back to the unforgiving folks in your town, who have had a strange turn of tone:
"Unfaithful servant, you will learn to find your place
I can see it in your smile, and yes I can see it in your face
The memories will linger on
The good old days; they're all gone
Oh lonesome servant, can't you see
We're still one in the same, just you and me?"
I challenge you to be the only dry eye left in the room as the guitar plays us out, accompanied by mournful horns.

I view this as an autumnal album, above all else. It's brown; how 'bout that? And it claims ambiguity as its central theme, which is Fall, if you ask me. It is fitting that the final song is "King Harvest Has Surely Come".
It's yet another song that sounds celebratory, but if the narrarator was a friend of yours, you'd be trying to talk him out of his enthusiasm. The song is actually a little confusing, as the protagonist is both a farmer and a union laborer. It's unclear what it is, exactly, that he does.
His hope is so touching and infectious, and yet, especially after all the other stories you've heard on this album, you just can't trust it. Especially at the end, where he says,
"And here comes a man with a paper in his hand
tellin' us our hard times are about to end
and if they don't give us what we like
he says, 'Men, that's when we gotta go on strike'."

With the basically 1800's slant of the entire album, I think we know where this is going to end.

No summary paragraph. This took a long time to finally write about, and even so I only scraped the surface. Back soon with silly observations about popular cultch.

All the Glory That the Lord Has Made, or, Whose Hands the Church has Fallen Into

I was sitting with Jason the English lately. He was discussing his dislike of a certain act on the scene.
"Te-gan and Sa-ra? I mean, God...Te-gan?"
"Yeah," I said. "It's bad enough that they're two eye-rolling teenage lesbians who are sisters, but why does one of them have to be named one of those American not-names like...
"Tee-gan!" he said.
And then I started talking about Sufjan Stevens. I mean, 'Soof-yawn'? What kind of killingly cute bullshit is that? And the fact that he's some sort of hipster crypto-christer...With a whiny little bitch voice, and pretension to spare...If he weren't the best musical arranger currently known to me in American pop music, he'd have a lot to answer for.
I know my history well enough to understand that some of the greatest art made in human history was made to celebrate the glory of God, regardless of how I feel about that, or anything I might know about the commerce aspect of that sort of thing.
There's the story about Rafael, after painting the usual insanely beautiful images on the cieling of some chapel somewhere, and is approached by a bishop or cardinal or some similar professional liar/gay man who must hide for fear of death, who asked why the angel's faces looked so red...
"They blush to see whose hands the church has fallen into," he reportedly said in response.
Perfect. What do you say about a moment like this in human history? This moment, like so many in the last hundred years, decided largely by the actions of the nation I live in, and when the leadership, as always, has no noticeable regard for human life (except the highly profitable unborn, that is, and the soon-to-be-dead), and the people, as always, are gathering around the crudely drawn stick figures that comprise their faith.
This is why I have a problem with Sufjan Stevens, despite the fact that I can honestly not name anyone who writes better music, these days. It's like embracing Nazi-ism because you like their snappy uniforms, their spare and majestic architecture.
But what do I say about anyone else with this dichotomy? Ya' gotta love the art, not the artist. (Or, as I say even more often, 'Hate Christianity, love the Christian.')
His album "Seven Swans" is a full-blown celebration of the mystery of the soon-to-be-revealed savior. It is fine, spare, banjo-driven music, full of longing of the most beautiful sort, and at least at first, the lyrics could very well be about a lover, rather than the revealed messiah. By the end, it's full blown hymnal for a new age. And it disgusts me. It is sentiments like these that make it easy for the rest of the citizenry of this highly armed and superstitious nation I live in to accept the police state a-growing. 'Unto Caesar...', y'know.

His project to make a celebratory album for each of the fifty states is admirable. I suspect that the professional rock press will have abandoned him for some new, transitory darling by the time he gets to Oregon, if ever. Probably before he hits Nevada or Idaho. That doesn't matter. I haven't heard his album "Greetings From Michigan", but I bet it's wonderful, as almost everything he does is (the album "A Sun Came" is just plain awful).
The album that followed, "Sufjan Stevens Invites You to Come on Feel the Illinoise", is a fucking classic. It's the kind of thing that would have become a musical, not all that long ago.

The first song, "Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois", sets the tone nicely. It starts with echo-ey piano, and goes right into the theme of child-like wonder that pervades the whole album. He also displays his erudition (or pretension, if you please) by referring to said UFO as 'the revenant'.
Like we all noticed at one point or another: based on what early cultures had to say about the gods, they certainly do sound like a bunch of highly advanced beings from space, don't they?
An instrumental follows. It is both majestic and self-parody-ing. Beautiful and large. It is, on further reading, named "The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself In the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're going to have to Leave Now, or, 'I have Fought the Big Knives and will continue to fight them until they are off our lands!'"
Sufjan Stevens likes long song titles. But taking the above with what I know of the guy: I think he's a liberal Christian. The kind I like. He will say, in interviews, that he's a Christian, but he doesn't wanna talk about it. I applaud that, because I think he's trying to say that faith is private, and worse yet, there's already plenty of assholes already making a business out of this.

The next one is a two-parter named "Come on Feel the Illinoise!" The first part called 'The World's Columbian Exposition'. "Oh great intentions/ I've got the best of interventions/but when the ads come/ I think about it now"
Nice word play, and I love the idea that anyone would be delving into the history of a place on a pop record...But that particular line also reminds me that a hell of a lot of his lyrics seem to be about a great deal, without actually saying anything. "If you got patience/ celebrate the ancients". Sure, but...
Along the way, he visits Frank Lloyd Wright, the invention of the Ferris Wheel and Cream of Wheat. It's all good stuff, and seems to be heading toward a statement of some sort regarding how far we should have gone contrasted with how far we actually went: "Oh god of progress/ have you degraded or forgot us?" Even so, the guy still is saying nothing. The music is gorgeous, almost florid.
It flows nicely into the second part, 'Carl Sandburg Visits Me In a Dream'. If you're going to explore Illinois mythology (Lincoln in particular), you're going to need to go back to Sandburg. It's even more in keeping with the classical ode view being put forth here that he would arrive in the form of a visitation from beyond the grave, or a Voice From History, at least. "I was hypnotized, I was asked to improvise/ on the attitude, the regret of a thousand centuries of death".
He's no longer talking about Illinois, or History, at all. He's talking about Where We Stand Right Here, as artists, as Sufjan Stevens...How to say the thing that needs saying, when so many have already said so much. How to not make the same mistakes...
"Even with the heart of terror and the superstitious wearer
I am writing all alone, I am writing all alone
Even in my best condition, counting all the superstition
I am riding all alone, I am running all alone
And we asked the beatitudes of a thousand lines
We were asked, at the attitudes, they reminded us of death
Even with the rest belated, everything is antiquated
Are you writing from the heart?
Are you writing from the heart?
Even in his heart the Devil has to know the water level
Are you writing from the heart?
Are you writing from the heart?"
Perfect. He's writing a new handbook for how to approach this whole I-have-something-to-say thing. Are you acting out of a pure place? Or, as I like to put it, are you operating from ground clear? Intent is everything, y'know.

The next song is about a serial killer from Illinois, "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."
I remember hearing about him on the news, as a kid. I didn't understand why anyone would feel like killing so many people, and wondered why the fact that all the dead bodies were naked was such a big deal. I don't recall whether or not they mentioned that he made his living as a clown.
The music is quiet, singer/songwriter-y but claustrophobic, like the Seventies themselves. It's a not-sympathetic-but-realistic treatment: "His father was a drinker/ and his mother cried in bed/ folding John Wayne's t-shirts when the swingset hit his head"
and "the neighbors they adored him/ for his humor and his conversation". Yes. That's what all the neighbors of all serial killers say. But the nightmare hasn't started yet.
"Look underneath the house there/ find the few living things rotting fast/ in their sleep/ oh my god" and on that 'oh my God', his voice breaks into a near-crying falsetto. He follows it quietly by asking, "Were you one of them?"
Now, what does that mean? Is he wondering about some cousin who disappeared one day in 1977 and was never seen again, or is he asking if we all died, or at least some part of us did, when we finally had it brought to our attention that clowns sometimes are psychopaths, and the neighbors may have a trunk freezer in the garage full of the remains of other neighbors?
It goes on like that, alternating cold recitation of fact with poetic flights. At the end, as almost a post-script, Sufjan Stevens intrudes again:
"And on my best behavior, I am really just like him
look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid."
Shiiiiiit. So-assuming that isn't a confession that he's a serial killer himself- he's certainly laying the whole 'we are all sinners, and therefore wounds in the body of Christ' thing on a bit thick, right? Or, is he reminding us all that it's easy to view all the evil inherent in people through the convenient lens of monsters like Gacy, causing the rest of us to blow off the awful shit we do?

The next song, "Jacksonville", is another one where the music is so lush and wonderful, it causes one to sing along without ever knowing the words. This is why so much of his music courses through the sound systems of hip coffee shops and cafes all over: it's really pretty music.
The lyrics though? It's another pseudo-historical exploration, with words that seem to be saying a great deal, but I'm not sure they're about anything really.
He talks a bit about how the actual black people who live in Illinois don't scare him so much, as he knows he's going to heaven (that's a big paraphrase, but it's what he's saying). He throws in something that I think is a reference to Helen Keller, the Dewey Day parade (?)...And here's something: "The spirit's right, and the spirit doesn't change".
I know that the above is one of those reasons people give for being religious. "Here, at least, is something I can be sure of." Well, sure, but doncha see how some of us people (like me) see this whole No Change thing as terrifying, and signifying Atrophy?
Or how acting like things don't change signifies you in my book as being An Idiot, since the nature of life and the universe Is Change? And how having Something up there in the Sky constantly watching actually sounds a great deal like the nightmarish world I already inhabit? And yet I also agree: there are some things that are just True, dammit, and I don't care what anyone else has to say about it. I know.
And this is one of those places where religious people and non-religious people come together. The other one is: we all agree the world has gone to shit.
"Andrew Jackson! All I'm asking/ show us the wheel, and give us the wine/ raise the banner, Jackson hammer!/ everyone goes to the capital line/ Colored Preacher, nice to meetcha!/ the spirit is here, and the spirit is fine."
Et cetera. I guess I get what he's saying, but what he's saying isn't much, by my estimation. Those who built our nation did so by murder and lies. Yes, I noticed. But maybe this astonishingly good looking Christian guy of twenty-three or so can tell people better than I ever would...But what if they have no idea who Andrew Jackson is? Or they get so caught up in the music, they never check the lyric sheet?
It fades out on one of those long piano trills that takes up the entire keyboard, and into a short string thing called "A short Reprise for Mary Todd, who went Insane, but for Very Good Reasons". A Lincoln joke again. Gotcha.

"Decatur" is the song that follows. Sufjan shares vocals with some other guy. This is the most light-hearted song on the album; largely a bunch of Seussian word-play in which all of the last lines of each verse rhyme with 'Decatur'.
Even so, he still can't leave it alone, either with trying to pack too much meaning into a pop song, or saying things that don't mean a damn thing while trying to fool the rest of us that maybe it does...Also, the requisite stops in History:
"The sound of the engines and the smell of the grain
we go riding on the abolition grain train
Stephen A. Douglas was a great debater
but Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator"
See what I mean? Totally fucking cute. But then check the not-makin'-any-sense-at-all next verse:
"Chickenmobile with a rooster tail
I've had my fill, and I know how bad it feels
stay awake and watch for the data
no small caterpillar, go and congratulate her!"
I forgot to mention that the first line is-"our step-mom, we did everything to hate her/ she took us down to the edge of Decatur". So, along with History History, we also get Personal History, which would have been great if the guy had followed up at all with what he was referring to. That doesn't stop the final chorus from being great:
"Denominate her! Go Decatur!
Go Decatur! It's the great I Am
Abominator! Why did we hate her?
Go Decatur! It's the great I Am
Denominate her! Anticipate her!
Go Decatur! It's the great I Am
Appreciate her! Stand up and thank her!" etc.
So, it's a nice sentiment, if you're finally getting around to apologizing to your stepmom (the actual title of the song is "Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother"), but why didn't you do a better job of that, minus the half-ass historical references? Or why not do the whole thing more cohesively, unless that's the point: here's what it sounds like inside the head of Sufjan Stevens.

The next song, "Chicago", is beautiful. I'm not gonna get into it here, though. The song we've been heading for this entire time is coming up next.
The guitar starts out quietly, at home. An unusual melody. By now, you're ready for it: if he's putting me at ease like this, something horrific is about to happen.
And it is, but it's not. "Casimir Pulaski Day" is one of the most beautiful songs I know, since it's not just a song about a little girl dying of bone marrow cancer. Indeed: if it were just that, I would be able to say, oh you cheap piece of shit. How dare you make me cry with stupid songs about little girls dying of cancer? What ya' got next? Puppies run over by cars?
No: it's about being in love when you're way too young, and having to deal with unacceptable loss when you're a young Christian, and are compelled to say that it all has a higher purpose.
"In the morning through the window shade
when the light pressed up against your shoulder blade
I could see what you were reading
All the glory that the Lord has made
and the complications you could do without"
All the little images we remember years later: "with your shirt tucked in, and your shoes untied", for instance. It all adds up to being a complete picture, which you never get in pop music, of a person. Not just My First Love, not just The Dead Chick, not just The Day I Started Questioning God Because I'd Never Had to Deal with Death Before, not just Cheap Tearjerker, but not just Celebration of Someone, either. All the above, in fact.
"All the glory that the Lord has made
and the complications when I see His face
in the morning in the window
all the glory when he took our place
but He took my shoulders, and He shook my face
and He takes and He takes and He takes..."
She's a martyr/messiah, too. She is the face of God, or is that a reflection in the window?
And I love that 'he takes and he takes'. Last time Sufjan played New York City, the guy from the Times pointed out that any show by this outfit chiefly concerns 'a God that sometimes seems so distant'...Mr. Stevens is a believer, and I haven't been since I was very young (and only briefly then). I love to listen to the searching aspect, as opposed to the fat, self-satisfied smugness one generally gets out of Christians in the United States.
Above all else, this is the journey all of us are on, regardless of what we're seeking. If it ain't God, it's Art, or Justice, or Knowledge...Or anything we wish for. And to hear anyone finally say it out loud-It may not Actually Be There-is so fucking beautiful.

Rest o' the album's pretty damn great. The song that follows "Casimir Pulaski Day" is one that would make Stereolab proud. That's another one of the strengths of this album: it isn't tied specifically to one musical genre. It can be whatever it wants to be. The rest of the album is beautiful, though I think it shoots its wad on "Casimir".
That song ends with some of the beautiful girl backup singers he always employs doing their tiny, plaintive voice thing. Quietly, so young: feel sad, but then...
It gets louder, and the chorus reminds the musicians that this is also supposed to be a celebration, and it sounds more triumphant, like maybe she's a little lucky to be out of here, and not have to ask all these fucking questions, which then will require answers.

I gotta stop. I promised myself a few weeks ago that I'd do a piece on this album, and now I basically did it. Take it for whatever it might be worth.